Novel Full Chapter 306: Raging Patriotic Will!
Chapter 306: Raging Patriotic Will!
Bruce glanced sideways at Duke…
Duke’s palm remained pressed against the frozen earth. Beads of sweat rolled down his temple, cutting faint lines through frost. His jaw was tight. Veins stood out along his forearm, muscles straining beneath his sleeve as if he were holding up a collapsing sky.
The air around him warped faintly, rippling in slow distortions.
Bruce felt it now. The strain.
SSS-tier beasts were not like lesser creatures. They weren’t mindless predators bound by instinct alone. They possessed mass. Not just physical, but existential. They pressed against the structure of reality itself, and containing twelve of them simultaneously was like trying to hold twelve detonations inside a closed fist.
Spatial Lock was absolute control. But against beings of this magnitude, it was contested.
Duke’s eyes flickered toward Bruce, steady despite the tension burning through his frame.
“Move.”
That was all he said.
Isolde didn’t hesitate. She gave Duke a single sharp nod, acknowledgment, understanding, and shot forward toward the hovering Core, frost trailing behind her like a comet’s tail.
But before she could reach it, the Core pulsed.
Once. Twice.
The pale blue veins within it flared violently, light flooding outward in a heartbeat-like surge that washed across the clearing. The pulse wasn’t random. It was deliberate, a sentient intelligence responding to the threat against it with the only weapon it had left.
Notifications erupted across Bruce’s perception.
[The Labyrinth Core has temporarily boosted the stats of its inhabitants.]
[The Core is motivating its inhabitants.]
[The inhabitants wish to protect their homeland from the invaders before them.]
Bruce’s expression shifted.
Homeland. Not territory. Not hunting ground. The Core framed it as home, and the guardians believed it. Whatever intelligence governed this Labyrinth understood something fundamental about motivation. Soldiers who fight for pay retreat when the cost grows too high. Soldiers who fight for home don’t retreat at all.
Isolde’s jaw tightened. Her frost aura intensified instinctively, the air around her crystallizing in layered patterns as she prepared to push through.
Another notification appeared.
[The inhabitants have temporarily activated Raging Patriotic Will.]
[All stats and skills boosted by 5%.]
Five percent.
For ordinary beasts, negligible. For SSS-tier entities already operating at the edge of what reality could contain, catastrophic.
A red glow ignited within the eyes of the twelve.
It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t emotional. It was feral, the cold, burning focus of beings who had just been given permission to exceed their own limits. The veins beneath their stone-like skin pulsed violently, frost lines blazing brighter. Muscles expanded against rune-etched shells. The air thickened further, pressure deepening until breathing itself felt like labor.
The diamond lance still suspended inches from Duke’s chest began to vibrate.
Fine cracks spiderwebbed along the invisible edges of Spatial Lock.
Bruce’s Life Glance flared outward instinctively, and he felt it clearly now, their vitality spiking, internal momentum surging even within stasis. They were pushing. Not with technique. Not with skill.
Against space itself.
The Titan before Bruce snarled, a low, grinding sound like stone crushing stone. Its massive arm trembled against the frozen barrier, red light pulsing through its muscles as it forced raw power into motion that should not have existed. Behind them, the Diamond Golems shifted just slightly, just enough, crystal bodies grinding against warped space with screeching resistance, fractures of movement pressing against the invisible constraints.
The Everwhite Abyss wasn’t responding mindlessly. It was adapting. Strategizing.
Duke exhaled through clenched teeth. “I’ll release some,” he said.
His voice remained controlled, but Bruce could hear the strain threading through it now, the sound of a man holding a door shut against something that refused to stop pushing. “Tighten my hold on the rest before they break through on their own terms.”
Bruce didn’t argue. He stepped forward, Red pulsing eagerly in his hand, its crimson glow brightening as if tasting the violence about to unfold.
“Let two of mine go,” he said calmly, gaze fixed on the trembling Titan inches before him.
Isolde’s voice came from the side, cold, steady, already recalculating. “Release two from mine as well.”
Duke inhaled sharply, ribs expanding against the pressure pushing back at him from twelve directions simultaneously. His fingers flexed against the ice.
Then he released.
Spatial Lock shifted. Reality groaned.
Two of the four targeting Bruce snapped free instantly, the shockwave of regained motion blasting snow outward in a violent detonation. The Titans lunged as if spring-loaded, red-lit eyes blazing, warhammer and blade descending in synchronized arcs that carved the air apart.
But something else happened in the same instant.
Duke’s jaw clenched. A sharp breath escaped between his teeth.
“Fuck.”
Instead of four, six broke free.
The strain had torn the formation unevenly. Reallocating hold on some had weakened his grip on others, and the five percent boost had given them just enough momentum to exploit the fracture. Spatial Lock hadn’t failed. It had slipped, and against SSS-tier beings, a slip was all it took.
Six Aegisshell Titans hit the ice with crushing force, the glacier buckling beneath them. Froststone shells flared with runic light as they advanced in disciplined coordination, red glow intensifying, not berserking, not mindless, but moving with the terrible efficiency of soldiers who knew exactly where each of their targets stood.
Two pivoted instantly toward Duke, recognizing the source of the spatial restraint, targeting the threat that had held them captive. Duke signaled sharply toward Isolde and Bruce, a single cutting gesture that said cover me without wasting breath on words. His hands were already rising, spatial mana condensing around his fingers as he prepared to re-engage.
Two locked onto Isolde mid-flight, intercepting her path toward the Core with lances leveled and shells angled forward like battering rams.
Two came straight for Bruce.
The Diamond Golems remained frozen behind them, for now. But the fractures along their crystalline frames were deepening with every passing second, hairline cracks spreading through the invisible barriers holding them in place. Bruce could hear it, a faint, high-pitched whine, like glass about to give way.
They had seconds. Maybe less.
The Everwhite Abyss had stopped testing them.
Now it was trying to win.