Chapter 43 Ascending the Stairs

The space for dodging was limited, and the flexibility of the enemy's attacks had increased manifold. Even Mo Wen was unsure how to withstand this onslaught.

From the highest point of this mortal divine kingdom, the radiance meant to cleanse the world's turbidity inflicted destruction upon the mortal realm.

The sky was swallowed by an extreme brilliance, and anyone who dared to look up felt a searing, unbearable pain in their eyes.

That light condensed in the air, expanding and twisting everything around it. Yet, to Mo Wen's surprise, it never descended, and Formless showed no sign of astonishment.

Was this a unique new move of his, or did his training as a warrior allow him to conceal any emotion that might affect the battlefield?

However, neither his perception of death nor his psionic precognition confirmed that this move had lost its threat.

Mo Wen did not dwell on the reason; he chose to seize this opportunity and charge toward the "Angel" legion guiding the light in the sky.

His psycho-frame prosthetic translated his will to fly upward into a distortion of the world, fighting against gravity as it continuously accelerated.

The "Angels" who had previously engaged him in close combat had been thinned out by his hand until few remained. They were powerless to stop Mo Wen's slaughter of the light-guiding "Angels."

Wielding his dragon blade, a single strike obliterated all "Angels" within a radius of a kilometer. Golden blood fell like rain, warming the surrounding air.

Several of them turned their heads, wearing identical faces and speaking with identical voices, attempting to stop Mo Wen: "Stop. If you disrupt the guidance, the uncontrollable light that follows will kill everyone in the world."

In the heat of battle, how many people would speak the truth? Mo Wen was not deceived by such a simple rhetorical trick.

The slaughter continued, and death spread until the rigid, unmoving "Angel" legion was completely swept away, yet the light in the sky still did not fall.

The "Angel" legion had been exterminated, and the operative known as "Formless" appeared to still be alive, but he was temporarily unable to obstruct Mo Wen.

Mo Wen launched another slash toward the pitch-black rifts that partitioned the battlefield around him. This single strike traced a full loop, shattering the isolation between multiple combat zones simultaneously.

He could see that the psions who had fought their way here alongside him had either been defeated, were still struggling, or had declared victory.

There were many people Mo Wen did not recognize who had died without a trace of their bones remaining, just as there were those currently burning away their own lives.

There was no grand eloquence, no tragic fury, and no affected, tangled melodrama in the face of a formidable enemy. They assessed the value of their lives and the state of the battle, and then decisively exerted their maximum value.

Horizon knelt upon the golden waves, his dissolving eyes overflowing with light. Yet, he continued to gaze fixedly at the sky, steadfastly reaching out his hand.

Mo Wen finally understood why the previous beam of light had not descended: someone had noticed the attack in the sky and chosen to intercept it with their life.

That previous strike might have been enough to ignore the boundaries, directly affecting the entire battlefield, and the halo might even have been invoked by other intercepters to unleash beam after beam of light, yet in the end, it had achieved no effect whatsoever.

Psionics, which normally only affected perception, had truly managed to turn a stone's throw into the ends of the earth this time.

But regrettably, Horizon and the other desperate psions were already beyond saving.

Mo Wen's speed surpassed theirs—fast enough to see the ferocity and pain on their faces, to clearly perceive how runaway psionics were killing them, and to feel their determination to embrace death. Yet, no matter how fast he was, he could not stop the death currently in progress.

Uncontrollable psionics surged out of those physical shells, thoroughly shattering their human forms. Yet, the effects of the psionics persisted; no matter how violently the light in the sky raged, it could not fall.

Simultaneously, many of the intercepters were restricted by other psions.

They were either stripped of their senses, plunged into hallucinations, or rendered entirely immobile.

The psionics unleashed at the cost of life deprived these intercepters of the possibility of killing anyone else.

Yet the intercepters' exuberant vitality made them difficult to kill, even when facing a concerted siege.

Fortunately, those responsible for the attack had not instantly risked everything to gamble their all, allowing Mo Wen to outpace them and reduce casualties on his own side by granting death to the enemies.

Kill!

Those restricted intercepters struggled until their dying breaths, yet found themselves utterly helpless.

They all died.

Their golden blood fell, and the power they had stolen from Zero did not vanish into thin air; instead, the light of this mortal divine kingdom grew even more intense.

If he had come alone, Mo Wen had no idea what percentage of a chance he would have had to break through these layers of obstruction.

If other psions had not exhausted their lives to forcibly restrict the enemy—if he had had to face the intercepters head-on by himself—by how much would the stability of his prosthetic have dropped? And how much longer could he have continued to fight after slaughtering them all?

Mo Wen swept his gaze across the battlefield.

Horizon was dead, and the psions from Dream Entertainment, along with those from all corners of the world, had mostly perished as well.

In battles of this caliber, there was almost no room for injury. One either endured the opponent's damage and rapidly self-healed, treating wounds as nothing at all, or was killed in an instant.

Those who remained alive held no sorrow, no superfluous words. They stood straight, gazing toward their distant objective.

Pure determination permeated everything about them. Only after victory, as the victors, would they possess the right to grieve.

At that moment, Ren Sisi's voice resounded in Mo Wen's mind: "Well done. The interference has finally dropped to an acceptable level. Reinforcements are following up, and I'm attempting to tap into the psionic network of this special space."

"With a bit of luck, we might even be able to harness the power flowing through this place."

Another voice belonging to Ren Sisi immediately followed in Mo Wen's mind: "Where is this? What happened to me? I... Oh, sorry, a minor glitch, nothing to worry about."

Mo Wen had long since noticed the anomaly. He guessed that Ren Sisi was likely already dead, but as an exceptional hacker, she had left behind a personality model, preserving her psionics through a special method to continue fighting, even pretending she wasn't dead so others wouldn't worry.

He had not expected that within this mortal divine kingdom, the personality model would collide with the deceased Ren Sisi.

How would they view each other?

Yet, regardless of the circumstances, it could not affect their most crucial objective right now. This was hardly the time to ponder questions of identity.

Mo Wen roared to the psions: "Follow me forward!"

With that, he was the first to charge toward the stairs ascending to the divine throne.

Behind him, the psions who had accompanied him here advanced at full speed, followed closely by the emergency-teleported steel giants, with a composite entity formed from the fused psionics of various corporate executives trailing right behind.

More reinforcements had already locked down their coordinates, and various cross-space strikes could arrive at any moment.

No supporting member mentioned that the flow of time in the mortal divine kingdom differed from the outside world, or that the supporters of the Syndicate outside were locked in a desperate, all-out war with the remnant forces of the major corporations that had chosen rebellion, leading to the minor issue that their rear might be completely wiped out at any moment, rendering them unable to provide further support.

Such matters could be casually mentioned near the brink of total annihilation, just to ensure they were factored into tactical considerations during the battle; there was no need to add pressure right now.

Those who had come here had already done their absolute best and fastest.