Just as Aaryan and Pau were preparing to follow Cyrus deeper into the workshop to seek refuge, an even heavier thud echoed overhead.
The Blood Council's airships were clearing the surface of the demonic race, but an unexpected massive energy bombardment had shattered the 'Bioforbidden Zone' at the bottom of the arena. Not only were gladiators awaiting slaughter imprisoned there, but also war machines distorted by excessive etheric infusion — machines that had leaked from the laboratory — which were sealed away.
'Crack!'
A sharp sound rang out as a massive claw ripped open the ventilation ducts above the power room.
The senses were assaulted by the stench of high-pressure oil, stale blood and the violent flow of ether. Then, a monster the size of an armoured vehicle descended from the sky.
It was the Blood Council's secret experimental subject, codenamed the 'Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound'.
Its body was composed of highly compressed muscles and various external etheric pumps, with over a dozen steam-spraying tubes protruding from its back. But the most chilling feature of all were its numerous compound eyes, each with a different focal length, flashing wildly and locking onto the three people in the power room.
"Damn it… those 'cleaners' raised by those Celestial Vein lunatics!" Pau's mechanical legs clicked in terror. He instinctively ducked behind Cyrus's workbench. 'These monsters have no souls,' he said. 'They're only attracted to the strongest etheric sources.' In the ruins, Balthazar, critically injured and on the verge of death, was still breathing. Leaning against a collapsed pillar, his severed obsidian arm dangling from his body, he wore a self-deprecating smile.
'Huff… huff…' His breathing was heavy, like a bellows.
The Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound's dozens of eyes all turned to Balthazar because, in its perception, the black ether within him, which was on the verge of collapse and constantly leaking out, was the most tempting 'tonic' in the room.
"Roar!"
The monster let out a deafening roar and charged towards Balthazar, its hind legs surging forward like a heavy cannonball covered in steel scales.
"Balthazar!" Aaryan cried out. Although Balthazar had tried to kill him just minutes before, seeing the once-powerful figure being devoured by a maddened monster stirred something within Aaryan.
Balthazar could only just raise his right hand, attempting a final defence, but the etheric circuits within him had already been reduced to scorched earth in the previous battle. He closed his eyes, waiting for the claws capable of shattering rock to fall. Just as the claws were inches from him, a blur flashed past.
Aaryan moved. Rather than using a weapon, he relied on the life-or-death training he had undergone in the slums, ramming directly into the monster's side.
'Construction: Instant Flow!"
As soon as Aaryan's feet touched the ground, the flow of ether in the area was distorted, giving him an instant burst of power. The immense impact sent the Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound off course, causing it to crash heavily into a wall and dent a heavy steam boiler.
"Awooo—!" The monster felt its dignity bruised. Its compound eyes instantly turned red as it ignored the weakened Balthazar and focused all its killing intent on the boy, who was only as tall as its legs.
It opened its blood-red maw and the etheric pressure pump deep within its throat began operating frantically, gathering a torrent of lava-coloured flame.
'Aaryan! Run! That's 'Solar Prominence Breath'! It'll melt you!' Pau screamed from afar, closing his eyes, while Aaryan stood rooted to the spot, not dodging.
He felt the pendant on his chest go from burning to utterly cold, evoking a loneliness born of being high above and looking down on all living beings.
Deep within his consciousness, a massive rift suddenly appeared in his hazy memories of the 'Builder'. Rather than formulas or blueprints, behind the rift lay an ancient dragon slumbering in a sea of stars, its wings obscuring galaxies.
Aaryan's eyes changed.
They were no longer the eyes of a desperate young man fighting for survival.
He slowly opened his eyes. His original pupils had vanished, replaced by vertical pupils almost like those of deep space, etched with dark gold patterns.
He made no movement, nor did he utter any incantations.
He simply gazed calmly at the ferocious Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound and uttered a single, ancient, deep and forceful syllable from deep within his throat: 'Kneel.'
'Kneel.'
