Chapter 379: Interference
Seth’s mind fractured and began to crumble under pressure, the glowing ruby-red ring around his finger beginning to grow deep, gleaming cracks, slowly spreading round the metal frame.
Seth’s expression was painted with pure agony, his eyes squeezed unwillingly tight, as his vast mental sea began to sizzle and evaporate.
Shadows flickered around Seth’s frame and the other three as the corrupted, rallied by the zone guardian, pounced as it let out a vicious screech.
The other three were barely holding on compared to Seth. Brandon and Jack, the newcomers, bore even more frail minds than Seth’s, and overwhelming them came much more easily to the zone guardian.
It could be said that a whopping fifty percent of the charmed beast’s efforts were poured into restricting Seth’s mind.
Because he was the only one to be able to pull himself out of the dreamscape he had been trapped in, even though it was by pure chance, it still spoke of his capabilities.
Compared to the rest, Zoan was in the most vulnerable state, the poor lady captain barely even putting up an ounce of resistance.
This beast outright overrode her ability, drawing her out of her chaotic state, and forcing her out of her plasmatic state, which inevitably caused the disappearance of the fury beast she had summoned.
The poor girl didn’t even know what happened to her before it happened, as a shackled realm evolver, what manner of resistance would she even be able to muster against such an abomination?
Her fate had been sealed the moment she entered the clearing, her consciousness had been snuffed shut, and she was a few minutes from turning into a husk of a soulless body.
It was safe to say that the fate of all four had been sealed...
This wasn’t a foe of the likes they had ever seen, an entity that had no physical tethers yet bore terrifying mental capabilities enough to influence them all without anyone noticing even a single thing.
A means of combat no human was made for.
This was just a brutal reminder of the reality they had to embrace, a world that held infinite possibilities.
Their foes wouldn’t always be entities within the realm of reason...
Time seemed to slow, as savage growls reverberated through the air, defileds and charmed beasts parted their maws, claws outstretched, their eyes all locked onto their prey, drool pooling into streams down the sides of their jaws.
The wind flowed, and the atmosphere went still, the phantom entity towered above all, as it anchored all tethers to the four human minds, slowly chipping away at their identity and mind.
Corroding their souls with the contaminating, pungent flow of the abyssal force, it was over, at least it should be.
There was no way the humans could get out of this, no allies close enough to interfere, none of them had the ability to pull out any cards.
The charmed beast was cunning and cautious, not once did it let slip a flaw as it constrained their minds, squeezing them into splintering fractures.
Blood pooled beneath all four, oozing from all seven of their orifices as their brains were slowly being reduced to a bloody mess.
"No! No! NO, boy! WAKE UP!" a voice boomed furiously into the scrambled remains of Seth’s mind.
The world seemed to draw to a halt as interaction sparking on the genetic level worked faster than the mind could comprehend.
Seth’s body, in great distress, was in a state of constant adaptation, it could feel the demise drawing closer by the second.
But alas, there was so little influence the silver cells could exert on the mind.
They were hopeless to the disaster looming on the metaphysical level.
So much potential sparking, bursting with life, yet remaining helpless to the doom at hand.
Deep into the body, beyond the genetic and into the quantum level, a resonance that lay dormant most of the time sparked.
And the presence attempting to interact with Seth’s mind bloomed from here... the genetic space.
"Old man, what do we do!" another voice bloomed out of the source.
As panicked frequencies flickered in Seth’s blank mind.
Both sides could feel Seth’s will growing dormant and his mind dissolving into the void.
At this pace, the kid would become brain-dead before the corrupted even had a chance to attack.
Both ancestors, entities standing on a mythical level, had their minds filled with worry.
Seth was a descendant of both the asura king and the grand weapon maester.
And both figures had come to the conclusion that Seth was the perfect heir to inherit their true lineage.
They couldn’t lose him now, not to a stupid abyssal zone, that was for sure.
Especially not since they could do something about it!
Both minds went silent as both had the same thought running through their heads.
They could act, but that move was forbidden, there was a reason mythical figures weren’t walking around the Earth wantonly.
Yet for Seth’s sake both sides didn’t hesitate to consider breaching this taboo.
"Let me act... it’s better that way, it can be more subtle," a bold voice echoed in communication with another.
The asura king remained silent, not giving a response, but its stance was clear, as long as it was to save Seth, the risk would be worth it.
Both figures simply couldn’t bear to lose such a gem...
The moment both sides made up their mind, the world reacted and the flow of time ceased.
Monsters a hair’s breadth away from sinking their fangs into the fresh flesh of their prey went still.
The minds of all four humans falling into a limbo-like state, yet lying frozen, unable to completely fall into the void... fall into death.
The phantom entity towering over them all went frozen, the wind fell silent and even nature seemed to hold its breath.
Suddenly reality started to fracture and crackle, cracks spreading through the space around them, as a brilliant halo of gold poured into the earth.
A finger, small and human, silently poked through the void, appearing in the space right beside Seth.
It was a single human limb, pristine and mundane, yet carried an air of transcendence that went beyond what mortals could comprehend.
The finger flicked, and suddenly the frames of all four humans within the core vanished silently and abruptly.
Neither space nor time suffered any undulating from this abrupt relocation, leaving one to only imagine what level of control this entity had over space.
And as soon as all four vanished, the finger retracted, sinking back into the self-repairing void, the cracks closing up as fast as they appeared.
And suddenly everything snapped back to normal, time bursting right back into motion.
Savage roars rang out, as beasts burst back into action, tearing at the winds and mauling the earth... only to realize... gone.
Their prey was gone.