The five Sorcerers climbed the mountain with slow, measured steps. They couldn’t afford to jump around or spread out, since they needed to keep the Corrupt Barrier perfectly synchronized to withstand the pressure.
Until...
"!"
The leader suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. The other four turned toward him, their eyes widening as they saw the man’s face lose all color, becoming pale as a corpse.
The perplexity on the leader’s face was almost grotesque. What the hell could possibly leave a high-level expert in such a state of absolute terror?
"You guys... behind... you guys..." he finally managed to stammer, his voice faltering.
The four spun around in alarm to face the mountainside. And the instant they raised their eyes, their minds froze.
A gigantic head floated just a few meters from their faces. It was so enormous that they couldn’t even see where the skull ended and the rest of the body began.
Two gigantic eyes stared directly at them.
The cold, vile light emanating from those pupils made the temperature of the air plummet, as if they had been thrown into the bottom of a frozen abyss.
’Hurry up! Run, you brainless idiots!’ Watching from the rocky crevice, Priam felt a genuine pang of distress at their sheer stupidity.
"RUN!" the leader roared in absolute desperation.
Without looking back, he turned around and leaped off the mountainside, letting the energy gale itself hurl him down the mountain as fast as possible.
The other four finally snapped out of their trance of terror and began falling and running with every ounce of strength they had left.
The Heavenly Beast merely watched its prey flee. Once the intruders had reached a reasonable distance across the ground, the creature opened its jaws wide... then fired a colossal net of pure flames.
’Perfect! The beast waited until they moved away because it doesn’t want to damage anything on the mountain!’ Priam smiled in ecstasy. The monster was protecting the place at all costs.
The web of fire woven by the beast was as dense as magma and maintained its perfect structure throughout its flight. Cutting through the air like a blazing lightning bolt, it reached the fugitives’ rear in the blink of an eye.
Realizing that dodging was impossible, the Sorcerers burned the essence of their power.
Black, profane runes ignited across their bodies, and their weapons tore through the air in blind desperation to stop the attack.
*BOOOOM!*
Watching from afar, Priam swallowed hard.
The instant their weapons touched the flaming net, they exploded into a thousand pieces. The web of fire didn’t even slow down: it simply swept over two of the Sorcerers, reducing them to clouds of ash and vaporized flesh before they even touched the ground.
In the face of such monstrosity, the men were nothing more than helpless ants, completely incapable of reacting. This was the overwhelming power of a Level 13 Heavenly Beast from the noblest and most brutal lineage—and one that had spent a long time absorbing the energy of the treasure within the mountain, increasing its power.
However...
"SON OF A BITCH!"
"DIE, YOU ABOMINATION!"
The three survivors roared in blind fury, unleashing their entire arsenal. Having overcome their initial shock, they proved why they were considered the elite of the Sorcerers’ command.
But, unfortunately for the group, the Heavenly Beast wasn’t specialized in the fire element—that attack had merely been a secondary display of power. Its true strength lay in the impenetrable rocky shell covering its body: it was an Earth-element Beast, blessed with an almost indestructible defense.
"?"
Suddenly, while analyzing the battle from a distance, Priam frowned when he noticed a bizarre fluctuation in the beast’s aura.
It only took him a second to identify the anomaly. After all, he had spent months dealing with that very thing in the abyss...
’Calamity Poison...’
Priam was certain: the Heavenly Beast was severely poisoned and fighting at the absolute limit of its strength to contain the necrosis.
’Fuck... these three might actually kill the beast! If I’d known it was weakened, I would’ve kicked its ass myself!’ Priam gritted his teeth.
But soon he shrugged; if he had attacked right away, he would never have discovered the conspiracy between the 8th Branch and the Sorcerers.
Luckily for him, the confrontation had turned into a brutal war of attrition. Both sides were locked in a bloody stalemate.
Without wasting a second, Priam began to move.
With Divine Concealment, he moved with millimetric caution, then began climbing the crystal mountain from the opposite side. He didn’t even dare use wind magic to speed himself up, avoiding any fluctuation that might alert the Beast.
*BANG! BOOM!*
Thunderous explosions made the valley and the skies tremble as the Sorcerers and the Beast exchanged devastating blows.
As he climbed, Priam noticed another change in the beast’s aura.
’The poison is spreading like fire through oil because of the physical exertion... This Beast knows it won’t survive, but it refuses to flee. Why the hell would a monster like this rather fight to the death?!’
Fleeing would have been easy for this Beast. It would lose the treasure in the mountain, but its survival instinct should have taken priority in a situation like this.
Within a few minutes, Priam reached the entrance of the great cave at the top.
Carried along by the chaos of the explosions outside, Priam silently entered the darkness of the cave.
...
...
...
