Chapter 577: Reward
【Ding!】 【Bloodline awakening successful.】
The setting sun cast its orange glow upon the world, scattering the last tinge of its warmth before its descent. In the tree hollow where a venomous serpent lurked, Roel opened his eyes upon being awakened by the System’s notification.
“…”
Through the cracks between the leaves, he dazedly stared at the final embers of the setting sun as he slowly regained his senses. The first thing he noticed was that the unbearable heat that was on the verge of melting him down had been replaced with a wave of refreshing coolness.
The tree leaves rustled under the night breeze.
Roel made use of the lingering daylight to assess the outside world. His extremely sharp vision allowed him to perceive even the veins of the leaves on faraway trees.
Moments later, his face darkened.
He keenly noticed that the grass in the distance had considerably lessened, as if many people had trampled on the same land and unwittingly paved it into a path. There were bones and armor fragments lying around. Humans wouldn’t have ventured into this place, so they could have only been the victims who were taken as ‘rations’ by the deviants.
Did another army enter the forest? Roel wondered with a frown.
Since the first batch of deviants, he had seen two more waves of armies that numbered beyond ten thousand. Taking into account the time he had fallen asleep, there had to be at least tens of thousands of deviants in the southern area of Tark Prairie at this very moment.
It was a relief that the enemy didn’t know his exact location, or else his head would have rolled off his neck by now. Even so, his heart was still heavy. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the deviants found him.
The Collector would never allow a dangerous variable like him to safely return. He had to make his escape soon, or else it was only a matter of time before the Savior’s worshipers found him. To make things worse, the deviants had likely formed an encirclement around the forest, evident from the flying patterns of the eagle-like demonic beasts in the sky.
The deviants heavily relied on taming aerial demonic beasts for scouting purposes, be it eagles or wyverns, which was why the human fortresses had to invest heavily in their aerial defense. This eagle that Roel was looking at right now was still in the same position as it was yesterday.
Why would a scout keep watch at the same position when it was in the midst of hunting down a target?
If the scouts weren’t moving, it could only mean that they were securing the location while the rest of their armies were moving. In other words, the deviants were tightening their encirclement around the area.
So, then, Roel had to escape before the encirclement tightened on him.
He took a moment to ponder his next step before confirming his gains from the Witness State. Now that his bloodline awakening was complete, he was finally able to view the rewards he had obtained from the Witness State.
It was more than what he could have imagined.
【You have obtained a Crown’s Stone.】 【Processing the formation of the spell.】 【You have obtained the ability: Magma Core.】
【You have obtained a Crown’s Stone.】 【Processing the formation of the spell.】 【You have obtained the ability: Silver Devourer.】
【Processing spell description.】
“!”
Roel’s cheeks quivered in excitement when he saw the rewards he had received on the System. The Crown’s Stones were the most straightforward method for him to raise his fighting prowess, as their powers were nigh impossible to defend against.
In the Witness State, Roel had destroyed the Savior’s body by borrowing the strength of the Six Calamities. Of course, those were the Six Calamities in their strongest state, but nevertheless, it still showed how powerful they were.
In the present era, the whereabouts of some of the Six Calamities were unknown, and Shrouding Fog had become too powerful for him to defeat. He had no choice but to give up on gathering all of the Crown’s Stones as a result.
He hadn’t expected to receive two more Crown’s Stones from the Witness State, but after some thought, he could roughly fathom why that was the case.
Magma Core originated from Sire Darkness, whereas Silver Devourer was from Shrouding Fog. Those two of the Six Calamities had sacrificed themselves in the earlier battle to protect Roel, which was probably the reason he had obtained them.
The only one he was lacking at the moment was Light Devourer, which had survived till the end and aided him in defeating the Savior. That might have been the reason Roel didn’t obtain it as a Crown’s Stone.
It felt like a huge pity, but there was no way he could obtain it. That was the final sliver of his soul, after all.
The System’s notifications popped up while he was in the middle of his thoughts. With a heart filled with excitement, he turned to his System to check the descriptions of his two new spells.
【Magma Core The most primordial energy of the world, the manifestation of the Earth and Flame Emperor. Upon activation, the user can unleash devastating lava together with a huge amount of scorching volcanic ash to instantaneously extinguish life. Side Effect: High heat】
【Silver Devourer The devourer of all beings, the manifestation of the spatial power to obliterate all existence. Anything that stands in the presence of the silver fog will have its existence stolen away. The potency of the effect depends on the mana and duration. Side Effect: -】
“…”
Looking at the two descriptions, Roel’s face slowly stiffened up.
The two spells were as he had expected—a weakened version of the Six Calamities. Of them, Silver Devourer worked in a manner similar to Time Devourer, where its effects amplified with time, but what concerned him was its side effect.
Roel wasn’t so gullible as to think that the dash in Silver Devourer’s ‘Side Effect’ panel meant that it didn’t have any side effects. He had been done in far too many times by the unreliability of the System to be that foolish. There must be something off about it.
Carrying the final sliver of hope in his heart, Roel tried asking about it.
“Just to be sure, can I check what Silver Devourer’s side effect is?”
The System awkwardly paused for a brief moment before abruptly changing the topic.
【As the wise old sages have once said, a gentleman should ceaselessly strive along…】
Huh? Are you trying to preach to me now?
“Stop! I don’t need your poisonous chicken soup. Just tell me what’s with that side effect!”
