It almost felt like a dream when Zac stepped out from his teleportation room and stepped into his compound. Six years. It had been over six years since he left Earth with not a single update on the state of things, except for the notification that his followers had sohow accepted an incursion in his na.
Thankfully, there were no smoldering ruins or screams of battle greeting his return, indicating that things should be under control. It was sothing that had constantly worried him for the past month as he lay low at a remote corner of the Zecia sector.
He should have guessed that infusing a tool with Chaos would make its functionality unreliable.
Still, having appeared in a desolate spot at the edge of the Sector after weeks of being hurtled through so subdinsion was far better than he could have hoped for from an item that would normally only work inside the sector itself. Unfortunately, large chaos-laden cracks had appeared all over the bangle, making Zac leery about using the thing again.
However, he didn’t have much choice as he had been dropped off in the middle of space, and with air running out he had used the Teleportation Array on his back to teleport to a remote trading hub he had frequented before. He hadn’t dared imdiately return to Earth out of fear that the Orom, the golem, or Iz herself would show up at his doorstep.
Zac couldn’t bring those monsters back to Earth, so he had rented a top-tier cultivation cave, once more reminded how amazingly cheap things were in this remote corner of the Multiverse. Every day he had spent cleansing himself of karma and looking for marks left in his body, trying to recover his broken and chaos-addled pathways as much as he could while keeping an eye on the sky.
When a month had passed, Zac figured people either wouldn’t or couldn’t co after him, and he had finally returned ho. Zac imdiately wanted to find soone, but a clap of thunder above his head made him look up with solemnity.
It had co, just as he expected. The gathering clouds didn’t contain the vast indifference of the System, but rather the fury of the Boundless Heavens. Zac knew it hadn’t co for him though, but rather for soone else; Alea. He had noticed sothing brewing over the past week as Zac gradually whittled down the Orom’s seal on his Tool Spirit.
Perhaps by design, it was quite easy to deal with after having left the Orom World. After all, most of those who left were either scions with powerful backing or powerhouses who had confird their Daos in the limited environnt of the Orom World. There was no point in angering these kinds of people.
However, as the layers of restrictions were removed one by one, Zac had felt that sense of premonition that fate was gathering on his location. He could sohow tell it was related to [Love’s Bond],so he had eventually left the last layer of restrictions and hurried back ho. As expected, she was breaking through.
For almost five years she had been digesting the enormous ball of blood and Oblivion, joined by Temporal Energy and continuously bolstered by the Ambient Energy inside the Orom World. And this was as a Peak F-grade Spirit Tool. Her accumulations were shocking, and this step was long overdue. However, Zac hadn’t expected a minor Lightning Tribulation to arrive because of this.
Then again, it was undeniable that [Love’s Bond] was an unorthodox weapon, no matter if you talked about its origins or what it had fed on. Zac wondered if the sa would happen to Verun in the future, considering the axe had been marked by pure life inside the Twilight Chasm.
A wave of hunger filled Zac’s mind, and he didn’t hesitate as he started emptying his Spatial Rings of anything he could think of. There were mountains of rare materials, from things he had found in the Spatial Rings in the Void to the supre treasures he had found in the Twilight Ocean and Qi’Sar’s treasury.
The piles kept growing as Zac took out one thing after another, just like when Alea’s coffin was turned into a Spirit Tool the first ti. Altogether, the value of the mounds surrounding the coffin was probably inching toward three million D-grade Nexus Coins, a ludicrous sum for an F-grade Spirit Tool. Even the passive energy the treasures leaked was enough to create a chaotic storm in the sky.
However, Alea didn’t take too many of the treasures. First, she picked up the [Blackearth Steel] fromQi’Sar’s treasury, the chains barely able to drag them toward the lid, along with the supre-quality death-attuned wood Catheya had identified for him. Next, she picked up five other unnad Death-attuned tals Zac had found in the Twilight Ocean, along with a few dozen Death-attuned natural treasures.
