Novel Full Chapter 1089 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins - Deals
Chapter 1089: Chapter 1089 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins - Deals
Ren immediately pivoted...
He dropped the heavy, exhausting fusions of the Hydra and Wolverine, instantly switching to a pure wind mana push.
Using the Mantis crystal in his hand, he seamlessly matched its frequency, making the spell incredibly cheap to cast.
It was a masterclass in mana efficiency.
He was maintaining the physical pressure on the artifact without bleeding out the last mana reserves he desperately needed to conserve.
The howling gale lacked even a quarter of the destructive, flesh-tearing damage of the light-dark blast. But raw damage wasn’t the objective anymore if the artifacts front couldn’t be damaged.
If he could hit the corrupted flesh controlling it from behind... But it was out of reach in the bottle neck of the stairs.
Luckily, to stop it, they didn’t need to kill it. They just needed to pushback.
And an endless, suffocating wall of wind, without wasting energy on lethal force the artifact would just absorb anyway, was the most efficient tool he had left.
But the tactical reality remained grim.
The artifacts were blocking their escape route. Six colossal, black arms were forcefully wedging themselves into the stairwell, their sheer mass occupying the entire shaft and already spilling out into the edges of the seventh chamber.
The normal route was gone. The only remaining exit was a small sliver of dark space slipping past the grinding limbs.
They had to jump.
And it had to be a shadow jump. A light jump required an uninterrupted line of sight to the destination, and from where they stood, the other side of the blockade was not visible. There was zero chance to use it in those conditions so Liora and Hikari couldn’t push themselves to help with their mana fumes.
Ren ran the brutal math out loud. He wasn’t giving a report; he was just trying to organize the grim reality in his head.
"I can’t carry all nine of you," Ren gritted out, his eyes locked on the encroaching mass. He quickly evaluated the battered, exhausted group. "Even if I split the load, five or six with me, and the others with Sirius, it won’t work. The jump distance is too long... Best case we’d materialize on the other side with completely empty mana and without energy, we’re just feeding ourselves to them."
Sirius listened to the rapid-fire calculation.
He didn’t know exactly how much time he had spent as a petrified statue, but as he stood there, he realized the process had done something entirely unexpected to him. When his flesh returned, it brought something back that he had nearly burned out completely before his "death".
Energy.
His mana core was thrumming. He was completely fully charged thanks to Ren’s rewind process. It was the bizarre, miraculous byproduct of having existed as a literal mana crystal for some time; his system had essentially hard-rebooted.
He felt a surging vitality that completely contradicted the physical and magical exhaustion he should be feeling from the grueling descent he remembered fighting just hours ago in his altered perception.
He opened his mouth to offer his reserves trying to carry all 10 people while fused.
If he fused now, burning his full mana pool to the absolute limit, maybe he could brute-force the entire group across the gap.
And if that wasn’t possible in the end, he would do what any seasoned military commander did when faced with total annihilation: he would suggest a triage. Prioritize the VIPs, secure the essential assets, and accept the necessary sacrifices.
But before the first syllable could leave his lips, a voice echoed through the chamber.
"Hello again so soon!"
Selthia...
♢♢♢♢
The voice didn’t echo off the ancient stone this time... It squelched from somewhere else.
It projected directly from the pulsing, necrotic looking meat woven tightly between the artifact’s six colossal arms. It was the exact same grotesque, biological architecture Selthia had used to speak other times and it was very different to the one coming from the walls of the tenth chamber. But hearing it up close, vibrating through a wall of living, corrupted muscle, and echoing in the stairs made the air feel suffocatingly heavy.
"It seems I arrived just in time," Selthia said. Her tone was terrifyingly bright, brimming with the genuine, warm delight of a hostess welcoming old friends. "And I’m really glad we get to see each other again so soon."
Ren didn’t break his focus. Sweat beaded at his temples as he forced his mana into the howling wind barrier, grinding it relentlessly against the unyielding, black mass of the artifacts.
"You’re a cheater," Ren gritted out, his voice strained. "I thought we ended things on good terms in there."
"Yes, yes... But that was then," Selthia replied lightly, a dark, genuine amusement threading through the fleshy tunnel. "And this is now."
She paused, letting out a soft hum. "Though, I must admit, I do love the sound of ’good terms in there’, it has a certain romantic charm to it don’t you think so?" The amusement vanished, instantly replaced by a razor-sharp, calculating edge. "So... Since you kept me such lovely company, and you even thought about helping me if I ever need it in such a sweet, tender way... I’m giving you a rare opportunity. You can negotiate with me now, before I bring my other Platinum-rank mutants to the party."
She let that hang in the air for a second. It was a deliberate, weaponized concession and Liora wasn’t happy about the way it was framed... But it could be the only way out.
"They’re a bit far away, unfortunately. Being bred in another ruin, all the way in Yino. They’ll take a little longer to arrive... So what you say?"
The implication hit the group like a physical blow. A ticking clock had just been activated. Every second they wasted standing in this stairwell was a second closer to absolute annihilation. If Platinum-tier horrors from Yino arrived to reinforce this blockade when they were this low on mana, whatever slim chance of survival they currently held would evaporate completely. The situation would instantly shift from a desperate bottleneck to a slaughter.
They needed to move.
Now.