Chapter 537 - 522: Severing Samsara
Chapter 537: Chapter 522: Severing Samsara
[Warning! Outer wall defense system damage rate at 79.4%. Complete paralysis expected in thirty seconds!]
[Warning! The Demon Legion has breached the annular zone between the first and second walls!]
Piercing alarms blared incessantly across the bridge of the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine. On the displays, the light dots representing Cybertron’s defensive firepower were extinguishing in swathes at a visible rate.
The grayish-yellow mist sweeping across the world was Sargeras’s Law—[Decay]. Logically speaking, this Law should only affect living beings. However, Sargeras, having actualized this Law, had altered its properties so that it also worked on metal. Even if it merely caused Magic Metal to rust, a Golem was composed of tens of thousands of precisely interlocked components; if even a few of those parts malfunctioned, the entire machine would be reduced to a pile of scrap.
Sargeras’s maneuver struck directly at the fatal weakness of Allen’s system. The majority of those precise weapon arrays were already reduced to useless scrap.
Allen sat quietly on the Commander’s throne, observing the destruction as if it weren’t his own doorstep under siege. Within his multi-threaded mind, a single thread calmly analyzed the mechanism behind the Law of [Decay].
"Law... so this is a Law," he mused. "Making steel lose its sturdiness, preventing energy from conducting, and stripping gears of their interlock... What a crude yet highly efficient method."
His tone even carried a hint of admiration. "What a pity that it relies too much on interfering with the Material Realm. Jarvis," Allen’s voice abruptly turned cold, "deploy the Netherworld Guide."
[Command confirmed.]
[Activating... Thanatos.]
On the battlefield, the movements of all the frantically sieging Demons synchronized into a sudden halt. A terror stemming from the deepest depths of their souls surfaced.
In the sky, the layer of clouds dyed a sickly green by Evil Energy was fading in color. No, it wasn’t fading. Another "shadow," originating from an entirely different dimension, was overlaying this patch of sky. Directly above Cybertron, a colossal, blurred dark silhouette hundreds of meters tall slowly emerged from the void like a mirage. It resembled a waterlogged ink-wash painting, its contours constantly shifting between reality and illusion. It was a hunched figure cloaked in a sprawling mantle, carrying a lantern in one hand and wielding a scythe in the other.
Divine Statue - Guide of the Underworld - Thanatos.
It hadn’t truly descended into the Material Realm; it was merely projecting its "shadow" over from the Shadow Realm.
Sargeras’s eyes, burning with Purgatory flames, shifted away from the walls of Cybertron. He abruptly looked up, staring at the colossal phantom in the sky. A hint of surprise and suspicion flashed through His gaze. He couldn’t sense any energy fluctuations from this phantom, nor could He lock onto it using physical means.
Right at that moment, the phantom of Thanatos slowly raised the Bronze Lantern in its left hand.
WHOOSH.
Inside the lantern, the grey mist of light composed of countless Soul Light Balls violently expanded outward. A silent, invisible soul shockwave erupted with Cybertron at its epicenter, instantly sweeping across the entire battlefield!
Across the battlefield, millions of Demons—whether low-tier Hellhounds or enhanced Lords of Purgatory—experienced a sudden stall in the Evil Energy Flames burning within their eye sockets. Immediately after, wisps and clumps of sickly green, illusory Soul Fire were forcibly yanked out from their bodily orifices, completely beyond their control!
From a high vantage point, the entire battlefield appeared to be caught in a torrential, reverse rain of sickly green! Tens of thousands of light dots representing souls converged into visible torrents, forming an immensely massive vortex that surged madly into the sky, only to be swallowed whole by the Bronze Lantern!
Stripped of their souls, the Demons instantly went rigid. Then, like puppets with their strings cut, they collapsed to the ground in massive swathes. The Undying properties and Frenzy Ability that Sargeras had just bestowed upon them were utterly useless now. A physical body could be reconstructed, but what if the soul was gone?
The Soul Concealing Cloak draped over Thanatos’s chest parted, revealing the operating Soul Furnace. It dumped all these freshly harvested souls into the furnace like discarding trash.
RUMBLE.
The gravitational pull inside the Soul Furnace abruptly increased a hundredfold. Countless phantoms of souls spiraled and collided within, ultimately being crushed into the purest, unceasing torrent of Curse Power to supply its entire body.
[Soul Furnace base reserve: 5,471/1,000,000... rapidly increasing!]
[17,471/1,000,000!]
[39,471/1,000,000!]
[72,471/1,000,000!]
Allen could clearly feel Thanatos’s aura skyrocketing at a terrifying speed! It was growing colder, more desolate, and far stronger!
Inside the bridge, a soft chuckle escaped Allen’s lips. "Without a soul, let’s see how you plan on Resurrection."
Sargeras’s Law was built entirely upon the foundation of "souls returning to the Purgatory Blood Pool for Blood Pool Reshaping." However, Thanatos severed this path of return directly at its root. It didn’t slaughter the physical body; it solely harvested souls!
