“We only have one single minute in each month that we can use to escape,” Shan murmured and grimaced, “and that woman chose such timing to fight Angor so that we can’t get away. Damn it all!”
“Stop complaining. Let’s find that core and kill Erdus. Otherwise, we are all gonna die in here,” said Keely.
“We don’t even know where it is! And we don’t have near enough time to look around randomly.”
“Meow!”
Angor heard Luna’s voice and remembered that the cat was unaffected by the illusion.
Maybe Luna can help us?
He thought Luna meant to tell them something, but when he looked that way, he noticed that Luna was busy hanging on Keely’s clothes so that it wouldn’t get flushed away by water currents. The creature just meowed out of panic.
Angor reached out a hand to grab the small feline. With a stable footing, Luna slowly calmed down and huddled up into a ball in Angor’s arm.
Keely was quite surprised that Luna was fine staying with someone that they barely spent time with. Usually, other than its master, Luna would slap anyone who attempted to touch it.
“Hey Luna, do you know how to find Erdus’ core?” Angor asked the kitten.
The others all looked this way curiously. They knew that Luna was the only one among them that could resist the illusion. Even Angor had to eject his soul to escape from the effect.
When Luna saw itself becoming the center of attention, its black fur puffed up and the creature hopped back to Keely’s feet.
Then it slowly shook its head at everyone while it trembled a little.
“Luna says no. There are too many different smells mixed around us,” Keely explained.
Nausica held her chin and thought about how Luna struggled with water earlier. “Maybe we can follow the flow of water? Since Erdus needs to draw in water every now and then, surely we can get closer to its center by doing so?”
“Good idea, actually. We’re still standing outside its skin, right? Then we can enter its body in this way.” Angor nodded. He then added, “But we can’t follow the water to the end because that will take us to its stomach where deadly acid or something dangerous is at.”
“So... what’s your opinion?”
Any ordinary people in a life-threatening situation would quickly break down under such pressure, but Angor did not. He felt calmer than ever.
“I do have an idea, but we still need to enter Erdus first.”
He took the lead and dived into a small hole where all the water was going.
Everyone followed.
Using Keely’s embers, they noticed that the “cave walls” around them slowly turned into a bright orange color.
“We’re inside now,” Angor said. He then checked the wall again and calculated their distance before he looked at Nausica. “Now we depend on you to find the core.”
“Uh, me?”
“There are still illusion nodes here that will prevent us from sensing anything. Your mechanical arm, however, does not trigger them. So, you can lead us by feeling where Erdus’ heartbeats are coming from.”
“I see... Leave it to me.”
Nausica wanted to provide something to the team since she had been receiving everyone’s help instead of contributing. Now, she got a chance to do so.
At first, someone still had doubts about the efficiency of this plan. After Nausica helped them find a lot of the hidden paths, they were soon convinced by the plan. These paths were all concealed behind superb illusions that even Angor could not see through without assistance.
After walking through several more narrow routes, they entered a water-free area where lots of spiderweb-like objects were located.
While walking, Gank accidentally stepped on and crushed a “spider web”; this caused brief turbulence in the surroundings as if an earthquake were coming.
“Those should be nerve systems, don’t get too close,” Angor explained after some observation.
According to that Duon earlier, Erdus had been sleeping for several thousand years. Someone who carelessly woke it up might cause serious trouble to their already tight schedule.
A moment later, Nausica stopped in front of a thin, blood-red barrier and used her machine arm to touch it.
“There... the heartbeat comes directly from behind this thing.”
Angor also moved to check, but before he could, the ground began to shake violently.
And this time, it only grew stronger instead of stopping after a short period of time.
Luna meowed something at Keely, who immediately gave everyone an anxious look.
“Erdus is waking up. We need to hurry!”
It made a lot of sense. Anyone would wake up if there were creatures lurking around their heart!
There was no doubt that breaking the barrier in front of them would be the last straw.
