Defiance of the Fall

The shift in history could only have come from Pervata Wendimar entering the memory domain. The unscheduled appearance of a high-grade entity added a massive expenditure. A third of the memory domain’s accumulated Faith Energy had been drained in one go. For better or worse, the following expenditure wasn’t too bad. The domain wouldn’t collapse on its own, so they still had to face its dangers.

Zac had no idea if the token allowed communication, though exposing its location was probably enough to trigger a response from the Wendimars on the surface. Even so, Zac wouldn’t put his hopes on the kindness of strangers. He stowed the token without waiting for a response, pursuing the bedraggled Monarch with everything he had.

The confusing maze of [Apex Jungle] was repeatedly conjured and torn apart, leaving cracks across the skill fractal. Ogras, who’d reentered Zac’s shadows for safety, tried to help by conjuring shadow trees and mesmerizing illusions. It was the only thing they could do to stall Ivar’s escape. The Guild Master had timed things perfectly, rushing toward a closing gap in the Hidden Earth Abode’s barrier.

The shield didn’t seem to exceed [Void Mountain]’s phasing capabilities, but jumping in blindly was incredibly dangerous. While Ivar was at the end of his ropes, Zac wasn’t doing so great either. Beyond dealing with [Arcadian Crusade]’s backlash, he’d been punched full of holes to keep Ogras alive from the Void-imbued attacks.

There was also a war taking place inside Zac’s body. He’d forced his way through Ivar’s curtain of tainted Void Energy to deliver his final strike. His personal Void was fighting against the outside aggressor, using quality to whittle down quantity. While Zac was confident in his resilience, Ivar cultivated the Dao of Earth just like his ancestor. Geomancers often excelled at defense, and the Guild Master had a significant grade advantage.

Zac wasn’t afraid to risk his life in battle, but he didn’t have any promising follow-up, even if he followed Ivar into the abode. No matter their quality, Middle D-grade Skills didn’t have the oomph necessary to bring a Monarch to their knees. Zac also lacked the means to directly target weak spots inside Ivar’s Inner World. Even if he brought out [Extinction Event], it was unlikely to change anything.

That was why Zac called on the Wendimar Elder. Pervata Wendimar didn’t need to directly intervene. Zac just hoped the presence of an Autarch would create some form of opening. With Ivar’s destabilized cultivation, coming into contact with an Autarch’s overbearing Dao might even prove fatal.

Zac didn’t need to wait long to see the result of his gamble. The Dipper Mountains groaned with pain as countless cracks appeared across the abode’s outer wall. The pressure was relentless, like someone had thrown the mountain range into a black hole. The ceiling only put up a symbolic struggle before collapsing, opening the floodgates to a deluge of blood and steel.

A literal sea of blood was pouring into the cave. Inside were countless corpses and skeletons whose empty eye sockets burned with madness. They hated anything alive, and their Killing Intent was enough to blot out the sky. It was a Dao of Slaughter so wild and unchecked that Zac almost lost his mind. He quickly activated [Void Zone] to water down the onslaught. Completely blocking it was a fool’s hope.

The first two grades were introductory stages where cultivator set their foundations and prepared their bodies to accept the Dao. Hegemony was sometimes considered the first true stage of cultivation, where one formed the core that would fuel the rest of their journey. In simple terms, Hegemony provided energy while Monarchs introduced mass.

Zac’s weight had increased significantly since becoming a cultivator as bones hardened and muscles grew supernaturally dense. That was nothing compared to a Monarch, whose theoretical weight was equal to their inner world. This was a fundamental force that couldn’t be shrugged off, and a Monarch could add it to any skill or attack. The sturdier their world, the more mass they could imbue.

The chasm between Monarchs and Autarchs was even bigger. Zac remembered the Templar Saint who’d slain six C-grade Cultivators as a Peak Hegemon, but not even the Divine Monarchs among the interred saints had brought down Autarchs. Forcing one to back down like the Eveningtide Asura was already a monumental accomplishment.

The disparity was based on the difference in Dao. Stepping into Autarchy meant erecting a ladder to forcibly integrate their Dao with the Heavens. Monarchs and below solely relied on their own power, while an Autarch could directly borrow from the Heavens to amplify their attacks. The drawback was that the Heavenly Ladder needed to be maintained.

Visiting spiritually exhausted regions didn’t just mean having less power to draw from. While an Autarch had defended their Dao, it was ultimately not a true piece of Heaven. Without maintaining its position, one’s Dao risked getting pushed out of the sky. This was why Autarchs never visited the frontier unless they had to. They wouldn’t be able to exhibit their true strength, and their cultivation would see a setback.