"!"
Suddenly, his eyes widened at what was hidden deep inside.
’An egg!’
Resting on a stone pedestal stood a colossal egg over five meters tall, covered in a dense mineral shell. However, upon looking more closely between the grooves and cracks in the shell, Priam detected a subtle poisonous aura.
It was the Calamity Poison.
’This Heavenly Beast is a female... She must have already been contaminated when she laid this egg. The corruption ended up passing to her offspring before it was even born.’
Priam quickly approached. As he walked around the giant egg, he came across the true heart of the cave: a one-meter-diameter crystalline sphere floating in the air and emitting pulses of mystical light.
He swallowed hard as he felt the density of that aura. His mind frantically searched through the catalog of energies he had stored in his memory until his eyes lit up with a flash of recognition.
’Yes! This is a genuine Nature Beast Catalyst!’
It was a supreme treasure generated by the ecosystem itself—something that only emerged in extremely high-level primordial forests, after millennia of coexistence and the deaths of countless powerful beasts. The earth absorbed and refined the creatures’ vital essence, condensing it into a perfect core.
Its energy was incomparable, as it harmonized the essence and vitality of thousands of different species into a single artifact. It was a legendary resource, with practically limitless uses.
In this particular realm, it seemed that the Nature Beast Catalyst had the unique property of creating Wild Spirit Stones.
’So this is how everything started... The female found the Catalyst, dug it out, and brought it into her territory. The presence of the core triggered the valley’s natural phenomenon, attracting and fusing thousands of Wild Spirit Stones. Seeing this abundance, the Beast must have gathered and fused everything together with fire, creating the entire mountain as a shield.’
Apparently, the intelligence of this race of Heavenly Beasts was above average for such a great race.
Priam carefully observed the egg and noticed a crude and desperate energy bond, created by the mother herself between the Catalyst and her offspring.
’She knew she wouldn’t survive the poison for much longer. But since the offspring had only been superficially contaminated, she tried to use the pure vitality of the Catalyst to purge the corruption and keep it alive. The problem is...’ Priam let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head. ’A crude bond like this would never work in time. The poison is winning the race. The fetus inside the shell is already in critical condition.’
At that moment, Priam felt a hint of relief for not attacking the mountain head-on.
He snorted, taking responsibility with a firm expression.
’Alright... you can leave without regrets. I promise I’ll cure your child.’
Inside Priam’s inner space, Mirra felt a deep ache in her chest. The emotions in her soul overflowed as she witnessed this kindness.
Priam had already revealed the truth about her origins to her: he had found her in the same way, isolated inside an egg, and saved her to give her a dignified life. If it weren’t for him, she would have been raised as a tool, used by her own race.
Seeing the man she considered the most important person in her life show such pure compassion toward a helpless creature from another world made Mirra’s admiration for him reach an entirely new level.
Even the shield, which had silently watched everything the entire time, was impressed.
They were from different races, different worlds, and this offspring possibly had an almost animalistic intelligence, to the point that ordinary people couldn’t connect with it. But Priam didn’t care and treated it with kindness.
Was this really an invader? Outsiders normally saw the natives with indifference and distance, without caring in the slightest. But this young man was different.
Priam approached the egg and took out his Life Ring, enveloping the structure in a gentle light and transporting the entire thing inside the artifact.
**KBOOOOOM!**
At that exact moment, a monumental explosion echoed from outside, making the rocky structure of the cave tremble down to its foundations.
The battle outside had finally come to an end.
Without wasting any time, Priam used his sealing techniques to isolate the energy of the Nature Beast Catalyst, carefully storing the floating sphere before shooting toward the exit.
Absolute silence now reigned over the valley.
All that energy-laden wind had disappeared as well. Everything had been caused by the Catalyst.
As he emerged from the cave and swept the battlefield with his perception, Priam’s eyes narrowed.
Four Sorcerers were dead, their shattered bodies scattered among the rocks.
Only the Leader had managed to escape, leaving behind a thick trail of black, corrupted blood—the bastard had paid an exorbitant price in his own essence to escape in desperation.
A little farther ahead, the gigantic carcass of the Heavenly Beast lay motionless.
Priam walked toward it.
The smell of poison and burnt blood was suffocating. Its colossal eyes were open, and its rocky body remained motionless, but Priam could sense one last, agonizing spark of consciousness resisting deep within the creature.
Priam stopped a few meters from its head and held its gaze.
"You can rest in peace. I’ll take care of your egg and get rid of the poison. My vice-leader is going to love this gift, and she’ll raise it with the same love as a mother."
Upon hearing those words, a pale, serene glow shone deep within the vertical pupils of the Heavenly Beast. It was as if it had understood Priam’s words.
Then, the last spark of life finally went out.
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