Chapter 539 - 489: Beneath the Firmament, the Battle of Godfall

Chapter 539: Chapter 489: Beneath the Firmament, the Battle of Godfall

Instantly, that patch of space shattered like a broken mirror, revealing countless fractured and distorted images.

But Roland had dodged the vital point.

And as he tilted his head, the Bright Moon in his hand transformed into a ghastly, blood-red arc. No longer a straight thrust, it now carried the force of a thunderbolt as it slashed horizontally toward Yemiga’s Space-Time barrier!

CLANG!

An even more piercing sound of impact rang out.

The barrier shook violently as the cracks spread further.

Yemiga didn’t pause for a moment. With both hands outstretched, his ten fingers danced as if playing an invisible symphony of death. "Space-Time Stripping," "Local Acceleration," "Space Folding," "Time Lag"...

All sorts of unbelievable applications of his Space-Time Authority rained down on Roland like a torrential storm.

He was no longer aiming for a single killing blow. Instead, he intended to use an endless, unavoidable barrage of Space-Time attacks to interfere with, delay, and exhaust Roland, disrupting the dangerous rhythm of his escalating Power.

As for Roland, he had completely transformed into a crimson thunderbolt, dancing wildly within the Space-Time Storm.

His Dragonified body granted him greater Power and resistance. The Weaver’s Heart provided a seemingly endless supply of Energy. The deep Burning of his Mad Soul allowed him to ignore pain, pushing his combat instincts to their absolute limit.

He swung Bright Moon, its blade flashing like a meteor crashing to earth as it violently bombarded the barrier.

At other times, he moved like a phantom, parrying and deflecting Yemiga’s Space-Time attacks from impossible angles.

He even began to experiment, imbuing the blade’s edge with the faint glow of the Time Trace Weaver’s Engraving Blade, attempting to analyze and interfere with Yemiga’s Space-Time attacks with greater precision as he blocked them.

The battle had fully entered a white-hot stage of mutual assault!

The absolute calm within Yemiga, a calm belonging to the World Serpent, was now being slowly eroded by an unprecedented sense of astonishment.

Roland’s Power escalation curve had already surpassed the model limits for every Extraordinary life-form in his database.

It was no longer "growth" or an "outburst," but something more akin to an out-of-control "mutation" hurtling toward some dangerous critical point.

However, Roland, at the center of this vortex of Power, felt something entirely different from Yemiga’s observations.

The price of activating Mad Soul was like a maggot burrowing into his bones, a cruel torment that wracked him from body to soul.

On a physical level, the raging Blood Qi had long since surpassed a mere "rushing torrent." It was more like countless miniature explosives detonating in every one of his blood vessels and muscle fibers.

Beneath his skin, a dark red light flickered like Magma. His bones, under immense pressure, let out faint, overburdened groans.

If not for the stacked bonuses from his various Professions pushing his physical body far beyond human limits, he would have burst like an overinflated balloon at the very start of his power surge.

Even so, he felt like a volcano on the verge of erupting. Every inch of his flesh was steeped in scorching heat and excruciating pain, and every heartbeat felt like it was pounding against eardrums stretched to their breaking point.

The torment on a spiritual level was even more terrifying.

Mad Soul wasn’t a simple berserker state. It used one’s Spirit as fuel, casting it into a Blood Forging Furnace.

Roland could "clearly" perceive his own Spiritual Power—as tough as steel, forged through countless trials—being violently extracted, burned, and converted.

This sensation was completely different from Fermented Battle Intent, where battle lust gradually overwhelmed reason.

It was as if his consciousness had been forcibly stripped away and thrown into the core of a furnace that burned eternally, where only pain and the Echo of Destruction resounded.

Every moment, the ramparts of his reason were being licked, scorched, and stripped away by the Flame known as "Burning."

He could feel his "self" being burned to ash, bit by bit, transformed into the fuel that drove this frenzied mortal shell.

His thoughts grew sluggish. Fragments of memory fluttered and broke apart like scorched scraps of paper. The boundaries of his self-awareness began to blur and waver.

A cold Fear, born from the dissolution of his very being, was trying to worm its way into the depths of his soul through the cracks of the conflagration.

Moreover, the side effects of his Dragonification, catalyzed by his boiling Blood Qi, were also quietly emerging under the unrestrained demand for Power.

The ancient, majestic, and cold savagery of a top predator, all contained within his Bronze Dragon Bloodline, was beginning to erode the parts of his Traits that made him "human," growing stronger with every new Scale that appeared and every wave of pressure he emanated.

The subtle emotions of a human, complex moral calculations, the warm bonds with his companions...

These precious qualities that constituted "Roland" seemed to be slowly overwritten and diluted by the more primitive, direct, power-and-dominion-seeking instincts of the Dragon Race Bloodline.

In a lull between sword swings, he even caught a whiff of something from the vaporizing mist of his own blood...

The cold, metallic scent of a predator.

His body was on the verge of collapse, his consciousness was being incinerated in a furnace, and the very foundations of his humanity were crumbling under the strain of Dragonification.

And yet, Roland’s grip on Bright Moon didn’t loosen in the slightest.

Within the blood mist, deep in his burning eyes, the flame called "anger" had not been extinguished by the pain and dissolution. On the contrary, as if doused in boiling oil, it burned ever hotter, ever colder, and ever more...

Pure.

Compared to the physical agony he was currently enduring, the heart-wrenching fury from watching his comrades be ruthlessly erased, reduced to the Void—that cold loathing for Yemiga, who treated life as a toy—had not faded. On the contrary, in this desperate situation on the verge of collapse, it had been tempered into the hardest of diamonds and embedded in the core of his soul.

It became the final anchor that allowed him to maintain his "self" within the furnace.