The cavern floor was a massive sheet of bloody blue ice. Thousands of shattered Deep Gnos lay scattered across the rusted tal city.
Lucifer remained entirely still on the high stone ridge. He dragged cold stale air into his burning lungs.
His physical body was completely pushed to its absolute limits. The violent rapid-fire mana drain caused by the death of his thirty-six Vanguard snipers had nearly ruptured his internal organs.
He survived only by forcing the Carnage Core to aggressively siphon the life out of the dying Gnos and pump it directly back into his fractured soul.
He slowly pushed himself up from the cold rock. The pulsing red artifact at his waist finally dimd. The massive slaughter was over.
The air pressure in the cavern shifted.
A deafening triumphant horn blast echoed directly inside the mind of Kaelen. It was not a sound generated in the physical world.
It was the Soulbound Arcanum actively recognizing a monuntal achievent.
A massive blood-red holographic interface violently materialized directly in front of his face and completely blocked his vision.
[Mandatory World Law Event Completed: The Warlord’s Trial.]
[Objective Reached: Eliminate 500,000 Hostile Entities within the surrounding bio.]
[Calculating total kills... Iron-Hide Boars, Undead Horde, Deep Gno City.]
[Total Confird Kills: 512,450.]
[Condition t: Host has survived.]
Lucifer gritted his teeth as a blinding golden pillar of celestial light crashed down through the solid cavern ceiling. The light struck him directly in the chest.
It was not the standard warm glow of a normal level-up. This was a forced absolute physical evolution dictated by the world laws.
[Ascension Initiated. Upgrading Host to Tier 2 Warlord.]
The hollow scraped-raw sensation deep inside his chest vanished. Lucifer gasped loudly as his soul physically expanded.
He felt his ribs loudly pop and shift outward to adjust to the sudden massive influx of dense magical pressure. His veins bulged against his pale skin and glowed with a bright solid azure light.
The fragile mortal limits of his nineteen-year-old body were aggressively overwritten.
He clenched his fists. The physical strength radiating through his muscles was entirely overwhelming. He felt heavier, denser, and completely rooted to the stone beneath his boots.
The system interface updated rapidly and locked the new paraters directly into his mind.
┏━━━━━━━[ Status Update ]━━━━━━━┓
│ Na: Lucifer Obsidian
│ Level: 20 | Class: Apprentice Mage
│ Title: Tier 2 Warlord
│
│ Mana: 30,000 / 30,000 [Ascension Bonus Applied]
│ Base Mana Capacity Doubled.
│
│ Active Summons: 9,964 / 20,000
│ Soul-Drain Penalty: Reduced to -250 Mana per Summon Death.
│
│ Warlord Aura: Expanded to 500 ters.
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Lucifer exhaled a long steady breath. The golden light completely faded and left him standing in the dark.
"Thirty thousand," Lucifer whispered aloud and stared at the blue numbers.
He finally had a massive buffer. The system had actively reinforced his soul to handle the massive burden of his multiplied army.
The lethal Soul-Drain penalty had been slashed in half. A single Vanguard death would now only cost him two hundred and fifty mana. He could comfortably absorb a significant hit without imdiately collapsing into a bloody dying heap.
Elara landed softly on the ridge beside him. Her silver armor was completely coated in freezing gray Gno blood. She took one look at Lucifer and imdiately felt the heavy suffocating pressure of his expanded aura.
"Your soul is no longer fracturing," Elara stated. Her starlight eyes widened slightly. "The celestial weight around you has doubled. You have ascended."
"I survived," Lucifer corrected her coldly. He reached down and securely fastened the Carnage Core to his heavy leather belt. "We are not done. Reform the Vanguard. Leave the dead Gnos. We march deeper."
The Elven Commander blew a short sharp whistle. The remaining Cryo-Vanguard Snipers moved with terrifying chanical precision down in the ruined city.
They instantly abandoned their current positions and rapidly marched up the steep stone ramps to rejoin Lucifer on the high ridge.
They ford up tightly. Their heavy ice-rifles glowed brightly in the pitch-black darkness.
Lucifer took the lead. They left the frozen completely silent Gno city behind and marched directly into the massive set of black iron doors located at the far end of the cavern.
The tunnel beyond the doors was drastically different from the ancient dwarven highways. The stone walls here were heavily covered in a thick pulsing layer of black fleshy moss.
The air slled entirely of rotting at, dried blood, and heavy suffocating dark magic. The temperature aggressively spiked and replaced the freezing subterranean chill with a humid sickening heat.
"We are entering the absolute core of the plague zone," Elara whispered and stepped carefully over a pile of crushed yellowed bones. "The dark magic here is so dense it is physically pushing back against my celestial aura."
"The Cult of Decay operates here," Lucifer said. His eyes scanned the dark fleshy walls. "They are the ones pumping the necromantic plague up to the surface. The entire forest bio above completely loses its power source if we destroy their base."
They marched strictly in a tight diamond formation for another thirty minutes. The fleshy moss on the walls grew thicker and actively dripped dark viscous fluid onto the stone floor.
The tunnel finally aggressively widened into a massive circular antechamber.
A pair of colossal fifty-foot-tall doors forged entirely from solid black adamantine tal stood directly in front of them. The doors were heavily engraved with horrific twisting runes depicting screaming skulls and lting flesh.
Two massive glowing green braziers burned on either side of the gate and cast terrifying shadows across the fleshy walls.
This was the entrance to the underground stronghold of the Cult of Decay.
Lucifer stopped exactly fifty paces from the massive tal doors. He could physically feel the heavy oppressive dark magic aggressively radiating from the adamantine tal. It made his newly expanded mana pool churn in his chest.
"Commander," Lucifer said with a completely level voice. "Stack the Vanguard. Focus all five thousand rifles directly on the center hinge of those doors. We blow the gates completely off and we instantly flood the room with absolute zero fire. Nothing inside survives."
The Elven Commander nodded. The five thousand snipers dropped seamlessly to one knee and aid their massive weapons directly at the black doors. The chanical whine of five thousand arcane batteries aggressively charging filled the hot humid antechamber.
Lucifer raised his right hand and heavily prepared to drop it and signal the devastating volley.
"Hold steady," Lucifer commanded. His eyes locked strictly on the gate. "On my mark."
He tensed his muscles. He prepared to unleash complete unyielding destruction.
The world then completely broke.
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