An invisible, heavy pressure, immense like a collapsing star, instantly enveloped the entire power room. The Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound, which had been gathering flames to melt everything, suddenly froze.
Its hundreds of compound eyes, which had been darting around frantically, now uniformly displayed extreme fear — a physiological response etched into the deepest recesses of its genes, transcending millennia of evolution.
Bang—!!!
The Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound's limbs, capable of smashing through city walls, slammed heavily to the ground as if they had lost their support.
It did more than just kneel down.
It buried its massive head tightly in the rubble, unable to utter a single mournful cry. The ducts throughout its body ceased pulsating with fear and spewed gas continuously. It trembled, and that tremor from the depths of its soul made it look less like a killing machine and more like an ant repenting before a god. A deathly silence fell over the power room.
Pau was still covering his eyes while Cyrus put down his tools and watched Aaryan's retreating figure thoughtfully.
Balthazar, who was closest to Aaryan, froze the light that was fading from his remaining right eye.
As someone who had once reached the "upper limits", he understood better than anyone what had just happened. It wasn't skill, power or even some kind of ethereal magic.
It was status.
It was the oppressive aura of a bloodline lost to this plane for epochs, so noble that it inspired the desire to sacrifice one's soul.
'This... this is impossible...' Balthazar murmured, his voice trembling. His gaze shifted from astonishment to fanatical greed, then deep dread.
He stared at Aaryan's retreating figure as if he were seeing the boy's true nature for the first time.
'The Constructor... no, who are you? This aura... are you the true source of the Holy Blood?'
The hundred-eyed demonic mastiff, with a body made of high-pressure hydraulic components and mutated muscles, lay on the ground in a posture that was almost comical. The sound emanating from its throat was no longer a roar, but rather a whimper reminiscent of a frightened puppy.
Aaryan stood before the monster, his dark, golden, vertical pupils fixed coldly on the beast beneath his feet. He didn't raise a fist, not even a finger, yet the entire power room seemed to collapse around him.
'What... what kind of trick is this?' Pau, hiding behind the workbench, chattered incessantly, feeling the air grow heavy. This pressure even triggered a high-frequency alarm on the pressure sensors of his mechanical legs. However, the surrounding ether concentration didn't increase; instead, a pure spiritual mass called 'Pressure' increased.
Cyrus stopped working, his gear-shaped pupils contracting sharply. He had read about this phenomenon in the ancient bronze pendulum records: at the highest levels of the Builder civilisation, there was a bloodline called the 'Celestial Bloodline'. Its members didn't need complex formulas; a single glance was enough to rewrite the physical parameters of reality. "Cough, cough… Interesting, very interesting."
Balthazar, who had collapsed to the ground, scrambled to his feet. His body was half-crystallised and his vital signs were as faint as a candle in a storm. Yet his eyes burned with an unprecedented madness.
'Aaryan... so you are the "Singularity".'
Suddenly, Balthazar attacked, not targeting the fallen beast but instead channelling the remaining black ether within him and condensing it into a sharp crystal spike aimed straight at Aaryan's back.
This wasn't betrayal, but a desperate test: he wanted to know if the blood flowing through this boy was truly the legendary 'King's Blood', capable of ending the world's chaos.
"Danger!" Pau cried out.
But Aaryan didn't even turn around.
The moment the obsidian spike touched the ground within a three-metre radius of Aaryan, an invisible, oppressive defensive mechanism appeared to activate around him.
Buzz!
A golden ripple spread outwards. The obsidian spike, which was powerful enough to pierce an armoured vehicle, crumbled inch by inch in mid-air at such close range, turning into shimmering powder. Balthazar felt as if he had crashed into an invisible iron wall. The recoil sent him flying and he slammed heavily onto the power reactor. 'Enough.'
Aaryan's voice, resonant and ancient, echoed through the empty underground hall.
The Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound could no longer withstand the immense mental pressure and its biochip instantly overloaded and burned out. Due to the resulting pressure imbalance, the ether pumps throughout its body erupted in reverse, and purple steam gushed wildly from the gaps in its carapace.
