WorldCrafter - Building My Underground Kingdom-Chapter 209: Hold It Down
Chapter 209: Hold It Down
Apophis slowed, hovering in silence for the first time since the battle began.
She reached toward the seal, and the air distorted around it, like touching a soap bubble about to pop.
Her eyes scanned it again. She could feel it now. The damage was worse than she had imagined.
This wasn’t just from time, most of the damage come from her.
All those centuries spent thrashing against it… biting, coiling, screaming, trying to break free.
Every ounce of effort she had poured into escaping… had hollowed it out. And now, the energy flooding this dimension, the golden power radiating from the system, was eating away at what little stability remained.
She hovered closer. ‘To think I spent all that time and energy trying to destroy this… and now I’m the one trying to reinforce it.’
Her fists clenched, fury burning in her chest. “All this time… Bastard! Damn it!!!”
Right now, Apophis genuinely regretted ever taking Ben and the Nephirid in. If she had known it would lead to this, she would have kicked them into the void the moment they showed up.
The seal was crumbling. The system’s code wasn’t just bypassing it, it was corrupting it, eating away at the foundation like acid in holy water.
Her eyes narrowed, scanning the fractured structure again.
Despite having no formal knowledge of seal formations, Apophis had spent countless years tinkering with this one, trying to crack it from the inside. She had learned its quirks. She knew where it flexed, where it resisted. She understood just enough to patch it. To redirect it.
She even knew how to make it target the system’s power instead of her own. But she wasn’t satisfied. ‘If I can use this moment… this chaos… to take my body back…’
A far more dangerous idea formed in her mind. ‘What if I use the Empyrian crystal to sever Ben’s link? Cut his soul out of mine. Return to my body. Break free… and leave.’
The ideal result, her freedom. Her body glowed again, black fire pulsing through her veins.
She grit her teeth and reached into her chest, pulling free a swirling fragment of her core essence.
It shimmered, hot with her original law signature.
Her voice dropped, low and bitter. “…You sealed me for so long.”
She hovered her hand over the cracked seal.
“But now, you’ll be the key to setting me free.”
She pressed her essence into the seal.
The crystal flared. The horizon shook. And Apophis made her gamble.. It was all or nothing.
Either she succeeded, and got everything she wanted. Or the space around them would shatter like glass. And all of them would perish in the collapse.
Far above her, the Devourer of Light screamed, eight golden eyes pulsing in sudden panic. Its coils thrashed through the sky, tearing streaks through space itself as it sensed something were coming.
Then, Chains materialized. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Forged from ancient rune, they erupted from the fractured air like phantom serpents of crystal and iron.
The chains surged upward, homing in on the Devourer of Light.
They wrapped around its body, legs, tail, neck. One locked around the base of its spine, others looped through its horns and around its wings.
Ben hovered beside the knight, bruised and breathless. He blinked, staring at the chains with wide eyes. “…She did it.”
The knight let out a sigh of relief, lowering his sword slightly. “She actually did it.”
One of the chains coiled around the Devourer’s chest, right where its charging core had been forming again. The moment it latched on, a blast of light surged down the chain, locking it in place.
Ben’s shoulders relaxed, just slightly. “If she can buy us a few minutes, just a few, then maybe I can finish this.”
But the Devourer wasn’t done. Its eyes flared again. System code pulsed from its skin, rewriting entire part of its form in real time. It burned through the air, fighting the glyphs binding the chains.
Then it roared. With a violent snap, it ripped free of the first set of chains, shattering five in an instant. The fragments exploded in all directions, tearing through the air like crystal daggers.
Ben threw up a gravity shield just in time, one shard grazed past his cheek, drawing a line of blood.
The knight grimaced. “It’s fighting the seal’s law with system logic. It’s overriding the bindings one by one!”
More chains rose, reinforcing, coiling tighter. The seal wasn’t done either. But the Devourer’s eyes began charging again. Not all eight, just two, now glowing twice as bright.
It had shifted tactics. It aimed directly at Apophis, far across the horizon where she hovered above the seal core.
Ben’s eyes widened. “No.”
He didn’t wait for the knight.
Dark aether exploded from beneath his feet, launching him forward like a cannonball forged from gravity and wrath. Space folded around him, warping and cracking under the sheer pressure of his speed.
Behind him, the Devourer’s two charged eyes locked on Apophis. Golden glyphs spiraled, building toward another cataclysmic beam aimed straight at the weakened seal core.
But Ben was already there. He slammed into the Devourer’s head with a concussive shockwave, his appendages lashing out in sharp arcs. Spears of aether drove deep into its armored crown, forcing its head back before the blast could fire.
“Not today, you bastard!”
The Devourer shrieked, the charging beams faltering, but not fading. Its body writhed violently, chains snapping under the system’s counter-surge.
Ben was nearly flung off as its wings lashed out, slicing apart air and code.
Then, a blur of lightning shot past. The knight appeared above the Devourer’s back, blades in hand.
Cracked and bloodied, but standing.
“Hold it down!” he bellowed.
He drove both swords into the creature’s shoulders, sending lightning deep into the system’s core code. Fractures split across its surface as arcs of relic power disrupted its channeling process.
“NOW, BEN!”
Ben gritted his teeth and slammed his hands together. Gravity compressed into a dense orb in front of his chest, like a dying star, and then he hurled it directly at the Devourer’s throat.
