Lian remained floating in silence in the red darkness of the river depths, keeping his fingers on the egg’s surface.
Its surface was warm, not like stone, not like metal, but like the skin of a living creature.
Right at that moment, the book of treasure exploded, not literally, but all its golden pages began to tremble with an intensity that Lian had never seen before.
The golden lines on the pages lit up, information appeared and then disappeared, appeared again.
As if even the book itself was having trouble identifying what was in front of it.
Lian had never seen such a thing before, he did not know if this was normal or a very rare event, he did not have much information about this book himself.
But if he was going to bet, he would bet that it was an extremely rare event that perhaps even the Vorhelms had never seen the book behave this way.
A few seconds later, the information lines finally stabilized.
[ Unknown Lifeform Detected ]
[ Classification Failed ]
[ Name Identified ]
[ The Devourer of Devourers ]
[ Status: Dormant ]
[ Growth Stage: Embryonic ]
[ Threat Assessment: Impossible ]
Lian’s eyes narrowed.
"Devourer...?"
"Devourer of Devourers?"
The information had no other explanation.
No rank, no value, no threat level, and not even a description of what this creature exactly was.
Only a name.
The Devourer of Devourers.
A name that sounded more like a legend than a living creature.
Lian stayed there for a few moments, trying to review all the information he had in his mind about all the Ruined Realms, legendary creatures and ... to see if he could find any information about such a thing or not, and the result was already clear, this egg was still unknown.
"What should I do with it?" What could he do with an unknown egg? An egg that even the Celestial Book of Treasure could not determine its value?
If it was someone else, they would probably leave the egg behind.
But he was not that kind of person, if the book of treasure had reacted this much to find something, its value was unimaginable.
But his intuition warned him that this egg was very dangerous, more dangerous than anything he could think of.
His gaze went toward the massive shadow in the distance, the Abyssal River Drake, the Fallen monster was still patrolling around the area.
Fortunately, it was far away, but it was unknown how long this situation would last.
So he made his decision, without the slightest hesitation he touched the egg, the next moment the egg disappeared and went into his storage space.
And at that same moment... the entire river trembled, a weak tremor, but real, as if it had lost its heart.
Lian’s eyes opened wide, his heart stopped for a moment, his gaze immediately went toward the Fallen monster.
The massive creature raised its head for a moment, its several dozen meter long body moved through the red water current and moved even further away.
Lian even stopped breathing, but fortunately the monster continued on its path again.
It had not noticed anything, or at least it had not noticed yet.
"I have to go." He did not stay there for even one more second.
Abyss Veil was still active and his body moved through the heavy water current.
On the way back, a few River Fang Eels came out from beside the rocks.
Massive eels with metal teeth, but this time Lian did not even look at them, he had no time to fight and no reason to.
His only goal was to get out of the river, as fast as possible, as far away as possible, he did not know how that monster would react when it realized the egg was no longer there.
But he was sure it was not going to be a good reaction.
A few minutes later, he finally emerged from the water surface, the open air rushed into his lungs, he sat on the ground and breathed a sigh of relief.
Water droplets were dripping from his hair, his gaze went toward the river again.
There was no sign of pursuit, no sign that the theft had been noticed yet.
"Good... very good." Lian let out a quiet sigh, the theft operation had been successful, but it was unclear how long it would last.
Then he got up, it was time to return.
The closer he got to the battlefield, the louder the sounds of war became.
Roars, explosions, screams.
When he finally reached the main area, even he himself stopped for a moment.
The battlefield no longer looked like a forest, it looked like hell, hundreds of Ironfang corpses lay on the ground.
Blood covered the entire area, massive trees were broken, the ground had collapsed dozens of meters due to spells and explosions.
But the operation had almost succeeded.
Almost.
Only two Fallen monsters remained.
[ Fallen Ironfang Alpha ]
[ Level 28 ]
[ Fallen Ironfang Tyrant ]
[ Level 29 ]
Both were drenched in blood but still fighting, and both had become more dangerous than ever because both had entered the berserk state.
Their metal skin was covered with a layer of blood, the [ Blood Sucking Skin ] skill was active.
Every drop of blood that settled on their bodies was absorbed into their natural armor, and the more blood they absorbed, the stronger they became.
Swords sparked on their bodies and spells barely penetrated their flesh.
Then one of them took a deep wound, and right at that moment Blood Frenzy was activated.
The monster’s eyes became redder, its muscles swelled, and its speed almost doubled, a level twenty-six hunter had no chance to react.
The monster’s claw passed by his body and the man was thrown back right there.
Everyone understood that these two monsters, on the verge of death, were much more dangerous than at the start of the battle, suddenly the Fallen Ironfang Tyrant raised its head.
Then it activated Ravager Roar, a massive roar shook the entire field.
The air trembled, a few low-level students knelt right there, the mana of some people was completely disrupted for a few seconds.
Even a few people ran back in panic, but the high-level hunters remained standing and the battle continued.
In the center of the field, the female commander was engaged with the Tyrant.
Her massive sword crushed the monster’s armor with every strike, but the monster kept fighting.
At that same moment, Lian entered the field, not to save anyone, not to play the hero.
But for EXP, he entered from the flank and his body moved like a shadow through the chaos, it is true that he could not defeat them alone.
But if there was a powerful group, he could still help them defeat these two monsters.
[ Thunder Calamity ] gathered on his arm.
Thunder twisted around his fist, then he threw his punch.
An explosion.
The monster was pushed back several full meters.
Everyone was shocked for a moment, Rhea who was fighting from a distance looked with disbelief.
"This crazy guy again..."
But she had no time to think more, because immediately she attacked again.
Blazing Charge was activated.
Her flaming sword sank into the Fallen Alpha’s body, from the other side Zak appeared.
Shadow Sever.
His blade passed through the armor crack, Kael was also not idle, dozens of thunder spears fell from the sky one after another.
The entire field lit up, all the remaining awakened ones regardless of their level were helping to defeat these two remaining Fallen ones.
Bren stood with his shield against direct attacks, and Elias was treating the wounded without stopping in the back of the field.
Everyone fought together, everyone attacked together, and finally the result appeared.
The Fallen Ironfang Alpha was the first to fall.
Its massive body fell to the ground after the final strike.
The ground trembled but the battle was not over yet, everyone focused their attention on the Tyrant, the level twenty-nine monster was still resisting.
But the number of its enemies was too many, out of the thousands of awakened ones who had come, many of them were still alive and were attacking this Fallen one simultaneously.
It did not matter how powerful it was, standing against this many humans was practically impossible for it.
One strike.
Two strikes.
Dozens of spells.
Hundreds of attacks.
In the end, even it could not hold on, its massive body trembled and its red eyes went dark, and with a heavy sound it fell to the ground.
Silence.
After hours of fighting, silence covered the field... the cleansing operation had succeeded.
But at that very moment... inside Lian’s storage space... something else happened.
The egg... the Devourer’s egg, began to pulse.
Once, just once, but that one pulse was enough.
Lian felt it, as if something inside the egg had awakened and was hungry, very hungry.
He felt something inside that egg... wanted to devour all the living and dead creatures that were here.