Chapter 111: Shadow-Step Infiltration
Lucifer stood over the broken monarch. The King of the human realm wept silently with his face buried in his trembling hands. The Royal Protectors lay paralyzed across the throne room, completely neutralized by the Sovereign’s Eclipse aura.
Then, his system interface exploded!
[CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT: Spatial Breach Detected!]
[Target Proximity: Void-Core Reactor.]
Lucifer’s void-swirling eyes narrowed sharply.
"Vexia!" Lucifer barked. His voice was a low dangerous rumble.
"Elara. Sarah," Lucifer commanded and switched channels. "We have a breach in the engine room. Someone bypassed the outer Cryo-Pylons and the blood wards."
"I am moving," Elara’s voice crackled through the rune. "I am diving for the Aether-Forge."
He activated Void Step. He attempted to teleport directly into the reactor room.
A sharp painful feedback loop slammed into Lucifer’s chest. The Warlord staggered slightly. His boots ground against the marble floor of the King’s throne room.
[Reason: Hostile Anti-Spatial Ward Active in Target Area.]
The infiltrators had not just bypassed the defenses. They had deployed a jamming field around the Void-Core Reactor! Lucifer was standing thousands of feet below Zephyria on the mortal plane.
He was too far away!
"The reactor is completely exposed!" Sarah cried out.
***
Deep inside the dark cavernous belly of Zephyria.
The massive blast furnaces were banked. The only light came from the colossal ten-foot sphere of the Void-Core Reactor pulsing steadily in the center of the room.
A pool of pitch-black liquid magic boiled on the stone floor. The smell of burning sulfur and rotting meat filled the air.
High Warlock Xoroth leaned heavily on his twisted petrified staff. His luxurious midnight blue robes were scorched and smoking.
Isolde had eaten him on the Shattered Plains. But the Dragon Queen had eaten a flawless blood-magic homunculus.
He had used the deaths of the three hundred million Coalition soldiers to fuel a forbidden Mythic-tier Shadow-Step ritual!
It was Lord Vorian of Iron-Heart!
Vorian was no longer human. He was a Revenant! His severed head was reattached to his neck with thick glowing green stitches of pure necrotic magic.
Xoroth had salvaged the Lord’s corpse from the battlefield. He had pumped Vorian full of Void magic and turned the disgraced noble into an undead siege weapon driven by singular unadulterated hatred.
[Name: High Warlock Xoroth (Level 50 - Dark Magus)]
Xoroth coughed and spit a wad of black blood onto the pristine floor of the forge.
Vorian did not speak. The Revenant Lord simply drew his massive rusted broadsword. He glared at the engine with his undead muscles twitching with violent anticipation.
"He dropped his entire army on the capital. He left his heart completely undefended."
"We place the charge directly on the primary conduit," Xoroth instructed the undead noble. "When it detonates, it will shatter the spatial anchor keeping this mountain in the sky."
"The city falls," Xoroth continued with a manic desperate smile stretching across his half-burned face. "Millions of tons of rock and steel will drop directly onto the Sanctum of Solaris. Lucifer, the King, the Saintess... they will all be crushed flat. We burn the board."
"Hold him back, Vorian," Xoroth commanded. "I need thirty seconds to prime the detonator."
The plan was flawless. The execution was silent.
They thought the Void-Core Reactor was unguarded. They did not understand how Zephyria’s magical infrastructure worked!
It landed directly on the center of Xoroth’s bald burned head!
The drop of liquid was not water. It was highly concentrated boiling blood!
"What is that?!" Xoroth screamed.
Vorian raised his broadsword and his purple eyes scanned the ceiling.
The Sanguine Princess landed gracefully on the metal catwalk overlooking the reactor. Her massive translucent red bat wings folded tightly against her back. Her crimson silk dress fluttered in the ambient magical currents of the engine room.
[Name: Princess Vexia (Level 65 - Epic Blood Sorceress)]
"I am the Architect of this city," Vexia corrected him smoothly. She walked to the edge of the catwalk and looked down at the scarred Warlock and the rotting stitched-together noble.
The deep pulsing crimson network of magical veins she had woven into the bedrock of Zephyria suddenly flared to life! The walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the Aether-Forge glowed with blinding red light.
Vorian roared. The Revenant Lord did not care about the blood magic. He bent his massive armored knees and launched himself into the air!
Vexia did not flinch. She did not draw a weapon.
Four thick solid spikes of hardened crystallized blood erupted from the metal catwalk! They moved with supersonic speed.
The Revenant Lord’s forward momentum was instantly and violently arrested!
Vexia casually stepped around the suspended thrashing zombie.
The High Warlock realized he had made a fatal error! He was Level 50. The vampire hovering above him was a Level 65 Epic Boss. The power gap was insurmountable.
Xoroth scrambled to his feet. He grabbed his twisted staff and pointed the glowing amber crystal directly at the Void-Core Reactor.
He began chanting frantically and funneled all his remaining dark mana into a massive volatile fireball aimed directly at the delicate runic shielding of the Mythic engine! He intended to manually trigger the reactor’s meltdown.
Elara had arrived.
The celestial weapon crossed the massive cavern in a microsecond! It struck High Warlock Xoroth directly in the chest and pinned him forcefully to the stone wall behind the dais.
"The reactor is secure," Elara announced and stepped fully into the forge.
"I had it under control, bird," Vexia huffed defensively.