Chapter 398: Sacred Devouring Body

With just a movement of his hand, those two were pierced by the beams of light. Before they could even scream, their bodies exploded into a bloody mist.

Priam nodded in satisfaction. Destruction Thunder was truly overwhelming. Since it was the direct manifestation of the world’s pure laws, designed to be effective against mortals, it was the sharpest and most merciless weapon in existence.

Being able to master and use such power was simply unfair. Too bad the amount available to him would run out soon.

At that moment, system windows floated before his eyes.

[System Assimilation: 100%]

[Level 6!]

[+35,000 GP]

[Your Secret World has expanded by 40%. The usable energy reserves available to your Celestials have increased by the same proportion.]

[Slots for new Celestials: +3]

[Assimilation of Acquired Knowledge:]

[Type 2: 55%]

[Type 9: 30%]

Priam read the notifications with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes, but he couldn’t afford to waste any time. He turned his full attention back to the spatial channel.

"Disappear."

He casually waved his hand, firing Destruction Thunder. Now that there was no longer any need to pretend to be weakened or exhausted, the process became frighteningly fast and fluid.

A devastating bolt tore through the air.

Shortly after, another. And another.

In a mere two minutes, Priam exterminated all nine Spectral Generals without giving them the slightest chance to react or land a single blow.

To achieve such absolute speed, however, he consumed more than half of his Destruction Thunder reserves, leaving him with less than 20%.

Priam let out a heavy sigh, turned around, and shot toward the rear at the speed of light, where his army was engaged in a bitter battle.

As he approached, the scene before him was brutal.

All two thousand members of his faction were covered in blood, fighting at the limit of their strength. Meanwhile, the sect’s core disciples were fighting desperately, trying to take shelter behind wooden fortifications—although more than ninety percent of all the structures had already been reduced to rubble.

It was a bloody massacre. They were facing a terrifying horde from the third eruption—three times larger than the standard volume—while also having to contain fifty enemy Celestials who were incapable of dying.

Priam took in the entire scene in a fraction of a second and took a deep breath.

Fortunately, no one in his faction had died yet, although everyone was on the verge of total exhaustion. If he delayed for a few more minutes, casualties would become inevitable.

The only thing holding the defensive line together was the perfect cooperation between the Physical Sages, who absorbed the direct impact, and the Holy Sages, who healed their wounds at the same speed.

On the other hand, the core disciples were going through a brutal filtering process. Of the fifty thousand who had set out for the Celestial Event, only forty thousand remained alive.

Even so, Priam knew that the survivors of this trial by fire would return to the sect as true warriors. Their future paths had been paved by blood and baptized by real combat.

Without hesitation, Priam advanced.

The sound of metallic impacts and runic explosions echoed nonstop across the battlefield.

At the center of the storm, the fifty enemy Celestials were locked in a chaotic battle.

Dandara, Mo Lan, Arvid, the Wyvern Lulani, and the Dryad Enuara were fighting in perfect synchronization against the multitude of enemies.

Currently, in addition to possessing raw power surpassed only by Priam himself, Dandara possessed unique trump cards. The first was her miasma, which had unique properties; the second, obviously, was her Beast squad.

The five of them together formed a true nightmare. The Dryad Enuara completed the team perfectly thanks to her specialization in healing. With the rear secured, Mo Lan could act on the front line as an improvised tank, poisoning the targets and controlling their movements, while Dandara, Arvid, and Lulani unleashed a devastating offensive.

Even though it was incomplete, that team was capable of holding back the fifty Acquired Celestials. Every few exchanges, three or four enemies would explode into pieces. However, those Celestials regenerated almost instantly.

After completing another assault, Dandara stopped in midair. She sensed a presence, and a fierce smile appeared on her face.

"Go all-out!"

She roared, releasing the entirety of her Essence of Creation. ℴℴ𝘮

At the same instant, the four beasts felt an intense flow of energy flooding their bodies. This was Dandara’s ultimate trump card, simply named Overload.

With this technique, she converted her own reserves to connect the power of all her Contracted Beasts, granting them a temporary boost in strength.

In the past, using only Ether, the increase in power had been modest. Now, fueled by Essence of Creation, the increase was terrifying. To make matters even worse for the enemies, the Dryad Enuara and the Wyvern Lulani were Primordial Chaos Beasts, possessing their own reserves of Essence of Creation.

When they activated everything together, the fusion of these energies elevated them to a mythical level.

"GO!"

In perfect synchronization, the five moved simultaneously, surrounding the fifty Celestials from every possible direction.

The enemy Celestials merely snorted in disdain, prepared to be blown apart and regenerate again, exactly as they had done dozens of times before.

However... this time was different.

After the overwhelming impact caused all fifty Celestials to explode simultaneously, not a single light of regeneration appeared again. No one returned. They had been completely eradicated from existence.

Dandara flashed a satisfied smile and quickly retreated. Under her agile command, she led the group to provide vital support to the core disciples, who were already fighting on the verge of collapse.