Zac suspected this problem would be resolved upon seizing Authority over their Dao, but he’d have to ask Iz to confirm. The important point was that an Autarch was their strongest where the Heavens were close, and what place better fit the description than a Primal Heaven? Here, they were essentially Heavenly emissaries whose mere presence could subvert the natural order of their surroundings.

That was why Kalir doubted General Percival would personally enter the Dipper Mines. His Dao could permanently alter its nature in its current fragile state, killing the goose laying the golden egg. Pervata Wendimar had no such reservations. His avatar only held a sliver of his power, and it was enough to completely overwhelm the area’s natural affinity.

Pervata’s path was a mix of Conflict and Order. Order was the walls holding the world’s brutality at bay, the stalwart soldiers defending their homeland from invaders. Conflict was the knowledge that to defeat true evil, one had to accept the evil within oneself. Only by embracing the flames of war and the battlefield’s madness would you outlive your enemy.

Ivar had failed to extract himself from the madness of Pervata’s path. Zac knew that this was the opportunity he’d waited for, but closing the distance felt like trying to lift the whole mountain range. Pervata hadn’t even sealed down the area; his avatar’s cold gaze was more than enough to suppress most of Zac’s strength.

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Zac didn’t get the chance to come up with a workaround before things spiraled out of control even more. The inverted mountain floating beneath the Hidden Earth Abode suddenly shattered, exposing a pitch-black stalactite at its center. It burst into sudden motion, shooting straight for the avatar. Only Zac and possibly Ivar could see the terrifying amounts of Void Energy it held.

Its might was no less than the fully-powered [Cardinal Stoneseed Array], except it was all condensed into a stone spike no larger than a spear. Zac’s mind screamed of danger despite the weapon moving in the other direction. As if it had broken the sound barrier, the spear left a shockwave of Void Energy in its wake. Ivar, who was right at the manor’s doorstep, was hit just as he woke up from his delirious state.

The pulse directly annihilated half of the Guild Master’s broken form. Not even his Inner World had been spared. Ivar Serpico had finally lost control of his Inner World, and erratically shifting spatial tears sprung up around him. They shifted position seemingly without rhyme or reason, indicating they were influenced by the Void’s unfathomable nature. The strongest fluctuations came from Ivar’s core, which rapidly leaked pieces of his cultivation.

Zac spotted a glimmer of surprise in Pervata’s eyes when the spear impaled him. The Slaughter Dao was directly consumed by the weapon, and the avatar was dispersed. Zac felt little relief upon seeing both his target and the dangerous avatar falling prey to the Hidden Earth Abode’s ultimate attack. They were right on Ivar’s heels, and the only partly weakened pulse was approaching with inescapable speed.

The warning bells in Zac’s head explained in no uncertain terms the pulse wouldn’t be a comforting caress of a friendly force. He activated [Void Zone] and [Empyrean Aegis] with Void Energy, thanking his lucky stars the defensive skill had finally come off cooldown. The wooden wheel reeked of primordial antiquity when it appeared behind him, as did the barrier unweakened by Zac’s nullification sphere.

Still not comfortable, Zac turned the wheel three times in succession to send out a trio of opposing waves. The disruption pulses were laughably inferior to the Hidden Earth Abode’s unrestrained might, but canceling out the attack was never Zac’s goal. Each pulse destabilized the incoming shockwave by a small degree, dislodging Void and the Inverse Dao hidden within.

The divorce was finalized upon entering [Void Zone], resulting in two separate forces slamming into Zac’s aegis. The barrier shattered after absorbing most of the force. What remained was more than enough to endanger Ogras’s life, so Zac urgently took out the [Fuxi Mountain Gate]. It didn’t vacuum the remaining energy as he’d hoped.

Not even the Void Energy hitting the entrance poured into the space beyond. Zac cursed and transported the gate back to [Purity of the Void] as hepushed his constitution’s golden cyclones to their limits. Gobs of ownerless Void Energy were pulled into his body, and Zac grimaced with pain as unsustainable amounts of energy poured into the depths of his cells.

The pathways hidden in the depths of his constitution couldn’t accommodate such a sudden influx, and the ownerless energy was difficult to control. His suffering only got worse when the disentangled Inverse Dao seeped into his wounds. The war inside Zac’s body reached new heights, and the only thing he could do was endure and shovel as much energy as he could into the [Fuxi Mountain Gate].

Vision swimming, Zac still hadn’t forgotten his main objective. He’d somehow made it through the pulse in one piece, so he released another batch of Void of Death from [Spiritual Void]. The chaotic state of Zac’s body prevented him from reentering the ultimate state of his Evolutionary Stance, but the erratic spatial tears surrounding Ivar suddenly looked normal.

