Part 4

*Michael’s Perspective*

“Stop staring at it and run!” I rushed past the dozens of soldiers that were still somehow alive and grabbed Amber’s left arm, pulling her along with me. Yeah, it takes a lot for me to ‘run’ to or from anything. However, the scariest things are the ones you literally can’t kill.

As she looked back one more time, Amber eventually turned towards me with her dragon-skull helmet sealed shut and telepathically asked: “Why do I feel so dizzy?”

“Don’t think about it! Just keep moving!” Eventually, she started to realize how dangerous the situation was and stopped fucking around. Once she was sprinting on her own, I was able to use the winds swirling around me to increase my speed even faster and was practically flying down into the depths of that seemingly endless tunnel.

Behind us was a massive wave of rainbow-colored mucus, which almost seemed to be speeding up the faster we tried to escape. Why would I be afraid of some weird slime juice deluge? Well, because it obviously wasn’t that simple.

“Goddess embrace me!” A huge contingent of nearly ten thousand Level-3 warriors were trying to clog up the tunnel and hold us back. However, before they even got close to us, just the radiant aura coming from behind us was enough to make them explode into crimson mist. Their bloody essence and mana was ripped apart, turning into thin streams that avoided us as we charged through their ranks. I didn’t even have to turn around to understand what was happening.

“Don’t look back! Don’t stop running!” I roared into Amber’s mind as I lifted up off the ground completely and sheathed my sword. At a certain point we reached a fork in the tunnel and my instincts were telling me to go left, Amber tried to as well, but I quickly grabbed her arm and pulled her to the right.

“Don’t trust your eyes or ears! Hell, don’t trust any of your senses! Just stay with me!” I could feel the tsunami behind us ‘calling’ to me, similar to what I felt from that left passage. It was natural in a way. The temptation of power.

A soft and feminine voice whispered in my left ear, “Why are you so afraid of me, Daddy?”

Then there was a deep and masculine voice speaking in my right ear, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But what if you just stand still and wait for the other point to come to you instead? Much easier, just way harder.”

“Don’t listen to the voices Amber! Whatever the fuck they’re saying, ignore it! Keep moving! Don’t stop!” Although I said that, it didn’t really seem necessary at that point. The fiery tigress was even faster than me, and once we made a few twists and turns, she started to figure out the tricks as well.

“I remember this one time, long-ass time ago… Hah~, we used to play a game called Planetary Bingo.” It sounded like Anael this time, but well, her adult voice: “Remember that shit Mike? Back then, we’d pluck out twenty-four random planets and a decent star… Then we’d make a fuckin’ solar system for kicks and giggles. Whatever happened to those bingo cards anyway? Hell, I forgot the rules. I think the number was based on the moons or something like that? Kanael always came up with the most stupidly elaborate games… I really miss that kid. I wonder if she’s still around?”

The farther away from the rainbow river we got, the lower the mana density and ultimately, the less hallucinations I was having. Eventually, we made it to a wide open caldera and soared up into the air. That massive amount of hellish goo was finally diffused and unable to directly devour us anymore.

In case you were wondering, that liquid was at least Level-8 in Mana Density. There was Level-7 mist just wafting off of it, and that was why we were both affected so dramatically even without touching the ‘water’.

By the way, that caldera was a massive underground city. ‘Was’… Of course, once it was flooded with the rainbow devil-sauce, everything was washed away. All the pain and suffering, the slaves and masters, the innocent children and evil old fucks. Everybody just turned into crimson mush and was sucked into the body of that omega-slime.

Oh well! I wanted to help the poor bastards, but ended up erasing another city from existence. Honestly felt like par for the course at that point. Then again, the reason why the Fire Elves were so fervently expanding above-ground was probably because they understood that their ‘Goddess’ was waking up.

“What do we do?!” Amber roared as she used four jets of materialized flames to float over next to me. By materialized, I mean Creation Magic, rather than simple Manipulation of already present particles and matter in the air. There was so much damn mana in the air around us that even heavy and refined metal alloys like steel could be fabricated, much less a bit of oxygen or hydrogen.

“If Armageddon wakes up, that’s it. We’re all fucked. It’s a goddamn dragon-spaceship big enough that multiple continents are literally growing out of its body. The planet itself could be ripped apart depending on the circumstances, so we can’t just leave. Right now, it looks like we’re… Well, this is essentially just a pile of ‘dead skin’. Or maybe part of some molted scales and hair. That giant angry slimy goop down there is the equivalent of some sweat, blood, cum or piss that was attached to the tiny scale that was casually shed by Armageddon.”

Part 5

*Michael’s Perspective*

It’s best not to think about it. How insignificant we all are compared to other, bigger, stronger things. Whether they’re organizations, planets or stars, what’s the point in that? Most people are far too busy just trying to survive with what they have, that they never even hope to improve their own state of existence. And ultimately, it’s usually unnecessary anyway.

Even if you’re like me, and have ‘tasted’ the power of a god before. Experienced the intoxication of pursuing ultimate power and actually achieving it. Unfortunately, it never lasts. Nothing ever does. Because once you reach the top, you realize that those tiny little lives that appear and vanish within a moment… Every single person has value.