Such a magnificent monster needed only its natural aura to cleanse some filth from its body, meaning, Angor’s group. This meant they had to destroy Erdus’ heart as fast as possible.
Without any more time to make new plans, Angor simply blasted the blood barrier open.
At the same time, Erdus tumbled in place and created a natural disaster to the sea. Deadly torrents, together with gigantic tidal waves traveled toward all directions to assault those who were unfortunate enough to be in their ways.
Inside a cave at Land of Demise, a giant Duon creature suddenly looked up and glanced at where Erdus used to be.
“Erdus has been woken up... This must be fate.”
His voice sounded deep and distant while it carried great sadness unresolved by history.
At the creature’s feet, a young man with a longbow on his back was quickly writing something on his notebook, while a transmitter he used was working to record image data of the forefather of the Duons.
...
Inside Erdus, Angor’s group all tumbled inside the barrier-protected area while they tried their best to remain steady during the “earthquake”.
Once they were inside, even without Nausica’s help, they all felt the great pulses unleashed by something.
They found themselves standing in a giant chamber where a huge heart hung in the middle of the room. It was connected to countless blood vessels while it pumped the energy of life in all directions.
They already felt a deadly and murderous aura looming in toward where they were standing.
Without hesitating, Keely unleashed her strongest embers from her oil lamp, which instantly covered up the giant heart and slowly charred a great portion of the magnificent organ into its lifeless form.
When Nausica grabbed her right wrist using her left hand, a powerful spinning tornado emerged from her mechanical palm and hit the heart in the center.
When the attack connected, Nausica was knocked back by recoil and crashed into a wall. Her attack earlier had opened up a hole on the surface of the heart, and now, both blood and concentrated energy streams came leaking out of it.
Shan was doing her strange dance again, which caused Gank’s already huge body to gain even more in size. Enhanced by Shan’s magic, Gank wielded his fists and relentlessly slammed at the fresh wound ripped by Nausica.
In a matter of a second, the hole on the heart grew terribly larger.
The monster’s aura was upon them. In the next second, they felt their legs give in as they fell flat on the ground.
Using what she could manage, Shiliew gazed at the surging blood and called out, “Grease of the Underworld!”
Erdus’ blood instantly turned into a green, flammable substance. It was then ignited by Keely’s embers.
The enhanced flames added with fuel quickly turned more than half of the organ into a black crisp.
What remained of the heart was still working. Also, Erdus’ aura was getting maddened and uncontrolled, which pressed more pressure on everyone.
They all felt something breaking in their bodies as blood moved up their throats.
Angor was in the worst condition among all. His untrained body failed faster than anyone. Upon receiving the aura shock, he instantly lost most of his consciousness.
“It’s not dead yet...”
Angor mustered his remaining strength and chanted Spirit Mantra.
This was a dangerous move as his body would get destroyed even faster without a soul. However, he had to take the risk. He had to finish off the beating heart before something worse happened.
He briefly checked his soul and realized that after the various encounters in the past few days, he no longer had enough soul energy to use a “sure shot” gravity attack now.
Without minding his safety threshold, he braced himself and began to gather his remaining soul energy.
“Here goes nothing!!”
That was the last attack they could manage, and their last hope.
Wham!
A gray gravity bullet sank into the healthy part of the beating heart, and following Erdus’ deafening bellow, the heart shattered apart, showering everyone and the area around them with red rain.
The ground was soon covered in ankle-deep blood.
“Did... did we do it?” Shiliew asked as she watched more blood fall with her typical plain expression.
“The aura is gone so... yes?” Keely stood up and stretched her limbs.
“Hooray!” Shan hopped about joyfully despite Angor’s mind-manipulation effect. “We’re saved! We’re saved!”
Angor returned to his body and wanted to enjoy the happy moments with his team. A moment later, he quickly decided not to move too much when he felt searing pain coming from every inch of his body.
Aw, gods... Well, at least we have enough time to reach the altar—
“Wait... no. The illusion nodes are still here!”