Chapter 1241: World Transcendent Cores!

The Void receded from Anactica as quietly as it had devoured it without dramatic final detonation announced that the impossible presence had withdrawn. \

The fathomless black loosened its hold, allowing existence to return one layer at a time with the eerie obedience of something being restored by a power that remembered exactly where everything belonged.

Light returned pale and merciless beneath the eternal winter sky with distance unfolding between mountains that had ceased to exist only moments earlier before sound rushed back with the shriek of the blizzard, the groaning of ancient glaciers and the low, oppressive murmur of the Dead Winter Realm settling once more beneath its own laws<anno data-annotation-id="ad40cd5b-fe8a-c223-6c18-b6bbdb787453" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

The Titan emerged at last, its colossal corpse reclaimed the frozen horizon, mountains resting upon ruined flesh while the ancient crown upon its skull pierced the storm with broken prongs. Death returned to its features exactly as it had been, solemn enough to make the catastrophe that followed seem almost impertinent for disturbing it.

Anactica looked untouched.

The mirror plains had vanished. Craters deep enough to bury palaces were gone, while glaciers torn open by World Transcendent authorities stood whole beneath fresh layers of snow. Mountains pulverized during the battle had returned to their primordial shapes, every ridge and crevasse restored with such flawless precision that even dust seemed to have been placed back where it belonged.

The restoration carried its own quiet horror because the Void had not rebuilt Anactica piece by piece. It had made the damage irrelevant, returning the continent to an earlier perfection as casually as someone correcting an unsatisfactory thought.

Only the dead denied that pristine lie.

Bromgar’s mountainous body sprawled near the center of the basin, more fallen fortress than corpse. The wounds that had ruined his Half Behemoth-Dwarf flesh were gone, his vast muscles restored beneath unbroken skin and the colossal framework of bone beneath them once again immaculate.

Yet the life that had made such a body terrifying had not returned with the rest of Anarctica.

Cassian lay farther away, pale features almost peaceful beneath the falling snow. The Ancient Naga’s tremendous serpentine body curved across the ice like some forgotten sea god dragged from the abyss and abandoned beneath winter, while the male Demon and Gorgon rested nearby, their once-overwhelming authorities reduced to empty flesh.

The Dead Winter Realm had survived beings older and stronger than them; it received their corpses without ceremony.

At the heart of the restored battlefield stood Phei Ryujin Tiamat and an unidentified woman.

Every injury upon him had vanished now that he was out of the Void and his full body was in view. The dagger wound through his heart was gone, his neck remained whole and the bones Vampire Lady’s blood-hands had shattered were seated perfectly beneath unblemished flesh.

Even his hair had returned to its natural darkness, falling around a face so offensively handsome that the surrounding carnage made him look almost absurdly misplaced, like a young immortal noble had wandered away from some decadent palace banquet and found himself inspecting dead World Transcendents before dessert.

Phei appeared entirely unconcerned by the mistake in scenery.

He walked toward Bromgar with his hands relaxed at his sides. The woman followed without a word, keeping an easy pace beside him while the blizzard bent around them and continued raging everywhere else.

Phei stopped beneath the Behemoth-Dwarf’s enormous shoulder and studied the corpse for several breaths. Bromgar could have crushed his Mortal body into paste with two fingers when he was alive and if Phei was still weak, and even now the residual density of his flesh pressed faintly against the surrounding atmosphere.

Phei extended one hand.

Something buried deep within Bromgar answered and a dense point of radiance tore free from the massive corpse with enough force to make the surrounding snow recoil. It crossed the space between them and entered Phei’s palm, disappearing beneath his extended hand before the light could be properly examined.

Cassian’s body reacted next.

Another concentrated radiance escaped the dead Vampire and streaked across the basin. A third tore itself from the Ancient Naga, followed by the male Demon, another and finally the Gorgon. Five lights crossed Anarctica in rapid succession, each carrying a weight so prodigious that the glacier beneath its passing trembled.

They entered Phei’s void pocket one after another.

World Transcendent Cores!

Treasures refined within beings who had spent centuries carrying cultivation powerful enough to reduce nations to historical inconvenience. Each Core contained the condensed legacy of flesh, essence, their condensed bloodline power and cultivation base belonging to an existence fourteen stages above Phei.

He had acquired six.

Phei’s attention turned inward briefly, examining the treasures now resting with him with considerably less excitement than any sane Master Stage cultivator should have possessed. Then his dark eyes rose toward the final Chained still standing in Anactica.

The Undead Queen waited next to him.

Her crown above her head had disappeared, her seven slender spires of bone too... she looked so hot now!

Her completely black eyes moved across the corpses.

Phei followed her gaze.

{They’re all yours.}

The Undead Queen became very still.

Phei gestured toward Bromgar, and others with the careless generosity of someone gifting expensive furniture rather than five dead World Transcendents.

{Take them. After that, go home. You know where.}

A slow smile appeared upon the Queen’s pale face.

Her gaze settled immediately upon Bromgar with hunger.

Oh, she knew exactly what she wanted to do with that one.

She had spent years chained beside the monstrous Half Behemoth-Dwarf, watching his already obscenely powerful body continue growing stronger beneath layers of suppression. Danton’s people had boasted endlessly about Bromgar’s vitality, physical density and absurd durability, never realizing that the Undead Queen had been listening with the private interest of someone wondering how magnificent such flesh would become once death removed the inconvenient matter of consent.

An undead Bromgar.

A tireless mountain of compressed brutality that felt no pain, required no rest and would obey every command she gave, commanding both his insane physical power and power of death!

The thought brought an almost indecent brightness into her abyssal eyes.

Phei noticed and smiled: {You’re enjoying this far too much for someone who wanted me dead.}

The Queen’s smile widened; "You don’t hold a grudge on someone who acted from wary and fear nos do you, Master?"

<annotations style="display: none;">I hope you guys realize, this side its day time while its night in Paradise and the island.</annotations>