Dragon Monarch System

Chapter 1193: Chapter 1193:- Heavenly Tribulation [III]; Misery

BOOOOOOM!!!

Aditya violently crash-landed in the middle of a farming field outside Axel City. The tremendous force behind his fall caused the earth beneath him to collapse, instantly forming a crater around the point of impact. Soil, rocks, and pieces of destroyed crops were blasted high into the air before raining down across the surrounding field.

The damage did not stop at the crater. Numerous fissures spread outward from its edges, rapidly extending across the farming field. The cracks divided and branched repeatedly as they travelled through the earth, creating a massive spiderweb-like pattern around the crater.

”Coughhhh!!!”

Aditya coughed out a large mouthful of golden blood. Some of it spilt across his chest while the rest splattered onto the shattered ground beneath him.

’This pain almost makes me want to quit now.’ Aditya thought to himself as he struggled to move his body.

The second Heavenly Thunder strike had already caused tremendous damage, but being sent crashing down from hundreds of meters above the ground had only made his condition worse. The sheer force of the impact had fractured multiple bones throughout his body. His left shoulder was in particularly terrible condition, while the bones along the left side of his back were screaming with unbearable pain every time he attempted even the slightest movement.

Aditya could not tell exactly how severe the damage was. Some of those bones might merely have been fractured, while others might have already been broken into several pieces. Fortunately, the healing pills that he had consumed earlier were doing their job.

The powerful medicinal energy continued circulating throughout his body, repairing damaged muscles, closing wounds, restoring burned flesh, and slowly mending his fractured bones. His Dragon regeneration worked alongside the medicines, causing many of his injuries to begin recovering almost as soon as they appeared.

But Aditya understood the problem very clearly. The speed at which his body was recovering was nowhere near enough.

The Heavenly Tribulation was damaging him far faster than the healing pills and his natural regeneration could repair him. Worse, every Heavenly Thunder strike would be more powerful than the previous one. If this continued, the injuries would simply continue accumulating until his body could no longer endure them.

Aditya gritted his teeth and forced his right hand to move toward his storage ring. A moment later, his black sword appeared in his hand.

He stabbed the sword into the ground beside him. Using its handle as support, Aditya slowly forced himself onto his feet. His legs trembled beneath him, and sharp pain spread throughout his left shoulder and back with every movement, but he refused to remain lying inside the crater.

Once he managed to stand, Aditya tightly gripped the black sword and raised his head toward the darkened heavens.

Then his figure disappeared. The next instant, Aditya teleported back into the sky, appearing several hundred meters above the ground once again.

The moment his figure reappeared, the people anxiously watching from below immediately noticed him.

Boris, Malakor Harrington, Wahid, Amelia, Athena, Riya, Sasha, Lilith, Rin, Spencer, and Nathan all felt a wave of relief upon seeing Aditya standing in the sky again. For the few moments when he had remained hidden inside the crater, none of them had known whether he was even capable of standing after taking the second Heavenly Thunder strike.

Seeing him return to the sky proved that he was still conscious and still fighting. However, their relief lasted only for a few seconds.

The heavens did not give Aditya enough time to properly recover. Another terrifying golden radiance suddenly appeared within the dark clouds.

The expressions of Boris, Malakor, Athena, and everyone else instantly changed.

FLASH!!!

The third Heavenly Thunder strike descended. It was even faster and more powerful than the second.

Before Aditya’s already-injured body could properly react, the brilliant golden Heavenly Thunder struck him directly on the head once again.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!

The golden Heavenly Thunder struck Aditya directly on the head once again. The pain produced by the third strike was greater than what Aditya had experienced from the first two strikes combined.

For a moment, his entire consciousness almost disappeared beneath the overwhelming pain. By the time Aditya managed to regain some awareness, his body had become a complete mess.

There were places where his flesh had been completely torn apart, exposing the white bones underneath. His remaining clothes had also been completely destroyed by the third Heavenly Thunder strike, leaving nothing behind. However, modesty was probably the last thing that mattered in his current condition.

His entire body had been burned so badly that he looked like a piece of overcooked charcoal. Golden Divine Dragon Blood continuously flowed from the wounds covering his body. It traveled down his blackened chest, arms, abdomen, and legs before gathering around his feet and falling toward the ground in golden droplets.

Aditya’s vision had also begun becoming blurry. He blinked several times, struggling to properly focus on his surroundings. His head felt as though someone was repeatedly smashing it apart from the inside. The fact that all three Heavenly Thunder strikes had directly struck his head certainly did not help.

Yet despite the unbearable pain, Aditya forced himself to think. ’This cannot continue.’

He had already endured three Heavenly Thunder strikes and three more strikes still remained. And every single one would be stronger than the previous strike.

’If I continue taking the Heavenly Thunder directly like this, I might actually die by the fifth or sixth strike.’

Aditya immediately understood that simply relying on his physical durability and healing medicines was no longer enough. His body was accumulating damage faster than it could recover. If the fourth strike was significantly stronger than the third, his injuries could reach a point from which even the healing pills could not immediately save him.

He needed protection.

More importantly, he needed some method of redirecting or discharging a large portion of the Heavenly Thunder’s power somewhere else rather than allowing his body to absorb everything directly.

Each strike contained an almost unimaginable amount of energy. It was not comparable to ordinary lightning-element attacks produced by cultivators. Heavenly Thunder was mana in one of its rawest, most violent, and destructive forms, descending with the sole purpose of testing or destroying the cultivator attempting to ascend.

Aditya understood something very clearly now. The Heavenly Tribulation was not helping him reach Beginner Sixth Order. It was trying to kill him.

Cultivation itself was a path that challenged the natural order. Cultivators continuously pursued greater power, longer lifespans, and eventually the possibility of escaping mortality itself. Yet the natural cycle of life had always remained simple, birth followed by life, and life eventually followed by death.

Cultivators were attempting to break that cycle. They sought power beyond the limits naturally given to them. They extended their lives far beyond what should have been possible and continued climbing toward immortality.

In doing so, they challenged the natural order established by the heavens. And the Heavenly Tribulation was the heavens’ response. If a cultivator wished to continue walking against that natural cycle, then they first had to survive the punishment that came with challenging it.

Aditya immediately took out the full-body armor set that the dwarf Tribe Leader had personally forged for him and equipped it without the slightest hesitation. Initially, he had planned to preserve this armor for the upcoming civil war. It was supposed to be one of his most important defensive measures on the battlefield, especially when facing the powerful cultivators serving Ren and the Mysterious Organization.

But that plan no longer mattered. If Aditya continued trying to preserve his armor for the war, there was a very real possibility that he would not even survive long enough to reach the battlefield.

His life was at stake now. Even if the armor could reduce the power of the Heavenly Thunder by only ten percent, Aditya considered that more than worth it. If it could somehow reduce the damage by twenty percent, then his chances of surviving the remaining three strikes would increase even further.

Of course, Aditya did not expect the armor to remain intact until the end. The Heavenly Thunder was simply too destructive. Considering how much stronger every strike became compared to the previous one, Aditya estimated that his armor might survive until the fifth Heavenly Thunder strike at most. Expecting it to withstand the sixth and final strike would be unrealistic.

But even that was enough.

If the armor could protect him from even a portion of the fourth and fifth strikes, then it would have already served its purpose.

After equipping his armor, Aditya immediately activated something a defensive passive skill of his. Crimson Lightning erupted from his body and wrapped around him like a protective cloak, constantly flickering across the surface of his armor.

At the same time, Aditya looked down at the black sword in his hand. An idea had formed in his mind.

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