Chapter 547 - 491: World Serpent

Chapter 547: Chapter 491: World Serpent

The dense fog that originated from the outskirts of Silver Radiance City, enveloping it day-long like a pale shroud, suddenly erupted into a frenzy.

RUMBLE!

A deep, muffled rumble, as if tectonic plates were being violently dragged, emanated from deep within the earth. It was followed by a soul-shuddering howl that swept across the entire city.

The thick wall of fog shrouding the city’s edge transformed into countless, frenzied, pale giant serpents.

From every direction and every corner, the serpents of fog tore through the air, surging back to converge on Yemiga’s location.

This was no mere infusion of Energy. It was more akin to a horrifying ’material reconstruction’ and ’flesh-forging.’

The vast quantities of pale fog didn’t dissipate upon contact with Yemiga’s shattered form. Instead, they began to madly condense, compress, and transmute.

First, it formed a ghastly white skeletal frame, dense as jade and winding like a mountain range. It was so massive that the curve of a single rib could cover several city blocks.

Next, the fog transformed into flowing, dark-silver ’flesh’ and ’sinew,’ filling the frame. It produced a thick, muffled squelching, like wet mud being stirred by a great force.

Finally, the outermost layer of ’Scale Armor’ was born.

It didn’t grow Scale by Scale, but ’congealed’ into existence in massive sheets.

Each Scale was as large as a Shield, with a dull, metallic silver sheen.

A phantom light, resembling both circuitry and ancient Runes, flowed along their edges. They overlapped layer upon layer, creating a sonorous CLANG of heavy, grinding metal.

The terrifying ’forging’ process was complete in the span of a breath.

Yemiga’s human form had completely disappeared.

In its place was a giant serpent coiled above Silver Radiance City.

Its body was so vast as to be inconceivable. The mere section of it suspended in the air was thicker than the tallest spire, its length winding away into the foggy, architectural backdrop, seemingly without end.

The dark-silver Scale Armor covered powerful musculature that rippled like mountain ranges and foothills, reflecting a cold, heavy metallic luster beneath the false daylight.

It was covered in deep patterns like cracks in ancient rock strata.

Within these patterns, a brighter, silver-white light flowed slowly.

Its head resembled a tilted, silver mountain peak—sharply angled and filled with an ancient, majestic power and beauty.

It lacked the sinister coldness of an ordinary serpent, resembling instead some kind of mythological metallic behemoth.

At the front of its head, where Yemiga’s eyes had been, were two enormous, recessed Shadows.

Deep within the Shadows, two searing ’pupil-flames’ slowly swirled.

Its mere presence, the slight twist of its neck, caused the surrounding space to emit a sorrowful CRACK, like glass on the verge of shattering. Displaced air formed turbulent, hurricane-force winds.

Every heavy breath was accompanied by the synchronous pulse of the Energy veins deep beneath the city, and a surging replenishment from the fog on the periphery.

It was as if all of Silver Radiance City had become a living organ, an extension of its massive body.

But to Roland’s Perception, the transformation before him was far more impactful than its appearance alone.

The human-form Yemiga, though he had wielded the terrifying Authority of Space-Time...

...the essence of his Power was more akin to a precise ’manipulation’ and ’definition.’

Like a puppeteer of supreme skill, pulling the world’s invisible strings.

Though difficult to oppose, there was still a logic to follow, a ’Rule’ that could be disrupted.

But now...

The dark-silver serpent coiled beneath the sky... its very existence surpassed the realm of ’manipulation.’

It was no longer ’using’ Space-Time. It had become the living embodiment of this distorted pocket of Space-Time, the living hub of the looping network. ℯℯ𝑙.

Merely by ’existing here,’ the terrifying pressure it radiated—a mixture of spatial-temporal Chaos and a Divine Attribute’s majesty—made Roland feel his Dragonification-wrought body and Burning soul cry out under the unbearable weight.

The level of its Power had undergone a fundamental leap.

If the previous Yemiga was an insurmountable mountain that he had to give his all to climb and chip away at...

...then the ’World Serpent’ that had now appeared was a living, breathing...

Disaster Domain.

’Is this... the true Power of the Gods?’

A tremor, born of primal instinct, shuddered through Roland’s heart, a heart almost completely consumed by the will to fight and the flames of fury.

The gap was nearly despair-inducing.

But the thought of despair rose for only a moment before being crushed by an even colder, more stubborn resolve.

At this point, there was no longer any path of retreat.

Retreating meant accepting the false loop, meant his companions’ sacrifices would be for nothing, meant completely surrendering to this all-twisting ’Order.’

Even if a true Divine Kingdom, an Abyss of Law, lay ahead, he still had to swing his sword.

’A fight to the death...’

He felt the excruciating pain racking his body, a consequence of over-burning his [Mad Soul] and the brutal battle that preceded it. It was an agony that threatened to tear apart every inch of his flesh and bone.

Along with the ceaseless, sharp shriek from the depths of his soul as his sanity was burned and stripped away, Roland took a deep breath.

The air he drew in was scorching, thick with the stench of Blood Qi and something burnt.

Then he squeezed and gathered all his remaining Power toward the depths of his chest, preparing to recklessly trigger the next, and perhaps final...

[Dragon’s Breath]!

