Chapter 180: The Resistance of the Void and the Nexus of Life (Part 1)
The primordial miasma of the Demonic Saint King was so dense and suffocating that the air of the colossal corridor seemed to have transmuted into toxic mud. Cornered against the immense black obsidian barrier of "infinite mass" that isolated them from the legion, Squad 4 stood their ground.
In front of them, the rotting corpse of Grand Saint Li, now the perfect vessel of a demon king from the Primordial Era, exuded a pressure that threatened to crush their souls against the bone floor. They knew exactly what they were facing. That being was no longer a simple Stage 4 Grand Saint; with the total possession of the demonic entity, the old man's raw power level had violently skyrocketed to Stage 5 of the Grand Saint Realm.
The difference between a Saint—the realm where the young geniuses were—and a Stage 5 Grand Saint wasn't a simple martial step; it was an unbridgeable cosmic abyss. It was the stark difference between a lone spark and an apocalyptic forest fire.
And yet, the five dragons of the Morningstar Clan didn't back down a single millimeter. They knew they couldn't hold back, hesitate, or save energy. They had to survive on pure willpower long enough for Cedric and the legion to achieve the impossible and break the wall.
"If the old fossil wants my body..." Violeta whispered, the temperature around her dropping so drastically that the air began to crackle, "...he will have to tear it from the absolute ice. Awaken!"
It was the order that unleashed hell.
Violeta led the divine metamorphosis. Her entire body erupted in pale light as she unleashed the [Semi-Transformation of the Winter Void Dragon]. Her beautiful human eyes completely disappeared, replaced by focuses of absolute and contradictory power: the right glowing with a raging neon violet that tore the hidden seams of space, and the left with a perfect diamond blue, multifaceted like a snowflake, that calculated the kinetic energy of every atom around her.
With a dull crunch, the immense [Crystalline Ice Horns] sprouted from her forehead. They vibrated at an ultrasonic frequency, acting as lightning rods to prevent the thermodynamic paradox of "freezing nothingness" from shattering her own brain. Her porcelain skin was instantly covered by translucent hexagonal plates, [Pearlescent Ice Scales] that began to bend and refract light. Visually, her figure became erratic, an unreachable frigid mirage. The [Domain of Absolute Calm] imposed itself; snowflakes began to fall upwards and the sound of the world was muted, leaving only a perfect Executioner whose power temporarily brushed the peak Stage 5 of the Saint Realm.
Beside her, Jareth smiled with a heartless grimace. His hands lost any trace of warmth. From the knuckles down, his skin adopted a cadaverous pallor that contrasted brutally with his fingertips, dyed a necrotic purple. From the pores of his [Constant Necrosis Fingers], a dense corrosive vapor began to emanate, hissing upon contact with oxygen. His nails lengthened into matte obsidian claws, pumping the primordial acid of a Basilisk, ready to inject death itself.
Voltar roared toward the vaulted bone ceiling. Beneath his skin, the [Lichtenberg Marks] lit up with blinding violet, acting as immense electromagnetic coils that violently sucked all ambient static into his gauntlets. His [Ionized Plasma Blood] accelerated his heart to an inhuman rate, burning oxygen in its path, and his pupils disappeared, becoming two crystal storms searching for blind spots in the enemy's conductivity.
Ciro, despite his shattered arm bleeding profusely, activated the vacuum inside his [Wind Marrow Bones], reducing his biological mass to achieve absolute zero inertia. The invisible [Solid Wind Scales] covering his body began to vibrate at such an extreme frequency that they phased his optical image. He looked like an intangible ghost, resting on the light wings of his boots, oblivious to the pain of the flesh.
Finally, Lirael closed her eyes and, upon opening them, her amber gaze had been devoured by two perfect [Silver Mirror Eyes]. Her skin took on the texture of cracked porcelain through which the glow of a broken moon seeped, and the pale [Selenite Scales] on her hips began to greedily drink the corridor's sparse light. Her power, like Violeta's, skyrocketed to match the pinnacle of the Saint Realm.
The Demon King, observing the simultaneous transformation, halted his advance. The disgust and arrogance in the putrefying corpse's yellow eyes were replaced by genuine stupefaction, which quickly mutated into a burning, overwhelming, and sickly greed.
"Dragon bloodlines..." the ancient entity whispered, his raspy voice vibrating with uncontrollable avarice. "They are not mere diluted heirs. This is a bestial purity I haven't seen since the Era of Ruin! A perfect aberration!"
The monster looked at his own rotting hands. He had ruled at Stage 9 of the Saint King Realm in the distant past, but with vessels like these, especially with the girl's unreachable cosmic duality of Ice and Space... he could break the very limits of the Great Emperor.
"At all costs," the Demon King murmured, his primordial miasma expanding across the floor like a raging sea of blood. "I will kill the flies surrounding her before they become true dragons. And you, child... I will tame you alive."
