Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

THUMP

THUMP

Atlas’s eyes went wide before something finally registerable happened, Atlas saw that the Force...the Gravity Multiplication, it wasn’t applying over the floor at all, it was...not there, ’The Gravity disappeared? How?’

Just as that question formed inside his mind, his heart stopped for a single beat.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The ear-deafening explosive sound spread through the entire Ruin as Atlas saw the roof crack apart, the whole roof that had been made from the exact same dark material as the surrounding walls suddenly broke away from its place and dropped...but it wasn’t the entire roof of the Ruin that had collapsed.

It was only the section directly above the area where Atlas had attempted to apply Gravity Multiplication.

That whole section separated from the rest of the roof almost instantly, the affected area itself spanning an enormous radius, easily covering over thirty meters around the point where Atlas had focused his Spirit, and the earlier deafening sound had been the roof cracking apart so suddenly that there hadn’t even been enough time for the fractures to spread naturally through the remaining structure.

Instead of gradually breaking apart, that entire portion had simply been blown away from its original place in a single moment as if the gravity supporting it had disappeared completely before returning all at once, causing the enormous weight of the roof to collapse under itself without anything left to keep it suspended.

And then...it dropped directly toward the floor below.

BOOOOOM!

The collision shook the entire chamber as broken pieces scattered in every direction, dust instantly rose into the air while fragments of the dark stone bounced repeatedly across the floor, the section of roof that had fallen being far larger than any ordinary object, its sheer size covering an area wide enough that several dozen people could have stood beneath it before it shattered upon impact.

THIL...THAK...THAK...

The broken debris continued striking the floor one piece after another, smaller fragments rolling across the chamber while larger sections settled into place after several heavy impacts, and only after a few more seconds did every remaining sound gradually fade until silence returned once again.

Atlas remained exactly where he had been.

His heart had stopped for only that single beat, but the reason his eyes had widened wasn’t because the roof had suddenly collapsed.

His consciousness had already disappeared the very moment that question had formed inside his mind.

If someone from a third person view had been standing inside the Ruin and looked at Atlas from a third-person perspective, they would have immediately noticed that something else had happened during those few seconds.

Without realizing it himself, Atlas had already absorbed every bit of Spirit contained inside all five cores.

His pupils now stared at daze, completely blank.

The light inside his eyes had disappeared, leaving behind only an empty gaze that remained fixed toward the front without reacting to anything around him.

Both of his hands still rested flat against the five cores exactly as before, not even a finger moved away from their surfaces, and the inward pull that had been drawing Spirit into his body had already ended because there was no Spirit left inside any of the cores to absorb.

Even his breathing appeared to have stopped.

His chest no longer rose or fell.

His body remained completely motionless, almost resembling a statue placed before the broken remains of the pedestal rather than a living person.

Time quietly continued passing.

Several moments became minutes.

The minutes gradually continued increasing until they eventually became hours, yet Atlas remained in that exact same posture without showing even the slightest movement, his consciousness staying somewhere far beyond his own awareness while his body simply remained sitting before the now empty cores.

Almost two and a half hours passed before... something finally changed.

Atlas’s blank pupils twitched slightly.

The emptiness inside his eyes slowly began fading as awareness gradually returned little by little, almost as though his consciousness had travelled somewhere far away before now making its way back into his body.

His fingers twitched first.

Then both of his hands moved slightly.

Since his upper body had remained leaning forward over the cores during those two and a half hours, that tiny movement caused both of his palms to press down against them without Atlas realizing it himself, and the moment his hands accidentally pushed against the now empty cores...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

An explosion way powerful than the previous one.

This time it wasn’t the roof.

The Spirit Energy that had filled his reserves after absorbing all five cores suddenly burst out of his body the instant his consciousness fully returned, the enormous amount of compressed Spirit releasing outward without Atlas deliberately controlling it, his body naturally releasing the excess pressure that had accumulated throughout the entire absorption process.

A blinding white explosion instantly spread outward from his body in every direction, swallowing the entire Ruin, and within a single moment every wall, every remaining section of the roof, every pillar and every part of the chamber disappeared beneath the overwhelming white light as the pressure continued expanding farther and farther beyond the Ruin itself.

The explosion didn’t stop after destroying the Ruin.

The white wave of Spirit Energy continued expanding outward with tremendous force, the ground shook violently beneath it while powerful tremors spread through the surrounding area, the pressure travelling through the earth much farther than the white explosion itself, passing beneath the forest and continuing toward the outer parts surrounding Lumivale.

