noveltune Chapter 61 [Kael'thas] 3
Chapter 61 [Kael'thas] 3
Kael'thas seemed to have merely wiped away a speck of dust, his dark gaze sweeping once more over the other trembling monsters who wished they could disintegrate themselves.
"waste."
The cold words, like a final judgment, pronounced their incompetence.
All the monsters lowered their heads even further, almost embedding them into the cold, enchanted floor, the chill of fear nearly tearing their tough demonic bodies and the core of their consciousness apart.
"Get out."
Kael'thas's voice returned to its usual calm indifference, as if his earlier rage had never occurred.
"Use all available resources to search every possible hiding place within the abyss! Leave no shadow, no abandoned fragment of a plane unchecked!"
His eyes gleamed with absolute confidence and ruthlessness:
"Her level plummeted, she suffered severe damage to her very essence, and her soul aura was as weak as a candle in the wind! There was absolutely no way she could pass through the rift heavily guarded by powerful human warriors! That would be no different from suicide! She must still be hiding in some filthy, dark corner of the abyss that we haven't yet discovered, clinging to life with that thing, licking her wounds like a desperate rat!"
"Find her! Bring her, along with what belongs to me, intact before me! This is your last chance."
"Yes! Yes! Great Lord! Your will is our mission!"
The monsters, as if granted a pardon, scrambled out of the terrifying throne room, their voices filled with sobs and extreme fear, tumbling and trampling each other, as if they might follow in the footsteps of that lurker at any moment that night.
In the blink of an eye, the once vast and desolate hall, filled with the stench of destruction and blood, was now empty except for Kael'thas on his throne and countless crystallized souls of eternal wailing on the walls.
He slowly opened his palm, and a token about the size of a palm, shaped like a curved fang, and entirely black, radiated a dense, ink-like, distorted abyssal aura in all directions, slowly appeared and rotated in his palm.
[Dark Eclipse City Lord's Order]
This token is a symbol of the authority of Darkeclipse City. On a deeper level, it is connected to the primordial will of the Abyss, granting its holder the supreme privilege of receiving feedback from the Abyss once every thousand years and drawing upon immense power.
For this privilege, he, Kael'thas, endured for nearly a thousand years.
He paid an unimaginable price to obtain those three [Cursed Nails of the Fallen God] from the depths of an ancient ruin that even he dared not easily recall.
He used friendship as a mask and loyalty as a disguise, meticulously weaving lies and conspiracies. Finally, at the perfect moment when the millennium was about to arrive, he added a potion that could temporarily suppress power to the celebratory mead. Then, taking advantage of the moment when Celia's father—his best friend and the previous city lord—experienced a stagnation in the flow of power, he drove three cursed nails into his body!
The curse was extremely vicious; it did not kill directly, but rather devoured the host's level and power, and sealed away their most core talent and power!
Celia's father, the powerful Abyss Lord, experienced a sudden and drastic drop in strength, and his prized talent was forcibly sealed away.
Even so, he still managed to unleash his last glimmer of light, giving Celia a glimmer of hope, while Kael'thas himself extinguished his soul flame, stepping over his corpse and glory to sit on this cold, chilling throne.
Celia was also caught in the aftershocks of a cursed nail, causing her level to plummet and her talents to be sealed, which led to her current predicament.
Now, the feedback power is like a raging, world-destroying lava, surging and roaring within him. This power is vast and boundless, enough to allow him to step onto a higher level of life.
However, the absorption process is exceptionally slow, painful, and fraught with uncertainty.
Worse still, he clearly sensed that only the Abyss Blood Core, a secret treasure containing the purest primal power that Celia's father had hidden at great cost before his death, could act as the perfect catalyst and safety valve to greatly accelerate this process, allowing him to truly and completely absorb this power, and even glimpse the deeper mysteries of the abyss!
Otherwise, he would not only have to spend an unimaginably long time painstakingly working on it and enduring the pain of the power backlash, but he also could not leave the [Dark Erosion City], which was closely connected to the City Lord's Order, for an extended period of time before he could fully absorb and integrate it. Otherwise, the power would go out of control and cause disastrous consequences.
Furthermore, it is impossible to easily set foot on the prime material plane, which has completely different rules and strongly rejects the power of the abyss; that would be tantamount to putting oneself in a deadly situation.
"Celia..." he murmured the name, his dark eyes churning with extreme greed, restlessness, and a lingering, deeply suppressed emotion stemming from that betrayal.
"My dear niece...where are you hiding? Give me the 'key' your father secretly left you...to share this glory and power, why did things have to come to this?"
He absolutely did not believe that Celia could successfully escape to the Prime Material Plane.
The human legions and powerful warriors guarding those known rifts are not just for show, especially the group of madmen in the northern abyss fortress, who are extremely sensitive to the abyss's aura.
How could a traitor, cursed, with her level plummeted, her essence severely damaged, and her soul fire barely ignited, possibly survive such a tight blockade and thunderous attack?
That's simply a fantasy!
She must still be somewhere in the abyss!
A hidden corner unknown to most!
We must find her!
We must retrieve the [Abyss Blood Core]!
He slowly clenched his fist, and the cold, sharp tip of the city lord's token pierced his pale, almost transparent palm, oozing out a drop of blood as black as the void and containing terrifying energy, which was instantly and greedily absorbed by the token.
"When I find you... I'll get back what rightfully belongs to me..."
He raised his eyes, his gaze seemingly piercing through the barriers of the Demon Palace, scanning every possible shadowy corner of the endless abyss, a cold and sinister smile curving his lips.
"I will reunite you with your foolish father, making you the perfect nourishment and stepping stone for me to reach the eternal peak."
He could never have imagined that Celia, whom he had searched so desperately for and believed must be clinging to life somewhere in the abyss, would...
Not only had it already narrowly escaped the rift, but because it was cursed, its level had dropped, and its aura was extremely weak and chaotic, the human guardians subconsciously misjudged it as an insignificant, suicidal demon soldier.
While the enemy concentrated their firepower to eliminate conspicuous targets like Balot, she miraculously escaped from the chaos at the edge of the battlefield and survived.
At this moment, she was no longer alone, but had become an extremely special and precious "resident" in Lin Tian's pet space.