569 That Day...
Dyon suddenly understood why celestials didn’t do battle on the planet. A puppet didn’t even have access to wills, and yet it was this devastating. Dyon couldn’t help but wonder… If the earth hadn’t expanded by millions of times its original size… Would it have survived the blow he just gave it?…
It suddenly dawned on Dyon that if this went too far, he could begin to endanger the mortal side of the world.
Without a shred of hesitation, Connery turned and fled. The Sapientia within Dyon’s tower could only watch in awe as the man they revered so highly was actually forced to flee by a child they continued to look down on.
Dyon felt his soul strength draining by the minute. Every moment he held a connection to the puppet was another he lost stamina with. He was so fatigued that he hardly noticed the astonished gazes of Tau and Lionel in the air. Clearly they had stopped their fight just in time to see what had transpired.
Planet Mino’s section once again received the shock of a lifetime. Saru had just been trying to convince her protectors to help Dyon when she realized her help truly wasn’t needed.
Although puppets were extinct in this universe, the same couldn’t be said to be true elsewhere. However, what did remain to be true was the fact that a celestial level puppet was nearly impossible to find. And, someone who could use a puppet of that caliber was even rarer.
The practicality of a puppet was nearly nonexistent. Unless a human controlled one, it would never reach its full potential – although, theoretically, it could should an array alchemist be skilled enough. That aside, this meant that in most cases, a puppet was severely handicapped without a controller. And yet, the demands for a wielder were so high that that person would be able to fight the threat on his or her own.
This meant that, usually, puppets were used to explore newfound lands and natural phenomena – places where risking human life was seen as a waste. It’s either that, or you make a puppet just powerful enough that when it was on its own, it would fall to a power level you deemed suitable.
As an example, someone might make a lower celestial stage puppet knowing that it would only be able to fight a peak saint on its own. Which is exactly what Dyon had done when he attacked Elder Er a few days ago.
However, this situation was clearly vastly different. Dyon was capable of making full use of the puppet on his own. And even more shockingly, it was a celestial puppet!
“I can’t imagine… The cost of such a puppet…” Elder Shruti breathed out his words.
“The material that makes up that puppet doesn’t seem to be normal…” Saru said softly. “It may not be so simple as just being a celestial puppet…”
Dyon stood above the hole breathing heavily. An instant later, his eyes flashed with gold as he appeared within the tower. He had no choice but to take advantage of the situation to catch his breath and protect himself. If he suddenly lost connection with the puppet, so too would his protection go.
Seeing the sleeping Madeleine, Dyon frowned. But, when he also noticed the odd atmosphere between Ri, Delia and Madeleine family, it only deepened.
However, he didn’t have the time to harp on this right now. He looked out toward the puppet, severing his connection with it.
Right now, the puppet would only have the combat power of a peak saint, however, its defenses would still be at the level of a 4th or 5th grade celestial. Dyon knew this because when he studied the arrays of the puppets, he noticed that although their enigmatic energy accumulation arrays were too damaged to be used, the celestial arrays of one was fully intact, and the celestial array of the other was damaged, but not enough to be unusable. But, the best news was the fact that the defenses of the puppet heavily relied on the material it was made of with only a few still intact arrays acting as a supplement.
This meant that if Matriarch Niveus was injured enough from that strike, the puppet might be able to finish her off on its own. And, even if it couldn’t, its defenses meant that she wouldn’t be able to hurt it too much, if at all.
Dyon plopped to the ground and instantly began to meditate. Replenishing soul strength was, unfortunately, much more difficult than replenishing body or energy strength. It wasn’t so simple as flooding the soul with more energy. The soul was tied to the world around you, and it also had very much to do with things like focus and will power, it wasn’t so straight forward.
Sometimes when you found you couldn’t concentrate very well anymore, the only thing you could do was take a break. That said, there were also drugs that helped people stay focused. Unfortunately, Dyon didn’t have any of those soul replenishing pills on hand. Even the celestial deer sect pill repository lacked such a thing. They were simply too much more expensive, so when they were attacked, they were likely stolen along with much of the other valuables.
Even more ironically, the strength of pill Dyon would need to replenish a soul on his level was so exaggerated that even he doubted if he could form such a pill…
Dyon’s best bet was to use Devour. But, it would have to be on someone with a powerful enough soul… It would have to be from a celestial at the very least.
Connery had fled and Dyon had no way to pursue him. However… There was still Matriarch Niveus!
Almost as if on cue, the rumbling in the ground amplified as a bloody figure burst from it.
Matriarch Niveus was truly a sad sight to see. Her previously white dress was soaked in blood. Her arms hung limply and awkwardly shaped to her sides, clearly having been used to block the strike. Her wrinkles seemed to have increased…
Suddenly, a cackling laughter left between her shriveled lips.
“9698 years I’ve lived… Not once have I been in such a sorry state…”
Dyon’s eyes flashed in all seriousness. Waving his hand, a massive amount of dao stones flooded the tower’s arrays, causing blinding shields to erupt all around them.
Matriarch Niveus’ laughter only increased as she lifted her disfigured arm to point out two fingers. A ball of darkness and another of light began to dance about each other, spinning viciously as they grew slowly in size.
Dyon thought she was going to attack the tower. But then, almost inexplicably, she twisted and slowly moved her arm toward the horizon, her laughter reaching a fever-pitch.
“I hear you’re from the mortal realm.”
Dyon froze. His gaze turned to Clara who trembled at those words.
“You like to play celestial with your little puppets… Let me show you what a real celestial can do!” Matriarch eyes shone with a savagery that could only match a wild animal.
Dyon’s mind immediately reached outward, ignoring the pain tearing through his soul as the puppet erupted into the celestial level once again.
But, what Dyon didn’t know until an instant later, was that Matriarch Niveus didn’t care. In order to survive the blow Dyon had just given her, she had been forced to burn her blood essence in that instant. The price for letting her guard down was nothing less than her life. To use such a technique at such an old age, she knew that only death awaited her…
And yet, she did so anyway because she wanted revenge. She wanted revenge for the fact that after all these millennia of living, it would be a child that ended her life.
“Since I’m going to die anyway!” Her pierced through the veil of the world, completely bloodshot. “Why would I care for your bullshit treaty!”
Dyon roared as the puppet swung down violently, mustering everything it could to stop her.
In the distance, Evelyn Niveus, the first in line genius, watched in horror as that woman she had seen as a mother since birth blazed for a final time.
It was all too late…
The sphere of light and dark connected, turning into a blinding beam that shot off into the distance with unmatched speed.
In the white house oval office, President Gallagher sat quietly, looking at a picture of his wife and daughter on his desk when a scorching heat suddenly caught his attention.
In the skies above the mortal realm, a swirling ball of light and dark grew, approaching faster and faster.
Matriarch Niveus sneered in her final moments, watching the blade cleave her in two as she whispered her last words.
“Immortal Balanced Arts. Final gate.”
Observing the approaching sphere, President Gallagher felt a sudden relief. ‘I know you’ll keep her safe…’
That day… The entire mortal population would be wiped out.