Chapter 104: The Abyssal Trench...
The Aether-gravity tunnel dissolved just as quickly as it had formed. In a flash, they were thrown back into the messy, chaotic reality of the physical world.
They stepped out onto a thin, rocky ledge right above the Abyssal Trench. Everything about the place was intense. The air smelled like harsh chemicals and sulfur, and you could really feel the heavy, crushing weight of the Void Singularity nearby.
Down below, the ground looked like a broken volcanic wasteland, with plates shifting around and deep cracks glowing with a strange purple light.
Deep in the trench, thousands of mutated Void Beasts were swarming the area. These creatures looked like twisted, multi-limbed monsters made of pure decay, and they hammered away at the collapsing front line without stopping.
At the heart of the chokepoint, Valeria was nothing but a streak of golden light and ruined fabric. She fought with a desperate, frantic intensity.
Her broadsword unleashed kinetic blasts that tore through the beast ranks, destroying scores of creatures with every strike.
Still, the odds were impossible. No matter how many she cut down, twice as many monsters kept pouring down the slope.
To their left, a bunch of silver-rimmed drones hummed to life, slicing through the thick purple smoke. It looks like Aurelia’s scouting team finally found a way to get past that spatial interference.
Lyra knew exactly what to do without anyone saying a word.
In a heartbeat, she shifted from the wide-eyed, excited conspirator back into the cool and calculated Goddess of the Aether Domain.
Lyra simply waved her arm, and a tiny black hole appeared right above them. The air around the cliff twisted and folded until a massive, pitch-black dome of gravity formed, trapping both her and Zen inside.
From the outside, it just looked like an unbreakable, heavy barrier to anyone watching, including Aurelia’s drones.
Lyra touched her communication device and spoke clearly, sounding completely at ease.
"Aurelia, keep your sentinels from the high ridge. The air near the Trench is too thick right now for the Emperor’s core, and I can’t risk it. I’m setting a high-gravity bubble in place to protect him and keep things steady. Just make sure you stay clear of that perimeter."
"Lyra," Aurelia hissed over the crackling connection. Her voice was shaking with desperate intensity. "If even one spark of gravity hits his core, I’m going to burn the entire Aether Domain to the ground. Keep him safe!"
"Logic dictates my compliance, Empress," Lyra replied smoothly before severing the link.
Inside the quiet dome, Lyra finally let her guard down.
She turned toward Zen, a sharp, confident smirk playing on her lips, and crossed her arms. "The ruse is working," she noted. "The rest of them are convinced I’m just being an overbearing warden. Now, Emperor, let’s get to the point. How exactly do you intend to use my help to get past your physical limitations?"
Zen stayed quiet for a second. He walked to the edge of the dome, looking down at the battlefield through the transparent base. Then he closed his eyes.
"I don’t need you to give me your soul fragment yet, Lyra," Zen stated calmly. "Siphoning a Divine-Rank chunk of your power while my pathways are at Low B-Rank would trigger an immediate internal collapse. Instead, I need you to act as an artificial pressure cooker.""
Lyra’s violet eyes narrowed in fascination. "Explain."
"Use your gravity magic to forcefully compress my muscle fibers and my current mana channels," Zen commanded, turning his head to look at her. "Max out the atmospheric density inside this dome. Constrict my pathways until they are compressed to the very limit."
Lyra gasped, immediately grasping how brilliant his plan was. "High-gravity cultivation. By compressing your Low B-Rank pathways under tectonic pressure, you are artificially forcing your vessel to mimic the dense, hardened structure of an A-Rank core. It will allow you to absorb and process the hostile, chaotic ambient energy from the battlefield below without your body instantly tearing itself apart from the influx."
She moved toward him, her fingers fluttering with a strange mix of surrender and excitement. She looked at him and said, ’This is going to be incredibly painful. If I miscalculate even the slightest bit, the pressure will crush your bones to dust.’
"Then don’t miscalculate," Zen said flatly. "Do it."
Lyra lifted her hands, and her violet mana pulsed right along with her heartbeat.
CRUSH.
The gravity inside the dome didn’t just increase; it slammed down on Zen with the force of a collapsing mountain.
Every square inch of his skin screamed as the atmospheric pressure multiplied exponentially. His joints popped, his knees threatened to buckle, and his lungs felt as though they were being filled with liquid lead.
Rather than fighting the pressure, Zen quickly settled into a cross-legged seat and activated Primordial Breathing technique.
[System Notification: External high-density gravitational matrix detected.]
[Host’s mana pathways are currently experiencing a 400% compression factor.]
[Warning: Physical pain threshold exceeded. Commencing structural adaptation.]
Ignoring the fire in his chest, Zen focused on clearing his mind until he felt completely numb.
Lyra’s intense gravity pinned him down, squeezing his Low B-Rank core until it became dense and solid. The process was brutal, but it was toughening his core up, preparing his body to absorb an overwhelming amount of power.
Lyra stood there, utterly captivated. His breathing was slow and steady, even though the pressure in the room should have been enough to break a normal person.
Her analytical mind side was totally blown away by how strong his mind was. He wasn’t just resisting her influence; he was actively shaping it to his will.
"I can’t believe this," Lyra whispered, feeling her heart pound hard. She stared at him and added, "You truly are a monster."