However, just as his will reached the critical point, about to detonate the violent Energy inside him...

Suddenly, his gilt-gold vertical pupils caught an infinitesimal detail—one utterly at odds with the World Serpent’s current, terrifyingly vast form.

Deep within those two massive, swirling ’pupil-flames’...

...something was flickering violently.

It was a tremor belonging to... emotion.

It was not the indifference of a God looking down upon mortals, nor was it the cold killing intent of a provoked being.

It was...

Fear.

The Fear of a ’human.’

In almost the same instant Roland perceived it, the newly forged, massive body of the ’World Serpent’ coiled in the sky began to move in a series of ways that starkly contradicted its immense and solemn majesty.

The body, covered in dark-silver metallic Scales, became unnaturally stiff, as if a ’shudder’ transcending its instinctual control had pierced through its shell of Divine Attribute.

A few of the massive Scales, freshly congealed and etched with flowing, cold Runes, imperceptibly ’bristled’ at the edges before quickly ’smoothing’ back down. They made a scraping sound distinct from its heavy breathing, like a startled animal’s fur standing on end.

This was absolutely not the calm and absolute control a true God, one who wielded Authority and had become an avatar of Law, should possess after revealing its ultimate form.

This was more like...

...the instinctive panic and precursor to a loss of control of someone who had violated an absolute taboo.

And deep within Yemiga’s inhuman consciousness, a Storm of panic far more violent than what Roland could see on the surface was raging.

’No... too soon... shouldn’t have... fully manifested... here...’

’It’s ’watching’... the Eye of Law... is locating...’

’Must... must end this quickly... return to ’sanctuary’ form... or else...’

But the attempt to ’return’ was met with the most instinctual resistance from its own form.

When the panic from the depths of its consciousness drove Yemiga to try and forcefully reverse the manifestation process of the ’World Serpent’...

...to shrink and condense back into the ’human’ form that was easier to hide and control...

The dark-silver substance forged from the dense fog and Energy veins that made up its huge body let out a sharp, ear-piercing wail.

Forcibly interrupting and reversing a transformation of this scale was far more difficult than imagined.

This wasn’t just a change in appearance, but a switch in the very essence of its existence.

It involved a crude interference with the massive amount of Space-Time Law and the city’s origin that had already been mobilized.

The silver flesh and metallic Scale Armor squirmed and twitched violently, but could not collapse smoothly.

The skeletal frame emitted a creaking sound as if overburdened, threatening to break at any moment.

The silver-glowing patterns on its surface flickered unstably, descending into a Chaotic strobe.

The two pools of molten-silver pupil-flame wavered, the terror within them growing ever clearer.

It was like a behemoth that had suddenly realized it was on the edge of a cliff but couldn’t stop immediately due to its great inertia, falling into a brief and dangerous state of rigid paralysis.

And in that instant of paralysis and Chaos...

Throughout all of Silver Radiance City, every sound, every beam of light, every flow of Energy, and even the dust motes floating under the false sky...

...all came to an abrupt halt.

This was not the partial Time Lag or spatial Freeze Frame Yemiga had used before.

This was something more thorough, more tyrannical, more...

...an unquestionable ’solidification.’

The wind stopped.

The smoke and dust drifting from the ruins froze in mid-air, preserving the exact posture of their dispersal from the second before.

The splattering fragments of Energy, the wreckage of broken Chains, even the few tiny silver Scale flakes that had broken off Yemiga’s body...

...all froze in place, suspended in defiance of gravity.

’What... is happening?’

Roland, the first to notice the anomaly, withdrew his gaze from Yemiga and looked down.

Avril’s gasping mouth, Duraga’s supporting arm, Galvis’s posture clutching a ruined lyre, Bronson’s terrified, upturned gaze...

...all of them were like hyper-realistic sculptures.

And not only that...

Roland felt the [Dragon’s Breath] Energy inside him that had been boiling to its peak and about to erupt, the pain of his soul Burning, his racing heart, his rushing blood...

...were also forcibly ’pressed down’ just before the point of eruption by this incomprehensible, great power, unable to move.

Only his thoughts continued to turn.

And within Roland’s unfrozen Perception, he clearly ’saw’ Yemiga abruptly turn toward a certain region of the sky above the city.

’No...’

A mental ripple, almost a moan and so faint as to be nearly non-existent, seeped out from the massive serpentine body.

Then.

In the direction Yemiga was looking, in the center of the pale firmament...

Space, like the calm surface of water gently poked by an invisible finger, rippled outward in silent, pitch-black circles.

At the center of the ripples, the Darkness rapidly settled and expanded, forming a circular hole with a slightly squirming edge, as if it were alive.

Within the hole, it was not absolute Darkness.

But something far deeper, far more ancient, far more...

...an indescribable ’existence’ was casting its ’gaze.’

And then.

A vertical pupil, so massive it defied description and colored a ghastly bluish-white, slowly emerged from the depths of the black hole.

It filled the sky, replacing the firmament.

When this eye ’looked’ down, the moment its gaze swept over them—be it the nearly exhausted Avril and the others, the burnt-out Roland, or the terrified and paralyzed ’World Serpent’ Yemiga...

...a sense of absolute awe, like a speck of dust facing the primordial universe, rose from the depths of all their souls.

Along with an inexpressible...

...cold Fear.