Chapter 2398: The compound

Hummm Sakar passed through the gate and fully emerged on the other side.

Then Robin’s voice echoed directly inside his head, "Move over to the side. We don’t want to get dragged into pointless battles that have nothing to do with us." Then a small smile appeared on his face. "And tell me how you feel."

Immediately, Sakar began moving farther away from the gate alongside Robin, while most of his attention remained fixed on the gate itself and everything moving throughout the enormous region surrounding it.

The atmosphere on the other side was extraordinarily strange, completely different from merely observing it from afar...

Although he had already been following everything happening here through his spiritual sense, that distant observation had felt more like watching a recording of events than actually standing among them, but now he was truly beginning to perceive what was happening around him, beginning to properly grasp the colossal sizes of the creatures moving through the space surrounding him.

Beside the gate alone was an enormous number of space beasts, millions upon millions of them gathered around the area. The only thing preventing that endless mass from entering through the gate and flooding into the universe to destroy everything was that the entrance itself was relatively small, allowing only the smaller beasts to pass through while forcing even those creatures to enter one at a time, which made the entire process somewhat easier for the Imperial Guards waiting on the other side.

Beyond those beasts of wildly varying sizes, there were additional rows of creatures farther back, each one roughly comparable to an entire planet in size, while some among them were so enormous that they appeared capable of swallowing whole planets in a single bite.

No matter how hard he tried, Sakar couldn’t smell their scent in the surrounding air, but his spiritual sense could clearly feel those enormous creatures moving, and could sense them repeatedly trying to drive away the annoying things circling around their bodies at tremendous speeds.

...There were five of those figures possessing strength at the level of the Domination Realm. Their movements appeared random and chaotic at first glance, but with even a little careful observation, one could discover that every movement they made was extraordinarily precise. They continuously positioned themselves as a barrier between the larger and smaller beasts, harassing the enormous creatures and forcing them farther backward so they couldn’t approach the gate, attack whatever existed on the other side, or simply destroy the gate itself directly.

"I feel..." Sakar finally began answering the Lord’s earlier question while continuing to observe everything around him, "like I’m standing in front of a battle from some prehistoric age."

"Hmm, perhaps." Robin nodded slightly, accepting the description. "But that wasn’t what I was asking about." Robin pointed toward Sakar himself. "How do you feel physically?"

"Eh?"

"The pain-numbing effect placed on you was stopped the moment we crossed over to this side. How does your body feel now?" Robin repeated his question more clearly.

"...?" Sakar raised both hands and began examining himself carefully, moving them slightly as he checked his current condition. "I feel completely fine."

He could still clearly feel his bones cracking from within and his muscles tearing as the transformation continued at the same pace as before, but the pain itself had somehow been reduced to nothing more than faint stings throughout his body. In fact, if he had to describe the sensation accurately, one could even say those stings had become somewhat pleasant.

"Do you feel any kind of discomfort at all?" Robin asked again, watching his reaction carefully. "There are no Heavenly Laws here. The laws responsible for governing the body’s biological processes cease functioning entirely in this place. The heart won’t beat on its own, the intestines won’t move, and the eyes won’t automatically capture light here. Every single process has to be operated manually. Anyone who enters this place has to devote 80% of their concentration merely to keeping themselves alive, even before they enter any battle."

Then he pointed back toward the gate they had just crossed. "That’s why you saw that Dominator cross over in such a terrible condition, and if we remain here long enough, you’ll see another one, then another, fleeing through the gate simply to preserve their lives." Then Robin folded his arms again and looked directly at Sakar. "Do you feel any of that?"

"...No." Sakar began examining himself once again, paying closer attention to the things Robin had specifically mentioned. "The blood is flowing normally throughout my body, and all my biological processes are functioning efficiently without me doing anything." Then he turned toward Robin with obvious curiosity. "Is this because I’m a plague?"

"No." Robin shook his head slowly. "If we brought a Dominator demon from another nest and placed him in ordinary space between the planets, he would immediately feel some discomfort from the absence of air and gravity and would need time to adjust himself to those unfamiliar conditions, but you are standing here right now, outside the entire universe, and yet you feel completely at ease, as though you were standing inside your own home."

Then he continued with a faint smile, "That’s because of the space beast blood you’ve all been enjoying and consuming throughout these past years." He gestured toward Sakar with his head as he examined him carefully. "Take off your armor."

"..?" The sheer amount of information Sakar had been confronted with in such a short time was becoming increasingly overwhelming, leaving him struggling to process one revelation before another arrived, but he still began removing his armor without hesitation.

This armor had accompanied him for centuries and had practically become a part of his appearance. He only took it off extremely rarely and only in certain places, especially ever since he learned that exposing their true identities would bring a disaster down upon both them and the Lord.

"This...?" After removing only a few pieces of armor and revealing more of his body underneath, Sakar’s expression, and even Robin’s expression as he watched him, began to change visibly.

Sakar’s crimson body, which had previously carried only a few thin and rather inconspicuous dark-purple lines scattered across several places, was no longer remotely the same... Those purple lines had spread until they now consumed nearly a quarter of his entire body, and the change was especially obvious in the three claw-like lines across his chest, which had grown considerably wider and larger, looking as though some enormous terrestrial beast had just struck him across the chest and left three fresh marks behind.

"Just as I expected..." Robin took his time examining Sakar from top to bottom with the Eye of Truth, paying close attention to every change taking place inside and outside his body. "It isn’t merely an external transformation. All your internal organs have transformed to a considerable degree as well, and even your bones themselves are becoming harder and stronger. You could even say that all of them are functioning better now that you’re here outside the shell than they did inside it." Then a smile appeared on his face. "In fact, the result is even better than I expected."

"What’s happening?!" Sakar asked in obvious surprise as he looked down at the changes covering his body. "Is all of this because of that drop of blood I swallowed?"

Sakar clearly remembered that all the sudden transformations currently taking place throughout his body, from the changes beneath his skin to the pain and strange sensations spreading through his bones and organs, had begun immediately after he swallowed that single drop of black blood.

He had experienced something remarkably similar to what ordinary demons went through whenever they swallowed the blood of a newborn space beast, and he had even felt pain similar to what they normally experienced during that process!

"Yes." Robin nodded without hesitation. "I noticed that the Reapers and the Executioner share a somewhat similar aura, even though their strength, size, and intelligence are completely different from one another. And frankly, just a few minutes of carefully examining the Executioner’s severed arm had already led me to a preliminary conclusion. There’s a certain compound inside her body that closely resembles the one found in the Reapers’ blood, except that its concentration inside her is vastly higher."

Then he continued explaining, "If I’m not mistaken, the Transcendents inject that substance into beasts to transform them into Reapers, while injecting it into people at far higher concentrations to transform them into Executioners... So they really do make them, if we want to describe what they’re doing accurately." Afterward, his tone became somewhat calmer as he continued, "Whatever that substance actually is, it’s what allows the Reapers to reach such enormous sizes, and it’s also what gives the Executioner that terrifying level of strength, to the point that I had to use all my power merely to break a single joint in her body."

"....?" Sakar lowered his gaze and began examining his transformed body once again, but this time the confusion in his expression had largely been replaced by awe as he tried to comprehend exactly what that single drop had done to him.

"Haha, not yet." Robin laughed aloud when he noticed his reaction. "You only consumed a single drop of her blood, while that substance permeated practically everything inside her, flowing through her blood and saturating her flesh and bones. Compared to the amount contained throughout her entire body, the quantity you actually consumed is practically negligible." Then he pointed at Sakar a few times while maintaining his smile. "...But you did consume it successfully, and that’s what matters."