She did, however, leave Uona’s corpse behind, though Zac did feel the axe on his waist perking up when he took the body out.
Seeing the decidedly one-sided nature of the materials, Zac was a bit surprised considering how she had feasted on Twilight Fruits for years. He had expected her to want at least so life-attuned materials to balance all that death, but it looked like he was wrong. Or had her needs changed after first being marked by Pure Death, and then swallowing Oblivion?
And if so, how would that impact her soul?
By the ti Alea had finished gathering everything she needed, the sky was dark with tribulation clouds while purple clouds crackled. However, Zac was inwardly relieved when he sensed the clouds were decidedly weaker compared to the punishnts he had endured to evolve his two Dao Branches.
The familiar rattle of chains moving echoed out through the area, but it was followed by a groaning sound Zac had only heard a few tis; the opening of the thick coffin lid. Zac’s heart beat an additional ti as the lid swung almost completely wide open, but he couldn’t see Alea’s body at all. Instead, there was only vast darkness that almost reminded him of the Abyssal Lake.
For now, the darkness was only a shadow of the real thing, but was [Love’s Bond] moving in that direction, toward the Abyssal Death of the Draugr? Was it he who had influenced her path that way? Or was it the System who had implanted the Spirit Tool with this path upon its creation, to make the coffin better match Zac’s Draugr persona?
Zac didn’t know what the truth was, and he didn’t even know how to feel about it. So he could only look on with mixed emotions as tendrils of Darkness quickly consud all the materials, dragging them into the coffin like a hungry vortex. The lid quickly closed after that, but a dark shroud covered the Coffin as it rose into the air.
Alea had finished her preparations just in ti, and the first bolt of purple lightning slamd into the coffin a mont later, instantly dispersing the darkness. The whole coffin shuddered as Zac felt a pang of pain in his mind, but he could sense that both Alea and the Spirit Tool itself had endured the first strike just fine. There was just a scorched spot on the lid and so small cracks across its surface.
The lid opened slightly again, releasing a second puff of darkness, this one even more condensed compared to the last. Unfortunately, just like Alea’s defenses grew stronger, so did the bolts of lightning, and the second tribulation left deep cracks across the whole lid. Luckily, there should only be one more to go, and Zac was relieved to see the lid open a third ti.
However, relief turned into confusion and fear as the ten-ter avatar of Alea’s torso appeared, her black eyes staring up at the sky as she stretched her arms out in a familiar gesture.
“Are you crazy?!” Zac shouted with horror, but he didn’t dare go closer. Doing so would just infuriate the Tribulation Cloud, making things harder for Alea. “Don’t copy ! Absorbing that thing is extrely dangerous!”
However, Alea didn’t seem to listen, and Zac could only pray she knew what she was doing. He looked on with worry as the final bolt of lightning descended, drenching the avatar in a sea of purple death. The demoness held on for a mont, but Zac was horrified to see that she eventually cracked and broke apart, absolutely incapable of containing the punishnt with [Death’s Embrace].
Zac felt like he was back on that mountaintop again, helplessly watching Alea’s soul fall apart. The only thing keeping him from going crazy was his connection with the demoness. It was weakened, but her consciousness was still there, so he stayed his hand as he saw the coffin drag the fragnted pieces of the spirit back inside.
Along with a mote of lightning.
The Tribulation Lightning seed infuriated, and it showered the whole coffin in lightning, completely obscuring Zac’s vision. Thankfully, it only had so much energy to expend, and Zac sensed reluctance as the bolt dissipated. Left behind, was a pitch-black obelisk of condensed darkness, reminding Zac of the tis [Verun’s Bite] had enclosed itself in a bloody crystal.
‘Soon,’ Zac heard in his mind before the connection was cut.
“You just woke up and you’re already going into seclusion again?” Zac helplessly muttered as he looked at the black cocoon, but he was inwardly awash with relief.
It looked like she had broken through successfully, and judging by the materials she had consud, it was bound to be a big leap in power.
