"Damn it!!!" Blukan received another devastating strike from an adult space beast, the impact so violent that his entire body was blasted backward like a cannon shell tearing through the darkness, spinning uncontrollably until he finally managed to disperse the force coursing through his bones and stabilize himself once more with imnse difficulty.
Then he began looking around viciously while roaring in fury, "You giant brainless flies, is there not even a speck of intelligence inside your heads?!"
Blukan could now feel the entire nest clearly, far more clearly than before, which ant they were only monts away from reaching him and swallowing this entire battlefield whole.
Then he unconsciously turned toward the glowing gate in the distance, toward the only path leading away from this nightmare...
Asr had entered it more than half a minute ago, yet it still had not begun shrinking or showing signs of collapse. That ant Asr was most likely still trying to convince Lord Human to close it, and that madman simply refused to do so no matter what he was told.
Blukan gritted his teeth so hard that veins bulged across his neck... perhaps that man's perception of danger was not much different from the adult space beasts surrounding him after all!
Without question, he wanted to escape, wanted help, wanted literally anyone capable of turning this hopeless situation around, but he knew deep down that no help was coming.
His best bet now was to wait until the nest finally arrived and attacked the massive adult space beasts around him, then exploit the inevitable chaos and confusion to flee with everything he had.
But the gate...
He truly cared about personal gain, there was no doubt about that, yet he also genuinely wished to protect the universe and fight for it, otherwise he would never have chosen to follow the will of the Cosmic Elder and dedicate himself to this endless struggle in the first place.
And that worthless human outside was going to get them all killed for the sake of a handful of resources and so insane research obsession—
"Hey, what's distracting you?"
".....?!" Blukan jolted several steps backward the mont he heard the sudden voice, his skin tightening violently as he instantly spread his soul sense toward the gate with full force, yet he felt absolutely nothing there... not the slightest fluctuation, not the faintest trace of existence.
"Lord Robin?" Blukan was utterly stunned. He could not detect anyone at all, yet that voice undoubtedly belonged to Lord Robin , he heard it before he entered the gate!
For a mont, his mind nearly stopped functioning entirely, desperately trying to convince itself that it had imagined the voice out of stress and exhaustion, that no one could possibly be speaking to him from there without leaving behind even a single detectable ripple.
"And who else would it be?" Robin chuckled from sowhere within the depths of the pitch-black darkness, his tone carrying an irritating calmness completely unfitting for the current situation. "Tell , Blukan, what exactly are you experiencing right now?"
"What do you an?" the blue-skinned man frowned deeply, then imdiately resud spreading his soul sense in carefully chosen directions to monitor the surrounding beasts and the rapidly approaching nest without lowering his guard for even an instant.
"Why are you still here?" Robin asked with obvious curiosity, as though the answer genuinely interested him. "You're a Mid Stage Monarch on a Major Fundantal Law. True, you cannot kill an adult space beast, but you can escape from them, even if there are three of them... even if there are ten."
"Is this really the ti for that?!" Blukan shouted furiously before moving at explosive speed and narrowly avoiding another attack from one of the three surrounding space beasts, the claws barely missing his shoulder before smashing through the darkness behind him.
"What? Do you have sowhere else to go?" Robin laughed lightly. "Co on, tell . I'm here with you, don't worry."
"..?" Blukan was extrely bewildered by that last sentence. He had only known that man for a very short period of ti, yet his arrogance had already beco nearly unbearable to listen to.
But that arrogant thing was right about one point... he truly had nowhere else to go anymore.
"It's the usage of laws." Blukan sighed heavily and finally spoke in a lower voice while continuing to move through the battlefield, uncaring whether Robin truly heard him or not. "The difference between us Law Dominators and Nexus States is that we received the acknowledgnt of a certain heavenly law. That law grants us power, makes the other laws accept us, and eases everything for us. Even the Law of Energy favors us, making absorption smoother and the casting of techniques easier and more natural. There is no other difference. Without those advantages, we and Nexus States are fundantally the sa. We possess the sa bodies and the sa energy gathering centers."
Then he continued with tightly furrowed brows, his tone growing increasingly frustrated, "But here, there are no laws to favor us, no energy to assist us, no universal order responding to our existence. Even the law that acknowledged and amplifies my techniques does not exist here. It feels as though we entered a completely distorted dinsion detached from reality itself."
"Oh?" Robin raised an eyebrow from afar, sounding genuinely interested despite the chaos around them. "Yet I can clearly see you and Althera using techniques from your laws."
