With almost the entire side of this monstrous beast erupting outwards, I expected somewhat for the most of the land to cover in blood, guts and fat, yet everything that was carried by the force of the explosion, dissipated into the thin air.
Turning my attention back from this momentary surprise back to my enemy, I was ready to cast yet another attack that would completely drain me out of energy, when I realised that something was wrong.
There was no more movement from the beast. Not even a single stomp more!
As my dash brought me closer and closer to its enormous body, I managed to discern more details than before, notice how the edges of the wound that my attack created, instead of closing under the influence of this beast innate regeneration ability, were actually spreading away from the core of explosion!
Just like an acid could dissolve a fragile material and turn it into a liquid state, as my entropy progressed through the tissues of this monster, it ignored the step of liquefying it and directly transformed it into pure mana.
Fascinated by the sight, I managed to forget about my hate, just in time to realise that the whole process was slowing down.
Before my soles even touched the ground nearby this monstrosity, I couldn't feel its aura anymore, but the entropy was still coursing through its body, making a short work of its abdomen.
Taking a look at the corpse, I could see strands of the energy sinking in the earth, which by itself looked like a strange void, pulling all kinds of mana inside itself, only to transfer it along tentacle-like veins towards the tower.
Barely a few minutes later, I could detect any signs of the entropy, but despite that, the body of this strange monster continued to dissolve on the spot!
I took me a while to notice that after the natural process of decay from the entropy stopped, several thin strands of that energy-like tentacles reached upward and dug itself into the corpse.
While the chaos was simply eating away at the matter, when the tentacles stabilised itself, they suddenly burst out with a sudden bout of mana, making the entire corpse bloat up, only to deflate like a balloon popped with a needle a moment later.
Barely two minutes after the fight was over, there was nothing left of the beast body except for a momentary growth of the vegetation in the place it has fallen, that was swiftly killed by my parasitic core before the entire area returned to its deadly peaceful state.
Taking a look around, I realised that no matter where I cast my eyes on, only the tower and the other deployable tools were protruding from the ground.
All the corpses of the beasts that I killed… Even the dust left after they were burned down was gone. With my vantage point lower than when I was on the top of my stronghold, I couldn't even see the thin line of green in the far distance.
No matter where I looked, I was surrounded by completely black earth, with either a mist covering the far-off distance or just a line of sea blocking the tendrils of my parasitic core from expanding into the aquatic world.
With nothing else to do in this land of the dead, I returned to my tower.
Bypassing some of the traps that I created when I first erected this tower, I went downstairs all the way to the hibernation chamber to check on Eve.
With her body lying down on the altar, her skin deadly pale and chest not moving at all, she looked just like some kind of sculpture, with the only glaring difference being the dimly red hole just above her heart, something that no proper artist would leave on its masterpiece.
Unable to stand this sight longer than I had to, I couldn't even touch her, worried about upsetting the balance of the spell that stopped the time for her. Unable to notice any anomalies, I swiped the tears forming in my eyes and moved back to the second level overground… Only to reach the opposite end of the big and empty room and descend all the way back to the bottom-most level, housing the core.
This was the first time when I had the leisure to actually inspect how it looked or worked.
After creating the tower, the small energy dome that I took for the entirety of the parasitic core was swiftly hidden at the very bottom of my creation, hiding it from the view of any potential invader, but blocking me from watching over it at the same time.
The sight that I met on the lowest floor of my tower was actually quite different from what I remembered.
Instead of a blueish dome the size of one-third of pilates ball, it now had the shape of an orb, just on the bigger side.
Measuring around a meter in diameter, it was now shining with deep violet in its centre, surrounded by a darker shade of blue all the way up to the barrier or even material cover that surrounded the violent outburst of energy continuing to appear inside the orb.
Instead of floating, it was supported by three, thick vein-like tentacles, made of a multitude of smaller ones entangled against each other. Even without my energy vision, I could feel the pulsating of the energy steeming from them.
At this point, I couldn't help but wonder whether I could infuse some of the entropy into the mix to boost the capabilities of the tower and make it more suited for me, but after a short hesitation, I decided to leave this topic be.
I knew not nearly enough about this chaos magic thing to carelessly mess with a tool that was my currently single hope of rescuing Eve!
Unable to understand anything about the parasitic core from just observing it, I decided to drop the matter and climbed back to the roof of the tower. Confirming that there was still a thin line of green in the far distance, I sat down on the ground, and while patting the mana gathering tool lying in the middle of the floor, I started scribbling down my options for the future in my mind.
There wasn't actually many of them.
With so many beasts already nourishing my core with their corpses and leftover energy, it would be insanely hard to catch any prey in that leftover forest in the distance, and even if I managed to do so, I would be in for a tedious time of carrying it all back on my own shoulders.
Only now did I realise how usefull the storage rings were in normal, everyday use. Having an abundance of them back in the times when I posed as a cultivator made me sued to them, blinding me to how usefull they were, but as soon as I lost access to this fine tool, I could only see the troubles connected to the topic of logistic stacking up.
And what was even more important, with most of the entire vegetation of this land gone, I could only hope to find some raw ores deep underground. Actually, even with this aspect of resources, I guessed that those tendrils of mana from my parasitic core would be capable of sucking those ores dry from the energy, turning them from potential treasures into nothing more than just a pile of basic elements.
With no food, resources and a sizeable armoury to my side, my first move was rather obvious, despite how forced it was.
It was time to venture deeper into this unknown land!
Chapter end
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