Chapter 277: Chaotic Domain (Part 3)
The First Encounter
Everyone stayed frozen at the crater’s edge, the heartbeat rolling up from below in a steady, oppressive rhythm.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Nobody spoke.
Kai suddenly raised his hand.
SMACK!
He slapped himself across the face, hard. Everyone looked over.
Kai exhaled. "Better."
Raze grinned. "Good idea."
THUD!
He drove a fist into his own chest hard enough to stagger backward. "Ow." A beat. "Still worked."
Mira laughed nervously and gave her own shoulder a light punch. Sera pinched the inside of her arm. Lily took a deep breath and slapped both cheeks at once. Elden adjusted his glasses, muttered "Embarrassing" under his breath, then pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to force his focus back.
Slowly, control returned to all of them. The pressure hadn’t weakened at all. They’d simply stopped letting it win.
Lily let out a slow breath. "Good thing we experienced this in the simulations first."
Mira managed a weak smile. "This one’s still worse."
Nobody argued.
Kai looked toward the crater’s depths. "Let’s keep moving."
The path spiraled downward from there, and the deeper they went, the stranger everything around them became. Gigantic claw marks scored the walls in overlapping patterns. Entire sections of cliff face looked half-melted. Some stretches of stone pulsed like living flesh before settling back into ordinary rock. Gravity kept shifting underfoot, and occasionally the path itself vanished for a heartbeat before reforming beneath their boots.
Nobody relaxed. The heartbeat kept rolling up from below, louder with every step.
BOOM. BOOM.
Movement broke the silence eventually, several creatures emerging from the surrounding rock. Unlike everything else they’d fought in the Domain, these remained perfectly stable, no mutation, no shifting features.
[Crater Guardian — Level: 71.] [Crater Guardian — Level: 72.]
Kai noticed immediately. "They stopped changing."
"They’re already complete," Elden said.
The fight went fast, six people moving with the practiced efficiency of months of training together. Kai cycled through emulations without breaking stride. Sera intercepted strikes aimed at him before he’d even registered the threat himself. Mira tanked the largest Guardian head-on without giving ground. Raze laughed his way through a second. Lily controlled the battlefield from a distance. Elden trapped the last stragglers before they could regroup.
Silence returned within minutes. Nobody celebrated. They kept descending.
The crater eventually opened into an enormous underground basin, and at its center sat blue water, perfectly still, the only spot of blue anywhere inside the entire crimson Domain.
Everyone stopped.
Lily whispered, "That’s"
"The only thing here that looks normal," Kai finished.
The water swirled slowly, almost peacefully. Then a gigantic shadow moved beneath the surface, and every hand in the group tightened around a weapon at once. Nobody needed it explained.
Kai studied the water for a long moment. "She’s in there."
Raze smiled. "So?"
Kai reached for his inventory, and a spear materialized in his grip.
Sera’s eyes widened. "You’re really doing it."
Kai smiled. "We came here to test something."
Lily sighed. "I had a feeling this was coming."
Kai activated a Class Emulation, fire spreading across his skin as the Fractured Blade dissolved and reformed as a flaming greatsword. The surrounding air heated instantly, and he raised the weapon slowly. "Ready?"
Nobody answered, because everyone already knew exactly what he was about to do.
Kai swung. A massive crescent of condensed fire tore forward, splitting the still water down the center and crashing directly into the shadow moving beneath it.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Steam engulfed the entire basin, the explosion echoing off the crater walls in every direction.
Silence.
Lily turned toward Kai slowly. "I know we wanted to provoke her—" a pause, "—but wasn’t that a little excessive?"
Raze burst out laughing. "Go big or go home!"
The laughter died the instant something answered. Pressure exploded outward from the center of the basin, hard enough that the entire crater shook. The remaining water erupted skyward, and four enormous dragons emerged from the spray, each larger than a city building, each radiating mana thick enough to feel like physical weight.
[Dragon Guardian — Level: 70]
The four dragons roared together, their voices shaking the entire basin, the sound alone sending cracks racing through the surrounding cliffs.
Then the moment Tiamat took a single step, all four dragons immediately lowered their heads.
Silence. Not because she ordered them to. Because instinct demanded it. The creatures that had moments ago looked powerful enough to erase cities now resembled loyal guards standing before their queen. Even their mana changed, the violent pressure surrounding them settling completely, becoming perfectly calm beneath her presence.
