Free Web NovelChapter 74: The Fall of the Great Stump
The entire underground area began to shake violently as cracks appeared on the floor, spreading to the walls and then climbing upward, and soon chunks of earth began falling from the ceiling. Even the thick roots, now dry and still suspended above, began detaching and crashing down.
Whatever was happening, Evan was certain he wouldn’t enjoy sticking around to find out. So he wasted no time, he snatched the beating heart from the ground and immediately ran toward the tunnel connected to the underground chamber in the city.
It was his only way out, since the passage he had come through was already partially collapsed, and he doubted he’d be able to use it.
But it seemed fate had a twisted sense of humor today, because the tunnel just a few meters away collapsed right in front of him.
"Shit."
If he had been any closer he would have ended up buried under the rubble.
Evan could feel the situation getting worse, especially because the presence above the city, the one that had once been the Duke, seemed to have noticed that something had gone wrong down here and would most likely act.
Evan wasn’t sure whether that other entity he had sensed earlier while coming down here would be able to stop the Duke, so he left nothing to chance and tried to find another way out.
Right at that moment the entire area received a powerful jolt, violent enough that Evan nearly lost his balance.
’Wait, this energy... what the hell is that guy trying to do?’ he cursed internally as he felt a familiar energy appear out of nowhere, its intensity growing by the second, but he had no time to determine exactly what was happening, because in the next moment the ceiling collapsed, and the entire underground area was completely buried.
The tremor didn’t stop at the underground laboratory. No, the whole city felt it. The entire Stump shook violently, and from that alone many buildings came down.
The people, already in a state of panic, were now completely terrified. Many had fled the city, but others were still on the Stump, while some remained inside the city and were caught directly by the collapsing structures.
But the one responsible for all of it didn’t seem to care about any of that.
Veylan, or whatever he had become, still locked in that exchange with the entity among the clouds, seemed to have lost his mind entirely as a dense, chaotic aura radiated off him.
The black crystal in his chest showed several cracks that widened as the radiance it had begun to emit continued to grow.
"Who... who the hell was it? Who the hell dared to take it?" the Duke, with nothing human left in him, bellowed, his voice rising and echoing everywhere, a sound no longer human, deeper and more terrifying.
His advancement had stopped. Stopped right at the threshold of the next stage.
He had waited a long time for this moment, the moment he would return, fully restored, the moment he would resume what he had been forced to leave unfinished. And yet something had gone wrong.
The core of his entire plan of rebirth had been stolen right under his nose, and he couldn’t even find who had done it.
The thing drove him beyond all limits. To the point where even his body’s disintegration no longer mattered to him. Nothing mattered anymore except unleashing his rage.
As the cracks on the Concept Core in his chest multiplied, strange energy fluctuations had made themselves present and were growing larger by the second, to the point where the entire space above the city began to waver and distort.
The entity above the clouds noticed the phenomenon immediately and its composure, what little it had, broke at once. With it, the sky itself seemed to roar as the storm between the clouds intensified.
"This madman... is he really planning to detonate himself here?"
The entity’s voice resonated once more, this time clearer, and soon from the black vortex among the clouds a human figure began to descend.
He appeared to be in his early thirties, with a strikingly beautiful face and sharp features sculpted with almost unreal precision. His presence was majestic and regal, and his tall, straight bearing conveyed a natural authority that was impossible to ignore.
His eyes, deep and blade-sharp, seemed to exert a crushing pressure, honed as if capable of seeing through anything. But those eyes, usually calm and faintly bored, were now filled with panic as they grasped the full implications of what was about to happen.
Having sensed a disturbance in this region of the kingdom, he had extended his consciousness and immediately detected the Duke’s presence, already fallen under the grip of that energy. He understood at once what the being before him was, and how could he not.
He had lived for over a thousand years, and though the situation in the world had calmed since his time, some of those beings were still out there.
The Hollows. He recognized that the being that had taken control of the Duke was a Hollow, and a powerful one at that, one that had likely found a way to survive until now.
Seeing its level of advancement, he had believed he could handle it without acting directly. But the sudden shift in the situation had undone everything he had counted on.
That being was already at the peak of S-rank and would likely have advanced to the next stage soon, the same stage he himself stood at. But it had stopped. Or rather, it had been interrupted by something, something that seemed to have sent it into a fury, enough to make it decide to detonate the very Concept Core it had used to come back to life.
It wasn’t simple self-destruction, that much he understood. It would have been devastating for the entire city and the surrounding area. But if it had only been that, he might still have been able to contain it. What he couldn’t contain were the effects of a Concept Core detonation carrying the void attribute. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
The clouds above BranLeaf grew denser, more turbulent, rotating on themselves at a speed that made everything before seem calm. The vortex tightened, condensed, and from its center a tornado descended like a fist dropped from above.
It struck the Duke dead on, and swallowed him whole.
The being that had once been Veylan Greymark was lifted, dragged violently from where he stood and pulled upward into the heart of the vortex. The wind roared around him, strong enough to rattle the windows of buildings still standing, intense enough to drive anyone caught in the open to scramble for cover.
The King acted immediately. His wind attribute unfurled around the Duke trapped inside the tornado, not to destroy him, but to seal him. Layers of atmospheric pressure compressed one over the other, tightening around that unstable form like invisible chains, trying to contain what was about to happen.
For a moment, it seemed to work.
Then the Duke looked down, and there at the entrance of the cloud vortex, he found the King.
And he smiled.
It wasn’t the smile of someone who was losing. It was the smile of someone who had already decided.
The King saw that expression and felt a sharp, overwhelming sense of danger, and tried to act. But he didn’t have the time.
The Duke brought his hand to his chest, where the Concept Core pulsed visible through the corrupted flesh, the cracks now spread across nearly its entire surface. His fingers closed around it.
And he shattered it.
For an instant, the world stopped.
The air itself seemed to compress, as if crushed by an impossible force.
Then... something gave way.
A white flash exploded between the clouds, so intense it erased every shadow. The sky tore open in silence, as if it were being ripped apart.
BOOM.
The sound came after the light, a devastating wave that hit everything in a fraction of a second. The clouds didn’t simply disperse, they were swept away, dissolved like smoke beneath an invisible flame, leaving a blinding void above the city.
The shockwave came down immediately after, simultaneous in every direction, hammering the entire city below. The buildings held for one heartbeat... then collapsed in unison, as if reduced to ash.
The energy wave expanded outward, overwhelming everything in its path. Those still in the streets were hurled away like leaves in the wind. Those closer to the epicenter didn’t even have time to understand what was happening.
The detonation had occurred high in the sky, far enough above the city that it did not strike it directly. But that was irrelevant.
The wave of energy that spread from that point was enough to erase what remained of BranLeaf, to shatter the structures of the Stump, to crack the surface on which the city had been built for centuries.
The great Stump, ancient, massive, seemingly indestructible, trembled to its deepest roots.
And for the first time in nearly a thousand years... it began to collapse.
