Chapter 587
A voice, one Kaelen knew well, then spoke "Nixbolt," he said, his tone laced with a detached analytical note, "I still underestimate how strong a Six-Tier figure is."
Kaelen’s eyes widened in confusion. Before he could even form a question, a searing wave of energy shot through him. A sickening crack echoed, the sound of an eye, or perhaps a core, shattering. Kaelen looked down. A gaping hole now bore through his stomach and chest, his core within crumbling into irreparable fragments. His gaze, clouded by pain and imminent shutdown, lifted to the familiar yet utterly unfamiliar Ratman before him.
Kaelen, his vision dimming, managed a weak, rasping chuckle. "It seems you’ve been playing us this whole while." His eyes, once vibrant, flickered once more before the light within them finally extinguished.
The Ratman, or rather, Rattan, heaved, his body wracked with pain from Kaelen’s final, desperate strike. With a grunt, he pushed Kaelen’s lifeless form off him. The Cube, floating steadily beside him, pulsed with a bright flash of mana, confirming it was the true source of the finishing blow.
A complex magic circle shimmered into existence on Rattan’s palm. He pressed it against the gaping wound in his stomach, and at the expenditure of his mana, the flesh began to knit together with unnatural speed, the gruesome injury closing inch by agonizing inch.
He stared up at the desolate abyss sky, a slow, ragged chuckle building in his chest, quickly escalating into a hysterical, echoing laugh. He had survived. He had manipulated, strategized, and endured. He, Rattan, had emerged as the undisputed victor. The greatest winner of all.
"Guardian, proceed as planned," Rattan commanded, his voice raw but resolute. As he spoke, his shadow stretched out, expanding rapidly to swallow Kaelen’s lifeless figure whole. A familiar, satisfying sensation washed over Rattan.
In the now desolate, cold abyss plain, with Rattan’s figure the only one left standing, a profound shift took place. In a sickening cascade of tearing flesh and reforming bone, the Ratman’s form twisted, expanded, and solidified. Where the Ratman once stood, now loomed an Ogre—or, more accurately, the resurrected Kaelen.
Rattan, now inhabiting his new, colossal body, stretched, testing the limits of his stolen form. The mage’s robes that had adorned him moments before rippled, shedding their illusionary form to reveal their true nature: Abyssal Armor. The dark, living metal writhed and adjusted, conforming perfectly to the Ogre-like scale of Kaelen’s body, taking on the same menacing, powerful aesthetic as his original armor.
Hours earlier, when the Imperial army first breached the Abyss, it was a familiar sight of steel and screams. The earth trembled underfoot as legions clashed, a symphony of destruction resembling the countless battles that had come before. Yet, this time, a new, dissonant note joined the chorus. High above, beyond that of mortal eyes, Sixth-tier figures waged a war of their own, their immense power ripping at the very fabric of reality.
To Rattan and his demon brethren, the true nature of this celestial conflict was incomprehensible. Their senses, attuned to the immediate, the tangible, could not grasp the scale of the power being unleashed. All they registered was the sudden, horrifying shift in their world. A shadow, vast and impossibly swift, plunged from the heavens. Then, the ground convulsed as a mountain-sized rock or what felt like it obliterated a section of the battlefield, turning warriors, both Imperial and Abyssal, into paste.