Chapter 132: The Ego Death
Chapter 132: Chapter 132: The Ego Death
Chapter 132: The Ego Death
The Miasma Gorge had turned into a slaughterhouse.
Black blood pooled across the jagged rocks. The toxic gray fog boiled under the intense heat of battle. Hundreds of mutated beasts threw themselves at the squad, only to be met with an impenetrable wall of human resolve.
Astraxion was a tiny god of destruction.
The baby void dragon soared through the chaotic airspace. He had been feeding relentlessly on the crippled Level 90 beasts Draven left in his wake. In mere minutes, the hatchling had completely bypassed his fragile infant stage.
[System Alert: Summoned Pet ’Astraxion’ has reached Level 30.]
[System Alert: Skill Upgrade Unlocked. ’Void Flame’ has evolved into ’Annihilation Breath’.]
Astraxion hovered above a pack of armored Razor-Hounds. The dragon opened his jaws. Instead of a simple burst of fire, a concentrated, blinding beam of neon purple and black plasma erupted from his throat. The upgraded breath weapon struck the ground, instantly melting the heavy beasts and the bedrock beneath them into glowing slag.
Draven stood nearby, his hands in his pockets. He casually crushed the internal organs of any beast that tried to flank his pet.
But the endless massacre was drawing the true terrors of the abyss.
The earth violently shook.
A monstrous roar echoed through the canyon. Stepping out of the thick Miasma was a colossal nightmare. It was a Level 130 Goliath.
The beast stood thirty feet tall, its body covered in thick, jagged armor plating that glowed with internal magma. It was exactly like the Behemoth Draven had slain in the ruined sector, but this time, Draven was not looking at it.
Draven was looking up at the towering cliffside.
A shadow blotted out the dim light of the gorge. A massive, Level 150 Two-Headed Miasma Wolf leaped from the cliffs. It landed with the force of a meteor, shaking the entire valley.
The wolf possessed two decaying skulls, eyes burning with cursed green flames, and a body wrapped in concentrated toxic fog.
Draven finally took his hands out of his coat pockets.
He did not draw his sword. He reached into his spatial ring. A radiant, terrifying pressure immediately flooded the battlefield. Draven pulled out a singular, glowing Magical Arrow. It pulsed with a devastating, absolute lethality.
Aegon stood near the temple gates, wiping black blood from his face. He saw Draven holding the Magical Arrow.
Aegon felt a chill run down his spine. Draven never used that weapon. The Captain only brought it out when he was facing a true, apocalyptic threat. Draven was going all out against the Two-Headed Wolf, which meant the squad was entirely on their own against the Level 130 Goliath.
"The Captain is locked in!" Aegon roared, his blood-fire erupting with renewed intensity.
"We are on our own! Fall into Vanguard Formation Delta!"
The students immediately snapped to attention. Aegon took absolute command, his tactical instincts taking over completely.
"Bram!" Aegon commanded.
"You are our wall! Keep that Goliath’s attention strictly on you! Do not let it advance a single step!"
"Understood!" Bram slammed his heavy shield into the dirt. His giant legacy activated, turning his muscles into hardened titan-stone.
"Cole, Lyra!" Aegon shouted, pointing his spear toward the flanks. "Do not let the small fry interfere! Keep the Level 90 mobs off our backs!"
"We got it!" Cole yelled, spinning his mechanical gauntlets while Lyra laid down suppressive traps.
"Lucien, Reina!" Aegon directed, his eyes locking onto the massive Goliath. "We are the strike team! Target the joints! Shatter its knees!"
"Estella, Natalie!" Aegon finished. "Heavy artillery from the rear! Wait for our opening and blow its head off!"
The squad moved with terrifying, flexible precision. They had faced death together. They trusted each other with their lives.
Bram took a brutal, earth-shattering punch from the Goliath, his boots digging trenches into the stone, but he did not fall.
Aegon, Reina, and Lucien became a blur of fire, ice, and lightning, systematically dismantling the beast’s armored legs.
They were holding the line.
---
Deep inside the Phantom-Weaver temple, Nyx was fighting a very different war.
She was drowning in the absolute dark. Her sight, her hearing, and her sense of touch were completely gone. She was trapped in a suffocating void.
SLASH.