“Who goes there?!” a ferocious shout broke the calm just as it settled, and Zac looked over with bemusent to see a spectral apparition float over with furious montum.
Or rather hide behind two hulking puppets that emitted the power that even surpassed the Half-Step Blacksmith golem he fought to open up the Dao Repository.
“My Lord! You’re back!” a surprised voice exclaid as the ghost peered over the shoulder of one of its bodyguards.
“It’s been a while, Triv,” Zac smiled. “How are you?”
“Nothing to complain about, now that young master is back,” Triv said as he hurriedly flew over. “Your aura is like the radiant sun, and your return is like the parting of the clouds, a great-“
“Alright, alright,” Zac snorted. “What is it?”
“Incidentally, I was wondering if the young master has joined the Undead Empire? I was shocked to hear you once more t up with the noble Draugr mistress who visited our province a decade ago,” Triv said. “It truly is fated.”
“Well, she’s putting in a good word for ,” Zac smiled as he started carrying the black cocoon toward his courtyard. “I am not sure how things stand though. Things spiraled out of control a bit in Twilight Harbor, and I’ve been stuck in an isolated world for the past four years. How is the situation on Earth? You guys actually started an Incursion?”
“There have been so problems among the drears, from what I’ve heard,” Triv slowly said. “Unrest on the main continent of this world. Infighting, seizing territory. Of course, no one has dared make any big moves even with master gone and much of our forces being occupied on the other world. But I hear there are rumors of you succumbing off-world, and there is just a matter of ti the elites of this world start fighting for your supposedly empty throne.”
“Well, as long as nothing has happened, it’s fine,” Zac nodded before he stopped and looked at his butler with a frown. “Wait, the elites are still offworld? What’s going on?”
Zac had always assud that the Incursion would be over by now. Over four years had passed since it started, far longer than the situation on Earth to reach a critical point. If his people still hadn’t returned, it usually ant one of two things; either, they had been eradicated by the natives or competing factions.
If not, they had been dragged into a drawn-out battle, which also indicated the situation had turned thorny.
“They are still there, though the situation is mostly stable from what I hear,” Triv sighed. “The Invasion Gate has long since stabilized, and the elites spend most of their ti on the other side. The level restriction has been increased all the way to level 150 already, but it is still very expensive to go back and forth. So most stay there permanently since the environnt over there is still far superior as there is still so lingering Origin Dao.”
Zac wasn’t surprised. Even he had felt just how much worse the environnt beca after Earth lost its last specks of Origin Dao, and the situation was far more palpable to cultivators who depended on their affinities and ditation to seize Dao Seeds.
For example, among the demons who joined the Azh’Rezak incursion, only a handful had Dao Seeds by the ti they arrived, but after a few years on Earth, almost seventy percent had ford their first Dao Seed, and a few had ford multiple. And that was despite the Dinsional Seed siphoning off a good chunk of the Origin Dao the System awarded Earth.
If he was a cultivator, he wouldn’t want to spend any ti on Earth either as long as there were Origin Dao to be had sowhere else.
“Is young master interested in heading over?” Triv asked.
“Soon, but not right now,” Zac slowly said after so thought.
Zac wanted to et everyone, but now that he had finally returned, he suddenly felt extrely exhausted like he had been carrying a heavy load for years. He needed to settle down a bit first and stabilize his ntal state. Besides, while he had managed to repair most of his broken pathways the month he stayed off-world, he had reopened so internal wounds during the teleportation just now.
“For now, I need to recuperate for a while,” Zac continued. “It took so effort escaping the place where I was trapped. Can you compile a report of all major events and changes since I left? Oh, and don’t tell anyone I am back, except Abby and Adran. Co back in three hours.”
“Certainly,” Triv hurriedly nodded, and he was gone in a flash a mont later.
Seeing the ghost disappear while the two guardian golems, who clearly had been upgraded sohow, lumbered off, Zac turned toward his courtyard. As he walked through the large compound, he was filled with a mix of emotions. At a secluded spot between two trees, Zac spotted an antique telephone booth painted pink, left behind by Thea during the ti she lived in this place.
