Novel Full Chapter 1022
I watch hundreds of thousands of battles pass by in the Purple Zone.
The majority of the first, and most intense, battles all occur in less than a million-year timeframe.
It is when the Lower Realm is still being drained of its high energy pockets, and the generals of first bloods and outer guards are still no longer myths of old. Almost every single demon born in this era is a Noble or High Noble with guaranteed potential to ascend.
It makes Ember’s ability to manipulate young demons and return to the Purple Zone every few hundred years very easy.
However, his own potential is always limited to the demon he’s bonded to.
Many demonic dragon forms reveal themselves to me, but a similar fighting style emerges from every iteration of the same battle. From Marcellus’ eyes, I get to watch the crimson eyes of hatred stare through this demon.
In the earliest battles, I even get to watch a version of the serene black and white primordial aura pour out from Ember. Even with the disadvantage of using average ranked-up buffs from a demon’s progression from a fledgling to a royal demon, Ember manages quite well.
He is just never able to stack up against the raw power that Marcellus uses when he pairs his demonic glyphs with his chaotic advanced Primordial aura.
Many of his demonic pairings have attempted to fully awaken their demonic glyph imprints by sacrificing him, their bonded dragon, but Ember always severs the bond and kills them both before any of them can do such a thing.
It is an interesting perspective to view.
In the battle I witnessed with my own eyes, Marcellus was confident and even looked down on Ember.
Yet, in these battles during his earlier life, I can feel the raw fear and hatred he emits while dueling this dragon that almost killed his Overseer King.
It is clear there are many things Marcellus does not understand about the system and existence itself for the first few million years as the first Royal Family Head. These memories are all tinted in an intense feeling of pure stress.
The demon never deactivated his full battle form and was constantly on edge, defending the zones the Overseer granted him, and would ruthlessly kill any demon from any zone that ever stepped out of line or even thought about him the wrong way.
At this point in time, the separation between zones was far more fragile. Marcellus could easily listen in on the thoughts and intentions of demons even in the Lower Realm.
In fact, once the next era of demons settles in, and Marcellus builds out the infrastructure of the central domain to protect himself enough, he begins targeting and killing Ember in the Lower Realm before he even manages to ascend.
He stands atop the same stump of the fallen dryad’s tree and starts to shape the galaxy below him to his wishes.
The attacks from the dragon that the Overseer called the Fallen One began making it up to the Purple Zone less and less. At first, it was every few thousand years, then every ten thousand, and eventually there would be over a million years that would pass in between confrontations.
The most interesting thing I see is that it was not only Ember that would challenge this demon.
All kinds of elites from all over the galaxy that fought against the newer generations of demons that could make it up this high in the chaotic struggle for power in the Upper Realms, they all challenged Marcellus too.
Yet, none were even close to the strength of this immortal dragon.
Marcellus would allow them into his dome and toy with any of the prey that would wander in from the Outer Settlements, then eventually kill them when he became bored or finished extracting information out of them.
The strongest Royal Demons that ascended all took charge of the Ritual Domains surrounding the center home base. Every single one of these ancient dryad structures that were taken over by demons shows bright in my mind. I witness many dragon-sacrificing ceremonies for demons to unleash the full power of their glyphs. Many succeed, but also many die trying to unlock the power of glyph imprints made in an era too strong for them.
Only their ascended bodies can remain after failure, but it is clear that making it up this far from the Origin Plane and being able to exist for eternity with their Family Head is a success in their minds already.
There are a few battles that I was not expecting to see at all…
One of an enormous bronze tortoise, another of a rust-red hydra, and even a bright white elf queen and a dark immortal lich.
The feature they all have in common is that they use silver threads and very complex advanced Primordial Aura to fight.
Once one of them attacks, they all begin returning in bursts every few million years or so. Yet, every time they try, their silver cores become weaker. Marcellus remains exactly the same strength, not losing any power at all while the zones below decay.
The first two Overseers I watch be utterly defeated are the tortoise and hydra. They both come alone one era, and completely burn their immortal cores out trying to defeat this Royal Demon.
Instead of obliterating them completely and letting their beings disperse into the galaxy, Marcellus gifts their souls to his first appointed Royal Family Head: Samir, Vanguard of the Dark Blue Zone.
At this time, it takes tens of millions of years to ever even see a hint of the Fallen One’s scent in the galaxy below.
Marcellus finally is able to relax, as life has finally decayed to a rate where there will never be another lifeform born that rivals him in power.
He watches the dark and light elven Overseers ascend to the Blue Zone a few times and fail to defeat the new gatekeeper of the Celestial Sea, but by this time almost all of the Ether from the Lower Realm has been collected.
The time to start activating the glyphs that separate the zones has begun.
With every era that passes now, it becomes increasingly harder to ascend upward from zone to zone. Many lifeforms born in the Lower Realm even go their entire lives without ever knowing that there is more to the system, and a place to ascend higher.
Marcellus even allows Samir to take care of the duties of the Lower Realm and new Family Head promotions, as for the next few hundred million years, he will be very busy.
Ember only shows up a single-digit number of times during this last era of Marcellus’ life.
The Imperial Family Head even appears bored at times, killing him in a single wave of the hand and yelling into the void as his silver and golden threads collapse in on themselves and disappear.
“Will you ever truly face me with your full power? Or are you scared the Overseer will feel your presence? Come on! It’s getting pathetic!”
As I watch that memory, I realize it’s the last time Marcellus saw Ember in the Purple Zone since the current day.
Of all of Ember’s rebirths since, he has never ascended past the Blue Zone.
Though, at this realization, more pieces of the fragmented memory puzzle come together. I only realize it when I watch Marcellus turn around with a scoff and walk through a tear in space in the center of the tree stump. My hold on these memories starts to blur, and my vision becomes covered in extremely strong silver demonic glyphs.
I only get a glimpse of Marcellus looking up at a silver-cored demon, still curled up in an orb of bent space, in exactly the same position I witnessed him sever his soul tie with Ember billions of years before.
Flashes of the past where Marcellus would often step through space to talk with this Overseer come rushing in. He would ask for directions and report the state of the Origin Plane very often, yet all of the responses are blocked out of my mind. He met with this demon millions of times, yet for some reason I can’t recall a single word they said.
I start to feel the rushing memories of the past fading away, but I see one more, much closer to recent times as they do.
It is of Marcellus standing on the edge of the tree stump. He is meditating and configuring glyphs in the white orb that was in his chest.
It links him to many anchors in the zones below.
Yet, it’s extremely difficult for him to anchor to the Purple Zone itself.
That is because the Dryad Overseer that formed this tree placed a seal of her own on it. No matter how much he tries, the demon cannot break through it or even know what it is that is hiding beneath it.
Yet, now that I look at these glyphs with my own knowledge, I can see that whatever seal was placed in this tree is no longer there. It was lifted the moment Maria and I extracted the Key to our Legacy.