Chapter 1,391 – Fateseizer

“The tracking mark was destroyed with her mirage world. We can still track her through the implanted energy, except…” Jimok said with a frown.

“With Lodge Island in flux, there is too much interference.” Royce grimaced as he arduously fought to reclaim control over his flesh. “Forget it. Update the others just in case. What’s the damage?”

“The overlap is incomplete and unstable,” Jimok answered. “Without the beacon, we can only operate at minimum capacity—and that’s after repairs. Worse, it looks like a second ritual has completely failed, leaving the whole node destroyed.”

“We knew there’d be variables,” Royce muttered, his insides still in turmoil.

He was lucky that his “Guild Master” had opted for the safe approach. For a moment, she’d looked like she was about to throw all caution to the wind, and Royce didn’t have the energy left to endure a Monarch’s final blast of glory. He’d already been forced to undo a restriction on [First Seal]—a choice that invariably came with severe consequences.

“The other three?” Royce asked.

“Two have been successfully activated. The Fifth Locus needs another hour to tune in. There have been no reports of any issues, and they should have increased their vigilance after our problems.”

“Is it enough to lift the curtain?”

“It is, though the path will be bumpy,” Jimok confirmed.

“Good. We’ve avoided casualties by splitting up, but it’s left us shorthanded. The survivors will have to tend to their wounds after we’ve deployed the contingency. I want it operational before the Fifth Locus is ready,” Royce said, releasing a relieved breath when his body finally returned to normal. Seeing that his assistant lingered, he raised a brow. “What?”

“How… detailed should my report be?” Jimok asked after some hesitation.

“Just mention there was a mole,” Royce said, adding after a brief pause, “Wait, send the whole picture to Descartes. We can’t handle the aftermath if he finds out we’ve hidden valuable prey from him.”

“Descartes…” Jimok muttered with trepidation. “I’ll get to it. He should have wrapped things up with the first Sealbearer by now.”

———–

“Useless, all of them,” Descartes spat upon seeing the unstable pillar pewter out and collapse far in the distance. “Is that where you’re hiding?”

A snapped blade stabbed into Descartes’ back the moment he was distracted. It channeled a dying man’s desperation and hidden reserves to dig straight for his heart. Rampaging sword lights tore through his body as the blade split into a thousand miniature blades for maximum damage. Descartes snorted, and a deep roar came from the depths of his soul.

The blades shattered, the foreign Dao was strangled, and a wet gurgle from beneath Descartes’ foot marked the departure of his target. The puncture wound and the internal lacerations were simply gone, as if they’d been part of a bad dream.

The six broken blades strewn across the clearing faded away as the light in the outsider’s eye dimmed. Descartes could feel the Imperial Fate pouring into his Fateseizer Seal, yet he turned the corpse into shreds with a stomp of his foot. These outsiders were full of tricks, and there was no point in taking a risk. Just as Descartes wrapped things up, a token floating in the depths of his [First Seal] hummed.

“Hm?” Descartes said after deducing the information sent through the network of the First Era’s Gift. “Another one?”

His gaze shifted between the broken pillar and the sandstorm that had begun encroaching on the mist in the island center. After a brief hesitation, Descartes started running toward the storm. He was reluctant to give up on his hunt, but it was just a slight delay. Weren’t they all headed for the same place?

————-

Reluctance and confusion filled Zorm’s eyes as the last of their light faded. Meanwhile, the red deepened on the scroll of [Desperation’s End], indicating another soul had entered the cycle of reincarnation. Zorm Hastor’s Inner World had been split in two, and his already unstable soul had directly collapsed from the backlash.

Zac still unleashed another swing at the dead Monarch’s head for good measure. A third reduced the opponent to a bloody soup, barring a Peak D-grade [Mercurial Sack], a set of D-grade armor that had almost collapsed when the altar exploded, and one of Zorm’s eyes. Zac stashed them all before they could be claimed by the growing spatial turbulence.

The battle with Zorm Hastor had lasted less than two minutes, but the victory could neither be considered easy nor painless. Zac and Idiche hadn’t wasted the hours while waiting for Esmeralda’s plan to reach fruition. Idiche had shared everything she knew about the Hastor Society and Zorm himself. The Hastor Clan all followed a unique path called Illusory Ancestry, which was actually somewhat similar to his human side’s [Conformation of Supremacy].

They formed and continuously nourished a connection with an imagined ancestor, to the point they could draw from their strengths like a beast’s bloodline. This differed from Zac’s skill in that it was a permanent boost that affected all aspects of their cultivation. The approach allowed their family to draw from all kinds of powerful mythological beings. In Zorm’s case, it was the one-eyed giant whose mere presence rendered [Eye of Desolation] almost useless.

The upside of the method was that it brought true and permanent power. Even one’s talent could slowly improve by nurturing the bloodline of those ancient beings. The drawback was that Clan Hastor had only managed to dream up four ancestors who could provide tangible cultivation benefits. According to Idiche, they were all based on real Innate Existences who had lived at the start of the Era.

Such Primordials were powerful yet simple and generally relied on brute strength in battle. It wasn’t necessarily that those races were dumb, but rather a product of their time. The Dao was fragmented, and all energy was extremely chaotic, which didn’t lend itself to finessed cultivation or refined paths. Since Clan Hastor’s descendants had to emulate their adopted ancestors, they truly became brutes over time.

Even Zorm, one of the most talented descendants of his generation, fought like Zac before he began delving into technique. He relied on resilience and raw power to defeat his opponents, and drawing from the corruption had only made his actions more telegraphed. Illusory Ancestry was a path that accelerated growth but limited one’s ceiling, which was how Clan Hastor managed to nurture a steady stream of mid-tier cultivators inside the Mercurial Court.

Zac had never underestimated their path, and for good reason. He’d known Zorm’s final attack was coming, and it completely lacked any finesse. And yet, his Void-empowered technique wasn’t slippery enough to avoid the strike. It contained such overbearing might that Void’s hidden paths had been forcibly shut.

His defenses may as well have been paper against the grazing touch, and the bloody stump just below his left shoulder was proof that his body wasn’t nearly tempered to the point it could have taken that strike head-on.

Thankfully, losing a limb or two couldn’t be considered a crippling wound at this point. A new arm was already growing out on its own without the need to draw Creation Energy. The process was slow, but it’d speed up after he purged the remaining energy lodged in the scar. Zac was in no hurry to speed the process along.

What remained of Zorm’s primal energy and hostile Dao kept the ancient Killing Intent going, allowing Zac to extract a few extra strands of purified intent. Fighting Zorm alone had already proven more than twice as effective as dealing with the whole pack of drakes, and the process was still ongoing.

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