"An illusion." Blukan waved dismissively while avoiding another shockwave. "Here, we do not command laws to manipulate energy as we wish, because the laws themselves do not exist here at all." Then he gritted his teeth harshly. "What's truly happening is that we use our internal energy to produce patterns and runes that imitate the laws we beca accustod to over countless years, and from those imitations, these techniques are born."
"Oh, my friend, that's truly irritating. Did you really endure this sensation for all these hours?" Robin shook his head with genuine sympathy mixed with fascination. "Remind to increase your point prices later. People should be compensated properly for suffering like this."
Blukan's explanation had been sowhat vague and incomplete, yet Robin understood it far more clearly than expected because he himself had once experienced sothing disturbingly similar in the distant past, though on a much smaller and less terrifying scale.
Their current situation could be compared to a water-path user like Victoria.
If Victoria were fighting above a vast lake, she would only need to expend 1% of her energy to manipulate the water beneath her, because the environnt itself would practically obey her existence and assist her willingly.
If she were fighting on normal land, she would need to spend perhaps 10% of her energy searching for underground water veins and dragging them upward toward the battlefield.
If she fought within a barren desert, she would require nearly 30% of her energy rely to gather scattered moisture particles from the dry air itself before forcing them together into usable attacks.
But what if she were fighting sowhere where not even a single drop existed? Sowhere completely detached from the concept of water itself?
Then she would need to expend nearly 90% of her entire energy reserve rely to produce a tiny handful of water by simulating the patterns and behaviors of water itself through pure understanding and internal construction... and naturally, such a feat would only be possible if she were skilled enough to comprehend those patterns deeply enough to imitate them accurately. The current Victoria would never be capable of sothing like that no matter how talented she was.
But those Law Dominators who had received the acknowledgnt of a heavenly law... they could.
They were spending the overwhelming majority of their energy reserves simulating the patterns of laws that did not even exist around them anymore, constructing false imitations through internal energy alone just to barely maintain a fraction of their normal combat strength, and even then, the resulting power was pitiful compared to what they could unleash inside the living universe where laws naturally responded to their will.
The re fact they were still alive after enduring such conditions for so many hours said everything about their experience, combat instincts, and monstrous resilience!
"....?!" Blukan felt Robin's words sounded far more mocking than encouraging, almost as though the man found this entire impossible situation intellectually entertaining. "What exactly brought you here? Do you seriously think you can calmly conduct research in a place like this? Do you think we can actually protect you?!" Then his expression darkened further. "And why haven't you closed the gate yet?!"
"You may not know this, but I actually cannot do that..." Robin scratched the back of his head awkwardly, sounding more troubled by the inconvenience than the danger itself. "When we first opened the gate toward the previous nest, they nearly destroyed the gate through sheer stupidity alone. They attacked recklessly without understanding anything, and the adult space beasts even started breathing flas through the opening directly toward us. It was a rather unfortunate event that almost convinced to close the gate entirely..." then he smiled faintly within the darkness, "...until the Cosmic Elder personally crossed through and taught them a lesson carved directly into their bones."
"...?" Blukan's confusion deepened further and further as he listened to the bizarre story unfolding in the middle of this battlefield.
"If I rely shrink the gate, then the new nest will imdiately attack , and if I close it completely, then decades of my work and preparations will vanish for nothing. Worse still, the next gate I open might appear directly beside an Ancestor, or perhaps inside a mature nest far worse than this one... who knows?" Robin sighed dramatically. "So... I decided to teach this new nest a lesson as well, so they might learn proper manners like their predecessors eventually did."
"Have you completely lost your mind?!" Blukan finally stopped retreating altogether, unable to endure this insanity anymore. "Teach them a lesson? You?!" Then he pointed furiously toward the gate. "With what army exactly?!" His voice rose further with disbelief and anger. "Hurry up, leave and close it before you destroy the entire universe with your madness!!"
"Hmm..." Robin calmly turned toward a certain direction within the endless darkness. "I'm afraid that is no longer possible."
Blukan instinctively followed his gaze, and the mont he did, cold sweat imdiately began covering his entire body.
The nest had arrived.
Not rely close... it had truly arrived.
Millions upon millions of space beasts were staring directly at the two of them at this very mont, their massive bodies floating endlessly throughout the darkness like a living ocean of nightmares, layers upon layers of monstrous forms stretching so far that the edge of the swarm could no longer be seen.
The surrounding darkness itself seed to twist beneath their presence, and the suffocating pressure radiating from countless violent lifeforms rged together into sothing almost tangible, sothing that made even breathing feel heavy.
For a single horrifying mont, Blukan genuinely felt as though he and Robin had beco two insects standing before the mouth of an endless abyss.
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