Chapter 1,257. (Patreon)

Faith and determination strong enough to move mountains failed to make the rusty sword so much as stir. Joanna railed at her weakness, her failure to fulfill her duty. What good was finishing her seal if it didn't let her protect her Emperor and fend off his enemies? Was this the reward awaiting her companions after risking their lives to bring her here?

It wasn't right, but Joanna was all out of ideas. The [Orionis Blade] wasn't an enemy that the [Eight Hells Suppression] could overcome. Her unsealed gates were already wide open, and she was trading Longevity for strength. She'd even brought out her master's avatar in hopes her presence would subdue the reticent sword. If anything, it fought back with increased ferocity.

Trembling muscles tore from the blade's violent rejection, and her bones crackled like chestnuts roasting. Her physical suffering was nothing compared to the agony of ancient faith punishing her attempt to subvert its existence. The pain only made her dig deeper and push harder. She couldn't stop, not while her companions were still fighting to keep the hope alive.

It was futile. Joanna felt like she was back on those heavenly stairs, knowingly walking toward her death. Joanna didn't fear death any more after finding her path. She only felt regret as she fell to her knees. She wished she could have contributed more to the mission and Earth's safety. She wished she could have fought by his side a while longer.

He appeared in a cascade of starlight, no different than a divine revelation before a devout believer. A blinding light shook Joanna's muddled mind awake, and answered prayers filled her drained body with power. Nothing could withstand her Emperor's descent. The swarm of puppets collapsed when a wave of celestial might swept through their ranks.

A hand made from starlight appeared over hers, and Joanna felt born anew. The waning stream pouring into the [Orionis Blade] was reinvigorated with boundless energy and profound, steadfast faith. All rust and corruption were burnt away, and hostile beliefs guarding the battery submitted to the Emperor's will. It was ready.

The imperial apparition faded, leaving a burst of images and a short message. 'Good job. Save her.'

Joanna gripped the sword, her mind unprecedentedly clear. She didn't care about the fantastical transformation her accumulated faith was undergoing. She was the Emperor's spear, and she had her orders. She closed her eyes, becoming starlight and death.

The deadly streak emerging from a hidden chute arced, passing right by the misshapen creature banging against the gate. Its cruel aura filled Joanna with renewed hatred, yet she kept going with blinding speed. She only had a few seconds, even with the Emperor's assistance. The stellar sword entered the torn wall further down. Joanna could feel her target was close, but another enemy was in the way.

Ancient, boundless, Killing Intent emerged from the [Gate of Imperial Mandate], and the waxing starlight rallied while gaining a reddish hue. The shadows cast by the twisted metal suddenly looked like wretched figures locked in eternal suffering after going against the Empire.

The Foreign God didn't get the chance to react before the bloodthirsty [Orionis Blade] punched through its chest, leaving a hole dozens of miles across. An ocean of corruption poured out of the wound, triggering a fierce resistance by the lingering starlight. Joanna neither had the strength nor time to finish the job.

Only a thin sliver of her blade remained, and it had a designated target. The weapon passed through over a dozen layers of reinforced metal without slowing down. She was wielding the final judgment of the Centurion Base, and nothing would bar her path. Then, she was inside a vast empty space, faced with the same creature shown in the burst of images.

The [Orionis Blade] looked smaller than a mote of dust when it stabbed into the slumbering puppet's forehead. However, the final spurt of energy was the most refined. The purple scar was cauterized and closed, ending the corruption. Joanna felt her consciousness fade and used her last scraps of energy to impale a teeming mass of invasive energy further in.

Killing Intent, Faith, and starlight spread like wildfire, and the purple taint was helpless before their wrath. Joanna grinned as she toppled over, her connection severed. Mission accomplished.

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Zac exhaled as he withdrew from the [Orionis Platform]. Joanna had gone above and beyond, not only destroying the Qriz'Ul consciousness but leaving a nasty wound on a Foreign God. The hole was already closing, but the sudden strike gave the invaders pause.

Even the God trying to break through the octagon's defenses had stopped throwing itself against the wall of faith, warily looking around for more stellar swords. Zac could still feel its intense desire for destruction and knew it was a temporary reprieve. There was a deep-seated hatred driving the Foreign Gods, and Zac doubted any threat would make them back down.

Zac didn't continue igniting the beacon despite the pressing danger. He was already seeing double after activating the first four towers. Fury and anxiety could only take one so far, and helping Joanna activate the sword had worsened his condition. Any more, and his soul would break down before reaching the finish line.

He was only at the halfway line, with three outer towers and the central spire remaining. The Centurion Base's systems weren't designed to be controlled by a Hegemon, and its dilapidated state only made the process harder.

