I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 868: An Accident?
Feeling Azrael suddenly change his approach, Clark's brows drew together.
Even so he answered in the same fashion, partitioning off the fluctuation of energy that came surging toward him.
But no sooner had he perceived the nature of this fluctuation of power than Clark's expression changed and he looked at once to the side.
Those powers he had neither blocked nor divided away had gone thundering, every one of them, toward the edge of the dueling arena.
And there stood the rune arrays charged with holding space stable.
Boom!!!
An invisible torrent slammed hard against the protective array, and the runes that had been running steadily all flickered violently at once.
Hum, hum, hum…
Piercing alarms went off one after another.
The arrays responsible for maintaining spatial stability had, in this moment, actually had their protections forced open by the Law of Decay and been eaten into.
Great numbers of runes began to dim, and fine cracks appeared in the spatial structure along with them.
Clark's brows knitted slightly, not understanding what the other man meant to do. “Azrael.”
Azrael did not answer, and brought his palms together once more.
Boom!!!
The whole dueling arena shuddered violently.
And then the spatial structure of the entire dueling arena… broke.
The stable structure of this whole stretch of space was, in that moment, forcibly stripped away.
An enormous spatial rift ran abruptly across the length of the dueling arena, and then the power of the endless chaotic void came pouring in through the break like floodwater through a shattered dyke.
Rumble!!!
The clear sky above twisted in an instant, the garden vanished, the buildings vanished, and every spatial coordinate around them lost its meaning at the same moment.
All color began to stretch madly, and in that moment the boundary between matter and energy was lost entirely.
“Back!”
Someone or other let out a great shout.
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
Because of the nature of space itself, the range of a spatial collapse has no such concept as a “speed of expansion” to begin with; everything within that range is affected simultaneously.
Clark, Jie Ming, Viola, and some portion of the Scarlet Hive wizards who stood nearer the dueling platform were drawn into the spatial fault together.
Jie Ming felt only a blackness across his vision, which nonetheless cleared again in an exceedingly short span.
Yet when his sight returned to him, the world before him had already been changed.
Before him lay that flourishing garden no longer.
Every one of them stood within a chaotic void where there was no dividing sky from earth.
Boundless grey turbulence came rolling in from every direction, spatial storms rising and falling ceaselessly in the distance like tsunamis, countless elements colliding within the turbulence.
And beneath their feet, all that remained was an isolated island a few kilometers across.
Under the battering of the turbulence around it, this island was even shaking violently, its edges flaking away layer by layer.
Every fragment of broken space that fell out into the chaos beyond twisted and shattered without a sound.
“This place is…”
A sixth-level wizard, feeling out the power contained in a knot of spatial storm drifting past in the distance, went somewhat pale.
Jie Ming took one look at this place, so utterly unlike the endless chaotic void, and very quickly found the corresponding knowledge in his own mind:
“This is the chaotic interlayer between real space and the Reflection Dimension. The original spatial structure of the dueling arena has been torn away, and we are at a rather delicate spatial critical point.”
Viola drifted over from one side as well and said in a low voice, “This is not good at all. If our luck is poor and we drift to the Reflection Dimension side, there will be no playing our way out of that.”
That one remark turned the faces of no few wizards ugly on the instant.
The wizards present did after all know the basic knowledge concerning the Reflection Dimension, so they understood perfectly well that for any wizard below the eighth level, intruding into the Reflection Dimension unbidden was very nearly the same as suicide.
Even if one's luck held and one barely survived, without the coordinates of “the other side” to guide the way, any thought of getting back was wishful thinking!
It was then that Clark's voice rang out: “Azrael. You did that deliberately?!”
Hearing that low voice, everyone looked to Azrael and Clark without thinking.
Clark still stood where he had been, and to look at him his expression had scarcely changed; yet Jie Ming and Viola realized in the same moment: Mentor… was truly angry!
Having known Clark so many years, the two of them understood it only too well. The calmer Clark was in ordinary times, the more dangerous he became once roused to anger.
Azrael raised his head, and there was not the slightest fluster on his face; he only answered evenly, “It was no more than an accident.”
“An accident?” Clark repeated the words.
Boom!!!
As the whole stretch of space shuddered, Clark's Law Solidification Domain erupted with a roar and not the least warning.
Nor did Clark stop pouring out his power; he went on unfolding the domain outward instead.
In the blink of an eye it had crossed the whole spatial island and was expanding rapidly outward, very soon reaching a scale of ten million kilometers.
And as the range of the domain extended, all the churning chaotic elements around them were forcibly suppressed beneath its cover, the spatial turbulence was smoothed flat, and the raging laws were combed straight.
Clark, by his own strength alone, had actually suppressed the chaos of this entire region outright and anchored the island's drift for the time being.
“Pah!”
Azrael's body swayed violently and a mouthful of fresh blood sprayed out.
The domain of the Law of Decay about him, in the instant it touched Clark's domain, collapsed as swiftly as though it had met a natural predator.
For all that he resisted with everything in him, his Law Solidification Domain was ground to pieces almost on the instant. There was no room whatever to fight back, and the man himself was blasted several hundred meters backward by an invisible force.