An invisible blade dragged across her thigh. Nyx stumbled in the pitch-black silence, gasping for air. Blood ran down her leg, but she could not feel the texture of the wound. She could only feel the burning, agonizing pain.
"Haha, come on woman! Get up!" the Guardian’s maniacal voice echoed directly inside her mind.
"Bring me a sandwich! I am hungry!"
Nyx gritted her teeth. She gripped her obsidian daggers, swinging wildly into the empty void. She hit absolutely nothing.
"Oh my God! Are you going to hurt me?" the Guardian mocked, his tone dripping with sexist sarcasm.
"You think you are better than a man?! Witch! You are a witch!"
SMACK.
A heavy boot struck her ribs. Nyx fell hard against the unseen stone floor. She coughed up blood, her lungs screaming for oxygen.
"Why is the dinner not ready yet?!" the ancient psychopath continued to laugh inside her head.
"A woman only needs to take care of my kids and take care of the family when I am out! Women are weak! Utterly and pathetically weak!"
Nyx forced herself to her knees. She tried to listen for his footsteps. She tried to search the dark for any glimmer of movement. Her human brain was desperately trying to rely on the biology she no longer possessed in this domain.
"When women get empowered they just become unbearable, just like you!" the Guardian sneered, stepping on her wrist in the dark.
"Drunk on your powers! You are nothing! Just a pathetic little girl playing with knives!"
The Guardian dug his invisible boot into her skin. He probed her mind, searching for her deepest insecurities. He found her core memory.
"An orphan woman!" the Guardian cackled with sheer delight.
"If you were a boy you would have been a better vessel! Ah, that must be why your parents abandoned you, didn’t they?! Hahahaha!"
The words hit Nyx harder than any physical blade.
Her parents. She had spent her entire life wondering why she was left alone in the cold. Why was she thrown away like trash?
A horrifying realization bloomed in her mind. Bastion Seven was a safe haven because Lord Commander Helion was a morally superior ruler.
But outside those walls, the world was a living hell. In the wasteland and the inner Bastions, unawakened people were completely helpless.
Unawakened women were treated as nothing more than playthings for the strong.
Did her parents throw her away because she was a girl? Did they look at a defenseless infant daughter and decide she was a burden in a broken, apocalyptic world?
The thought made her blood boil.
Her mind flashed to the dirty, crowded halls of her orphanage. She saw the faces of the younger kids she used to steal food for.
She saw the true family she had chosen to protect. She was not weak. She was a survivor. She had clawed her way to the Vanguard Academy with nothing but her own two hands.
Nyx screamed.
The sound did not leave her throat. The silence of the tomb swallowed it. But the scream echoed violently through her own mind.
A massive, terrifying emotional turbulence erupted inside her chest. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The sheer rage and grief triggered a violent mana reflux. Her internal mana pathways overloaded, surging with volatile dark energy.
Nyx stopped moving. She stopped trying to use her human eyes.
Every single cut the Guardian had carved into her body began to burn. The pain was agonizing, but it was also a sensation. In the absolute sensory void, pain was the only physical anchor she had left.
Nyx pushed her volatile mana out through her bleeding wounds.
The blood dripping from her skin acted as a conduit. Her mana bled directly into the shadows of the room. Suddenly, her nervous system expanded. The cuts all over her body became highly sensitive sensory nodes.
She could not hear him. She could not see him. But she could feel the exact spatial displacement of the air as the Guardian moved through the dark.
The Guardian lunged for the killing blow.
He thrust his invisible knife directly toward her throat.
CLANG.
The Guardian froze in sheer shock.
Nyx did not dodge. She raised her bare left hand. She caught the sharp edge of the Guardian’s knife directly in her palm. The steel cut into her flesh, but she held it in a vice grip, stopping the blade inches from her neck.
Nyx slowly lifted her head in the pitch-black void.
She opened her eyes. The dark irises were completely gone. Her eyes had turned pure, glowing white.
[The Shadow Domain has accepted your integration.]
[’Mind’s Eye’ has been successfully Awakened.]
Nyx stared directly into the unseen face of the maniacal Guardian. She could see his exact outline drawn in pure, brilliant white energy against the absolute darkness.
She was no longer trapped in his domain. He was trapped in hers.