The air in the immense hallway of bones rippled and fractured under the extreme pressure of clashing auras.
Violeta was the first to move. With her [Zero Entropy Pulse] slowing the particles around her, she didn't run; she displaced herself using space itself. Through her Violet Eye, she found an invisible "seam" in reality and her [Passage of Ethereal Blood] dimensionally phased her body.
She instantly appeared half a meter in front of the Demon King's withered face, her fine [Absolute Zero Needle] pointing like a lethal ray directly at the socket of his yellow eye.
The Demon King didn't even blink. With an agility that defied Violeta's own temporal compression, he raised two rotting fingers wrapped in dense miasma and pinched the black ice blade with millimeter precision, halting the annihilation dead in its tracks.
But before he could counterattack, a supersonic boom shook the hallway from the right. Voltar, empowered by his overload metabolism, appeared on his flank. His heavy [Zenith Knuckles], loaded with the [Authority of Celestial Punishment], aimed at the monster's ribs to disintegrate his Qi.
Simultaneously, Ciro attacked from the left. With zero inertia, his body was an intangible trail, his twin swords absorbing sound in an absolute vacuum to decapitate the corpse. And from the rear, Jareth exhaled a dense cloud of his hyper-acidic purple miasma, the [Mist of the Fallen Era], seeking to dissolve the dead god's protective aura.
The Demon King laughed, a hollow, dry sound.
He released only a fraction of his true Grand Saint pressure. The red primordial miasma erupted from his body like an omnidirectional bomb.
The impact was devastating. Violeta was forced back, the cold of her scales clashing violently against the dead energy. Voltar felt his plasma knuckles collide against a wall of cursed diamond, his bones crunching from the violent kickback before he was repelled through the air. Ciro was hit by the sheer density of the miasma that forced the air to solidify, tearing his wind armor and throwing him against a colossal bone rib. Jareth tried to resist, but the old man simply extended a hand and swept the purple miasma away with his own necrotic energy.
"Poison against me?" the monster mocked. "Your acid is child's play compared to the rot of the abyss."
The difference in realms was suffocating. Despite their divine bloodlines, they were fighting an immovable mountain.
Fifteen meters away, Lirael hadn't attempted to join the physical assault. Her Silver Mirror Eyes were fixed on the immense, dark, and deformed "Spiritual Shadow" the entity projected on the immaterial plane. She bit her cheek. The vapor of her blood created three perfect clones around her. The four women raised their invisible scimitars, channeling the [Immaterial Slash]. She wouldn't attack his invincible Grand Saint body; she would cut the soul directly.
But the Demon King's millennial instinct perceived the lethal threat. Delivering a powerful stomp that fractured the ground, he disappeared just as the immaterial blade decapitated the space where his reflection had been.
Before Lirael could readjust her vision, the demon appeared in front of her and threw a brutal punch imbued with red miasma. The impact shattered the three clones instantly and sank into the real Lirael's abdomen. Her broken moon skin burst under the brute force. Lirael coughed up a massive mouthful of silver blood and was sent flying, crashing heavily and lying motionless on the ground.
"Lirael!" Voltar bellowed, his fury destabilizing his plasma.
The disdain on the Demon King's face was replaced by annoyance. "Game over," he grunted.
Voltar, Ciro, and Jareth exchanged a hard look. They knew the Morningstar tactic: in an impossible battle, the vanguard sacrifices themselves to open the perfect window.
They attacked simultaneously, with no regard for their own lives. It was a suicide assault. Voltar overloaded his nervous system, ignoring the damage to his meridians, and trapped the demon's right arm in a hug of pure plasma to fry his muscles. Jareth ran behind him, opening deep cuts on his own wrists to bathe the monster's robes in his Entropic Acid Blood, forcing him to spend immense amounts of Qi to stop the necrosis. Ciro used the propulsion of air escaping his own wounds to reach top speed, aiming a kamikaze thrust at the yellow eyes.
The Demon King roared, infuriated. He invoked the full weight of his Stage 5 and unleashed a shockwave that shattered Voltar's shoulders, fractured Jareth's chest, caving in his ribs, and sent Ciro spinning through the air with his hollow bones splintered.
But they had managed to distract a god for exactly one and a half seconds.
Violeta didn't waste her brothers' blood. She channeled the entirety of her immense Qi ocean into her rapier. Her horns vibrated frantically and she used the [Song of the Void Winter Sword].
She didn't run. She didn't thrust her sword. She looked at the demon's left shoulder. Her thrust quantumly disappeared and grazed the dead flesh. The ultimate move activated: [Crystal Coffin: Absolute Zero].
In the exact millisecond of the graze, biological time in the wound stopped. A layer of unbreakable frost, shining like diamonds, covered the monster's left arm and half of his face. He was completely paralyzed in stasis, nullifying any demonic regeneration.
Violeta appeared three meters away, panting.
