The air in Sub-Terra Prime's main square was filled with heart-wrenching screams.Clive kicked the steel ventilation cover, sending it crashing to the ground below. He crawled out through an opening in the cliffside wall of Sector One and stood on a narrow ledge overlooking the massive marble square.His pitch-black eyes widened as they took in the apocalyptic scene below.Hundreds of fully armed Radiant Guard knights were forcibly dragging Onyxspire citizens, refugees, and street children out of their tents. The soldiers struck anyone who resisted with the stocks of their rifles. Blood stained the white streets. The cries of children being torn away from their mothers echoed through the city, crashing against the obsidian walls like the echoes of hell.In the center of the square, an emergency execution platform had been erected."Move, filthy trash! Faster!" a Lumerian captain barked, dragging a group of women dressed in patched rags, t

Silence.That was the only law left in Sub-Terra Prime today.There was no longer the roar of the ventilation machines they had once worshiped. No more cries from rebels demanding water. No more groans from people suffering beneath the heat. Even the faint hum of residual energy in the air seemed to have been silenced by the absolute terror that had just taken place.In the center of the main plaza, now transformed into a slaughterhouse, Clive Collins sat upon his obsidian throne.The black stone spikes behind him still dripped with the fresh blood of Lumeria's knights, their bodies impaled upon them. Clive's silver-black-scaled dragon leg rested atop a mound of gray ash, the remains of the traitorous citizens who had been vaporized by his Void miasma.He had reclaimed this city. Not a single soldier under Benedict remained to lay claim to the territory. Sub-Terra Prime belonged to him once again, absolutely.Yet Clive stared aro

Dark.Not darkness caused by the absence of light, but a darkness with mass, weight, and texture.The thick black liquid that had swallowed Clive Collins at the bottom of The Abyss felt like wet asphalt slowly boiling around him.Clive could not breathe, yet he did not suffocate.The black heart of Lycus, still lodged within his chest, beat incredibly slowly, keeping his lungs from collapsing beneath hundreds of atmospheres of pressure.Clive continued to sink.Inch by inch, he descended deeper into this bottomless abyss.At first, he felt only the physical pressure bearing down on his scaled skin.But as the black liquid began seeping through his pores and entering his bloodstream, Clive realized that this dense sea was not an ordinary material substance.Drip...The sound of falling water echoed inside his head.Suddenly, the pitch-black world around Clive exploded into a thousand sh

Inside the enormous cocoon made from the liquid of The Primordial Blood, there was no gravity. No bone-chilling cold, and no heat scorching the skin.There was only silence.Absolute silence that felt like a mother’s embrace in the middle of the night.Clive floated in a curled position like a fetus inside a womb. His physical body was being destroyed and reconstructed at the molecular level, perfectly merging with the pure essence of Lycus, the Primordial Predator, and the dragon blood of Drakon’s Spine.A process that should have inflicted pain beyond human comprehension was now completely painless.His emotional nerves had died. His pain response had been numbed.Clive only felt... sleepy.A deeply peaceful sleepiness.Inside his mental space, Clive opened his eyes.He stood in a room whose floor was made of clear water, reflecting a starless sky of deep purple overhead. There was no smell of blood. No smoke.“Is it over?” Clive murmured softly.His voice echoed across the endless

The bottom of the Onyxspire abyss was no longer a sea of sludge and toxic waste.Ever since Clive allowed the pure energy of the Primordial Blood to merge with Lycus's miasma, the entire landscape in the depths of this world had changed. The wet ground had crystallized, hardening into a vast expanse of pitch-black obsidian that emitted a faint purple glow. In the center of that endless void, massive crystal formations jutted upward, intertwining until they formed a jagged throne that looked like the open jaws of an ancient dragon.Clive Collins stood directly before the throne.He no longer looked like an exhausted laborer. His tattered robe had been destroyed. In its place, remnants of black steel exoskeleton covered his shoulders, right arm, and part of his chest. His left eye was pitch-black, devoid of a pupil, while his right eye burned with a dark purple flame that seemed to freeze the air around him.He was an Eldritch entity.The king of the deepest abyss."Seriously, Boss. Thi