【…】
The System fell silent under Roel’s questioning.
Roel stared at the System interface with a constipated look on his face. It took a toilet trip’s time before the System finally answered.
【Ding!】 【Spell analysis failed.】 【The System is unable to determine the spell’s side effects. The user is advised to use the spell ‘Silver Devourer’ with prudence.】
“…”
This unreliable bastard…
As the System finally came clean after realizing that it was unable to hoodwink its way out of answering, Roel’s cheeks twitched for a long time before letting out a helpless sigh.
He was aware that the System struggled to process information relating to space and time. Admittedly, the System was reliable most of the time even though it was prone to occasional failures. It had been a great help to him all this while.
For the time being, he decided to seal off Silver Devourer.
It was too dangerous to use a spell that he didn’t know the side effects of, especially when he remembered the period of time during which he had regressed into a vulnerable child. He couldn’t afford to take such a risk given his current circumstances. He would have to wait till he was out of danger before testing the spell out.
Even so, he was still delighted to receive this Crown’s Stone. It significantly reduced the threat Shrouding Fog posed to him, and it also meant that he was now a step closer to Her.
Roel raised his head to look at the silver moon in the sky.
It was a long time later that he turned his attention back to his own condition. To his dismay, he was still in the midst of assimilating his Crown Origin Attribute, so he was still unable to reach out to his ancient gods at the moment.
“It looks like it’ll require quite some… Hm?”
Halfway through Roel’s murmur, his body suddenly stiffened up. He hurriedly raised his head to look out of the tree hollow.
…
Nights with a clear sky were when the demonic beasts of Tark Prairie were the most active. Hunting, massacre, and bloodshed would become the themes of the night.
Yet, it was on such a night, when the demonic beasts should have been the most active, that an abrupt silence suddenly settled upon this vast land. All sounds were suddenly snuffed out as if the world had suddenly transformed into a realistic painting.
The calls of the nightingales suddenly halted, and the pitter-patter of crawling insects vanished without a trace. All of the beasts in the forest stopped moving as if they had turned into statues. Even brawling demonic beasts separated right away and fearfully surveyed their surroundings.
The only sound left in the world was the cold wind.
Roel widened his eyes as an unbearable pressure weighed on him. He didn’t know where this pressure was coming from, but he felt like this entire area had turned into a room, and its owner was about to make its appearance.
An ominous feeling shook his heart as he racked his brain to figure out what was going on.
Origin Level 1? No, this is above that. Could it be…
Roel suddenly remembered what Carter had previously mentioned. There was an individual on Tark Prairie that humankind viewed to be a terminal threat—the Deviant Sovereign. This alerted him to the severity of the situation.
It would be foolishness to think that the Deviant Sovereign was on the same level as other Origin Level 1 Race Sovereigns. It was a much older and stronger entity that had been properly crowned as a Race Sovereign in the past.
Similar to how the present humankind only had Race Sovereigns but no Human Sovereigns, there had also never been a Deviant Sovereign in the previous wars. Yet, the situation had changed this time around, and it signaled the imminent arrival of a disaster of epic proportions.
Roel tightly grabbed his scepter while urgently checking on his current condition.
Meanwhile, a sinister black sphere made up of countless wisps of black smoke appeared in the night sky. All of the deviants fell to their knees and cried while kowtowing. Then, a black aura flowed out from the black sphere and swiftly enveloped the entire area.
This black aura bypassed all physical barriers to peer into one’s soul. When it seeped through the tree to fall upon Roel, his yet-to-recover soul suddenly felt a pang of intense pain. His face turned ghastly pale, but he couldn’t care about that right now.
It saw me!
As that thought surfaced in Roel’s mind, the black aura began converging into a black sphere in preparation for a devastating attack. The pressure crushing down on him also simultaneously intensified, straining his body to its limits.
His body, which had been reconstructed with many precious artifacts, was sufficiently resilient to withstand the pressure, but the same couldn’t be said about the compressed black aura. The sheer destructive prowess harnessed within that black sphere was definitely not something Roel could tank with his body.
In this critical moment, Roel clenched his teeth and furiously channeled all of his mana into his staff.
“Nine-headed Serpent Staff!” he roared.
Under the huge influx of mana, the Nine-headed Serpent Staff began emanating a blinding light. The blood within the staff flowed vigorously as it invoked the power of Relentless Regeneration to bring back the ancient demonic beast that had once terrorized the world.
Boom!
The tree exploded as nine humongous serpent heads surged toward the sky with menacing hisses, threatening to devour their enemy whole.
It was also at this moment that the black sphere released a destructive black beam.
Unbelievably intense shockwaves instantaneously rippled across the prairie, toppling over everything in the vicinity. The nervous silence looming in the forest finally ended, as the beasts fled frantically with frightened cries, whereas the kneeling deviants rose up and howled.
Roel gritted his teeth to endure the excruciating pain assaulting his soul while doing everything he could to channel his mana into the staff.
The intense clash inflicted severe injuries on the Nine-headed Serpent; its resilient scales shattered, its flesh exploded, and its bones were reduced to dust. However, under the effects of Relentless Regeneration, new serpent heads continuously popped out and protected Roel from the black aura.
This tug-o-war clash had Roel swiftly depleting his mana, but the black sphere in the sky was also quickly contracting in size. A huge explosion ensued, and the area around Roel turned completely white.
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