Zen’s eyes suddenly flew open, shining with a cold, blue light. He didn’t hesitate for a moment. He just flicked his fingers and pulled up his internal interface, which projected a huge holographic map of the Abyssal Trench right between them.
Despite the heavy pressure squeezing his chest, Zen sounded perfectly composed. "We have a much larger problem," he noted, pointing to the rift vectors.
Lyra leaned in to look, instantly picking up on the data Zen was highlighting. He had successfully mapped out exactly where the Ley-lines crossed in the Trench.
Working as a team, the cold Emperor and the logical Goddess started to break down the weak spots in the battlefield.
Lyra pointed at a swirling purple line on the map. She noted that while Valeria is holding her ground, she isn’t paying attention to the bigger picture. S
She’s wasting almost all her energy fighting minor enemies, completely missing the fact that the real danger is building up on the eastern side.
"Exactly," Zen replied coldly. "The ambush you set up funneled the first wave, but the Void Singularity is actively adapting to Valeria’s localized suppression. It’s building a reservoir of compressed energy right beneath the forward triage camp."
Lyra’s eyes widened slightly as she ran the mathematical projection. "Where Selene is."
"Where Selene is," Zen confirmed.
All of a sudden, the ground right under their feet started to shake and split open.
Next came a deafening, unnatural shriek that echoed through the valley, so loud that it physically shook the walls of Lyra’s gravity dome.
Down in the bottom of the trench, the swirling purple clouds of the Void Singularity collapsed inward. Before they knew it, the whole thing had turned into a massive, spinning vortex of dark energy.
[CRITICAL WARNING: Void Singularity fluctuations increasing exponentially.]
[Mass Spatial Rupture detected in Sector 4.]
[Warning: Multiple A-Rank entities emerging.]
Zen’s eyes snapped to the holographic screens. Right through the haze of dust, the ground blasted upward in ten separate places all at once.
Ten massive Void Behemoths suddenly burst from the fault line. They were terrifying to look at, with their jagged obsidian bones, gravity-shifting armor, and glowing purple eyes. Each one gave off a heavy, suffocating energy that marked them as serious High A-Rank threats... tethering at the edge of Low S-Ranks.
In the blink of an eye, the entire situation on the field shifted.
A standard army could handle a single A-Rank boss with a good plan. If ten of them attacked at the same time, though, it meant certain destruction for the troops on the front lines.
When the ten Behemoths let out that massive gravity blast, it hit the basin just like an explosion.
Valeria was totally lost in her berserker rage and didn’t see it coming at all. The closest Behemoth slammed its kinetic force right into her Aegis barrier, and the power of the hit shattered her golden shields with a sharp, echoing crack.
The impact sent Valeria flying. She slid across the rough volcanic terrain for hundreds of meters, carving out a deep path in the earth. She let out a roar, completely consumed by her own angry frustration.
With the Vanguard’s primary muscle temporarily blown away from the chokepoint, the ten Behemoths didn’t bother pursuing her. They ignored the heavy infantry entirely.
Instead, they followed the artificial gravity currents Lyra had created earlier. Their glowing purple eyes immediately shifted to the medical triage tents, which held the strongest source of divine light on the battlefield.
They charged, their massive steps causing the entire continental shelf to buckle.
Selene knelt in the muddy triage camp, her once-pristine robes now stained with blood and dirt.
For the past hour, she had recklessly poured out her own holy energy to soak up the scouts’ pain, hoping to prove her purity to Zen. Now, she was totally drained. Her holy light had faded to little more than a dim, flickering spark.
When those ten Behemoths barreled toward her camp, Selene didn’t reach for a portal or try to flee. She just stood there, letting her Martyr nature take the lead.
She gazed up at the incoming monsters with an unsettling, ecstatic look in her silver eyes. She was fully prepared to let the disaster wipe her out, eager to die right there in the mud just to make sure Zen witnessed her final act of sacrifice.
Inside the dark dome, the Probability System suddenly lit up across Zen’s vision.
[Analyzing tactical variables for Sector 4...]
[Target identified: 10x Mid A-Rank Void Behemoths.]
[Core Analysis: The targets possess hyper-dense, unrefined Void Hearts.]
[System Calculation: If Host extract and absorb all ten Void Hearts simultaneously under the current high-gravity compression matrix...]
[Probability of forcing a natural breakthrough from Low B-Rank directly to High B-Rank: 99.8%.]
[Probability of establishing a foundation for the Low A-Rank threshold: 92.4%.]
Zen stared at the floating words. A dark, triumphant grin slowly spread across his face, breaking his usual cold demeanor.
He could hold off on taking Lyra’s soul fragment for the moment The battlefield had actually just handed him an opportunity. Ten A-Rank cores were sitting there, waiting for him, and they were right under the noses of his overprotective guards.
"Drop the dome, Lyra," Zen commanded, standing up slowly despite the crushing atmospheric pressure. His core was tightly coiled, compressed, and perfectly primed like a high-explosive charge waiting for a detonator.
Lyra looked up at him, her violet eyes scanning his face with a mix of pure dread and quiet, stunned admiration. She knew exactly what was coming next. "You’re actually going to charge into ten A-Ranks all by yourself?"
Zen took a step toward the cliff’s edge and whispered, "I’m going to harvest them. I just need you to give me the momentum to make it happen."