Mira slowly tightened her grip around her hammer. "Those dragons are scared of her."
Nobody argued.
They roared, and the mist parted behind them. A figure stepped forward slowly, long crimson hair falling past her shoulders, ancient black-and-crimson robes shifting without any wind to move them, golden horns catching what little light existed down here, crimson eyes burning with unmistakable irritation.
She didn’t roar. She simply looked at them.
The system tried to register her. For the first time since any of them had awakened, it failed.
[Tiamat — Level: ???]
Kai blinked. "Well." A beat. "That’s new."
Lily lowered her bow slowly. "The System can’t even measure her."
Silence.
Tiamat’s eyes narrowed, and the crater trembled at the sound of it. She raised one hand, unhurried, and nothing about the gesture looked dramatic. Yet the entire crater began collapsing anyway, mountains cracking down their length, gravity twisting visibly in the air, space itself bending at the edges of Kai’s vision.
Kai didn’t hesitate. "Elden!"
The mage was already moving, the prepared relic activating in his grip. Golden light bloomed around all six of them at once.
Elden slammed the relay crystal into the ground. "Reverse Teleport beginning!"
The light expanded fast, and Tiamat’s eyes narrowed. She took one step forward.
Kai laughed despite the crushing pressure still bearing down on him. "Let’s take this outside."
The golden light surged, catching more than just the six of them, the relic’s field expanding wide enough to snag the edge of her reaching hand along with the rest of the collapsing space around it. Something flickered across her expression, not anger, something closer to surprise.
Then everything disappeared.
The six of them reappeared outside the Crimson Gate a heartbeat later, back in Mythal. The pressure vanished. Cold stone disappeared beneath their feet. Fresh air rushed into Kai’s lungs. Sunlight. Blue sky.
For half a heartbeat, nobody moved. Then every one of them looked behind themselves at exactly the same time.
The Crimson Gate. Still standing. Still intact.
Kai’s heartbeat quickened. "It worked."
Sera slowly lowered her sword. "We actually pulled her out."
Lily’s eyes widened. "The teleport field worked!It really dragged her across dimensions."
Elden stared at the relay crystal still clutched in his hand. "I wasn’t completely certain it would."
Raze let out a sharp laugh. "Well, I’d say that’s one experiment successfully completed."
...
Mayor Ko, Gabriel, and the assembled Astral Church members turned toward them immediately, and before anyone could ask what had happened, the Crimson Gate trembled violently, cracks spreading outward through its surface, reality itself straining at the seams.
For one brief second Gabriel smiled. Not because Tiamat was coming. Because the first half of their plan had actually worked. Months, no, centuries of preserved records, countless failed civilizations, every theory, every calculation, every argument inside the Astral Church, they’d all led to one single question. Could Tiamat be forced out of her Domain?
Now they finally had the answer.
"It works," Gabriel whispered.
One of the Astral Church members actually laughed in relief. Another quietly lowered his head, shoulders shaking. "We weren’t wrong"
Gabriel slowly exhaled. "Thank goodness."
The relief only lasted a heartbeat. Because immediately afterward her eyes hardened. "The second phase."
"Everyone get into position!"
The gate expanded further, unable to contain whatever had gotten caught in the teleport’s field. Then one elegant crimson heel stepped through, forced out of a gate that hadn’t been meant to release anything at all. Behind it, the roar of four dragons rolled out across the empty city, echoing off buildings that hadn’t heard a sound louder than wind in days.
The city answered. Deep beneath the streets, ancient relics buried over the past several weeks flared to life one after another, golden light racing beneath roads, across rooftops, under abandoned homes, through empty marketplaces, like veins of light spreading through the entire city.
Lily smiled despite herself. "Relay Network. It’s active."
Elden looked across the glowing streets. "Synchronization complete."
Kai slowly exhaled. "Now we’re fighting on our battlefield."
One elegant crimson heel stepped onto the streets of Mythal. Then the second. She stood there silently. No aura exploded outward. No dramatic roar echoed across the city. She simply looked around, as though quietly observing the place that had dared challenge her.
Kai slowly raised his sword. Around him, Sera, Mira, Raze, Lily, Elden. Farther back, Mayor Ko, Gabriel, the Astral Church.
Every relic beneath the city continued shining. Months of preparation, hundreds of dungeon clears, thousands of simulations, everything had led to this.
For the first time in countless civilizations, humanity had succeeded in bringing the First Disaster onto humanity’s own battlefield.