The wyvern up above hadn’t even reacted as Akevorax’s array activated and four semi-opaque ropes suddenly appeared. Two looped around its legs, and two more for its wings, when pulled taut, the wyvern simply hung in mid-air, questioning what the white, glowing ropes were, to possibly resist its physical might so well.

“Earth suppression,” Akevorax gave a simple command as he looked up with glowing eyes. The two wisps saw through the master tier wyvern’s body with ease, but he didn’t even frown as he saw the concentrated mix of elements and great runes within. This wyvern was extremely close to the top end of power in this tier, just a few more years and it’d definitely start seeking out evolutions as a way to exceed its limits.

With that order, a few runes of the array beneath them transformed to simply write out the word ‘earth’. Just a visual indicator, after all, all the important stuff happened underground where Akevorax placed the bulk of this array.

“Domination Force is active. Restraints are half drained… Are we just killing it?” Mala paused for a singular moment to consider Akevorax’s viewpoint, but he was just looking at Raccelline.

It didn’t take long for him to ask, “You wanted to fight a master tier. How about a crippled one about as strong as the progenitor?”

“But this one will be even weaker… Fine.” She didn’t at all hide her indignant attitude and the group just barely held back a laugh. With the threat nearing resolution, they lightened up and Mala didn’t need orders to figure out what came next. The array wasn’t exceedingly complex to utilise and Akevorax made them pretty easy to grasp.

A very familiar, but also vastly different, scene took place above.

The wyvern struggled continuously, enraged beyond belief as the humans and dragon below simply spoke so nonchalantly in his presence. And beyond that, they actually prepared an array which so easily trapped him! Just the embarrassment wrought upon him enflamed the arrogant lizard, and he desired to tear them all apart piece by piece, making the dragon watch as every last human died miserably. It truly was unfortunate that he couldn’t hear what they just talked about.

Eight rays of white light fired up from the array, moving outward in a spiral as they also approached the wyvern, maintaining an orbit of motion that clearly aimed straight for him. The circling rays travelled at immense speeds, albeit far from light itself, and in milliseconds already orbited his tied up body.

They no longer appeared as rays but as eight balls of light. Eight unbelievably deadly balls…

Each glistened as though not only incandescent beyond belief, but shiny and reflective like a creamy silver ball. They slowly converged into him, and each of them radiated such intense danger that any master tier would immediately leap back in fright as their senses went wild.

Unable to move though, he couldn’t do much as the eight lights penetrated into him, but the attacks hardly stopped there. A huge lance of black-coloured light rose up from the ground, its tip adorned with a golden edge. Additionally, it could tell that some sort of golden fluid seemed to reside within the lance’s shaft, but he could do nothing as it penetrated through his crystal chest and tore right through. The golden blade completely pierced through its toughened brown scales with ease, as though the defence it believed impeccable amongst its tier weakened to mere paper. It squirmed and roared further as golden particulates flooded its body en masse, every last one attached to the elemental crystals which formed his body. Connection between these crystals immediately dulled, and he realised that connection to his mana also disappeared.

Not just this, but the orbs of white light also now entered his body as though completely ethereal. The reason was a soul attack.

Once all eight orbs surrounded his Formed Soul, they took random orbits around the elemental mass which protected it. Like a series of blades rapidly spinning around it, any interaction of his soul was cut off disastrously, and the wyvern with minimal spellcasting knowledge panicked as it reared its head with spite.

Even if sealed, it refused to believe that a group of four humans could kill him. Especially if he could fly, so what if just the dragon followed?

“Was it really better to combine the Body and mana seals then? I feel like they could’ve been stronger if separated,” Korridan raised a slight complaint with the process just as it felt a lot simpler than what they did to the progenitor.

However, Mala countered before Akevorax could even explain his own array, “If it looks more complex, that just means we wasted a load of power unnecessarily. You’ll see, almost all magic above master tier minimises ‘display’ where possible. Simplicity is best for power.”

He mumbled back in response, “A giant spear isn’t exactly simple…”

But Korridan was forced into silence by a proceeding dirty look from the wizard. He really didn’t want to get into an argument about magic given his exceedingly small discipline in the matter. Even Raccelline eclipsed him several times over in that regard.

“Well, go on then. We’ll help if you can’t kill him,” Akevorax signalled over to the dazed Raccelline who now reacted with a drawn blade. A single use of the skill Flash Strike teleported her onto the tied-up wyvern’s back, ready to attack. Mala didn’t need any further words to detach the four ropes holding down the colossal foe.

As they watched how the tiny child sized up against a wyvern almost 10 metres in length, it was incredible how she darted about its lightning fast strikes and cut deep into its brown scales with ease. Korridan remarked, “If we had this array last time, none of that stuff would’ve been an issue. Too bad…”

The other three agreed fully, and Raccelline more than handled the wyvern with speeds that made tornados seem like light breezes.

Akevorax was having a bit of a personal conundrum though.

While the battle above continued swimmingly, the wyvern completely suppressed, as it lost access to most tools and then its body failed to defend effectively, he didn’t feel all that happy with these results. The last two times he encountered a disaster as foretold by his bloodline, it would vanish just moments before the attacker began the fight. In the progenitor’s case, it was him initiating, but this point stood true…

So why was the storm still there? And why did it seem to approach even now?