With Dandara and her Beasts directly intervening, the defensive formation of the core disciples finally stabilized, stopping the spiral of deaths that had seemed inevitable.

Meanwhile, Priam moved like an imperceptible shadow across the front line. He only intervened at truly critical moments, eliminating fatal targets at the exact millisecond he sensed that one of his allies was about to meet their end.

He chose not to reveal himself openly. His intention was to push everyone to their absolute limits, giving them the perfect opportunity to temper their wills and grow through the trial.

...

Five hours passed amid the endless chaos.

Priam finally stopped above a high peak and checked the Rank.

’Finally... those two from the other sects really were competent. It was surprisingly difficult to overtake them, even with our side facing three times as many enemies.’

Priam muttered inwardly, remembering the young Innate Celestial and that woman.

Both of them had behaved honorably before, refusing to attack him. Their attitude gave Priam a faint hope that this world wasn’t made up exclusively of rotten people.

They had remained firmly in ninth and tenth place for hours on end.

However, after hours of nonstop hunting, Priam’s allies had finally surpassed the pair’s score, monopolizing the entire Top 10 for the Ironweald Sect.

’Time to end this little game.’

Priam let out a sigh, turned his body, and shot toward the skies.

He flew directly to the primary spatial channel, where the Spectral Generals had previously attempted to cross over. The rift remained partially open, emitting unstable pulses. No ordinary Specter could cross through it; the smaller hordes continued to emerge only from the secondary channels scattered throughout the abyss.

Priam approached the rift and looked at the other side. It was like staring through a window into a small, dark, desolate world—the true dimension from which the Specters emerged.

Inside, a truly colossal army was marching. They were trying to leave through the secondary channels as quickly as possible, but there was a clear limit to how many could come out at once.

Calculating the number of enemies... if Priam didn’t intervene now, that Celestial Event would continue for several more days.

That would be a catastrophic tragedy.

The forces of his sect were holding on purely through the limits of their willpower. Since the enemies were absurdly powerful, there was no way to organize a rotation system to let the troops rest. Everyone was forced to fight without pause, and total exhaustion of their energy would only be a matter of time.

This situation wasn’t exclusive to the Ironweald Sect. Every other group scattered across the planet was facing the same desperate trial.

In other words... if the eruption continued for several more days, it was very likely that more than ninety percent of all the Sages on the planet would be killed.

Priam obviously wasn’t going to accept losing his allies like that.

Therefore...

He extended both hands toward the rift. The fabric of space-time around his arms began to hum and twist violently.

The entirety of the remaining twenty percent of his Destruction Thunder was mobilized all at once, concentrating into a single focal point.

Without the slightest hesitation, Priam fired the attack directly into the channel.

That destructive power advanced like an apocalyptic spear of fluorescent light, effortlessly tearing through the structure of the spatial rift before plunging into the heart of the Specter army on the other side.

**BOOOOOOM!**

The resulting explosion was so terrifying that the shockwave flowed outward through every open channel on the planet simultaneously. The earth trembled, the heavens roared, and every ongoing battle across the planet came to a halt for an instant.

When the spatial turbulence finally dissipated, Priam peered into the channel and nodded with a satisfied expression.

"I managed to eliminate practically ninety-five percent of the entire horde in one go. Now, the rest of the event should end soon."

There was no need to hurry back, since his army would be able to clean up the remnants without difficulty. Priam instead turned his attention to the system windows, which he hadn’t paid attention to yet.

[System Assimilation: Level 7!]

[+35,000 GP]

[Secret World Expansion: +40%]

[Slots for new Celestials: +3]

[Possible Celestial Marks to create: 6]

[Assimilation of Acquired Knowledge:]

[Type 1: 50%]

[Type 2: 65%]

[Type 3: 15%]

[Type 4: 9%]

[Type 5: 40%]

[Type 6: 10%]

[Type 7: 100%] [MAX]

[Type 8: 50%]

[Type 9: 40%]

[Type 10: 16%]

[Type 11: 5%]

[Type 12: 20%]

Priam smiled excitedly as he saw the next notification unfold in the air.

[Sovereign Manifestation completely assimilated!]

[New Innate System Technique acquired!]

[Sacred Devouring Body]

[Effect: You are capable of generating a perfect pocket space within your own body. When manifested externally, this space takes the form of a black hole capable of devouring anything with ease. Within the pocket space, even Sages of your same Rank lose all ability to react and can be refined by you.]

[Additional: This pocket space behaves like an independent micro-world, also being capable of housing and sustaining simple forms of life through your will.]

Priam read the description, and the light in his eyes changed drastically.

He had already understood that all twelve Sovereign Manifestations represented, in essence, the two primordial powers of each of the six existing Sovereigns.

This Sacred Devouring Body possessed terrifying versatility, and its ability to swallow and refine absolutely anything was simply unfair. And to think that this represented only half the power of a single Sovereign...

"Now, this power belongs to me... Let’s see what I’m really capable of with it."