'Ugh—!' The monster let out a final, mournful cry before collapsing completely and going lifeless.
Aaryan's dark, golden, vertical pupils gradually faded and his body swayed slightly. The divinity in his eyes rapidly dissipated, replaced by his original weariness and confusion.
"What... what just happened?" He looked at his hands in fear.
'You killed a monster and almost sent me to meet my maker.' Balthazar leaned weakly against the stove, his eyes filled with fanatical awe as he looked at Aaryan. 'Remember that feeling. That's the power that the false gods of the Holy Blood Council dreamed of stealing — the power belonging to this land.' The conflict in the power room had temporarily subsided while violent fluctuations were experienced aboard the Holy Blood Council's flagship, the 'Judicator', above the surface.
In the command centre, Silver Moon, the white-haired girl, suddenly stood up. The greatsword she held, 'Moon Phase', began to hum uneasily.
'Sir, an extremely high-energy psychic pulse has been detected underground at coordinates 1969 in the Maya District!' an operator exclaimed. 'It's interfering with all the ether radars! We can't find a match for this wavelength in the database!"
Silver Moon walked to the porthole, her icy blue eyes fixed on the ruins below.
"No matching needed." She spoke coldly, her voice trembling slightly. 'That was a dragon's roar. In this corrupted world, only the awakening of 'that bloodline' produces this unsettling resonance that even the gods find disturbing.'
Gripping the sword hilt with a reverse grip, she watched as her silver cloak fluttered in the gale.
'All warships, cancel the targeted elimination of the Demon Clan. Change the objective to 'Project Godfall'. Completely seal off Area 1969. Whatever lies hidden underground will not see tomorrow's sun." The atmosphere in the underground power room plummeted to freezing.
Cyrus swiftly pulled a heavy lever and the surrounding obsidian walls slowly began to move, revealing an escape route leading deeper into the darkness.
'No time for reminiscing. That commotion was like igniting a supernova in the night," said the old man grimly. 'The hounds of the Holy Blood Council will soon turn this place upside down.'
"Where can we go?" Pau frantically picked up the pieces from the ground.
'Go to the roots of the Maya district, to those landfills where not even light reaches.' Cyrus looked up. 'There, you'll see the last "work" your father left behind.'
Aaryan clutched the pendant to his chest. He could feel the world baring its fangs at him as that power awakened within him. Yet an unprecedented sense of purpose also took root in his heart.
"Let's go." He glanced at Balthazar in the ruins. 'You can come too, if you want to live.'
Balthazar grinned, revealing blood-stained teeth. 'Of course, I haven't seen the world collapse yet.' Just as the group disappeared at the end of the passage, the thick, dark clouds above the Maya District parted once again.
A gigantic, solemn and expressionless golden face appeared above them.
It was Lord Malakor.
His eyes, as large as stars, gazed down at the ruins below, seemingly piercing a thousand metres of rock and reaching the soon-to-close underground passage.
"Found... the 'Protocol Zero,' lost for twenty years."
This whisper echoed from the void, instantly freezing the etheric energy within a ten-mile radius.
Inside the power room, the massive 'Hundred-Eyed Demon Hound' lay as a lifeless mass of flesh and steel. The air was still thick with a lingering sense of oppression, making Pau afraid to stand upright.
Aaryan staggered, gripping the edge of the workbench tightly with his right hand, the image of a dragon soaring through the galaxy still lingering on his retinas. This superior perspective gave him a powerful sense of detachment as he surveyed the ruins.
'That... that wasn't the power of the Constructors,' Balthazar's trembling voice came from the corner. The fanaticism in his eyes had faded, replaced by fear and awe of the 'outcast'. 'The Constructors were reshaping the world, and you... you were commanding it.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Aaryan replied hoarsely. He could feel the pendant frantically drawing heat from his chest in an attempt to calm his boiling blood.