“Is it not this wyvern? What the hell is it here for… Mala, kill it right now. We’re leaving,” Akevorax spoke aloud in with a blank face, his tone disturbed the three adults. She didn’t need any further encouragement to switch the array’s mode and prepare a second attack. Killing a sealed master tier with this thing was a joke, practically just a waste of mana. At the same time though, Akevorax turned to Korridan and told him, “Grab Raccelline and run for the teleporter right now. I’m not messing about. GO!”

The storm hastened.

While just a tiny bit, it was now just seconds away from arrival and Akevorax reacted post-haste.

His pocket watch came out, set to 1 second and accelerated 10-fold. Even if his speeds were bottom of the barrel amongst mithril tiers, a multiplier like that instantly shot him to the forefront. Just this gave him more than enough time to quickly grab the two humans beside him and launch towards the teleporter. Korridan flew in with Raccelline with a chasing wyvern right behind, but it hadn’t even been given a chance to introduce itself outside of some screams as they sealed it.

Honestly, it’d been a pushover from the start. But only because he thought they prepared adequately.

Space suddenly quaked, completely unlike the wyvern’s noticeable entry, this was like how a boat tumbled and shuddered as blasting waves smashed into it. Perhaps even the disastrous rumbling as it crashed into a solid wall…

Or more like the wall smashed into it.

Just that single action, Akevorax could feel how the entire sub-realm destabilised from a structural point. From a firm rubber ball, it was like the powerful spatial fabric turned into a thin soap bubble, ready to pop from even the slightest interaction.

“Go without me, I’ll make it back later,” Raccelline immediately went up in arms, forcing herself from Korridan’s grasp as all of them could tell that his fate was anything but pretty.

The dragon didn’t just stand there though, as the second quake occurred, he already dumped hundreds of vials containing a myriad of fluids down his throat. At least 400 were just blood red, meanwhile, other colours containing viscous yellow, green, white, black, purple, and all manner of shades from pale pinks to deep cyans. Bloodlines which amounted to about 300 dragons were rapidly digested without reservation. They all just vanished down Akevorax’s throat without end and he ignored the dozens of assimilation processes melting his body all at once.

None of it mattered though, pure panic overwhelmed him already.

“Just. Go. I’ll make it back even if I die here. Is that clear?” While he told them of his resurrection ability, it also came with some limitations. The pout on Raccelline’s face was not unwarranted, as it was just like the situation with Lostradus but far worse, as he risked his life for hers this time.

Still, the fact this enemy did not know of his life-saving method meant it had an extremely high success chance.

Extremely high not being equal to certainty was the problem, and to that Akevorax could do nothing more than lower the chocolate-tipped tail to her hand. He said, warmly, “I promise. Alright?”

Mala didn’t take any more chances as a third quake shook the entire sub-realm to its core. A flash of light blinded Akevorax immediately, but he just closed his eyes and felt around at the nearby space of this area. Specifically, he felt how the thin bubble which currently held the teleporter wobbled violently as the group pushed tonnes of mana through the connection outward, Akevorax’s Fabric Warper bloodline worked to grab hold of all this substance and hold it in place.

Artificially stabilising space itself just to ensure the teleporter remained intact… Long enough that they reached the next teleporter and escaped safely.

Finally, the storm vanished.

Looking around, the world itself vibrated as though covered in a thick mirage. Not far away, the wyvern’s body had fallen on the ground, completely dead as a huge hole penetrated its chest in one clean swoop. Of course, Akevorax took the opportunity to grab its soul, all the while his body left a trail of liquid ice cream and reformed just as fast.

“Now, now. It’s so sweet you’d stay behind to fend me off, but surely it’d be better to go with them?” A voice echoed through all of space, penetrating through the entire sub-realm as though the vast area of space was a small room.

“I’m not an idiot. Like the passage would’ve survived with how far you destroyed space, though, given how you could’ve entered at any time… You just wanted to separate me from them, didn’t you?” Akevorax sneered straight away and his eyes flashed white to pierce through the thin boundary which coated the sub-realm. Usually he required the Origin Force enhanced version to succeed, but to easily see through without any additional factors presented a degree of spatial damage which left this entire sub-realm doomed.

By merely knocking on the outside a few times, this being already put an entire miniature dimension onto its last legs.

And they didn’t exactly hide themselves in the higher dimensional space between realms. Akevorax saw it. Coated in golden runes was an eternal warrior as expected.

A Cornem rank warrior, without a doubt.

He was so fucking dead that it wasn’t even worth joking about. But maybe he could hold them off long enough to create a fuss, not to mention learn just what god created those runes. It all came down to a single bet though.

“I’m about to evolve, or I should if I survive this medicine… Would a warrior of Asharvad take any pride in slaying me during that moment of weakness? Or are you just another assassin sent by your emperor?” Akevorax taunted the warrior who stood just inches outside the sub-realm’s boundary, their black figure with silver markings a frightening display of power and stature. Yet they did not move.

They only grinned and snorted. They laughed.

An acceptance of his childish taunt, because they truly wished to see what possible tricks he could pull out from a single evolution. Not doubting the story either as some special medicines could induce evolutions in exchange for physical damage. Akevorax’s improvised lie went down well…

But could a single evolution save him?