Just like how a human requires trillions of cells to simply exist. Even though those cells constantly replicate, grow and die without you even realizing it, they’re never ‘meaningless’. Sometimes a single mutated cell can grow into a disaster that destroys your entire life. While the smallest sperm or egg cell might create the most precious thing in your entire world.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: “Amber, ignore the lizards and come on! We need to keep moving!” 

Yeah, she wasn’t even slightly concerned about the fact that we were inside of an enormous ancient monstrosity’s dead scales and fur. Instead, she just casually followed me down deeper into the abyss, occasionally stopping to snack on an Earth Dragon or weird mutated demonic octopus. Because the mana density was so high, there were creatures living and thriving everywhere we went. Mushrooms that looked like really fat pale-skinned elves, vines that bore grapes that were shaped like snake-heads, poisonous sentient fog… The fiery tigress wanted to taste-test every new thing she discovered.

“Grrr~! Michael… How much farther do we need to go?” She was running down the seemingly endless tunnel a few meters in front of me, holding a meter long black-scaled iguana-like creature in her right gauntlet, with a yellow salamander in the left. Eventually she decided to chomp down on the salamander and tossed the baby obsidian dragonling away. Small wasp-like transparent wings fluttered on its back and the little critter zoomed away into a crack in the wall, obviously fleeing for its life.

Even the insects and other tiny creatures we came across were at least at Level-4, while the mana-density was constantly getting higher the deeper we went underground. Every now and then we’d meet with one of those apocalypse slimes and have to escape, so our progress was relatively slow. After all, the ground, ceiling and walls in some places were incredibly brittle, while others were nearly indestructible. It would be impossible for me to simply use Earth Manipulation to dig a hole straight down, or I would’ve done that in the first place.

“I have no fucking idea.” I snickered and grumbled, “All I know is that the further down we go, the faster we move in relation to the surface. Time is already dilated so much that I can barely communicate with Lorelei and Raelin anymore. Our kids should be doing fine though. A little chaotic up there, but well, that’s life.”

“Our cubs are strong. When Dark Star grows up, he will make a good Pride Lord. Hmmm, why can’t we just teleport?” Amber slowed down to a jog, and so did I. We couldn’t run nonstop forever after all. Our bodies were heavy on their own, but the armor and weapons we carried were also weighing us down.

I sighed and finally came to a stop at a wider part of a cavernous tunnel. There was no ambient light, but we didn’t need to ‘see’ with our eyes anyway. The mana in the air was thick, but not to the point where it could fully suppress our auras. Tiny strands of mana reached out from our armor like long tentacles and caressed our surroundings constantly. Well, aside from that, our pauldrons and helmets had magical searchlights built into them. And Amber’s sense of smell, combined with my hearing, were enough to navigate through pretty much anywhere.

“I’ve said this a thousand times. We can’t just teleport places.” I snickered and explained once again, “There are loads of different teleportation methods. And it should be ‘possible’ to freely teleport from one spot to another if you have enough Mana, but we don’t. Aside from that, you’d need to have coordinates or we’d just end up in outer space somewhere or maybe inside of solid rock. Speaking of which, that’s probably what happened to Armageddon in the first fucking place! The stupid space ship probably teleported away or towards somewhere for some reason, and then accidentally got trapped inside of a planet. If we want to teleport, the best-case scenario is just finding a teleportation array that’s already set up and hopefully not broken. Otherwise who the hell knows where we’d end up?”

The golden-armored tigress growled, “What about the crystal roots? Those manawells you talk about all the time? If we’re on the Earth, can’t we just… Do what we do with the trees? Touch the ground and teleport to another deeper cave?”

“Well…” I walked over to the wall that she was touching with her left gauntlet, “If we actually came across a Manawell, then maybe. But the problem is that we’re not actually on ‘Earth’ right now. So we can’t even cheat that way. In fact, we’re not even touching Armageddon yet… However, the temporal and gravitational distortions are already pretty chaotic. And it’s only going to get worse the closer we get. Once we’re inside of ‘Her’, let’s just say that in our current state, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish much anyway. Instead of rushing blindly into the abyss, we really need to slow down and prepare ourselves first.”

Amber took off her dragon-skull helmet and sat down on the ground, leaning up against the wall. Then she yawned and asked, “So we can take a nap now? I’m too tired to think anymore.”

“Umm, sure. Let’s just take a nap in the middle of this extremely dangerous tunnel that could be flooded with slime at any moment…” 

And she was already snoring before I finished complaining. To be fair though, she just recovered from a catastrophic injury, then we were forced to run, fly and fight with barely any rest for days on end. I was a little better off, but we were both pretty exhausted. Technically we could use mana to keep our bodies revitalized and healthy for several weeks without sleeping or eating, but neither of us were ‘that’ kind of masochistic.

In order to avoid dying in our sleep, I decided to keep watch while sitting down next to Amber. The two of us were still mostly armored, just in case we needed to get up and go immediately, but we both took off our helmets at the very least. With my nose, mouth, eyes and ears completely unprotected, it was obviously slightly dangerous. At the same time though, my senses were all much more powerful without the interference. I was also able to absorb the atmospheric Mana far more easily and quickly.

It was time to finally take that last step… The two of us had been stuck at ‘Level-6’ for far too long.