Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 790: The Final Twilight

The fact that one of the two A-grade leaders of the Draugr race might have taken an interest in something like an E-grade cultivator was almost incomprehensible. People at their level didn't even care whether Monarchs lived or died, and generations of E-grade cultivators would live and die in a single cultivation session of theirs. At the same time, Catheya knew what she could and couldn't ask about, so she instead focused on the other part Reyna had divulged.

“Edgewalkers? Something like this has happened before?” Catheya hesitantly asked.

She felt a wave of regret upon remembering how confidently she had assured Arcaz about how this plan of hers would work. But it turned out she was talking out of turn, lacking critical information. She had never heard of such a marvelous thing, which was why she was so adamant that Arcaz could become a high-value member of the empire.

But if they were common, his value would immediately plummet, which meant his safety was no longer guaranteed.

“The Multiverse is beyond ancient. What hasn’t happened before?” Reyna smiled. “We could even create them if we wanted. Unfortunately, they all have a fundamental weakness no matter if they were created artificially or if they were born from some cosmic hiccup.”

“A weakness?" Catheya said with worry.

“Life-Death Edgewalkers cannot form a Cultivator's Core because of their contradictory nature,” Reyna sighed. “If they could, they would have become strategic resources of our empire. Agents who could walk completely unfettered in the land of the living? But now, they are simply natural oddities, dayflies with a small window of glory.”

Catheya blanched when she heard of Arcaz's Fate. Was this the work of the Law of Balance? He was shining too brightly, like a candle burning from both ends. It felt extremely unfair that the path of someone so miraculous as that would be cut short at the measly E-grade. But if not even someone like Reyna knew of a solution, odds were that there wasn't one.

At least there was one piece of good news that came with this. “So no one would want to kill him for re

Zac was filled with a sense of helplessness as he looked at the gargantuan creature far in the distance. Over two weeks had passed since trapped in this infernal bubble, but he still wasn’t any clearer on the situation. Why had this huge thing captured him and all the others? And where was it taking them?

He desperately wanted to escape, yet he didn’t dare make a move. The Leviathan-looking beast had shown exactly what it did with those who rebelled. Zac still remembered the scene vividly.

The appearance of a creature that would dwarf even the enormous snake in the Twilight Chasm obviously hadn’t gone unnoticed. Scale and sizes were hard to grasp in the Void, but the Leviathan had to be at least tens of thousands of meters long. It looked a bit like an alien fish, with gills glowing in green and white, and at least ten sets of eyes that emitted extremely powerful spatial fluctuations.

There was also fin large enough to shroud out the sky on its back as well, but its tail more resembled an octopus’. Thousands of thick fleshy tentacles stretched toward the depths of the void, each one of them emitting the same spatial fluctuations as its eyes. It was clearly a beast that leaned heavily on the Dao of Space, which explained why had so effortlessly appeared in front of them.

At the same time, Zac was somewhat certain it wasn’t a Void Beast. First of all, it looked nothing like the grotesque Void Beasts he had encountered thus far. But more importantly, its aura was completely different. It emitted the primal aura of a high-grade beast, suffused with powerful spatial fluctuations.

Furthermore, it didn’t seem to have much love for Void Beasts.

Four times over the past two weeks it had stopped or made detours, with the sole purpose of ripping a couple of unlucky Void Beasts to shreds. The longest hunt took them through five dimensions and lasted a whole day, yet it didn’t eat them or harvest any parts. It only unleashed terrifying waves of spatial turbulence at them, leaving mangled scraps behind before moving on.

Being the target of a mysterious mythological beast had unsurprisingly put the other caged cultivators on the edge, and some of the bubbles had started to shudder as their captives held nothing back in a desperate attempt to escape. The Leviathan’s solution to quelling the rebellion was simple; it ate the spheres that emitted strong fluctuations.

Seeing the huge beast simply devouring over a hundred cultivators, many of which were emitting more powerful auras than himself, had eliminated Zac’s thoughts of escape. He still had the Oblivion Energy, but even if he managed to break open the impossibly sturdy bubble, then what? He would be stuck in the Void, unable to leave and without any means to break free. The Leviathan would simply recapture him or gobble him up.

He reluctantly decided to wait for a better opportunity. Thankfully, the beast didn’t seem interested in actually eating anyone else, and it soon turned around and reentered the vortex it had created. Zac had been elated for roughly five seconds until he found his prison following suit. A moment later, he had found himself part of a bobbing river of shimmering bubbles coursing through an endless series of dimensions.

The Leviathan was unhindered by space or any dimensional barriers, effortlessly opening one portal after another, scuttling through space with even greater ease than any Cosmic Vessel Zac had heard of. Sometimes, Zac found himself looking out at unfamiliar stars and galaxies, but usually, his view had been the endless darkness of the Void. All the while, the string of captives had been dragged along.

Zac’s nerves had been extremely taut the first hours, but the Leviathan never attacked any more of the captives after the first warning. Even now, every single prisoner was completely unscathed, if you discounted the mental torture of not having any idea of what was going on. Of course, the draining array was still active, though it only kept him at an extremely weakened state.

An even greater torture for Zac was the fact that there was a spatial lock inside the prison, one that was so comprehensive that he couldn’t even peek inside the pile of Spatial Rings he had looted. For all he knew, he might be sitting on a vast fortune, or perhaps even some odd treasure that could get him out of this place. But the items inside the Spatial Treasures might as well be on the other side of the universe.

He was still able to open his Status Screen though, and he smiled as he once more looked at the new Limited Title.

[The Final Twilight: Place first during the final Twilight Ascent. Reward: All Attributes +10%, Strength +5%. Effect of Attributes +10%.]