Boxes and vials appeared around Zac, who swallowed a mix of soul-nurturing pills and Natural Treasures. A chaotic yet nurturing torrent entered his mind, sweeping away exhaustion and replenishing his Mental Energy. It would take a while for the explosive concoction to kick in, and Zac used the downtime to focus on the other threat.

The Foreign Gods were temporarily subdued. The pope was not, and he'd almost made it through the barriers while Zac worked on the [Orionis Blade]. Zac wracked his mind in search of a similar solution to the cultist's activities, coming up short when rifling through the mountains of information.

Zac suddenly had an idea, and streaks of clarity protected by the Void pierced through the swirl of medicinal energy to enter his Soul Cores. The unapproachable mess of information transmitted from the solar flares was laid bare by Ultom's insight, and thousands of seemingly unrelated notations joined into a plan.

Pushing his mind into the outer tower, Zac rerouted a series of pathways while releasing bursts of stellar energy in empty chambers. The innocuous actions accumulated into a wave of change rippling through the region, and dozens of formations came alive. The faltering barrier was replaced by one much stronger, and miles of fleshy tendrils were torn apart by a flash of light. A feral roar bursting with fury shook the tower, and the pope wildly looked around.

Suddenly, it was as though he was looking straight into Zac's eyes. The solar flare transmitting information on the Ascension Chamber collapsed, and Zac stumbled when a wave of brutality and madness crashed against his mind, leaving cracks across his Soul Cores. He unsteadily back to his feet, thanking his lucky stars the array only transmitted a fraction of the force in the pope's aura.

The hastily devised plan worked. His series of alterations had managed to trick the chamber into thinking someone was already inside, which activated another set of barriers. Like the Foreign Gods, it was only a temporary solution. It wouldn't take long for the room to reset, and Zac didn't dare turn his attention in that direction again.

Shutting down the Ascension Chamber entirely was out of the question. There were countermeasures and redundancies installed to ensure smooth ascension, and most of its features were detached from the Centurion Beacon. The only way to guarantee success was to disable the whole tower, but that would also deactivate the beacon.

Zac still needed a while longer to absorb the medicine, so he extracted more epiphanies from [Purity of the Void]. The insight had allowed him to accomplish miracles with random data, and he hoped the other solar flares hid a way to lessen his strain.

One by one, the flares were disassembled and analyzed. It didn't take long to accrue a much deeper understanding of the Centurion project than the [Foreign Gods] tome ever did. Zac even managed to combine thousands of snippets into an account of the Centurion Base's final days. There was both good news and bad.

As expected, the Centurion Project was still in an experimental stage. It had still been in active development when the System awoke. Facing the Dark Age without warning, the leadership chose to seal the base and send it into the depths of the Void. They left only a skeleton crew and the research teams to continue the work while the rest set off toward the Limitless Empire's nearest capital, fearing they faced a powerful enemy.

The Heavens had gone dark, but the Lost Plane was unaffected by the System's awakening. The Centurion Base was already connected to the discarded fragment, and its corrosive influence grew worse by the day. The caretakers lasted less than a thousand years before they all succumbed. They'd tried to finish the project, but they'd ended up doing more harm than good.

The biggest issue of severing the puppets' dependence on the Lost Plane without losing their signature strength was already solved. The next step was to fully integrate them with the current Heavens and allow them to draw energy and sustenance from the environment like a cultivator. Currently, the puppets relied on the specific energy of the Centurion Star to function. Anything else clashed with their bodies' unique composition.

In other words, one dependency had replaced another, which wasn't what the Centurion Project envisioned. The Starfall Court was aiming much higher. Their goal was to use the Lost Plane to raise Foreign Gods like cattle and station their Eternal Guardians in every corner of the Empire. That wouldn't work if the puppets had to return to the remote star to recharge.

That was the problem the caretakers tried to solve. Only, they were already half-mad from spending too much time inside the Dead Dao, leading to addled ideas like the puppet Vilari kept in check. It was the researchers who'd implanted the breach into its forehead, hoping to use the Lost Plane as a mobile battery. A dozen more puppets were destroyed during similar experiments, including one of the two Elder God puppets.

The good news was that there were still more than enough puppets in working condition, and their unmatched constitutions held enough energy to keep going for decades on a single charge. That was more than enough time to deliver a devastating blow to the Kan'Tanu, especially if they could take out the pope before setting out.

Taking charge of the whole puppet army was unfortunately out of the question. Like Joanna, he could only bring out a fraction of the Centurion Beacon's power at his current level. Sending out multiple batches with rest in between was also impossible since the energy from the tracker had already been expended. Not to mention, Zac wasn't convinced the worn base would last much longer. It was already well past its expiration date, and the recent activity was adding insult to injury.

