Unholy Player-Chapter 544: Enduring the Heat

The morning cold started to fade as the Sun’s color began to shift, the air losing its sharp bite little by little.

Its monochrome light slowly took form, turning into golden hues as it prepared to reach the surface with a new day and a new mission.

This time, its mission was not only to warm the land but also to rouse a sleeping man from his months-long slumber.

Far from the human city, atop a mountain peak, in an open clearing surrounded by dense forest, a large group of people moved with hurried urgency around a massive metallic structure.

"Make it higher. We need to capture the energy properly," Dr. Mara shouted, staring up at the enormous metal structure as she stood among the rushing white-coated staff.

It resembled a giant antenna meant to monitor signals from the sky, but this time its function had been altered to capture radiation from the Sun, condense it, and drive it into a single target.

Beneath this towering structure stood a large gold-colored metallic bed, where a red-haired man with flawless skin lay half-naked, motionless against the cold sheen of the metal.

With his black-and-white wings spread along both sides of the platform, their feathers resting against the edges like carefully placed banners, he looked more like a crafted statue than a living human, if not for the steady rise and fall of his chest proving he still breathed.

Since losing his life force and falling asleep, Adyr’s body seemed to have reclaimed most of its vitality. The wrinkles on his skin had nearly vanished, and much of his luster had returned. Even so, he still showed no sign of waking anytime soon.

"Dr. Mara, are you sure this will work?" Henry asked from nearby, his voice edged with worry as he watched the motionless figure on the bed.

The massive antenna’s principle was straightforward. It would amplify the energy it drew from the Sun and focus it into a single point, namely Adyr’s body.

However, it would also carry intense heat, and like a magnifying lens, it could ignite whatever it focused on if the concentration became too strong.

Dr. Mara understood his concern. "Don’t worry, Mr. Henry. We already know Mr. Adyr’s capacity. With his current durability and healing speed, this level of heat will not harm him."

She turned her gaze back to the body lying there and lowered her voice. "Besides, if we do nothing, his awakening could take several more months. Are you sure we have time to wait?"

It had already been a month since the Blood Path followers arrived in the city.

Since then, Henry had been stalling them, keeping meetings vague and promises carefully measured, but even their patience was starting to run thin.

Henry no longer had many cards left to play. Arvyn, in particular, pushed every day, demanding more and more, her pressure building like a deadline no one wanted to name.

Technology was not something she cared about, so humans had to show her something else to keep her in check.

Ambushing and killing her was also out of the question. Over the past month, humans had learned just how strong she was. In a ’friendly’ spar, even Zephan, Liora, and Throgar together could not last more than 10 seconds against her. Their combined effort ended before it even resembled a real exchange.

That alone was the proof of how high her stats were and how much blood she had consumed to reach that level.

If Kaelor had not been around to keep her contained, staying close enough to restrain her impulses, she would have already demanded more than simple spars and started killing people on a whim.

At the very least, if they could wake Adyr, his presence might somehow close the power gap between them, or at least stop it from widening further.

"You’re not planning to stop us, are you, Mr. Henry?" Dr. Mara asked, suspicion sharpening her tone as she studied him like she was weighing his priorities against the stakes.

The area was not only filled with white-coated researchers. STF personnel in power suits stood everywhere, rigid and watchful, along with special teams in white uniforms stationed throughout the site, tracking every movement under constant observation.

The white-uniformed soldiers were watching the researchers with particular intensity. Their gaze followed hands and tools, as if there was a quiet tension between them, ready to turn the entire place into chaos at the slightest provocation.

They were the team chosen to be the first to be awakened by Adyr through his Path once he found a way.

Their training had not only focused on their talents. They had also spent their days in constant anticipation, prepared to become followers of a God, their mentality shaped by newly established church rules and beliefs drilled into each of them until it felt like routine.

The same preparations were also ongoing on Earth, with all of humanity being readied for Adyr’s return with a Path.

Every media outlet, every channel, and every newspaper was speaking of a new age, where balance would become the new belief and the Beyond would become humanity’s new home. Adyr stood at the center of it all, presented as the one who would lead them into this promising new life and world, his name repeated until it sounded inevitable.

The white-uniformed soldiers, now fanatical believers, felt growing displeasure toward the researchers because the researchers still trusted science rather than God, believing they were creating a God through their work. As a result, an inevitable clash between faith and science had begun to take shape.

Henry let out a sigh, the exhaustion showing through. "Don’t worry. As long as you wake him up, I have no other concerns."

It was a strange position for Henry to be in. On one hand, he was supporting and building a belief system for humanity. On the other, he was watching a research group try to awaken the one chosen to become the God of that system through science. The contradiction pulled him into peculiar thoughts that he could not fully dismiss.

Ah, I used to be a believer once, he thought, remembering childhood visits to church with his father and grandfather, those distant, old, peaceful days that now felt like they belonged to someone else.

"It’s starting," Dr. Mara said, lifting her head toward the Sun as the first rays of golden light began to reach them.

Henry followed her gaze and let the warmth touch his wrinkled face, allowing it to wash over him and blur the memories of that innocent past.

—

"Initiate power," Dr. Mara ordered after finishing her final checks on the tablet in her hand.

With permission given, the researchers standing before the computers pressed their keyboards and initiated the flow of electricity, cables leading out toward the structure like veins feeding a heart.

The massive antenna released a low hum and began to vibrate faintly.

The light striking its surface started to shift, splitting into tiny particle-like forms like fireflies, all of them rushing toward the antenna’s center in a tight, swirling stream.

"Is it working?" Henry asked as he watched the light take on those strange shapes.

"We’ll see shortly," Dr. Mara replied without lifting her eyes from the tablet, then gave her second order. "Start the amplification and purification."

The antenna’s hum rose another notch, and the vibrations intensified, sending faint shockwaves pulsing through the ground and making the earth tremble beneath their feet.

The small, sphere-like light particles gathered at the center started pulling inward, passing through the mechanism in the lower section and pouring into the lens-shaped compartment beneath it, flaring with a blinding glow that made faces turn away for a moment.

Seeing this, Dr. Mara gave the next instructions. "Open the passage. Let it flow."

The light pooled within the lens was released at once, driven straight down toward the gold-colored metal platform below where Adyr lay, a concentrated beam that looked almost solid in the air.

At that moment, everyone held their breath and watched as the condensed light met flesh.

Adyr gave no reaction. His body remained still, but where the light touched his skin, it began to redden, and thin wisps of smoke started to rise, curling upward before being scattered by the shifting air.

"The heat intensity is higher than I expected," Dr. Mara frowned as she watched his body begin to cook, the readouts on her tablet changing faster than she liked.

What they were transmitting was not merely sunlight. It was amplified and condensed pure Dark Radiation.

Even though it was non-ionizing, at this intensity it still hit with an effect like an enchanted microwave, turning the focused point into a brutal, sustained burn.

"What now?" Henry’s worry was plain on his face as he watched Adyr being cooked alive, convinced the experiment had failed.

Dr. Mara kept her eyes on the readings. "We’re continuing. He just needs to endure."

The heat was brutal, but Adyr was not a normal human. This alone should not be enough to cook him to death.