NOVEL WEB Chapter 21: Chapter 21
He waited until the dead of night, when the moon was hidden behind the storm clouds and the tension in the valley was at its peak.
Slipping down from the ridge and moving between shadows, he reached the edge of the encampment, just out of sight of the patrols.
He placed his hands on the rocky ground. He didn't have a shovel. He didn't need one.
The swampy earth beneath the rocky surface was easier to dig, but he had to move quickly, as the tunnels collapsed behind him in seconds.
Luckily, his constitution allowed him to hold his breath while he moved underground.
He dug for what felt like an eternity, his muscles burning, his focus absolute. Finally, his fingers touched something else: a faint, humming energy.
The bottom of the shield. This was it. The point of no return.
He pushed himself forward, through the last layer of dirt and into the energy field. The world lit up. A deafening, klaxon-like alarm shrieked through his mind and across the entire valley.
"INTRUDER!"
He didn't hesitate. He burst up through the ground on the other side of the shield, inside the perimeter and near the Labyrinth's entrance.
He was greeted by the sight of a vast, dark cave mouth and the roar of angry, confused shouts from the army behind him.
"THERE! GET HIM!"
Rhys didn't have to look back to imagine the expression the Regent was now making; his furious roars almost deafened him.
More and more terrifying presences started to lock onto him as his nerves screamed in panic. The rush of adrenaline was exciting, pushing him to his limits as he closed in on the entrance of the labyrinth.
He had failed to fully grasp the power of a Tier 3 cultivator. Sure, they couldn't physically reach him in three seconds, but their terrifying power could.
Rhys was fast, but he wasn't fast enough.
Just as he was about to cross the threshold into the cave, a searing beam of pure fire from the Regent and a crushing wave of gravitational force from someone else slammed into the spot where he had been a microsecond before.
'I have done it! Three seconds….'
[Oh, ohhh...]
However, before his body could fully enter the labyrinth's array, a huge impact that blinded his surroundings slammed through him.
Before the pain could register in his mind, Rhys felt his weight suddenly halving and the sensation of running disappear.
That's when he looked down.
His lower body, from the waist down, was gone. Even the wound was instantly cauterised by the sheer heat of the energy.
The momentum of his forward movement allowed him to pass through the labyrinth entrance. That was the last thing Rhys remembered before plunging into darkness.
Darkness.
That was the first and only sensation. An absolute, crushing void that swallowed all thought and feeling.
Rhys's consciousness, which had been screaming in a mixture of adrenaline and terror, simply winked out of existence.
The last image seared into his mind was the horrifying sight of his own cauterised stump of a torso tumbling through the shimmering entrance of the Labyrinth.
He was dead. Or he should have been.
No one could survive an injury like that. It wasn't just losing his legs; it was the sheer, annihilating power of a Core Formation expert's attack.
But Rhys was not a normal person. His foundation was not of this world.
In the silent, empty darkness of his mind, a new process began, unbidden and automatic. It was not the crisp, blue interface of his System.
It was a deeper, more fundamental power, woven into the very fabric of his being.
His passive ability, Flawless Regeneration, kicked in.
[Catastrophic physical trauma detected. Host's body is 55% destroyed. Initiating complete cellular reconstruction.]
[Warning: The lingering offensive Qi from the attack is hindering the regeneration process. Neutralising foreign energy...]
[Lifespan will be consumed to fuel the process.]
A faint warmth began to glow from the remaining half of his body lying on the cold stone floor of the Labyrinth. It started as a gentle ember, then erupted into a roaring furnace of life force.
Flesh, muscle, and sinew began to weave themselves out of nothingness. It was a grotesque and miraculous sight.
Strands of vibrant red muscle fibres twisted together, followed by the rapid formation of a new spinal column, each vertebra clicking into place with an audible snap.
Nerves spread like lightning through the new tissue, connecting and firing. A circulatory system branched out, new veins and arteries forming and instantly filling with blood.
Then came the bones. Femurs, tibias, and the intricate network of smaller bones in the feet were forged from pure life energy, imbued with the dark, unbreakable cluster of his Void-Tempered constitution.
Finally, skin, flawless and pale, stretched over the new creation, knitting itself seamlessly to the old.
The entire process took less than ten seconds. The cost, however, was astronomical.
[Reconstruction complete. Foreign energy purged. Total cost: 1,500,000 years of lifespan.]
The System's notification was a sobering reminder of how close he had come to true oblivion. He had survived an attack from a Tier 3 expert, but it had cost him one and a half million years of his infinite life.
Still, for him, that was nothing.
Rhys's eyes snapped open. He took a sharp, shuddering gasp, his body still tingling with the phantom sensation of being remade.
He pushed himself up, his hands patting down his legs. They were there. Solid and perfect. Not a single scar remained. He was whole again.
He was lying on a floor made of smooth, black stone, just inside the massive cave entrance. Behind him, he couldn't see the shimmering, transparent barrier of the families' formation.
He had been teleported into the labyrinth.
He looked up. The sky was a shade of purple, and on the horizon, he could see the rough outline of twin stars setting.
He had made it.
Rhys let out a shaky laugh, a sound that was half relief and half hysteria.
"Well," he muttered to himself, his voice hoarse, "that could have gone better."
[The Host could have handled this scenario better if you were not complacent, wasting a few fractions of a millisecond before entering. I would advise against repeating such reckless actions.]
'Noted,' Rhys thought, his grin widening. He had faced down a Core Formation expert and lived to tell the tale.
The fear was gone, replaced by a wild, exhilarating sense of triumph.
He was about to get to his feet and explore his new surroundings when a new light flickered to life before his eyes.
It wasn't the familiar, crisp blue of his own System. This screen was a deep, regal purple, its characters written in an elegant, archaic font that seemed to pulse with ancient power.
It felt less like a user interface and more like a royal decree.
A single line of text burned in the centre of the violet screen.
[Welcome to the Battle for the Legacy!]