Zac finally recovered enough Mental Energy to continue his work. At that point, the tremors from the Foreign God's attacks had already resumed. Zac could even sense its aura through the protective web of sunlight. Half the solar flares were unfettered, leaving Zac blinded regarding much of the base. It didn't impact his work beyond acting like a countdown. So far, only non-critical sections were affected, but he was running low on those.

The understanding attained through [Purity of the Void] became Zac's saving grace. It allowed him to grasp the underlying points rather than blindly follow a plan that didn't quite work with the base in its current state. Thousands of energy channels were rerouted, drastically lessening the leakage and damage, and the process became as much a matter of skill as grit.

The measured approach made the ignition take a full minute instead of a few seconds. In exchange, Zac only expended a fifth as much Mental Energy, and he kept going without pause. The sixth tower was in slightly worse condition, but not to the point it made activation impossible. Uncaring of the long-term damage, Zac even flooded residential corridors with starlight, turning them into makeshift energy circuits.

A deafening clap of thunder shook the octagon just as the sixth bonfire ignited, and Zac almost blacked out when an overwhelming amount of information flooded his mind. The Ascension Chamber had already been breached and activated, and there was nothing Zac could do to stop the pope's actions. Vast clouds seething with fury gathered overhead.

It was only a matter of time before the first bolts descended. Seeing it was a Dao Confirmation wasn't enough to lift Zac's spirit. The pope's breakthrough caused even more instability than Zac had anticipated, with pieces of the outer ring completely collapsing from the pressure.

Heaven's descent also pushed the Foreign Gods into a frenzied state, and the faith barrier groaned under the assault. More and more corruption found its way past the defenses, and Zac's hair stood on end from its aura. It was refined Dead Dao released by the Foreign God himself, far more dangerous than the purple mist they'd dealt with before. 

An urgent inquiry confirmed Joanna remained unconscious, and Carl still couldn't access any major weaponry. Zac could only rely on himself, and there was no more time to worry about finesse. Zac felt like his soul was being ripped apart from forcibly activating the final beacon, triggering a drastic change in the chamber.

The sun, which had remained locked atop the spire, looked like it was melting. Liquid gold dripped onto the spire and was absorbed, and thousands of previously hidden runes lit up. The seven bonfires surrounding them were next. One by one, they poured into the spire, adding further strength to the runes.

Zac's heart sank when one rune after another dimmed. He only somewhat calmed down when just over twenty runes remained, each emitting a stable light. All that work, and he only managed to rally one percent of the Centurion Beacon's true strength. It would have to be enough.

Direction and purpose poured into the spire, with Zac picturing the Foreign Gods and Kan'Tanu Pope. The runes fused one after another, turning into an unbreakable set of orders. A fifth of the runes were used up to brand the trio as targets to be eradicated, which was more than Zac had hoped for.

It meant he could send out five puppets at most, but only if he limited their orders to deal with the immediate threat. Zac duplicated the instructions after a brief deliberation. Two puppets would have to do.

From there, Zac infused the increasingly complex runes with his experiences in the Imperial Graveyard, warning of the dangers it posed. Finally, he imprinted the Zurbor Sector and the varying auras of the Kan'Tanu Chapters, marking their heretical path as enemies of the Empire. Zac grunted and was forced back a step right in the middle of the transfer, making him realize he'd run out of runes.

Zac had no way of telling how well the overly succinct orders would work. The only way to find out was by putting theory into practice. Taking a stabilizing breath, he pushed the tremendous amounts of energy held in the spire downward, where the Eternal Guardians waited.

Pragmatism overcame greed. Zac reluctantly ignored the enormous Elder God placed at the bottom of the tower, knowing his crude command runes were utterly insufficient to awaken that behemoth. Instead, he picked two puppets just slightly larger than the Foreign Gods, balancing power with control.

The runes sank into the depths of the slumbering giants until they reached the center of their extraordinary network of linked arrays. They seamlessly merged with the core like the final piece of a puzzle, and a surge of primordial force rose through the tower. The puppets lived up to their name. There was not a mark of time on their ancient bodies. They were ready to serve long after their masters had passed on.

Zac drew a ragged breath as two links were erected. He felt as though a primordial fire from the dawn of time replaced his ichor, and he saw the world through new eyes. His body held the power to shatter mountains and overturn seas. Not even the churning clouds above were safe from his might. They actually froze when coming in contact with the majestic aura pouring out of the tower.

The Eternal Guardians had awakened for one final mission.