Chapter 390: A Golden Body?

When Wang Yu first beheld that blazing pillar of light, his immediate instinct was to seize his starsteel filaments and drag Avia upward, away from the void. He thought it a cataclysm, like the tide of annihilation, from which they had to escape immediately.

But within moments, he realized the truth. The two dimensions had begun to overlap, and the change was bleeding into the void around them. An image of a barren wasteland appeared, gradually resolving within his vision as the two dimensions merged.

What he saw left him breathless: Sieg's draconic body forged into a living furnace; Noelle pressing her palm against his scales; and in her other hand, a lantern that never dimmed, the Lighthouse, whose flame shone unchanged even against the brightest light of the material world.

"Professor?"

Wang Yu's brows rose. He hadn't expected the firestorm bridging both dimensions to be Sieg's doing. And as for Sieg's condition—what was happening to him?

𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Wang Yu," Avia's voice cut in. "I don't know what Sieg and Noelle have done, but look closely—the twin dimensions are merging. The barrier that blocked your path will soon collapse. Send me out first. They will not emerge here in the void, but in the material world. I need to check on their condition."

She had been watching the signs of convergence all along; nothing in the void escaped her notice. She urged Wang Yu to cast her back into the waking world.

She had to ensure Sieg and Noelle's safety—and prepare to bring them back into the void before the tide of annihilation could descend once more.

"Of course."

Wang Yu crouched, letting her step onto his palm. With a gentle thrust, his strength as a grand knight sent her upward through a rift in the void.

"Don't do anything reckless," she urged as she vanished from sight. "Keep yourself safe above all else. With Sieg and Noelle on this side, we might be able to find another way out together."

Though Avia knew her warnings seldom held him back, she couldn't help it.

Wang Yu gave her an OK gesture to set her mind at ease. Then he turned to face the vast octopus-like monstrosity below.

As the two dimensions merged, the void around him filled out, its missing fragments made whole. At long last, Wang Yu saw what the colossal beast was gripping.

The edge of his perception, which had once been blurry, was now clear. The creature's tentacles burrowed into the seam where the void and the material plane met. Half of it clung to the material plane. The other half, motionless, anchored itself in the void.

"So it latched onto the material plane. No wonder its posture looked so strange—it was barely keeping itself from falling."

Understanding dawned. Wang Yu wasted no further time. Guiding the lingering power of the dream god's vessel, he advanced toward one of the beast's colossal tentacles.

His goal was simple: to touch it. The instinct burning within him had never been wrong. This time, he trusted it completely.

He sensed, though, that the impulse came from somewhere different than before. Previously, it had sprung from his body. Now, it rose from his very spirit.

The merging of the two dimensions had stripped away the final barrier. Within moments, he closed the remaining several hundred meters until he stood within arm's reach of a tentacle as vast as a mountain.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled off his gauntlet and pressed his bare palm to its surface.

Agony struck at once. The sting of a thousand needles, the grip of something leeching his essence—he felt as if he had been electrocuted. "I knew it. Even asleep, a lifeform of this level radiates power beyond imagination. Direct contact will be dangerous, but so be it!"

In seconds, the flesh of his hand blackened and sloughed away, leaving stark white bone exposed. Dark-green sludge crept up from the tentacle and climbed swiftly up his arm, identical in substance to the octopus's hide.

The corrosion did not stop at flesh. His bones, reinforced with alloys of rare metals, dense and unyielding, crumbled as though they were nothing more than brittle biscuit.

His second layer of defense, his blood, fared no better. Though hyperactive, and though it possessed its own will, it succumbed at once and was devoured without resistance.

He activated his bloodpool. If he was lacking in terms of quality, then he would focus on quantity. A fissure tore open as torrents of blood poured down over his body, drenching Wang Yu and submerging him in a scarlet sphere. His trapped arm was engulfed with him.

The clash began: red blood versus green corruption. Within the sphere, bubbles frothed and popped as blood and sludge warred.

Yet even in bulk, the blood ebbed away rapidly. The green tide pressed on, undeterred, as it gnawed through his arm.

If the blood hadn't slowed the corruption, Wang Yu might have doubted whether his struggle had had any effect at all.

