Defiance of the Fall

ke you’ve brought me a tremendous gift indeed,’ the sinister voice continued in Zac’s mind.
‘Perhaps there’s no need to turn you into a fulcrum.
But I am still curious what allowed a progenitor to reach the 9th floor of the Tower of Eternity after a few scant months of cultivation.
I’ll deal with this miscreation first, then I’ll slowly find out what secrets your body hold.
For now…’

Zac suddenly felt a sharp scream of danger, and he turned around to see that the old man was pointing a finger in his direction, and a small rune was forming on his fingertip.
Just looking at the rune filled Zac with dread.
At best it was a tracking rune, at worst it was some sort of slave seal.

A surprising turn of events took place the next moment as the hooded being suddenly turned to a blur, launching straight at his companion while desperately swiping at the rune.
Zac couldn’t understand why that stranger would help him, but he would definitely make the most of it as he tried to increase the distance even further while preparing his last ace.

The hooded cultivator was, unfortunately, no match for the Great Redeemer, and he soon started wailing as he held his head in agony.
It looked like his soul was being tortured, and a wave of Voridis’ sleeve was all that was needed to push away the hundred-meter-thick Memorysteel plateaus that Zac had tried to hide behind again.

The rune shot out, causing a white streak in the air that even passed by unbothered by a massive spatial ripple released from the Dimensional Seed, and it headed straight for Zac who glared back at it with wild eyes.
Brutal energies churned in his body as he squeezed every last morsel of Oblivion he could from his soul, and a small bronze flash appeared between his hands.

It had only been a few days since he used the skill against the Collector, so he hadn’t had much time to siphon any of the energy from the remnant in his mind.
But it was the best idea he had, and he pushed the small ball of pure destruction toward the rune.

An extremely bright flash illuminated the area, and both rune and Annihilation Sphere was gone the next moment, while Zac was left with a cracked body that bled all over.

’

“What?!” Voridis exclaimed, but his eyes lit up with elation rather than anger.
“Such a pure source of destruction!”

He pointed toward Zac once more, and he could only look on with despair while trying to nudge the Spatial Seal on his hand to activate early.
He was all out of energy and all out of tricks, and he could only feebly try to move further away with his last two chains since his legs wouldn’t listen to him any longer.

[High-grade Life!] a thunderous voice suddenly roared as the ten-mile-wide dust clouds in the air congealed into a huge face with a distinctive pattern in its forehead.

It was the Administrator, apparently born anew, and it looked like he wanted to capture The Great Redeemer as thousands of massive spikes appeared around the old cultivator and his vessel.

“Machine-God Faction?” Voridis frowned, and the avatar once more appeared to protect its master.

The two didn ’t even have a chance to clash though as hundreds of tentacles tried to ensnare the Administrator, The Great Redeemer, and Dimensional Seed alike.
It was like the tentacles formed a pattern that locked space itself.

Zac floated further and further away, his eyes looking at the clash of auras with wide eyes.
Was this what a fight between D-Grade Hegemons looked like? Even he was grievously wounded just by some errant energy fluctuations, and that was at a distance of thousands of meters before they had even gotten serious.

He would probably have died in seconds if he stood in the middle of those auras they released.

Space itself was giving way to the will of the three entities, but a sudden ripple broke the stalemate as the Dimensional Seed moved with impossible speed.
A small vortex appeared in front of it, and suddenly it was gone.
But Zac didn’t even get the chance to react before the shimmering crystal appeared right in front of him shot straight into his body.

”No! ” the Great Redeemer roared with anger as he saw his ticket to monarchy get absorbed by someone else, but he found himself unable to do anything about it as he was completely trapped by the Collector and the Administrator.

The Collector clearly saw Voridis as a huge threat to seizing the Dimensional Seed, so most of its endless tentacles trapped the old cultivator while a few snaked toward Zac.
The Great Redeemer obviously wasn ’t willing to let a beast snatch his item, so he started ripping one tentacle after another apart.
As for Zac himself, they probably only saw him as a temporary receptacle for an item he had no business controlling.

Meanwhile, the Administrator seemed more interested in studying The Great Redeemer than the Dimensional Seed for the moment, so it kept its needle-cage erect, which directly helped Zac against the cultivator at least.
Of course, The Collector was far too big to be entrapped, and many of its tentacles reached around from different directions.

’

Zac was in a frantic state, but he soon calmed down a bit as he felt a weak sensation from the crystal that had entered his body; gratitude.
Zac didn’t quite understand what the Dimensional Seed was grateful about, but it had clearly helped him since it had somehow modified space between himself and the old hegemons.

They were still close, but his senses told Zac that they were endlessly far away, like a vast chasm had cut them apart.
The tentacles frantically moved, but it simultaneously looked like they had been locked in place.
Zac looked at the scene with relief and wonder, but his attention was soon forced back to his own body as a storm of extremely powerful energies appeared out of nowhere.

The energy density was far beyond what he could handle, especially in his extremely weakened state.
Using the Mark of Creation had actually helped a bit with the weird cracks from the Annihilation sphere, but forcibly activating another oblivion-fueled attack had immediately reopened the wounds again.

Thankfully the primal energies the Dimensional Seed released didn’t hurt him at all.
It was as though the spatial treasure had controlled it to become more benign.
Some of it was immediately swallowed by his cells, and even more entered his two Hidden Nodes who greedily swallowed it like it was some sort of delicious treat.

Zac tried to find where the seed itself was hiding, but he soon realized that it had already left his body after releasing a fraction of the energies it contained, effortlessly breaking past the pull of [Void Heart].
It had released such a fearful surge of energy into his body, but it hadn ’t been weakened at all.

It made Zac doubly thankful he hadn’t really tried branding the thing; even if he had succeeded, there was no way he’d be able to control that terrifying crystal without the System taking charge.
And Zac definitely didn’t want yet another fractal cage inside his body that loomed over him like a ticking time bomb.

But the gift had been imparted, and Zac’s thoughts moved like lightning as he considered what he should do with it.
Letting it seep into his cells and Two Hidden nodes wasn’t bad as it clearly Strengthened him all-around, and a glance at his Bloodline-screen showed that his bloodline talent actually had increased to 20% in just a second.

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But wasn’t this an opportunity? If a Dimensional Seed could help cultivators open up an internal world, then surely Zac should be able to use a fraction of the energy to accomplish something much simpler?

A weak resonance pulsated in his lower spine, and Zac immediately started pushing.
The energy left behind was thankfully quite malleable, and a storm of power poured into a specific spot on his lower back.
A burst of extremely sharp pain spread through his bones, but it passed almost immediately.
Left behind was a small vortex, previously hidden between two of his vertebrae; his third Hidden Node.

Zac’s vision started closing in as he felt another Bloodline Vision coming on, or perhaps it was just his body that was finally pushed beyond its limit after the visit of a C-Grade Treasure.
The last Zac saw was the small Dimensional Seed moving tens of kilometers in an instant before it somehow cracked reality like a mirror.
An infuriated roar caused another shock to his mind, and the darkness crept ever closer.

’It ’s not over! ’

The Dimensional Seed disappeared through the cracks, and the universe crumbled as his sister and Rhubat turned into golden motes of light.