Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2208 Doomsday Furnace

Robin smiled while observing a very specific scene unfolding in the distance.

There, several young space beasts were tearing Robinʼs soul creatures apart piece by piece with savage fury, the space beasts growing increasingly enraged and hostile the more they felt the Purgatory Flame burning through their bodies and the more they watched the soul creatures reconstruct themselves over and over again despite suffering catastrophic damage.

The seven hundred swords had vanished as well.

Every single one of them had eventually shattered after assaulting massive numbers of nascent space beasts without pause.

And beyond all of that chaos, the adult space beasts had finally begun advancing in a straight line toward the battlefield itself... they had clearly grown tired of merely observing from afar.

When Robin witnessed that scene, he did not attempt to rebuild his soul creatures.

Nor did he reproduce the shattered swords.

Instead, he calmly raised the array disk in his left hand until it reached shoulder level before speaking with a smile and a voice loud enough to spread clearly across the battlefield itself.

”If this does not teach them a lesson, then I truly do not know what will.”

”DO IT!!” Blokan shouted desperately while struggling to keep several beasts away from the shrinking defensive circle, ”Whatever youʼre about to do, do it quickly!!”

”Your wish is my command.” Robin chuckled lightly before suddenly pouring an overwhelming amount of soul force into the necklace hidden beneath his clothes.

At once, a tremendous quantity of energy erupted from within the hidden artifact and flowed toward the array disk like a roaring waterfall crashing downward from the heavens themselves.

The process continued for several long seconds.

Robinʼs complexion gradually began paling.

The pressure surrounding him visibly weakened.

Only then did the flow of energy finally stop.

Even Blokan, Althera, and Asir immediately noticed the change...

Lord Robin had displayed almost no visible exhaustion while producing all those overwhelmingly powerful soul creatures and maintaining their reconstruction repeatedly throughout battle.

Yet this single array had visibly drained him?

Afterward, the disk slowly began floating upward while rotating in place.

Countless inscriptions, patterns, and layers of golden symbols emerged from within it one after another, orbiting around the disk in expanding circles as the array gradually revealed its true form.

The surrounding void itself began trembling from the pressure.

Disturbance

The adult space beasts that had already begun advancing suddenly shook violently.

Even the void surrounding them quivered uneasily as they sensed a severe and instinctive danger emanating from the disk.

And immediately afterward, they abandoned their earlier slow advance and lunged forward at full speed instead.

”Now!” Robin shouted joyfully the instant he saw their reaction.

Disturbance Disturbance

The shattered remains of the seven gigantic soul creatures suddenly trembled violently.

Then...

BOOOOOM

They exploded.

The colossal explosion itself did not seriously damage the surrounding young space beasts, aside from coating them more heavily in fire, yet the truly horrifying aspect was something else entirely.

The unimaginable quantity of Purgatory Flame surged far beyond the young beasts and rained downward across every space beast in the region, whether nascent or young alike.

There were even two adult beasts directly touched by the flames, though they completely ignored the fire and continued charging forward regardless.

Then, after sweeping his gaze rapidly across the battlefield as though verifying countless details at once, Robin suddenly pressed both hands downward.

SHOOOO SHOOOO

Something immediately began happening...

Under the influence of the gigantic array, the Purgatory Flame suddenly started leaping from one beast to another with terrifying speed and precision, as though countless tiny living fire creatures were racing through invisible pathways prepared long in advance.

The spread covered an unimaginably enormous area.

The number of beasts suddenly ignited and screaming in agony climbed into the tens of thousands almost instantly and continued rising in a disturbingly organized pattern.

What made the spread even more terrifying was the fact that enormous numbers of already infected beasts had long since been scattered throughout the battlefield among their own kind.

The swarm itself had unknowingly become the fuel.

”What is happening?!” Blokan retreated several steps in alarm while the screams around him intensified.

The cries of the beasts burning beneath the Purgatory Flame completely overwhelmed the battlefield itself, while the creatures not yet infected began moving chaotically in fear, desperately attempting to avoid contact with the burning space beasts surrounding them.

Then Blokan glanced toward Robin once more...

That man was still controlling the array.

Nothing else unusual appeared to be occurring... except for one horrifying detail.

The Tree Father had begun regenerating rapidly.

Its destroyed branches started reforming one after another while massive quantities of energy poured back into its body continuously.

Disturbance

The adult space beasts accelerated even further.

Their sense of danger and urgency had clearly risen sharply.

But the spread of the flames was far faster than anything they could possibly stop...

And the instant the final strand of fire reached the final beast positioned within the prepared pattern... Robinʼs grin stretched from ear to ear.

Then he spoke loudly enough for even the space beasts themselves to hear:

”This is the expensive gift I brought you from the other side. I hope none of you ever forget it!”

Then he seemed to inhale deeply before roaring with all his might:

SHWALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The blue flames suddenly erupted with violent green tongues as though someone had poured oceans of oil over them.

The fire burning upon every infected beast exploded outward instantly, engulfing tens of thousands of miles in every direction at the same time.

