Chapter 358

Apocalypse watched as Jacob and the mysterious girl walked into the room. She did not care one bit about who the girl was, because the real target here was Jacob Cloud. Jacob Cloud had foiled her plans on another world, and now he would pay a dear price for it. She finally had the opportunity to kill him and make him suffer — to treat him like a dog.

And the Dungeon that she had prepared for the slaughter of the people of Zamorye suddenly felt lacking. She wished she had arranged something more theatrical, something more dramatic, so that she could have nibbled on every last inch of Jacob Cloud’s flesh before killing him.

But in reality, what would happen was very simple. The Mithril traps — or even just the Adamantite traps, or even just the Imperium and True Diamond Rank traps in the Dungeon — would be easily able to kill Jacob. He was too weak.

Without the Grimoire, he still had his Heartfire Skill, which Apocalypse had seen through Lyra’s eyes before her Apostle died. And it was a very powerful Skill, and the moment Jacob had gained it, he had been able to display an incredible power, far beyond what she had believed possible for someone like him. But it would still not be enough. Even if his power peaked like that against Lyra, Jacob Cloud would die today.

So she watched as Jacob Cloud was about to enter an array that would literally set him on fire — magical fire that would destroy his bones first and burn him from the inside out.

But right when he was about to walk there, the girl whispered something that Apocalypse couldn’t hear. Jacob punched the ground, removed a ley line of power that had been part of the array of the Mithril Rank trap, taking an extremely valuable flower that Apocalypse had spawned herself in order to create this array, and pocketing it into his Interspatial Ring.

Now that the flower was gone, the array was not active anymore, and he just proceeded to pillage the rest of the trap.

Apocalypse did not understand what was going on.

How did he see that? He doesn’t have the Grimoire anymore. He shouldn’t be able to do something like that. What’s going on?

She double-checked her powers. Had her powers failed? No, it couldn’t be. She was still the one where the Grimoire came from. The Grimoire belonged to her. She could turn it off. Lyra had not been able to suppress the Grimoire for long. But by being so close to the true source of the Grimoire’s power, Jacob should not have been able to escape her control.

So what kind of spell had he used?

She started dissecting the Mana around Jacob Cloud, looking at him with a clinical eye as he proceeded to dismantle all the Mithril Rank traps in the room.

For a moment, she stopped and thought, What is he doing? Why is he taking all the materials? Is he a beggar? Does he need money? What would he even do with those materials? He can’t use them to make traps himself. He can’t channel the starting sequence to create such traps anyway.

And so she pried.

“I see through you, Jacob Cloud. You must have studied an incredible number of traps since I last saw you. You must have become a scholar of arrays and Primordial Magic. That is why you managed to see through such common Mithril Rank traps in the first room.”

Jacob looked up at the walls and slowly shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

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“You can’t hide your great knowledge from me, and I can see that your Mana is tightly balled together. You must have found a way to analyze the patterns of Primordial Magic, and coupled with your knowledge of traps, that’s the thing that would allow you to see through traps as complex as these ones.”

Jacob looks at Taya, who just shrugs in return and says, “What?”

“You cannot fool me. There is no other explanation as to why you would be scavenging all these materials like a beggar. You think you can fight traps with other traps? You think that I, a Primordial Goddess, would be so foolish as to just use trap patterns that are known to inferior mortal races? The first rooms have been crafted in haste, but I took my time with the rest, and you shall perish to them. Pillage all you want, you little beggar, but know that your end is nigh.”

“Holy—” Jacob laughs. “Are you all right? You don’t sound like you’re doing good.”

“Stop mocking me, Jacob Cloud. I know that you must have prepared specifically to face me. You must have known that Karma would have brought us together again, and you saw through my plans. I understand now. It only makes sense that you would be thinking about me all this time. But fear not, because you were in the back of my mind all this time.”

“Stalker,” Taya commented in a low voice.

“And that little friend of yours will die as well, as soon as you step into the wrong trap. I can see confusion on your face already. Your knowledge will only bring you so far. Knowledge is nothing in front of a Primordial Goddess such as me. I will bring the wrath of Apocalypse upon you, and then upon the whole of Zamorye. I will wear your face as I kill them all, and they will think that their savior killed them.”

“I mean, they already think that I’m a traitor.” Jacob shrugs.

“What?” Apocalypse frowns. “Do not tell tall tales to me. I know you’re a crafty bastard.”

“You’re getting pretty vulgar yourself, you know?” Jacob says. “I’m not a crafty bastard.”

Taya gives Jacob a meaningful glance.

“Well, maybe a little bit. But I’m not joking. They really don’t like me out there, and—”

“Silence!” the Primordial Goddess shouts. “Proceed. I want to watch you die and suffer.”

But as Jacob indeed goes on, what Apocalypse has to witness is just him dismantling more and more traps, as if he could see them extremely clearly — as if his Grimoire was still working.

But Apocalypse did not have a better solution. If she sent monsters to face Jacob, she would just be playing his game. Jacob was strong. And if he could dismantle traps like this, maybe Jacob Cloud had actually forecasted that she would stop powering her traps in order to redirect that power into Nightmares. But Apocalypse was smarter than that, and she knew very well that if she started sending Nightmares, she would have lost.

Or at the very least, that’s what she believed, since Jacob Cloud was dismantling traps so easily.

She didn’t know that the real reason Jacob was having such an easy time was that Taya was silently telling him where everything was, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. And Apocalypse also didn’t know that if she actually sent Peak Imperium Rank Nightmares, there was a good chance that they could have killed Jacob.

But instead, Jacob was draining more and more power from her traps, even as they became unconventional, and new, and original — designs that only she, as the Goddess of Apocalypse, could have come up with.

In fact, one could easily say that the Goddess of Apocalypse was currently undergoing an existential crisis as Jacob dismantled yet another Mithril Rank trap, one several orders of magnitude more complex than the one he had dismantled at the beginning of the Dungeon.

And it made no sense. How far did Jacob Cloud’s knowledge about traps span?

But she knew that the moment she turned to Nightmares, she would have completely lost. Jacob Cloud would start leveling up, become even more powerful, and that would be a real problem.

So she devised another plan.

Jacob Cloud had plainly admitted that he could not turn Mana nodes into Skill Crystals. And that was a great piece of information that Apocalypse was about to turn against him.

Jacob was about to make his way into another room when the door was suddenly closed by the stone joining together, and another door appeared on his left.

“Are you cheating?” Jacob asks warily. “What’s that?”

“In the next door, there is your demise. You might have figured out all the traps, but I’ve outsmarted even you. Your Skill works again. But guess what? The next room has Adamantite Rank Mana nodes. And if you want to proceed forward and meet me — and avoid having this entire Dungeon starve you to death — you will have to turn those Mana nodes into Skill Crystals yourself. I’ve tied them to your Mana signature, so that your little friend wouldn’t be able to use them. Now you either turn them, or the room explodes with you two in it. Good luck.”