“This… how is this possible?!”
The Scarlet Hive wizards beside him were struck dumb, unable to comprehend how Clark could erupt with power so terrifying.
Clark paid no mind to the astonishment of the wizards around him, and only looked toward Jie Ming and Viola:
“I have anchored this place for the time being. Now we wait for the people outside to mount a rescue.”
Jie Ming and Viola nodded, showing very little sign of alarm.
When they fell into the chaotic interlayer, after all, there had been a whole crowd of eighth-level wizards around them; they needed only to hold out a little while to be saved.
Clark turned his head toward Azrael. “Speak, then. What exactly is it you are after?”
Azrael raised his head, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his expression as calm as before. “I have said already, this was nothing but an accident.”
Listening to the man's answer, Clark remained tolerably calm, but Jie Ming and Viola could not help frowning.
It was the same point as before: in the present circumstances, Azrael represented not merely himself but the many eighth-level wizards of the Scarlet Hive as well.
As things stood, if Mentor Clark wished to kill the man it could be done without the slightest effort; but Jie Ming did not believe that, once they had killed him and then been rescued, they could keep it from those eighth-level wizards.
To concede ten thousand steps, even supposing it truly could be kept hidden, an eighth-level wizard needed no proof of any kind in order to kill.
And should face be torn away altogether, there was nothing to stop the eighth-level wizards on the other side from ambushing them on the road back.
In the matter of the number and the fighting strength of eighth-level wizards, Jie Ming and the others were at an absolute disadvantage.
The wizards on the Scarlet Hive's side had realized as well that this business did indeed appear to be Wizard Azrael's doing.
Though they did not understand what the purpose of it was, they nonetheless gathered to Azrael's side without hesitation, watching the three of them warily.
Jie Ming and Viola silently took their places behind Clark.
The smile had vanished utterly from Viola's face, and a grey-white power of pain flowed slowly along her arm, like a slender snake coiling between one arm and the other.
Jie Ming activated the Return to Ruins Armor as well, and several dozen Talisman-Rune Artifacts drifted up behind him.
These Talisman-Rune Artifacts were already glowing, plainly in a state of waiting to be triggered.
The atmosphere between the two sides turned instantly to drawn swords and bent bows; battle might break out at any moment.
But just then…
Rumble!!!
A low reverberation was suddenly conveyed into the ears of every one of them.
Jie Ming whipped his head around and looked toward the direction the sound had come from. “What was that?”
A second tremor came hard on its heels.
Rumble, rumble, rumble…
This time the entire spatial island shook violently.
Fine cracks surfaced everywhere at speed, the chaotic void outside began churning madly, and countless fragments of space came gathering here from every direction as though drawn on by some force.
Seeing it, Clark did not hesitate to contract the range of his Law Solidification Domain, strengthening the domain thereby and steadying the spatial island.
“Hold off on the fighting. We will speak of it once the matter in front of us is dealt with,” Clark said in a low voice.
Azrael likewise raised a hand, signaling the Scarlet Hive wizards to shift their attention.
The eyes of every one of them turned toward the depths of the void.
They could all feel it clearly: something over there was taking shape.
In the distance, that unusually conspicuous knot of spatial turbulence had begun to rotate, and its speed grew faster and faster.
The grey chaos was wrenched bodily into an enormous vortex, and countless fragments of space, elemental turbulence, even the wreckage of dimensions, were drawn into it, and then…
Impact, fusion!
Impact again, fusion again!
A kind of spatial fluctuation beyond description began to accumulate steadily at the vortex's center.
Jie Ming's True-False Void-Piercing Pupil opened in an instant, silver radiance whirling madly.
“That thing should not be a living creature… at the start of it, at least, it was not.”
He had barely finished speaking.
Boom!!!
The center of the vortex burst abruptly open, and a vast transparent outline congealed slowly out of the spatial turbulence.
In no more than a few breaths, a transparent behemoth composed wholly of spatial waves stood before them all.
It had no fixed form, its body like countless overlapping ripples of space.
It was plainly right there in front of them, and yet seemed to be separated from them by innumerable layers of space.
Jie Ming could see clearly that inside this behemoth's body, spatial cracks were being born and healing again without cease.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Dense sounds of spatial rupture went off one after another.
That was the noise this behemoth made with every breath… supposing it truly had any need of such a thing as breathing.
It turned its head slowly. It had no eyes, and yet it seemed to be gazing at every one of them.
Jie Ming's pupils contracted slightly, an exceedingly powerful sense of danger rising from the bottom of his heart.
This thing… was extremely dangerous!
The two sides of wizards, who a moment ago had stood with swords drawn, now turned as one against the outside threat without the slightest hesitation.
Clark took a step forward, his vast Law Solidification Domain rolling thunderously out ahead of him, sheltering Jie Ming and Viola behind him.
“We deal with this first.” He looked at the others. “The rest can wait until afterward.”
No one objected.
Because everybody there knew that if they did not first settle this spatial behemoth before them, then there might well… be no “afterward” for them at all.