After one round of harvesting, Thanatos didn’t pause. The entire Golem transformed into an elusive dark shadow, darting across the battlefield from another dimension at astonishing speed.
[Shadow Travel]!
Wherever it passed, countless chains shot out from the Shadow Realm. Like a highly efficient farmer, it frantically reaped the crops known as Demon Souls. One hundred thousand! Two hundred thousand! Five hundred thousand! Across the battlefield, rows upon rows of Demons fell like reaped wheat, turning into soulless husks. This silent slaughter was far more chilling to the bone than any previous explosive artillery bombardment.
Thanatos’s aura was frantically exploding at a horrifying speed! The two clusters of eerie green flames in the eye sockets of its skull burned ever more vigorously, even beginning to spill out the radiance of a Law!
"No!!!" At a corner of the battlefield, a Level 2 Peak Fear Demon King that Sargeras had resurrected once before let out a shriek of ultimate terror. It could feel its soul being torn outward by an irresistible force. It frantically channeled its Evil Energy, attempting to stabilize its soul.
But just then, a chain shot out from the shadow beneath its feet without warning. Bypassing all its defenses, it coiled directly around its soul.
"Soul Hook."
The Fear Demon King’s massive body crashed heavily to the ground. Its soul, comparable to that of a Second-level Wizard, was forcefully dragged out of its husk by the chain. Transforming into an exceptionally bright sphere of light, it was swallowed in one gulp by the lantern as a little "dessert."
In the distance, the expression of Sargeras, the Purgatory Monarch who resembled a Titan walking the earth, finally shifted. His legion—those fearless, supposedly inexhaustible troops enhanced by Evil Energy—was being thoroughly erased!
Sargeras’s gaze instantly pierced through the chaotic battlefield, locking onto the dark shadow weaving through countless demonic corpses and bringing about death and finality. He sensed it—that Power of Laws.
[Soul]!
This lowly Morning Star Wizard had actually mastered a Law as well! And it was a Law that specifically countered His Purgatory system! The Soul Marks of those fallen Demons were completely vanishing from the Purgatory Blood Pool, rendering them forever incapable of Resurrection.
The three-hundred-meter-tall Demon God raised His head, His Evil Energy-burning eyes locking onto Thanatos in midair.
"Thief," Sargeras let out a low roar. He took a single step forward, and the earth shattered. His colossal three-hundred-meter body erupted with terrifying speed in an instant, directly shattering the air and kicking up a destructive hurricane. He reached out with a giant hand entirely wreathed in the densest, sickly green Evil Energy, grabbing directly at Thanatos in the sky. He intended to crush this soul-stealing bug.
Thanatos made no move to dodge; it remained stationed in the Shadow Realm. Sargeras’s giant hand passed right through Thanatos’s phantom, grabbing nothing but empty air. Physical attacks in the Material Realm could not touch entities residing in the Shadow Realm.
However, Sargeras possessed more than just physical strength. He snorted coldly as the Evil Energy in His palm abruptly erupted. The Law of [Evil Energy] forcefully distorted space, actively beginning to corrode and influence the interior of the Shadow Realm! Thanatos’s phantom flickered violently, and traces of corrosion appeared on its Soul Concealing Cloak. The gap in their levels was simply too vast. Even though Allen had touched upon the Soul Law, his foundation was ultimately far inferior to that of this ancient Purgatory Monarch.
"Finally making a move yourself, are we?" Inside the bridge of the Ten Thousand Miles of Sunshine, Allen slowly stood up. "Jarvis. Deploy PX-4."
[Command confirmed! "Peacekeeper" "Xiong Da", restrictions lifted!]
High in the heavens, an eighty-six-meter-tall Steel Giant stood quietly upon the Celestial Throne. Its entire body was forged from dimly gleaming Radiant Black Steel. Its broad shoulders, heavy armor, and strength-radiating limbs all broadcasted a pure, tyrannical physical presence.
Three Dawn Star Level Magic Engines ignited simultaneously, letting out deafening roars! At this moment, Allen’s consciousness descended into it.
The eighty-six-meter Steel Giant transformed into a black meteor, streaking across the sky and crashing heavily onto Sargeras’s path of advance!
BOOM!!!!
The earth quaked violently, as if the entire Plane had been jolted into the air by this impact. An impact crater over five hundred meters in diameter formed instantly, and the terrifying shockwave directly reduced all Demons within several kilometers into a bloody mist.
The dust settled.
PX-4 "Xiong Da" knelt on one knee, slowly raising its head. It stood up. In front of the three-hundred-meter Sargeras, its eighty-six-meter body still appeared somewhat "short." Yet, the aura of violence and oppression radiating from within did not fall short in the slightest.
From within the chassis of the Steel Giant, Allen’s consciousness gazed from afar, meeting those terrifying eyes that burned with the entirety of Purgatory.