Sage had already been outside the Universe Ring for a few minutes now, and he was constantly burning Qi to maintain a shield with the Sovereign Stone. While he was away from the Warp Worm, the Blacksilver King that armored it was constantly deteriorating. He could feed it Qi through the Soul Fragments, but that meant he’d have less available to protect himself. The more time he wasted now, the less time there was until the Universe Ring started taking damage again. Without his continuous support, the Warp Worm wouldn’t last very long. The heat in the tunnels was many times stronger than it was where they’d first entered and rather than a half hour, he expected the Warp Worm would only last a few minutes on its own.

The Soul Clone wasn’t much better off, without the Sovereign Stone this place could melt a spirit being quite quickly. As he considered his options, the whole chamber suddenly started to rumble. It shifted to the left and right, shaking up the lava lake. The tortoise was moving. Thankfully, as a spirit being he could float around and the shaking didn’t do much to him. The wall of the cavernous area shifted and one of them smashed against him. Just like when traveling down the tunnels, the walls were too charged with the tortoise’s energy that he couldn’t pass through them and the impact caused a bit of damage to his Nascent Soul.

A thin layer of his soul cracked where he was struck and then it flaked off like the shell of an egg. Just like before, the strength of his Nascent Soul seemed to depend on volume and density. The density seemed to correlate with quality and his soul had become many times more resilient than before, and the sheer volume or amount of soul matter was something of a power and health rating. At least, that’s what he guessed. The Timeless Master’s Library had little more in it about the soul than the Holy Flame Sect’s library did, and considering how he couldn’t access the information about the soul in the Holy Flame Sect Library when he was there, he still had little actual knowledge from any outside sources.

After taking that hit, Sage knew that the Living Disaster had found him out. He had to make his play now, or he likely wouldn’t get another chance. While floating near the roof of the chamber kept him out of range of most of the lava spouts on the walls, it also meant he could easily get hit by the tortoise’s motion. There was also the fact that he still had to dive all the way down to get to that obsidian heart!

Time to go all in.

There wasn’t time to make a detailed plan or consult with others. He was rapidly burning through his Qi reserves and if he didn’t make an attempt soon he wouldn’t have the power to try. He swooped back towards the tunnel he’d entered through, and the Soul Clone leapt out of the Universe Ring. The Warp Worm disappeared into the ring and the Soul Clone grabbed the ring. With the Second Skin Barrier at full strength it flew into the giant chamber and frantically dodged the spouts of lava that started to divert away from the walls and shoot up from the lake.

The Second Skin Barrier started to fail and a stream of lava tore one of the Soul Clone’s arms clean off, the particles of soul stuff sizzling and dissolving into the air after being broken off the Soul Clone. Sage reached the Soul Clone just in time to shield it with the Sovereign Stone before more lava burst from the lake below. The burning drops rolled off the shield like water off a duck’s back and Sage pulled the Soul Clone into his Inner World. Unfortunately, the Inner World could not house the Universe Ring so he had to carry it with him.

Sage flew upwards, avoiding more of the burning obstacles around him, but stopping a safe distance from the roof to give himself time to react. Without his body, he couldn’t use the Timeless Eyes, so he couldn’t just use Foresight to make dodging these streams easy. He was forced to rely upon his own instincts and reactions, something he hadn’t had to do for many years. His formal combat training was terribly limited, a memory of his time at the Lang Clan as a child flashed into his mind, but he pushed it aside to focus on the moment.

A black ooze spilled out of the Universe Ring, crawling over his spirit body. Without a physical form it didn’t really form around him so much as it formed into the same shape as him. It formed to match the size of his spirit body and then a bit more, the Black Enhydros forming a sort of puppet body for him to inhabit. Once the inky material had taken shape, silvery liquid with a bluish tint rushed out and formed into solid plates around the inky body.

The Blacksilver Knight.

Without a body, Sage wasn’t really using the King form to protect and enhance himself, instead he was just going to ride inside the Knight. Sage used his own Spirit Power to empower the Knight with a Second Skin Barrier and extended the Sovereign Stone shield around that. With his defenses fully powered, he threw out a stone from the Inner World and used Telekinesis to steady it. The Blacksilver Knight landed onto the stone and kicked off powerfully, launching it forward towards the center of the chamber. The Knight crossed its arms in front of its chest and shot forward through the streams of lava like a rocket.

The downside of having a physical body here meant that the Knight would have to touch the ground to move. Yet, Sage had a whole planet worth of material inside his body. When the Blacksilver Knight started to slow down, he threw out another huge boulder in front of them and the Knight caught hold of it, hopping on top of it and leaping off before the boulder slowly fell down and splashed into the molten lake. The leaps were aimed to take it towards the center while avoiding the highest concentration of lava streams. Other than that initial adjustment they didn’t bother to avoid the burning sprays coming from every direction. They made a mad rush through the worst that the Tortoise could throw at them.

By the time they were on the final leap towards the obsidian heart, the Sovereign Stone shield could only focus towards one direction like an umbrella and even the Second Skin Barrier had failed a few times. Parts of the Blacksilver Knight’s armor plating had been melted away, with many circular gouges burned into its inky flesh.

He turned the Sovereign Stone’s shield downwards, because he could sense what was coming. The swirling whirlpool of lava centered on the obsidian heart roiled and just before he reached it, the lake beneath him exploded. The lake rose to meet him, bursting into the air and only barely turned aside by the power of the Sovereign Stone. The umbrella of protection beneath him slowly shrank, the circle of protected area got smaller and smaller. The lower half of the Blacksilver Knight’s legs were burned clean off when he shifted the shield to protect its arms. The Knight reached out and its claw like armored fingers clamped down on the Heart of Eruption. The size of a human heart, the Knight’s giant hand was able to completely cover it.

Yes! I’ve got it! No… wait!

The Heart of Eruption did just that. It erupted. The Blacksilver Knight’s hand was blown apart by an eruption of heat and lava not from the lake below but from the heart itself.