Golden light surrounded the purple-haired girl above the collapsed ruins as her long hair fluttered in the air. She felt power surge within her body, magnified a thousandfold, and whispered softly to herself.

"This... is the strength of my Valkyrie armament?"

As she spoke, Amitya looked around. Her gaze carried a faint dignity, as if she had suddenly matured by several years. The massive seven-star and eight-star illusory beasts standing behind the senior students no longer held the crushing pressure they once had. They now seemed weak, as though she could pierce them with a single thrust of her spear.

This was not an illusion. At this moment, she truly was that powerful.

While Amitya was immersed in the daze of her skyrocketing strength, Chen Chu tilted his head slightly, studying his "masterpiece."

In her Valkyrie form, the purple-haired girl appeared more mature, elegant, and alluring. Her beauty rivaled Lin Xue's, yet her figure was fuller, with distinct Western curves. But this change was only external. Chen Chu's attention was caught by the Valkyrie armament encasing her body.

That ornate, sensuous armament was not clothing to him at all, but a complex lattice of energy, akin to an exoskeletal armor. It was the reason Amitya's strength had risen so drastically. The source of her power lay entirely in the Valkyrie armament. She was merely its vessel.

After all, even at his peak in the Fifth Heavenly Realm, Chen Chu had barely managed to contend with the Seventh when unleashing his full strength. Yet Amitya, upon awakening and breaking through to five-star, had leapt directly to the Ninth Heavenly Realm.

Still, this Valkyrie system, though seemingly formidable, had clear limits. Since all their strength was derived from the armament, their bodies, will, and souls remained untempered. They never underwent the life-stage metamorphoses that came with true breakthroughs.

This was why Valkyries and heroes of this world rarely lived longer than ordinary transcendent individuals. In essence, they were still just that: ordinary transcendents.

Fiorina, the dean of the Phantom God Faculty, smiled. "Amitya, congratulations on awakening your armament and becoming a true Valkyrie warrior. But rapid surges in power often bring loss of control. I will give you a live-combat lesson soon to help you master it."

Turning to Isabelle and the others, Fiorina added, "You will also come to the martial square. Witness for yourselves how a Valkyrie armament infused with divine power differs from your own."

Fiorina attributed Amitya's immense growth entirely to Chen Chu, believing it to be his strength resonating with the Valkyrie armament. This time, her guess was correct.

Amitya, whose strength had soared, naturally would not refuse. But just then, Chen Chu suddenly spoke. "Amitya, I have something I need to verify. I won't be watching the match."

These childish games held no interest for him. He had more important matters.

"...Chu, where are you going?" The purple-haired girl asked in surprise.

"The underground maze." Chen Chu released his power beneath his feet.

Boom!

The earth quaked for dozens of kilometers. The ground beneath him collapsed instantly, sending stones and soil shooting skyward. Shockwaves swept across heaven and earth like a storm.

The sudden upheaval drew cries of alarm from the students.

"Be careful!"

The illusory beasts behind the girls roared, their multicolored powers erupting as they shielded their masters from the rain of boulder-like debris.

When the dust finally cleared, everyone looked into the distance.

The ruins under Amitya's feet had vanished. It had been replaced by a pitch-black chasm a hundred meters wide, so deep that its bottom was invisible. Spider-web fissures spread outward in every direction.

Chen Chu had been left with no choice. With his divine abilities and principles sealed, he could only rely on physical strength. Yet even this single step, even concentrating his power underfoot, still devastated the terrain. Had he not restrained himself, the impact would have shattered a thousand kilometers around him.

A hundred kilometers from the Valkyrie campus, the World Tree Square erupted. A shadow streaked into the maze's stone gate amidst the rising dust.

On the fifteenth level of the underground maze, stone walls that had just mended trembled and collapsed again. Three minotaurs, each over ten meters tall, with dark red skin, scarlet eyes and broken stone axes in hand, snarled as they locked onto the black-haired youth emerging from the dust.

But before the three five-star demonic beings could act, an invisible, domineering force descended upon them.

Boom!

The three demonic beings exploded. In their place, a massive palm imprint a hundred meters wide and a thousand meters deep smashed through the maze level.

