During the next hour, Almond stayed at the frontlines amidst Immortal Kings and Immortals.
His physical stats were already as good as an average Immortal-rank powerhouse, thanks to the 50%-65% of stats he regularly stole from Immortal King Griminions, the area-wide buffs from other Immortal Kings, and his innate talent—Rygaroth’s Reign.1
With his physical capabilities becoming enough to endure his own potent Arcane Constitution and external higher-level shockwaves from another battle at the frontline, Almond was performing exceptionally.
Naturally, it was still nothing compared to elite Immortal-rank powerhouses and Immortal Kings. Find your next read at My Virtual Library Empire
Almond’s realms of elemental powers were far weaker compared to theirs, but the perceptive powerhouses were already sensing powerful sources with high potential within Almond from his abilities.
From them, Almond couldn’t remain hidden, especially from powerhouses who had Space Element mastery higher than him, and there were multiple such powerhouses.
The strongest of them was none other than the one Almond encountered.
“That kid is abnormal,” Dave muttered as he flung away a leviathan’s tail by grabbing it with a giant translucent spatial hand and slammed it onto a glassy spatial rectangle he created, causing the beast to shred into millions of pieces before they all burned up and like a meteor shower, zoomed at another Immortal King Griminion and blasted it.
It was over in the blink of an eye, but the speed of the slamming motion was incomprehensible to Almond even as he saw it via his domain. The space within whatever area Dave fought on was incomprehensible to him.
‘He must be able to see through the complex space of the second layer. I can’t do it yet,’ Almond thought as he saw a four-winged, mixed-headed, metallic gray and red colored bird swooping at him with a cry that instantly enveloped the area around him into spikes, trapping him in an area of 50 meters.
‘Fuck, an Immortal King Griminion,’ Almond frowned. His teleport wasn’t working.
This was bad. He was trapped, and the bird was coming in an instant.
His body blurred in place with what space he had around him that remained thanks to his barrier, and he entered the hyper plane, his mind becoming hyperactive and elevating into a higher dimension of Hyper Plane, giving him 31 seconds of thinking and doing anything within his source plane this time.
But that didn’t meet the incoming Griminion, which also couldn’t enter. Almond was sure the bird was also in the hyper plane and was observing him just as he was observing the metallic prison and the bird.
‘This is bad.’
The space around him was strangely disrupted by the metal spikes as the patterns on them glittered. He couldn’t teleport.
Almond’s heart paused, and his pupils shrank.
‘Space Element will not work alone…it looks like I’ll have to use my old and new teleport methods together.’
Almond’s eyes flickered with a spark of ✾ symbol.
All-Seeing Eyes, All-Severing Blade.
See-through, sever, and connect.
‘This conceptual power affects space forcefully and rewrites its rules with willpower as fuel, but I can also use space teleport of space element with it to make it easier.’
Almond’s eyes glinted as he created a simple sequence to execute this hybrid teleport.
‘As long as I can dodge this, it’ll be confirmed that I can get away from Immortal King monsters at least.’
And the reality resumed as Almond vanished from within the prison right before the blades blasted with the entry of the bird.
It looked like the four-winged wind combined into the blast of the sword, turning the area into a hell of gray and red sparkling blades.
Almond appeared one kilometer high up and dodged successfully.
‘Awesome! Who can overwrite my willed action?’ Almond’s eyes ferociously shone as a grin stretched across his face.
Right then, alarming danger bells rang in his head.
He tried to teleport again. However, he was frozen, and that, too, in the confines of space!
All he saw was eight creepy eyes covering his entire vision and mindscape before a flood of pain invaded his being.
He felt an impact as if he was thrown onto the ground very hard after something struck that numbed his entire body. The pain temporarily vanished.
And then, he saw Dave briefly saying something before dropping him on the ground. His mind was abuzz, and the pain was returning like a torrential river.
‘What the fuck happened…’
At that thought, Almond lost consciousness, lying within the Stronghold with his faction members that Dave teleported here.
Returning to the battlefield as soon as possible, Dave and two other Immortal Kings confronted the Silver Skyrend Butterfly Spider, an Immortal King Griminion with a high level of corruption and power of Space.
The one that almost killed Almond was this giant terror with spatial power.
Almond came onto its radar because of his activity, and he was alone high up where this spider was also spatial drifting.
Dave noticed its arrival early and intervened in time to save Almond.
‘Fuck, this creep is a menace, Dave! Keep it in place!’
‘Shit, it has mental interference powers that spread through spatial layer!’
‘Its corruption potency is highest so far. It seems that the final wave is coming, the strongest one.’
‘Kill it before it escapes! Locking in!’
Everyone talked to each other by simply passing their thoughts at insane speed for better communication during battle and hunted down the Butterfly Spider.
The tide slowed down, but it was calm before the storm, and everyone was alerted about the final wave.
“Dave, you kind of saved him, right?”
“He got some good power sources and high potential,” Dave said with a smile. “It’d be interesting to see his Ability Trees once he breakthroughs to High Mortal.”
“True. It’s a miracle he survived,” Jama nodded. “An immortal would have died, but he is breathing despite getting struck.”
“He got some clever use of Space with one of his powers. He managed to mitigate the majority of the attack power.”
Jama narrowed his eyes, glinting with curiosity. “Even though he got a rather extensive Arcane Constitution, it’s unthinkable how he survived that attack. Even if he has a high potential power source or conceptual power, his parameters shouldn’t have allowed him to survive that Griminion’s attack.”
“That means he is higher in one parameter that we can’t measure and see,” Dave chuckled.
“Will…” Jama muttered. “True. If it’s high enough, it could significantly empower his conceptual power. Did you manage to glean his conceptual power?”
“The main contributor was an Intent. I saw multiple spirals for a moment, but that’s all. It doesn’t matter how he did it. What matters is that he did it, and it’d be in our interests to keep him under our radar.” Dave said with a knowing smile.
“If you say so,” Jama shrugged. “He is in the academy, so we can contact him.”
“Not yet. Let him progress more. This near-death encounter will also benefit him. He was on the verge of a breakthrough in his Space Mastery, and I think he got what he needed to enter the next realm,” Dave chuckled.
“Anyway, it’s time to take out our big guns.”
“Yeah, I just hope there aren’t too many of them to disrupt our supplies.”
“How’s our group?”
“Three died. They’ll be revived soon and trained with our organization’s resources, but we can’t afford one more death. We don’t have any more Immortal King revivals.”
“No problem. Take out the artifacts and other items. We’ll use up all if it means keeping everyone alive.”
…
On the other hand, Almond woke up in his mansion’s bedroom after several hours.
[Rygaroth’s Reign]
-Description: An innate talent that is intricately connected to another living being called Rygaroth the Bladeborn, a dragon recently born in Mystic Dragon world, and shall develop based on that being’s progress.
-Rank: Special.
-Effect(s):
—> Aura of Reign: While engaged in combat, an aura radiates from you that automatically reduces all damage aimed at you by 10% before affecting you.
—> Bladeborn Hunt: Physical body’s parameters increase by 20% when holding a bladed weapon or attacking with bladed powers.
—> ??? (In Development)