The whole compound was filled with these kinds of things, especially the area around his living quarters. Seeing the installnt made Zac stop for a while with a sigh. Close to seven years had passed since Leandra returned, her appearance an even deadlier calamity than the Tribulation Lightning.
The hurt had slowly faded over the past years, but the guilt remained. Zac still wondered if Thea would have been caught in the crosshairs if he had been more forthright about the secrets he kept. He should have realized that Thea would have noticed the large research labs and factories underground, no matter how ingenious Kenzie’s ans to hide them were.
Zac hesitated a bit, but he ultimately chose to keep the telephone booth and the other items where they were as he returned to his courtyard. The walled-in mansion was exactly as he had left it, except for two additions. The Ambient Energy had increased by a noticeable margin, no doubt the result of Triv’s hard work. Zac couldn’t exactly put his finger on it, but he was reasonably certain that the trees in the whole inner area of Port Atwood had been rearranged to beco a massive formation.
And his courtyard was in the eye of the formation, the hotspot for ambient energy.
The second change was that the courtyard had more than doubled in size, adding a second building drenched in Miasma. However, this half was shrouded in high-powered arrays, and it looked like a hedged-off garden from the outside. Zac guessed that Triv was afraid Zac would forget or discard his undead side, so it added this place.
The encased coffin wasn’t absorbing any energy at the mont, but he still chose to leave it at the heart of the miasmic zone of his courtyard just in case. After that, he took out one of the folding chairs from his old camper and sat down, taking a deep breath as he took in the mont.
He really was back. Finally.
The road had been far bumpier than he had expected, no matter if you looked at the Twilight Ascent or what ca next. In return, the gains were almost unfathomable for a trip that was initially just ant as a shopping spree to look for skills and so way to upgrade his undead side to D-grade race.
He had already looked at his screen dozens of tis the past month now that it wasn’t restricted any longer, but he still couldn’t resist taking another look. Sotis it almost felt like a delirious fever-dream thinking back on what he had been through over the past years, but numbers don’t lie.
Na
Zachary Atwood
Level
145
Class
[E-Epic] Edge of Arcadia
Race
[D] Human – Void Emperor (Corrupted)
Alignnt
[Earth] Port Atwood – Planetary Lord
Titles
Born for Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer I, Full of Class, Rarified Being, Trailblazer, Child of Dao, The Big 500, Planetary Aegis, One Against Many, Butcher, Progenitor Noblesse, Duplicity Core, Apex Hunter, Heaven’s Chosen, Scion of Dao, Omnidextrous, Eastern Trigram Hunt – 1st, Tyrannic Force, Achievent Hunter, The First Step, Promising Specialist, Tower of Eternity – 8th Floor, Heaven’s Triumvirate, Fated, Peak Power, Sovereign-Select, Frontrunner, Apex Progenitor, Pathstrider, Runebinder, Runic Erudition, Grand Fate
Limited Titles
Tower of Eternity Sector All-Star – 14th, The Final Twilight, Equanimity, Heart of Fire, Big Axe Gladiator
Dao
Branch of the War Axe – Early, Branch of the Kalpataru – Early, Branch of the Pale Seal – Early
Core
[E] Duplicity
Strength
18177 [Increase: 123%. Efficiency: 287%]
Dexterity
7526 [Increase: 88%. Efficiency: 206%]
Endurance
14540 [Increase: 124%. Efficiency: 287%]
Vitality
12512 [Increase: 112%. Efficiency: 273%]
Intelligence
3058 [Increase: 82%. Efficiency: 206%]
Wisdom
5995 [Increase: 89%. Efficiency: 216%]
Luck
632 [Increase: 106%. Efficiency: 229%]
Free Points
Nexus Coins
[D] 933 662
As looked at the numbers, a smile slowly spread across his face like it had many tis before. He knew he was just an ant compared to the old monsters littering the Multiverse, but he had to admit – he was getting kind of stacked.
Reviews
All reviews (0)