“Now!”
As Thasvia’s voice rang out, the six of them shot out of the cavern, the divinity on their bodies blazing with incredible might. Under the crimson sky, Gemini knew that they would be very conspicuous, but all their prior feints, up to and including the addition of clones, had been building up for this very moment.
Unlike the previous diversions, there was no spectres that emerged from the ground this time. Instead, the thick forest of defences began to fire upon them, and a sea of red light began to close in on the six of them. It was something that hadn’t appeared on the earlier approaches, presumably because the Abyss Sovereign wanted to avoid friendly fire, but now…
He let out a low battlecry, and the sound barrier shattered effortlessly as Gemini sped up over and over again. The others behind him did the same, and the sea of incoming fire missed entirely. There was no time to rejoice, however, and the six of them continued to increase their speed over and over again. The world around Gemini turned into a blur, and it was all Gemini could do to keep his bearing steady.
Now that they had plunged deep into enemy territory, Gemini could experience for himself the true power of the Abyss Sovereign. For instance, he could now understand why Hereward couldn’t open a passageway into the top floor of the Cradle of Creation — space here had been hardened and frozen over and over, preventing anyone from teleporting or shuttling about. His divine sense was completely restrained in this place too; a burning, piercing pain would engulf his nerves whenever Gemini tried to exert his divine sense.
It also didn’t help that the last moments of the fallen continued to play out, and Gemini had to forcibly relegate those showings into a pointless corner of his mind, increasing his stress marginally.
“What a fortress,” Demigod Xie Baole muttered.
“Agreed,” said Thasvia. “He has grown this quickly, it would seem. This is a pseudo-Divine Kingdom now, and he has near-perfect control over it to boot. “
“This world is unfair,” Hereward muttered. “Us gods don’t benefit from having an immense will, but a punk who has a suicidal desire and sees it through is somehow able to polish his skills to such an extent. Just because we’re Bounded Presences…”
“Can’t the gods become a Boundless existence?” Gemini asked, curious.
“The Demon God tried his hardest, but see where that got him,” Thasvia replied. “The Human God tried to do the same, only to turn mad. And the Abyss Sovereign cut him down personally. But…well, it seems that that’s the key to becoming strong.”
“Boundless?” Queen Hyperion asked. “What’s that?”
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“It refers to beings that do not have shackles,” Gemini replied. “Beings who have forged their own path. In a normal ascension in the hierarchy of life, one forges their path by severing the superfluous, and the remainder becomes their path. However, in the case of the Abyss Sovereign and I, we didn’t restrict our freedoms.”
“I see,” said Queen Hyperion. “But the conventional process of restricting our will requires the Abyss, right? What happens now?”
“The Abyss is separate from this,” said Hereward. “You can sever your will, but the Abyss just so happened to be the dominant existence in the realm of the mind. It needed fragmented wills, and was happy to trade some power in exchange, which forms the basis of a Fief and a Dominion. Besides—”
Alarm bells abruptly rang in Gemini’s head, and on instinct, he forced everyone down by five metres with his divinity, cutting off Hereward’s words. Horrifying lances of light tore through their previous positions, and small explosions bloomed in its wake, shaking Gemini to his very bones.
“No time for talk anymore!” Thasvia howled. “Charge into the Cradle of Creation!”
Hereward waved his hand, and a shimmering layer of black cracks appeared around the Cradle of Creation. “Descend to the first floor! We’ll need to fight our way up! Don’t run into the spatial rifts around the tower, or you’ll never come back!”
“Tch, the old man…” Gemini dodged another volley of light. The Sentinel of Space had deliberately withheld the information, presumably to not demoralise them with the prospect of climbing up a freaking tower, but since he now didn’t have a choice…
As Gemini evaded eighty-three lances of light, his organs shaking and jerking madly the whole time, he couldn’t help but notice that the Abyss Sovereign’s divinity had changed slightly. In the past, it used to be black and grey; if the punk wasn’t changing the colour deliberately, it could only mean that he had undergone some changes once more…
“What kind of monster did I create?” Gemini muttered, dodging yet another insane volley of attacks. For some damned reason, the automated defences of the Cradle of Creation were focusing their attacks on him and not on the others.
A cold shiver ran down his spine, and Gemini took the chance to look around him as he dodged the next attacks. The spectres that had been lured away by the diversions had returned, but Gemini didn’t know if they had been ordered back or not.
He didn’t dare to examine those visions that had been flooding his mind either.
Letting out a battlecry, Gemini generated a thick layer of divinity and threw on one gigantic burst of speed. With the wind howling all around him, the Demon Sovereign smashed through the incoming attacks and crashed into the base of the Cradle of Creation, creating a ripple that tore up the ground around the ominous structure.
“First, I guess.” Gemini clenched a fist, wrapping divinity around it, and strode towards the small, nondescript door at the very bottom of the final enemy’s base. Before he could land a mighty strike, however, the door had swung open on its own accord, and small shivers ran up Gemini’s back.
It was just a petty trick of the mind, but…
“Does he like his cliches?” Gemini folded his arms, and then decided to wait for the others to arrive. With such a dramatic landing, there was no way the others could miss it, and besides, there was only one path onwards.
Now, everything just boiled down to how quickly they could make their way up this damned tower. If they delayed too long, the arriving reinforcements would crush them from the back. The spectres would probably lose a whole bunch of bodies in doing so, but the Abyss Sovereign probably wouldn’t blink an eye.
The other five touched down a moment later, and without a word, they hurried into the tower.