At the instant of their annihilation, Chen Chu sensed invisible fluctuations above him. Three streams of heavenly gift power appeared out of nowhere. A fraction vanished instantly, but the rest surged into his body.

Although the harvest from the three five-star demonic beings yielded no origin points, Chen Chu's face brightened with a radiant smile.

"From here on, it is slaughter time."

Boom!

A sonic boom split the air as Chen Chu accelerated to hundreds of times the speed of sound. His body seared the air, leaving behind a blazing red-blue plasma tail. This time, instead of piercing through to the next level, he smashed directly into the maze's passages and stone walls.

The impact shattered rock tens to hundreds of meters thick, melting it into magma that burst outward and turned the entire layer into a sea of fire. The maze's demonic beings shrieked in fury and alarm, but they had no chance to react. In the flash of red light, they were all reduced to ash.

Level after level fell to Chen Chu's rampage as he slaughtered every demonic being. More origin flooded into him with each wave, converted immediately into origin points. Soon the origin points on his attribute page had broken through to ten thousand, then twenty thousand...

However, before those origin points had even warmed, they obeyed Chen Chu's thought, flowed along the soul passage, and appeared inside the Dragon Emperor. They were transmuted into the primordial and world-creation power it needed.

***

A dignified, ferocious bellow echoed through the Sea of Chaos. A black veil of light unfurled at astonishing speed around the black-red colossal beast, whose body had swollen to thirteen million kilometers.

Instantly the Dragon Emperor's aura surged as it quietly exceeded the primordial star level. On the black-red beast's head, even the Silver Colossal Dragon, which was already accustomed to Ao Tian's heaven-defying talent, blinked in awe as it felt the Dragon Emperor's endlessly swelling aura.

Progress usually slowed when a colossal beast reached the late stages of cultivation; after the ancient titan level, advancing even a minor realm could take millennia. Yet the opposite was true for the Dragon Emperor. The stronger it grew, the faster it advanced.

Its growth would accelerate further upon reaching the primordial level.

Ao Tian's become even more monstrous!The Silver Dragon snorted, exhaling an icy blue chill. Its tail trembled with excitement. The Dragon Emperor's growth meant the being it was depending on was getting stronger.

***

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Deep within the earth, another level of the maze that occupied a different spatial plane collapsed from Chen Chu's all-out destruction. Whatever stood before Chen Chu exploded and shattered beneath that domineering fist; nothing could withstand it.

The invisible power fluctuations he emitted set the whole underground maze trembling.

The twentieth level's passages caved in, forming a parallel cavern that was kilometers wide. The twenty-first level ruptured into a twenty-thousand-kilometer planar fault. The passages going downward for dozens of kilometers were filled with rubble.

Since Chu aimed to slaughter every demonic being without leaving any alive, clearing even a single level took time. The huge commotion of his rampage alarmed many adventurers deep in the maze who had not yet withdrawn. They trembled, not knowing what was happening overhead.

It felt as if the entire maze were about to collapse.

On the fifty-fourth level, some distance from the path Chen Chu had smashed his way through, a party of seven rested with their backs to a forest. A campfire burned before them as they prepared supper.

Suddenly, one of the seven, a woman with long blue hair wearing a black-and-white Valkyrie armament, stood up and looked at the cavern ceiling tens of thousands of meters above them.

"Everyone, be careful."

The others sprang to their feet. A burly man whose aura radiated nine-star power looked to the blue-haired woman. "What is it, Your Majesty Estelle?"

Estelle frowned. "Did you hear something coming from above?"

"Hear something?" The others glanced at one another.

A youth with green hair, whose pressure matched the Ninth Heavenly Realm, hesitated. "Your Majesty, we didn't hear anything."

"Not at all?" Estelle frowned again, but her expression changed immediately as the invisible vibration from above intensified.

She decided. "Something's happening up there, and it's serious. We need to leave now."

"Leave? But, Your Majesty, we were about to push on to the fifty-fifth level."

"Yeah, it feels like a shame to go now," another admitted.