The ground continued trembling for several more moments, trees shook continuously as leaves scattered into the air, some massive trees were uprooted completely while others bent from the force before slowly returning to their original position, and only after the white Spirit Energy gradually faded away did the destruction become visible once again.

The Ruin... was gone.

Its door and the outer walls... had completely disappeared.

Even the mountain beneath which the Ruin had remained hidden for countless years had vanished under that sudden release of Spirit Energy, leaving behind nothing that could even suggest a Ruin had once existed there.

Everything had disappeared.

The floor Atlas had been sitting on, the pedestal that had held the five cores, the Crucible he had thrown away earlier and every remaining part of the Ruin had vanished completely, only an enormous empty clearing remained where the mountain had once stood.

At the center of that clearing... a massive crater had formed, though it wasn’t extremely deep, its wide scale stretched across an enormous area, making it obvious just how much force had been released a few moments earlier.

After all, an entire mountain had disappeared from that sudden destruction.

Atlas still remained sitting in exactly the same place.

The destruction hadn’t moved him from where he had originally been, his posture remained almost unchanged while his cold eyes silently observed everything around him, and despite the enormous amount of Spirit that had exploded outward from his body, his clothes hadn’t received the slightest damage.

His black attire remained exactly the same, his clothes had no change or had been torn off, they remained intact completely.

Atlas slowly looked around the enormous clearing before quietly speaking, ”This is...quite powerful, are all S-ranks like this? Or is it just me?”

His voice remained calm as always.

There wasn’t excitement inside it, instead they seemed...detached.

Even though he reached it...He had just achieved S-rank in a peculiar way none ever did.

His spirit energy remained somehow controlled now.

He simply stated the question after seeing the result because even he...hadn’t expected the release of Spirit Energy to destroy an entire Abyss-Rank Ruin along with the mountain concealing it, and since this was his first time reaching S-rank he had nothing else to compare that amount of power against.

His eyes slowly travelled across the surrounding forest.

Although the mountain had disappeared completely, the massive trees surrounding the former Ruin remained standing to a surprising extent, many of them had broken apart while several others had been uprooted and thrown away from their original positions, but a considerable number still remained rooted in place, showing that although the Spirit Energy had destroyed the Ruin completely, most of the released pressure had travelled outward instead of concentrating only upon the forest.

Atlas slowly stood up before lowering his gaze toward the place beside him.

The bag he had brought into the Ruin had been completely destroyed, the cloth had torn apart, the straps also had turn to shreds.

Only scattered pieces remained mixed together with ash and broken stone.

He quietly searched through the remains before noticing the books lying beneath the debris.

They were completely intact.

Not a single one had been damaged despite everything that had happened.

Atlas bent down and picked them up one by one before lightly brushing away the dust covering their surfaces, his eyes remaining fixed on them for a brief moment before shifting toward his own hands.

The black gloves covering both hands remained completely undamaged.

More importantly, the markings of Reiden upon the back of his right hand emitted the familiar faint glow.

The cross-shaped mark shone softly for several moments, the quiet humming inside his arm returning once again exactly the same way it always did whenever Reiden responded to him, and Atlas simply watched it until the glow gradually faded away.

He gave a small nod after it disappeared.

He seemed to understand that Reiden had remained completely unaffected by what had happened.

Atlas slowly closed his hand before speaking in the same calm voice as before.

”Now it’s finally time to go to the Central City and become stronger, I need to get revenge on those Human Royals with any means necessary.”

His voice sounded even colder than before.

Nothing about his expression had changed, yet the hatred buried deep inside him had undoubtedly become stronger after everything that had happened during the last few months.

Atlas turned toward the path leading away from the destroyed mountain.

He already knew reaching the Central City would take time, and after arriving there he would once again have to register himself as an Explorer before continuing his journey, but none of that changed what he had already decided long ago.

Becoming stronger remained the only thing he needed to continue doing.

Without enough strength, revenge would remain nothing more than a thought.

Atlas quietly looked behind himself one final time before speaking once more.

”I had thought I would fail many times before even starting to absorb the Spirit Energy in the cores but...it seems I forcefully succeeded.”

His eyes seemed to percept beyond those trees and fall on Lumivale directly as he spoke.

”I am not coming here again...so, it’s a goodbye.”

After saying those words, Atlas turned around without looking back again, held the books firmly in one hand and quietly stepped forward toward the path leading to the Central City, leaving behind the place that had changed his strength once again.