Chapter 1223 – An Act of Grand Consumption

From deep within the Malefic Viper, Jake felt the internal stomach of Palate stir. Instantly, he knew that the Malefic Viper’s capacity far surpassed Jake’s own, which naturally wasn’t a mistake, seeing as one was comparing an A and a C-grade, but the difference still struck Jake as stark.

With time slowed, Jake felt the Malefic Viper open up the channel connecting the stomach and the real world, something that instantly struck Jake as odd, but he quickly guessed that the Viper planned on consuming something nearby, even if Jake couldn’t detect anything.

Unlike Jake, the Viper wasn’t limited to only one item in his Palate stomach. Jake could detect several objects of significant power, but the only one in there he could get a good feel for was the Eye of the Magus that the would-be snake god had naturally already devoured.

As Jake was still wondering what the Viper planned to do, he got his answer. With the channel open, the Viper began to breathe in, not targeting anything specific. Rather than focus on a single item, he simply devoured the mana in the air, something that felt incredibly simplistic at first.

However, as the Viper continued, Jake realized he was doing so much more than that. Within the barrier established by the World Leader and now controlled by the Viper’s comrade, the future Primordial devoured everything that had been sealed within… including the remnants of the many A-grades who’d died.

Jake felt a massive influx of Records into Palate’s internal stomach in the very next moment. These Records took the form of something Jake was particularly sensitive to right now, as he realized what the Viper was truly trying to consume were the concepts lingering in the air.

When powerful beings fought, it left traces behind. Remnants of power in the form of energy and concepts. Often, the combination of the two was simply referred to as concepts. Energy of all affinities had inherent concepts, which Jake had started to uncover a long time ago, such as dark mana’s desire to devour other mana types or life mana’s desire to cause growth.

The concept-infused energy left after the death of the powerful was far more complex and potent than that normally lingering in the air. These concepts profoundly affected the world, sometimes creating entirely new domains that other monsters found beneficial; however, it often resulted in the land being corrupted.

This was something Jake knew, but he also knew that the energy left behind was pretty universally agreed upon to be useless for most people. Sure, it could create holy grounds for monsters to grow stronger, but this was a result of the system slowly purifying and releasing the energy and Records into the environment.

There were also rare rituals and formations that could make use of this lingering energy, but in most cases, it wasn’t something anyone even thought about. At most, the people who killed a powerful being would seek to purify the area to make sure none of the energy of the dead lingered.

One very prominent example of this was the wars between the Risen and the Holy Church. If a powerful undead died, they would naturally leave behind lingering concepts of death, while if a member of the Holy Church died, they would leave behind remnants of holy energy. Both factions would seek to purify any territory they conquered to avoid the other faction’s energy lingering, as it would create a less-than-ideal land for members of the Holy Church to live in an area filled with the death affinity.

Armed with all this knowledge, Jake could only wonder what the Malefic Viper’s plan was as he began to devour the energy left by the many dead A-grades. Instantly, as Villy began dragging it in, Jake knew that the Viper couldn’t actually absorb this energy in any way.

All the “useful” Records were already given to the Malefic Viper when he got the kills, and the Truesouls had long dispersed, and while he did consume some remnants left by the souls of the slain, what he did devour wasn’t anything that seemed particularly potent or useful.

However, as the Viper continued to devour everything, Jake sensed that he wasn’t even trying to absorb any of it. He was merely digesting it internally and storing it there.

Soon enough, he was done consuming everything within the barrier, but Jake felt that the Viper wasn’t satisfied yet. While he couldn’t detect the would-be Primordial’s thoughts, he could get a vague feeling of what the dragon intended as his eyes opened wide right as the Viper gave a command to his comrade.

“Release the barrier.”

The cloaked figure didn’t even appear, and nothing detectable to Jake happened, but in the very next second, the entire barrier shattered like a mirror. Predictably so, all the fragments of this barrier were instantly sucked in by the A-grade Viper as the dragon looked downwards and opened his maw even wider.

His body seemed to explode with power as Jake felt the Malefic Viper unleash Palate at an even higher level, as the scope of the consumption was expanded. The planet below was instantly affected, but to his surprise, the Viper wasn’t sucking in any of the physical objects, such as the dense rock of the crust below. He didn’t even seek to consume much mana anymore, but only took in the bare minimum to get what he truly wanted:

Concepts.

Jake watched on in silence as the world around him slowly changed. Below, the rock started to lose its color as the air also turned black and white. Like a vacuum of color and life, the Malefic Viper dragged in everything, leaving nothing behind as more and more of the planet was affected with every passing moment.

His scope just kept expanding until soon the entire planet was affected. Jake felt countless concepts entering the internal stomach, many of them recognizable, but the vast majority beyond his comprehension, in part because he couldn’t even try to comprehend them.

The Viper wasn’t trying to either. He was still just storing everything as the planet died. While Jake couldn’t see it, he knew that by the end, no life could exist there anymore. To clarify, the Viper wasn’t actually killing anything. Palate didn’t have any true offensive capabilities but could only consume environmental energies. However, with everything else gone, the Malefic Viper left behind only one thing:

Desolation.

Within mere minutes, the entire planet had become desolate, with not a single being capable of stopping the future snake god. Even the World Core had everything consumed, unable to stand up to the might of an A-grade, especially not after the World Leader had already fallen.

Yet even after seeing this, Jake had one massive question: why?

Why engage in such an act of grand consumption? He had absorbed so much useless energy, and it wasn’t as if he could even try to understand all the concepts he tried to absorb. Moreover, the vast majority of these concepts were of such a mundane level that they wouldn’t even have been able to benefit a D-grade.

Nothing made sense… until the Malefic Viper closed his mouth and stopped the process of consumption and began the digestion.

With his maw closed, the channel between the internal stomach and the external world was severed, and all the passive aspects of the stomach could kick into effect once more. The first one was an effect very much reminiscent of a passive acceleration of time; however, the second one was what truly caught Jake’s attention.

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As with Jake’s own version of Palate – before he accidentally broke it anyway – the Malefic Viper could use Touch to refine the items he’d consumed. However, what the Viper did wasn’t to directly try and refine the items, but instead he sought to only speed up and amplify one aspect of all the natural treasures he’d consumed:

Their ability to absorb environmental energies.

Once Jake felt this, everything the Viper had done suddenly made sense. The Malefic Viper knew he couldn’t use all of these concepts himself. He knew they were useless to him, which was why he didn’t want to actually consume them at all.

No, instead, he absorbed it all to create an environment for the many treasures to feast and grow more powerful. Especially one of the treasures he’d recently consumed was eating really good, namely the Eye of the Magus.

The Malefic Viper had consumed Records in the form of concepts deployed by a dozen powerful A-grade mages, and now the Eye of the Magus was absorbing all of these to make itself even stronger.