Several of the adventurers hesitated. These nine-star heroes rarely gathered, but they had all come when Estelle, the strongest of the Divine Blade faculty at the Valkyrie Academy and this generation's top nine-star Valkyrie, had called.

Their goal had been to investigate the underground maze down to at least the ninetieth layer, perhaps even to the Underground Palace of Evil Gods, and to uncover what lay there.

Success would make them legends in the adventuring world. Just as they were wavering, the floor trembled beneath their feet. The shaking grew stronger and stronger; even the overhead "sky" began to sway.

The heavy rock ceiling, spanning unknowable distances, cracked and fractured. Chunks of stone cascaded down with a crackling roar. The entire level erupted in unrest, and hidden demonic beings began hissing and howling in alarm.

"This is bad. What's happening?"

"Quick, pack up. Be ready to withdraw."

The six who had been hesitating were startled into action. But the tremor did not come from a single direction, but from every direction. For a moment, no one knew where to flee. They all looked at Estelle.

"We can't go down." Estelle's features were sharp and cold as she shook her head gravely. "This vibration is coming from the upper levels. Without knowing what's going on, recklessly going down to the fifty-sixth level could be even more dangerous. Going up isn't an option either. The passage to the fifty-third level is too far from here.

"Edith, deploy your Radiant Defense Array and prepare for danger. Tor, you monitor the ridgeline over there. If this anomaly is caused by a demon king, we'll snipe it from here."

The two nodded.

"Alright."

"No problem."

They arranged defenses, gathered power, and prepared to face the coming threat.

But as time passed, the shaking of the overhead world grew ever more violent, so much so that it no longer resembled the phenomenon caused by the appearance of a demon king.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The distant "sky" collapsed with a thunderous roar. Countless boulders fell from above, slamming into the earth; the shaking ground, choking dust, and howling winds soon drowned the underground basin.

The green-haired youth's face changed drastically as he staggered back through the dust, shouting, "Careful, something powerful has appeared over there. It's moving toward us!"

"Strike," Estelle barked, and dazzling ice-blue radiance burst from her.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The ground before them shattered. Dozens-of-meter-thick ice walls rose a hundred meters high, forming nine concentric crystalline ramparts. At the same time, the woman in the black cloak pressed both palms to the earth. A thick, white light screen rose around the group.

But the expected assault did not come. The dust slowly settled as everyone remained tense. A vague silhouette appeared on the outermost ice wall, growing clearer as the haze dispersed.

A young man with shoulder-length black hair and a handsome face stood with his hands behind his back and looked at them with an indifferent gaze.

A human!

Estelle and the others froze.

Did this youth cause the cataclysmic tremor that sounded like the world collapsing earlier?

Before anyone could speak, the black-haired youth flickered and vanished into thin air. A piercing sonic roar immediately filled their ears, accompanied by explosions that seemed to split heaven and earth.

Boom!

Massive passage walls in the distance, as thick as mountain ranges, collapsed. Scorching magma hissed as the howls of demonic creatures thundered through the void.

While Chen Chu was frantically massacring demonic beings and plundering over two hundred thousand points of world origin in just two hours, far beneath the endless crust, a pair of black eyes burning with flame suddenly opened.

"The seal... seems a little loose," a voice observed.

In the pitch-black void, another respectful, low voice replied, "My lord, you are awake."

The burning black-flame eyes shifted downward. Below, a figure rose in the dark void to a height of ten thousand kilometers. Its body was sheathed in black fine scales and crowned with a pair of curved bovine horns.

It knelt on one knee. Though immense, the figure's flesh had receded, leaving only a layer of skin clinging to its bones like a skeleton. It appeared extremely grotesque and dreadful.

"Celos, did you sense it?"

The skeletal figure bowed deeply and answered respectfully, "Great Lord of Darkness, I felt it as well. For reasons beyond me, the seal that suppressed your true form did indeed slacken for a moment."

The flame-burning gaze radiated a terrifying pressure; the voice that followed was deep and icy. "I hope this loosening of the seal is not an accident."

"If it continues at the current rate, I will be able to break free of the seal without waiting for those two Hell Apostles to arrive. When that time comes, I will wipe out the whole of humanity to avenge the hundreds of thousands of years of sealing."

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