Sanctuary Area, the Bloomshard Castle atop the Mountain of Radiant Zenith.
In the castle’s bedroom, Almond opened his eyes and saw Lily’s peacefully sleeping face right beside him, making him smile.
The last night was the wildest, so Almond knew Lily wouldn’t wake up yet.
‘Yeah, this needs to be fixed.’
Almond could only wryly smile as he saw the room in shambles.
He freshened up in the shower and went outside because he could feel his Spirit Wraiths’ mood and how eager they were to meet him as they were outside in the training ground.
“Master!”
“Boss!”
“You abandoned us, Q_Q,” Sylvia said with a pitiful face.
“Roar!”
“Haha, even Starlight agrees, my lord.”
Everyone circled around him like merry kids, expressing themselves in their own way about Almond’s absence.
“Master, the connection between us and the source of our powers we feel is even more pure and powerful than before,” Alfred said, his eyes curious.
“Yep,” Almond grinned, “And you all are due for superb upgrades now that I am here.”
He waved his hand as a big whirlpool appeared above, swirling with misty green and black energy.
“Get in. I have tons of Spirits and free reign of the Spirit Animation concept. Once I’m done, all of you will become a new meta-spiritual lifeform, called on my term as…” Almond’s eyes glinted, a dashing grin on his face as he announced, “Spirit Lords!”
…
Almond had already envisioned his Spirit Lords project when he learned his class and evolved Meliora by creating her own soul sea and arcane foundation.
Before that, the Spirit Wraiths were under Grimworld’s tutorial laws. They were made as per skills designed by Grimworld, and they had to use the resources of Labyrinth to grow, including the leveling part. They didn’t have their own foundation structure like other living beings because…the class was just SS-rank. It wasn’t at its full potential. Not all possibilities of the Spirit Animation concept were explored as they were restricted by Grimworld’s Tutorial.
Usually, he would have to upgrade the skills and then the class to know more, but since he went to the second layer, he was threatened with erasure of this class’s source, so he made the class source his own by understanding Spirit Animation.
As such, all limits were gone. It was up to him to use the knowledge he had about Spirit Animation to make skills and make further progress by increasing his understanding of Spirit Animation, which he didn’t know how to do yet as the sources of these classes were a mystery to him. However, they felt in the same category as Intents, but of a different nature.
Like Spirit Animation, his Riftveil Grimblade was also a power source, named into existence by him, but created by the Grimworld, so its progress depended on his own imagination, meanings, and visions he explored, which were then conceptualized by Grimworld, developing the power source by creating skills that he envision during Skill Insight and learns more about the power source in that Skill Insight realm.
Almond knew about such power sources as everyone had them on the second layer, and they bloomed as Ability Trees once one breaks through to High-Mortal. And changes would happen to his sources as well when the time came.
But for now, there was still so much to do with Spirit Animation and Riftveil Grimblade. He had yet to even fully explore Riftveil Grimblade’s powers, but mainly because he was undecided on which direction to take to envision the next step of this power source when he had multiple options. But he could make the decision now, so he planned to explore it.
However, he wanted to finish the project Spirit Lord before that.
‘First, I’ll have to purify them, and then I’ll create a skill to operate on them. Let’s call it Spirit Operation. It’s based on Spirit Wraith Hex, but it’s better, and I can derive the desired results with 100% precision.’
*Beep*
Suddenly, his wristwatch rang.
It was Admiral Rudra’s video call from Earth. Although the Labyrinth Floors normally prevented communication, the Sanctuary Area was an exception.
Almond accepted as the hologram sprung up, showing Admiral Rudra in a combat-armored set.
“We’ve spread surveillance in the Sanctuary Area, so Astra saw you here, and I called. It seems that your mysterious journey benefitted you greatly,” Admiral Rudra said, a smile on his face containing a hint of relief.
“No doubt about that,” Almond chuckled and waved his hand as his eyes flickered with lightning while Mana hummed around him. “Solid signal.”
In the next moment, Almond pointed his finger at the wristwatch, causing a beep to ring in Admiral Rudra’s wristwatch.
“I sent you a file containing information about where I went.”
“Don’t tell me you locked this file like the one you sent me before?”
“Haha, nope. Not this time.”
“Good. We don’t have time for that. I called you because there’s something to do on the Battlefield right now, and it’s unavoidable, so if you come, we’d be able to do it without casualties.”
Admiral Rudra’s face turned somber, hinting at the gravity of the situation.
Almond’s eyes sharpened. “I’ll be waiting at the base. Let’s meet there.”
…
Arriving on the battlefield by using the function in his status window, Almond’s presence soon attracted the attention of everyone at the base as he floated in the sky.
‘The base is solid.’ Almond overlooked the grand military base, which was oriented toward adventurers. It was completely different and bigger than the last time he saw it.
There were many adventurers here, mostly going to and fro from the battlefield and the Battlefield Hub where the people of all four worlds could interact without any form of violence, except for verbal one.
“Almond.”
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Admiral Rudra arrived and vanished into a gust of wind before appearing in front of Almond.
He directly pointed to a certain direction and said, “We have to cross 450 kilometers in that direction. No, wait, make it 400. They are moving fast. The other old monsters are already there.”
“Moving what?” Almond asked as he expanded his Espada Ad Grimveil. ‘So I can expand it up to a 100-kilometer radius, eh? I’d need more stats unlocked to keep such a large domain on, but for teleport, it’d cost nothing with my innate talent.’
Just as Admiral Rudra opened his mouth, Almond teleported four times quickly, each time crossing 100 kilometers, essentially crossing 400 kilometers within 0.8 seconds.
“It’s a terrifying foe that’s looming over our head and is playing with us.” Admiral Rudra turned toward the section of sky that was dark, covering a 100-kilometer radius of area.
“That beast already killed Shiro-sen.”
Almond’s fist clenched. He knew that as Big D had told him.
After sighing, he looked at the cloud, his eyes turning cold. “Are you telling me the presence I sense in that darkness killed Elder Shiro-sen?”
“You can sense that dragon’s presence in that?” Admiral Rudra was surprised. He then nodded, his expression grave as he looked at the expanse of darkness. “Shiro-sen discovered this first since he had the best sensing and scouting powers. It’s created by a dragon, and he mocks us. That beast does something to the monsters of the Battlefields, directing them to our base specifically while he flies and watches, laughs, and mocks us.”
Admiral Rudra clenched his fist, anger bubbling within. “And we can’t do anything to him because…”