Chapter 341: Conclusion and the Door

The Sword of Darkness swept across one of the obelisks. Its obsidian blade shortened by a fraction, and the obelisk vanished from Wang Yu's sight. Outside this strange space, the alchemical constructs that had been waiting did not attack him.

"What have you done to Mouth?! Where are the alchemical constructs? Attack him! Why aren't you attacking this intruder?!"

Eye's obelisk flashed in panic, her voice trembling with both fear and rage.

"What a fuss..."

Muttering under his breath, Wang Yu, still being steadied by the Machine God, moved to stand before Eye. With another cut, the noisy obelisk disappeared entirely. Sweet silence descended once more.

He coughed out a clump of blood mixed with fragments of shattered bone and rotten flesh. Wang Yu stopped in place and took a moment to rest. Right now, most of his mental focus was being spent marshaling his blood to replace the organs that had been destroyed just to keep his body running.

The Machine God's overwhelming attack from earlier had destroyed far too many organs in a single blow—damage far beyond the reach of quick patchwork healing.

Within the horrific cavity stretching across his torso, blood hardened under his will, bridging his severed spine and extending outward into newly formed ribs and a sternum forged entirely from coagulated blood.

Other, still fluid, portions of his blood clung to this artificial skeleton, molded by his Blood Tempest and Material Shaping. Slowly, they sealed the massive wound shut.

The heart didn't matter all that much. His vivified blood could handle circulation without it.

As for his ruined lungs, he had no way to repair them now. Instead, he resolved the issue temporarily by continuously exchanging the blood in his body with oxygen-rich blood from his bloodpool, just enough to keep him moving.

"Ah, that's better."

Using the Chariot's power, Wang Yu commanded the Machine God to pull its fist free from his newly sealed chest.

He straightened, the grotesque wound now just a solid, dark-red patch, as if a strange material had been grafted onto him.

"Twenty minutes... that's enough."

He calculated that, at the current pace in which he was continuously replacing his blood to "breathe," he could last another twenty minutes. It was more than enough time to erase every last member of the Central Assembly. Erase, not kill.

"As I thought, the system's judgment is based on Astartes' perception. If I told it earlier that destroying my heart wouldn't kill me, then it wouldn't have directed the Machine God to target my heart.

"And now that I've told Astartes the truth behind the Sword of Darkness, using it to erase the members of the Central Assembly doesn't count as harm at all."

Before entering this space and being smashed apart by the Machine God, he had revealed to Astartes the true nature of the Sword of Darkness.

To an observer, it would have looked as if he were annihilating the obelisks. In truth, they were merely hidden from all perception. Surely that couldn't constitute harm.

"Stop! Whatever you want, we can give you: secrets of the past, the Void, the Abyss; the arts of every intelligent race, dwarven forging, gnomish—"

Ear was babbling, overwhelmed by panic. Even Eye's fate of having been cut down for being too noisy hadn't proved enough of a warning.

Wang Yu stepped forward and swept Ear's obelisk away with one cut from the Sword of Darkness. He barely even heard Ear's words—his own ears had been ringing since earlier. Eye had simply been too loud to tolerate.

Astartes watched as the near-dead Wang Yu silenced Ear mid-sentence. Never had it imagined that this strange man it had just met could accomplish something like this.

This was the stuff of legends: an unknown figure bypassing every obstacle to strike down one of the most powerful organizations in the world as if it were nothing. It was ridiculous, impossible. And yet...

Here was Wang Yu, erasing the members of the Central Assembly, the disciples of his very own creator Merlin.

"What a pitiful sight..."

In its mind's eye, Astartes saw Ear begging for her life.

Once, these disciples had been brilliant and proud. Now, they crumbled into terror and despair before the void. Perhaps now, Astartes understood why they had done what they did.

"Just who are you? Whatever your reasons, this gains you nothing. Our wealth will be sealed, our knowledge buried!

"But if you can be rational, we can work together. I can transfer my authority directly to you. With Julius under your control, you would never—"

Nose finally spoke up as Wang Yu approached his obelisk.

Cool-headed where the others had been frantic, Nose laid out his reasoning, hoping to tempt him with the "optimal" choice.

But his fate was no different. Wang Yu ignored his words and cut down his obelisk.

"Move! Why aren't you moving?! Julius, did you revoke my permissions?! Give them back! We'll all die if you don't—

"Astartes, I know you're watching! Hurry up and take down this man! We witnessed your birth with our very own eyes. Aren't we friends? Won't you—"

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The last of the five standard obelisks, Hand, had lost all his composure. He shouted for alchemical constructs that no longer existed, that had since been reduced to fireworks near the Council of the Arcane's headquarters.

As he called out to Astartes for help, invoking their old bonds before everything had gone awry, Wang Yu cut down his obelisk in one sweep.

Finally, Wang Yu walked up to the central obelisk, the most special of them all. Julius, the central obelisk, was connected to the entirety of Skyborne City. A mess of cables and conduits fed power through it.

Wang Yu approached it just as he had the others, blade in hand. He felt a ripple from Julius, an attempt to stir the Machine God behind him, to wrest back control.

For a moment, a component twitched under its command—until Wang Yu severed the signal with the Chariot's power.

Truth be told, it was the Central Assembly's own technological stagnation that had made his takeover so easy. The Machine God's structure was breathtakingly complex, and it was unquestionably a masterpiece of its era.

But Wang Yu's knowledge came centuries down the line, accumulated from both inside and outside Skyborne City. To modern eyes, the old masterpiece didn't look quite so impenetrable.

Merlin's theories had been the bedrock of alchemical engineering for generations, but even his genius had ultimately been digested by the populace at large. It had been built upon, refined, and surpassed. Armed with centuries of innovation, Wang Yu could dismantle even this marvel.

The Machine God was by no means weak. But if it had been upgraded according to modern principles, there would have been no way that Wang Yu could wrest control of it so easily. It would have become even stronger.

The blade fell. Julius vanished. The moment he disappeared, the entirety of Skyborne City shuddered as it suddenly began to fall. Then, its motion halted, as if it were rebooting.

"I've taken control of Skyborne City. The spatial seals are gone. Get your ally here to heal you—you're hurt badly enough that even a robot like me can't watch you without wincing."

Astartes transmitted its voice into Wang Yu's ear.

Wang Yu nodded and tapped the silver dragon sigil on the back of his hand until it began to shimmer.

Space rippled. A doorway opened beside him—another Gate of Phases. Avia stepped through quickly, with none other than the Lady of the Night walking beside her.

Finally, Wang Yu let himself sag against a nearby panel. His body had been running on willpower alone. He was hardly healed, only patched up enough to move. The full force of his injuries hit him.

The Lady of the Night placed her hand on his wound, infusing it with void energy and saturating the cavity in preparation for Avia's latent ability.

Wang Yu gave Avia a faint, reassuring smile before letting his eyelids fall. His weary mind slipped into sleep.

This was the first time since leaving Villa Mayene that the fatigue of combat had left him unconscious. The precision with which he had had to manipulate his blood had drained him to his limit.

In the haze between reality and dream, his awareness stirred. In his mindscape, the doorframe that he had been unable to perceive finally appeared once more.