And there were tens of thousands of infected beasts.

The battlefield transformed into a sea of expanding green hellfire in less than a second.

”KAAAAAAAAAAAAA---”

”RAAAAAAAAAAAWOOO--”

”GGGGHIIIIIIIIII--”

The screams of the burning space beasts intensified horrifyingly while the beasts that had not yet been infected suddenly discovered that they were no longer standing around the flames...

They were drowning inside an endless ocean of them.

Only moments earlier, the Tree Father had been completely surrounded by space beasts from every direction imaginable, while several distant blue-and-green stars scattered across the battlefield represented the infected space beasts burning amidst the swarm, yet now, in this very moment, the Tree Father itself had become entirely wrapped within a gigantic shell of raging fire.

It looked less like a living creature and more like the core of a collapsing sun.

”WOOOOOH--!!”

The young space beasts began crashing violently into one another from sheer agony, hundreds of them at once. Most had already been infected by the Furnace Array either directly or indirectly, while the detonation of the seven soul creatures amidst their ranks had concentrated the flames upon their bodies to a horrifying extent.

The blue flames mixed with violent green tongues continued devouring flesh relentlessly.

The beasts could neither extinguish the fire nor escape it.

”Good heavens...” Asir unconsciously stepped backward with fearful eyes while gripping his bow tighter.

The scene unfolding before him no longer resembled battle.

It resembled mass execution.

”...”

Altheraʼs large eyes widened as she watched those abominations of life perish in the cruelest ways imaginable.

Some beasts slammed themselves against one another desperately in an attempt to extinguish the flames.

Others tore chunks from their own burning flesh.

Some simply screamed endlessly while their bodies slowly collapsed into blackened remains.

Yet within the endless furnace surrounding them, none of it mattered.

As for Blokan, he overcame his shock more quickly than the others and immediately focused his attention upon the Tree Father itself, which had already fully regenerated and was now lashing outward in every direction once more.

At first the attacks appeared completely random, as though the gigantic creature was merely attempting to widen the defensive circle around itself and prevent the burning space beasts from charging toward them in panic.

But after observing more carefully... Blokan suddenly noticed something strange.

The branches were plunging directly into the sea of flames for several seconds before emerging once again carrying crystals.

More and more crystals.

An absurd quantity of them.

Energy crystals.

The Tree Father was harvesting the battlefield itself while the beasts burned alive around it.

Yet within Altheraʼs eyes... the gigantic divine tree whose countless branches continued breaking apart amidst the endless blue flames looked as though it was carrying the burning heavens themselves upon its shoulders.

The white-and-gold branches stretching across the inferno created a breathtakingly epic scene impossible to forget.

For a brief moment, even amidst death and chaos, the battlefield looked beautiful.

”Prepare to escape!”

Robinʼs sudden shout violently severed the thoughts of all three of them.

”Weʼve got company that doesnʼt joke around!”

”Huh?”

The three immediately looked toward the exact direction Robin was staring at.

The adult space beasts had nearly reached the sea of flames itself.

The gigantic furnace.

Several among them were already infected by the fire and continued becoming more engulfed with every inch they advanced, as though the flames themselves were chasing after them relentlessly.

Yet the pressure radiating from their auras alone extinguished the Purgatory Flame the instant it touched them, as though the terrifying fire had never existed in the first place.

The difference in level between them and the lesser beasts was overwhelming.

”Hovi!” Robin shouted loudly, ”Enough gathering, open a path!”

RUMBLE

The soul creature immediately withdrew more than half its branches before concentrating them all into a single point, the exact location behind which the passage was hidden.

Then—

BAM

The Tree Father smashed its gigantic branches violently against the exhausted burning space beasts, killing several instantly while sweeping countless others aside with raw force, carving open a pathway of white-and-gold wood directly through the center of the furnace itself.

The pathway resembled a divine bridge cutting through hellfire.

”Move!”

Robinʼs shout snapped Althera, Blokan, and Asir out of their daze, causing all three to surge through the wooden pathway using whatever speed they still possessed while preserving the final fragments of energy required simply to continue breathing.

The battle had already drained them nearly dry.

As for Robin, he cast one final glance through the Furnace using the Eye of Truth, observing nearly a million beasts burning within the endless ocean of flames...

Most likely the adult space beasts would eventually extinguish all of this once given enough time.

But the pain inflicted upon the swarm today...

That agony would remain carved into their instincts and memories for a very long time.

Now all he needed to do was survive for several more moments until the adult beasts arrived.

By then, Althera and the others would already have traveled a sufficient distance toward Morgana, allowing him to escape afterward using spacetime.

That way, alongside everything he had already gathered, he could—

Whoosh

The Doomsday Furnace extinguished suddenly.

The Purgatory Flame vanished instantly.

And with it... Robinʼs smile vanished as well.

The battlefield itself seemed to freeze for a brief moment.

Instinctively, Robinʼs eyes shifted toward the exact location where he had suddenly sensed a strange disturbance spreading through the void...

There, staring directly back at him from within the darkness itself, were two eyes.

Two small burning red eyes.