Zac slipped past them to reach his prey. Holding nothing back, Zac swung [Verun’s Bite] at Ivar’s midsection. The Guild Master’s eyes were blank, and he did nothing to stop Zac from splitting his fleshy body in two to rip open a larger passage to his inner world.

‘Let me,’ Ograssaid just as Zac planned to jump inside to deliver a final salvo.

A streak of darkness rushed into the tear, and Zac vaguely saw a wraith holding a familiar tool. It was the doomsday device Kator had planted in the Yphelion during their mission to the Imperial Graveyard. A shadowy hand covered in blood emerged from Zac’s shadows, and their surroundings shifted. The demon had squeezed the two through a crack in the Hidden Earth Abode’s barrier before it mended.

A strident whistle loud enough to burst Zac’s eardrums came from their previous position. Zac turned around just in time to witness Ivar’s final moment. A flower made from life-force and a life’s worth of cultivation briefly bloomed before the corpse and his leaked energies were swallowed by an intense implosion that even managed to swallow some of Perata’s lingering Dao. Zac looked at the fading spatial tear with wide eyes.

Getting a glimpse of Ivar’s utterly demolished Inner World was a rare opportunity to see a cross-section of a Monarch’s cultivation. It was filled with broken rubble, and space inside looked like a broken mirror. The windows into other realities were split between four camps. Zac felt the distinct presence of two different Lower Planes, one of which was the source of the Hidden Earth energy. The other matched the Dipper Mine’s ambient energy.

A third was not so much as windows to another plane as pockets of Void Energy that created a black backdrop. The final was the most surprising. He’d actually seen patches of dense mist, the very same haze filling the Dipper Mine’s crater outside. The bomb had actually blown a hole in the memory domain, though the breaches disappeared when the spatial tear closed.

“Leave it to the goblins to build bombs,” Ogras whistled as he emerged from Zac’s shadows.

“Give K’Rav my regards,” Zac exhaled.

Galau had already repaired the bomb during the countdown, but he never managed to rearm it. It was K’Rav’s idea to make some alterations and let it absorb the Dipper Mountain’s energy. It worked even better than expected, though Zac would have kept it at hand if he’d known it was powerful enough to blow a hole in the memory domain. Zac wasn’t keen on entering the mysterious mist, but there were much worse dangers on the inside.

Still wrestling with the chaos inside his body, Zac scanned Ogras to confirm he was bloodied but okay.

“You were right. The safest place really is within your shadows,” Ogras said, looking at Zac with a grin. “I’m surprised we actually took him out. Too bad it was on this long-forgotten piece of rock.

“Don’t remind me,” Zac grimaced.

Taking out a Bonafide Monarch at the threshold of Middle C-grade would have yielded a monstrous surge of Kill Energy, even with the penalty of finishing the job with an external device. Even Zac would have gained a couple of levels in one go. Now, he only had wounds to show for his efforts. There wasn’t even any loot since Ivar was a Monarch who had no need for Spatial Rings. Casting the depressing thoughts aside, Zac took in their surroundings.

They’d stopped just within the Hidden Earth Abode’s barrier out of fear of triggering another hidden weapon, floating roughly a mile from the disk holding the actual manor. The environment was surprisingly energy-starved, which felt like a blessing after being submerged in such deadly concepts.

Zac didn’t get the chance for a proper inspection. The terrifying pressure returned, and the ceiling started bleeding again. The Void spear was only able to briefly disperse Pervata Wendimar’s avatar, and it was about to descend again. That couldn’t happen. Zac took a deep breath and brought out the Wendimar Seal again. This time, his message was preempted by a rough voice.

‘Child, explain yourself.’

‘Senior, please retract your aura, or you’ll destabilize the abode! The manor you saw holds a Void Treasure with enough power to erase the whole mountain range. I’ll explain everything after I’ve stabilized it. If everything goes according to plan, you and the Whitecrest Clan will be able to exchange this heritage for great merit when Margrave Wartorius takes over the Hollow Court.’

Zac exhaled upon seeing the tides of madness recede, returning a semblance of normalcy to the Hidden Earth Abode. Zac was about to put away the token again before he was caught in a lie. The raw pain in Pervata’s voice made him hesitate.

‘You’re of my blood, yet not. You hold the Wendimar’s Fate in your hand, yet it’s foreign to me. Its glory is so faded there’s barely a shadow left,’ the Autarch lamented, sounding like he’d personally witnessed his clan's future being erased.

‘That’s…’ Zac couldn't find the words.

‘You’re not of my time.’