"What a terrifying creature. What is this thing's body made of? I haven't felt even a flicker of life force from the Banner of Triumph."

He pursed his lips. Did that mean that he still hadn't managed to take down even a single cell of the octopus's body?

A wry grin spread across his lips. Would a body so large have cells far larger than average, too? Perhaps that was the case. He wouldn't be surprised if he had been fighting the equivalent of a single cell all this time.

In some ways, luck was on his side. He was small—far too small to provoke the response of the octopus's immune system in full. It would hardly waste its strength on an insect, after all. That alone had bought him this fragile stalemate.

Flames burst forth where his blood could no longer shield him. Cursed Fire blazed, shifting from a sickly green to an incandescent crimson, as Wang Yu channeled the flames to his corroded arm.

The fire bit deeper than his blood, forcing the corruption to falter, even recoil. Yet within moments, it adapted. The green tide advanced again, relentless in its hunger.

His blood spent, his flames repelled, he summoned every remaining tool at hand: barriers of fighting spirit, venom, spells from the Spellweaver's Tome—

Each forced a slight pause, but did little more. The green substance would retreat or halt for a moment before rallying and striking anew.

Soon the corruption had climbed to his shoulder. His entire arm had been consumed. Only a ragged, cratered stump swathed in green remained.

At last, Wang Yu ceased his resistance. He added no more shields and summoned no more flames. He let the corruption gnaw freely at his flesh, as if surrendering.

Then, suddenly, the sludge stopped. It writhed, seething with violent hunger, yet it no longer advanced. It could not.

At the juncture where Wang Yu's arm met the creeping corruption, a pale golden ring flared into existence—a ring that gave off no light, yet barred the advance of the green sludge. No matter how it attempted to pressed forward, it could not breach the ring.

"So it worked... This power, was it yours all along?"

He raised his arm. The flesh that had nearly been consumed to the shoulder began to regenerate under the furious surge of his body's healing as a faint golden radiance clung to it.

The golden ring had merely been the shape traced out where the lost flesh allowed new growth to take hold.

Wang Yu still had countless tricks up his sleeve, after all. He still hadn't invoked alchemical armaments, nor the husk of the dream god. All this time, he had been intent on maintaining a precarious balance with the encroaching corruption.

In the past, his body had learned by killing alien matter that had seeped into his blood and extracted abilities from their remains. But the gap this time was too vast. No matter how much of this sludge he destroyed, quantity could no longer compensate for the gulf in quality.

So he inverted the process. He allowed the foreign substance devour his flesh, ceding territory to it so that he could learn even as his flesh was consumed.

After all, if he truly had no means of resistance, he wouldn't have stopped at a stalemate? He could have cut off the arm and walked away—it would have grown back.

The golden radiance coursed across the restored limb as it flowed all the way down to his hand. It pressed the very corruption that had once devoured his flesh back against the colossal octopus's body, pinning it down.

Sensing the shift, more of the dark-green sludge gushed from the creature's mass, crawling hungrily toward Wang Yu's arm. Yet the golden glow rendered it impotent.

From the outside, his right arm seemed to be sheathed in golden light that terminated abruptly near his shoulder, a golden sheen that made him feel like a character from a game world.

The green corruption could no longer touch him. It could not cling to, nor corrode, nor gnaw at its body. The moment it touched the golden light, it dissolved.

It seemed as if a strange new power had awakened in him, but not completely. Not even this abyssal leviathan possessed such unfathomable potential.

What Wang Yu had gained was simpler and more limited: some hidden stratum of his being had ascended one tier higher. He now had the ability to support what had previously lain beyond his reach.

He drew back his hand. The golden brilliance receded into his body, leaving his arm whole.

"Never thought I'd make such an advancement here, of all places."

Exhaling, Wang Yu smiled—a rare, genuine curve of the lips. He could still feel the golden light dwelling within him. The glow was but its outward facade. Its true form...

He reached into the void and drew forth a ragged white wooden door. Then, he pressed it into a point in the void before him. With a resounding crash, the door that had until now existed only within his mindscape fell into reality.