The Demon King looked at his frozen arm. His surprise transformed into a cosmic, destructive fury at the humiliation.
"Insolence..." he hissed, his voice trembling with murderous rage. "Pathetic worms!"
He raised his only useful hand. The red miasma condensed violently, forming the [Domain of the Blood Purgatory]. An immense sea of thick blood levitated above them, swirling like a vortex. He used his immense gravitational pressure to crush them.
"Bow to death," the entity sentenced, lowering his hand.
The pressure descended like an anvil the size of the sky. Violeta was forced to drop to one knee, her scales cracking under the Stage 5. Lirael, Ciro, Jareth, and Voltar were immobilized and crushed against the ground, groaning under the torment.
For any orthodox cultivator, that would have been the end. An absolute surrender in the face of invincible cosmic power.
But the Demon King didn't understand who he was facing. These kids were not greenhouse flowers; they had endured the indescribable tortures of Sienna and the suffocating divine pressure lessons from their own Patriarch in the Morningstar Hell. If that old geezer thought he could break them with gravity and miasma, he was dead wrong.
They would not let themselves be killed.
Despite having broken bones and bruised organs, the figures on the ground began to move. Trembling, staggering, and spitting blood, the five youths forced their legs to disobey the gravity of a Grand Saint.
Violeta, the first to stand up, her eyes dripping golden blood from the extreme effort and her Qi reserve dangerously low, raised her face. With what little strength she had left, she ignored the physical isolation and maximally activated the conceptual power of the Soul Nexus.
The telepathic network, forged in the clan's very soul, reacted to her desperate and fierce intent, breaking through the obsidian barrier and managing to connect violently with the outside.
"Violeta... what the hell is going on!" Kael's voice echoed in her mind, loaded with a fierce urgency. "The connection was cut! We have problems here, I can't talk for long!"
"I'll just say the geezer from the tomb is in here with us," Violeta transmitted, gritting her teeth as blood ran down her chin.
On the other side of the thick wall, Kael gritted his teeth, the veins in his neck bulging as he shouted orders at Cedric and Iris to hurry up with the geometric breach; his siblings were on the edge of the abyss.
Violeta exhaled an icy vapor and spoke again through the Nexus. "Cassius, Elowen, Lys... I need a fucking favor. Activate your healing skills and I will guide them through the Nexus to us. Without that, we won't last two minutes, so do it... now!"
Outside, Cassius didn't hesitate. He nodded and concentrated his skill, not around his body, but transmitting it directly through the soul network. He unleashed the [Marrow of Eternal Sap]. Acting as a repeater, he stole all the immense vitality from the beasts previously massacred in the labyrinth and channeled it into a torrent of luminescent green energy that traveled toward Violeta.
Elowen did the same. To boost Cassius's healing, she cut her wrist without blinking. She shed her drops of [Universal Elixir Blood], a living antidote, sending her profound cellular regeneration through the network.
And Lys joined the chorus of life. He activated his [Solar Healing], sending golden stardust through Violeta's will to cauterize internal hemorrhages and weld the shattered muscle fibers of their trapped siblings.
While the miracle of green and golden light flooded the Nexus, Eris's voice, tense and laden with a strange concern, faintly echoed. "Vio... are you okay?"
Violeta remained silent for an eternal second, feeling the warmth of her family coursing through her veins. "I hope you get here soon, Eris," was her only reply.
Eris remained in a dark silence, nodding from the other side of the wall.
Hearing nothing else, Violeta concentrated exclusively on guiding all that overwhelming vitality to her group for the second assault.
Ciro, Voltar, Jareth, and Lirael, who could barely stand, felt a green and golden aura envelop them. Their splintered bones crunched as they welded together, the necrosis stopped, and the blood ceased flowing. Their auras began to rise again. Although their Qi remained dangerously low, barely recovering between fifty and sixty percent of their reserves, their physical bodies were whole and ready for war once more.
The Demon King, who was observing them from above, was stunned. He blinked his only functional eye, unable to process how those insects that were on the brink of death a second ago, were now healing and standing defiant under the pressure of his Blood Purgatory.
Then, he narrowed his eye. A sinister, grave smile laden with madness split the corpse's face.
"Good..." the entity laughed. "Hahahaha! When I take your cold body, girl, I will know exactly what dark secrets all of you keep. What fascinating abilities! How did you cheat death? With every passing second, I like the idea of devouring you slowly even more."
His yellow pupils shone with a pure, unhinged murderous intent.
The five young warriors stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder, forming an unbreakable wall in the face of death. Violeta, in the center of the vanguard, wiped the golden blood from her lips, raised her Absolute Zero Needle, and pointed at the sky of blood.
"It's time for round two, you old fossil."
The rotting veins on the Demon King's forehead bulged at the insult. With a bestial growl, he raised a hand and gave them a dismissive wave to come and die.
The five dragons of Morningstar shot forward together, and thus began the second round of hell.