'Stop arguing!' Cyrus pushed open a rusty hydraulic door on the other side of the power room abruptly. Behind it was a bottomless, downward-sloping mine tunnel. The 'Judgment' had already locked onto the coordinates directly above. 'Those madmen of the Celestial Vein Demon Clan would rather raze the slums within a five-kilometre radius to the ground than spare a single "King".' As if to confirm Cyrus's words, the rock strata above the power room suddenly emitted a dense, rain-like cracking sound.
'Godfall Plan, Phase One: Thermal Purification.'
Silver Moon's cold voice pierced through the thick rock strata, exploding in everyone's mind through etheric resonance.
A pure white laser beam, over ten metres in diameter, descended from the sky and instantly pierced all the floors of the Obsidian Well Arena. The rock vitrified immediately under the intense heat and the air was sucked away, forming a massive vacuum black hole that sucked all surrounding debris into the centre of destruction.
"Jump!" Cyrus roared.
Just as the laser beam was about to reach the ceiling of the power room, the four of them leapt into the dark mine tunnel.
BOOM! A massive shockwave erupted behind them — the collision of pure technological might and primal divine pressure from different dimensions. Even through hundreds of metres of soil, Aaryan could feel the heat scorching his back. Inside the mine tunnel, only the faint emergency lights on Pau's mechanical legs were visible.
The group slid and plummeted wildly before finally crashing heavily into a swamp of industrial waste — the lowest level of the Maya district, a 'waste layer' even the demons despised.
"Cough… Am I still alive?" Pau touched his head and found that his prosthetic eye had been dislodged by the tremor and was now hanging crookedly on his face. 'An attack of that scale... Is the Holy Blood Council planning a Third Aether War?'
'They're afraid.' Balthazar leaned against the edge of the mud pit; his crystallisation had spread to his neck, yet he smiled unusually brightly. 'The higher the ruler, the more afraid they are of hearing a sound that can make them kneel. Aaryan, you haven't realised what you just did."
Aaryan remained silent, staring at the distant, unreachable surface. The lingering force of the beam was still making the earth tremble. For the first time, he understood the significance of the pendant around his neck and the substance flowing through his body to this world.
It wasn't salvation; it was a catastrophe capable of destroying the existing order.
In the darkest corner of the slag layer, a rhythmic, crisp impact shattered the deathly silence.
Clang— Clang—
This sound was not the result of an explosion, but a rhythmic, soothing chime that seemed both absurd and sacred in this wasteland of destruction.
'Looks like we're not at the end of the tunnel yet.' Cyrus stood up, brushed the mud off his clothes and looked at the other end of the tunnel, his expression complex. 'That old guy's still alive, still guarding his broken bell.'
'Who?' Aaryan asked.
'An even older madman than me.' Cyrus stepped into the darkness. 'A fool who thinks he can still find "Zen" in a world filled with machines and data.' Let's go. If we want to evade Malakor's global manhunt, we have to enter his territory.'
At the end of the tunnel, a faint flame flickered.
It was a temple built from the wreckage of decommissioned robots. Amidst the countless rusty gears and cables, a monk covered in grease, with his eyes blindfolded in red, was striking a massive bronze and obsidian pendulum.
With each chime, the turbulent ethereal currents within Aaryan calmed slightly. Above ground, inside the flagship 'Judgmenter,'
Silver Moon stared at the signal that had completely vanished from the radar, a flicker of struggle visible in her icy blue eyes. She sensed that the source of the 'dragon's roar' had not been destroyed, but had instead seeped into a deeper, more uncontrollable realm.
Meanwhile, in the throne room of the floating island, Malakor slowly withdrew his gaze from the ground, his fingertips tracing a yellowing blueprint marked with the 'Builder's' inscription.
'Awakened? Faster than I expected.'
Malakor issued a secret command to the void:
'Activate the "Deep Dive Protocol". If it cannot be captured, let that ruin become his burial ground. Also, inform the blindfolded monk that he owes the Council his debt.'