Chapter 512 - 477: Underground Facility

Chapter 512: Chapter 477: Underground Facility

There was no earth-shattering explosion.

Only absolute nothingness.

Everything within a twenty-meter radius of the point of impact.

The soil, the rocks, the dust from the previous attacks, the suspended particles in the air, and even the lingering embers of Energy from that strange Flame.

It all vanished.

Not pulverized, not vaporized, but cleanly erased from the canvas of reality as if by a master eraser, leaving behind a perfectly cylindrical chasm with mirror-smooth edges and no discernible bottom.

The walls of the chasm had the unique, vitrified texture that comes from instantaneous exposure to extreme heat and pressure, shimmering with a dull luster.

The range of Destruction was controlled with extreme precision; the ground beyond the chasm hadn’t even felt a tremor.

This kind of pinpoint control over Power was more terrifying than mere destructive force.

Roland’s figure was, of course, also within the "erased" area.

The attack still passed through him as if he were an Illusion.

However, the "effect" of the attack hadn’t missed entirely.

It wasn’t just matter that had been "erased," but also the ground beneath Roland’s feet.

The instant the beam "struck" and the matter below was completely annihilated, Roland felt the ground vanish from under him.

This wasn’t an ordinary collapse. Rather, all support beneath the "spatial coordinates" he occupied had been yanked away into nothingness.

The Space-Time dislocation protected him from the attack’s impact, but it couldn’t change the fact that he was now in midair, unable to use Borrowed Power.

A sudden feeling of weightlessness washed over him.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, he plummeted toward the pitch-black, bottomless chasm with its mirror-smooth edges.

The sharp whistle of the wind rushed past his ears as he fell.

His gaze swept past the rapidly shrinking rim of the chasm above, the blurred figures of the Cleaner squad, and the strange sky that was slowly "healing" itself.

The fall only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like a century.

However, during this brief, uncontrolled descent, Roland’s vision suddenly widened, aided by the residual glow of Energy that hadn’t yet fully dissipated within the chasm and a faint, eerie luminescence emanating from the depths below...

He wasn’t just falling into simple earth or rock strata; it was as if he were plunging into a meticulously hidden subterranean space.

It was a massive cavern of immeasurable size, its high ceiling disappearing into the gloom at the edge of his sight.

The first things to enter his view were countless colossal, crisscrossing structures that gleamed with a cold, metallic luster.

Energy conduits, thick enough for a carriage to pass through, snaked throughout the space like the vascular network of some mechanical behemoth, their surfaces coursing with dim streams of blue or pale white light.

They connected to massive, orderly, geometric buildings.

They were standard research facilities in the style of the Crystal Era.

Multi-leveled laboratory platforms, honeycomb-like sample storage arrays, circular analysis stations fitted with complex observation Crystal Clusters, and many other enormous devices of unknown function, all exuding a precise and stark industrial beauty.

This was no natural cavern. It was a large-scale, underground research complex, its level of technology and completeness far surpassing any ruins Roland had seen before.

And in the center of this cold, precise, and orderly "forest of research," stood a structure.

If one could even call it a structure.

It looked like a tumor of primordial malice, forced up from the planet’s core, utterly clashing with the rational aesthetics of the surrounding Crystal Era.

It was towering and twisted, its material an indescribable entity woven from a sickly pale white and a foul, dark red.

Its surface was not smooth but covered in thick, bulging veins that resembled giant blood vessels or decaying roots, all pulsing slowly.

Its structure defied all principles of architecture. Several different styles—spires, arches, contorted spirals—had been forcibly fused and grown together by some maddening force, creating a dizzying sense of dissonance.

Countless tiny Runes, glowing a ghastly green or a dark violet, crawled across its "skin" like living parasites, flickering in and out of existence.

The structure was not capped at its peak. Instead, it blossomed into an enormous, hideous, organ-like formation, resembling a withered sarcoma or a flower bud from an Otherworld.

A deep fissure ran through it, continuously seeping out an extremely faint yet contaminating pulsation that directly plucked at the uneasy strings of the soul.

And this pulsation shared the same source as the aura from the bizarre fire on the surface.

BOOM!

Roland slammed heavily onto the incredibly hard alloy floor of an observation platform, his landing point happening to be right at the edge of this subterranean space.

The immense impact made the platform tremble slightly, shaking loose a shower of dust.

He got up quickly, completely unharmed, but his gaze was already locked onto the grotesque, blasphemous, twisted creation in the distance, which seemed to possess a life of its own.

The primordial, chaotic, and sacrilegious aura it emanated was nothing like the style produced by the Crystal Era’s technological civilization, which pursued precision, efficiency, and rational aesthetics.

It was more like...

a heterogeneous hybrid, forcibly spawned by some ancient, savage, and malevolent Power.

As his thoughts raced, Roland didn’t rashly focus all of his attention on the obvious, bizarre target.

His eyes swept the area and quickly locked onto a hidden corner beneath the Shadow of a massive Energy conduit, formed by a discarded control console and a stack of metal crates.

The light was dim and the structure complex—a perfect temporary hiding spot.

[Shadow Dance Form] activated silently.

His form and outline, like a drop of ink in a deep pool, rapidly faded, melting into the interwoven Shadows and the crevices of the complex geometric structures around him.