Chapter 945 — The Rift in Time and Space
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
When all that was done, he let out a breath, turned, and made his way to the edge of Metzen's enormous wing. After confirming the height of the sea below, he gathered the power within his body and leaped.
As a Legendary powerhouse, even if he was no mage and could not work their flight spells, he could still, to some degree, briefly suspend himself in the air and slow his descent. And the sea below Metzen was not empty—strange chunks like wreckage drifted nearby, enough to serve as stepping stones on the way down. Gaoyang used them as his path, controlling his direction and speed as he sprang from one piece of wreckage to the next, and in moments he had reached the sea.
He stepped onto the motionless ocean, and at once a wondrous sensation rose underfoot—the surface, which looked as solid as ground, was not as "hard" as he had imagined, yet neither was it liquid as normal seawater should be. It seemed to hold a peculiar "elasticity" underfoot. Gaoyang felt himself sink slightly, but when he planted his feet with force, the sinking sensation vanished.
He felt as steady as though he were standing on solid ground.
"Strange..." Gaoyang murmured to himself. "There really was a moment of sinking, a feeling of elasticity just now..."
There was no one around to answer his murmur.
Gaoyang shook his head, drew another deep breath, and raised his eyes to the distance.
In the vortex-shaped sea, that towering steel construct stood at the center of his vision. Seen from afar it resembled a strangely shaped mountain, bearing obvious marks of artificial construction: its surface was seamless armor plating, and outside the armor were many protruding structures of unknown purpose. When he had looked at this scene from midair earlier, Gaoyang had felt nothing in particular, but now, viewing it from the sea, he realized just how immense the thing was—larger than any ship the Cecil Empire had ever built, taller than any tower humanity had ever raised. Only part of its structure seemed to rise above the sea, and yet even that exposed portion alone was enough to strike one dumb with awe.
He could not help but look toward those vast shapes emerging on the sea and in the air, near and far—toward those "attackers" surrounding them on every side.
Their forms were bizarre beyond measure—grotesque would not even be an exaggeration. Some looked like hideous sea monsters with seven or eight heads; some like giant beasts carved from rock and ice; some like nothing but a searing mass of flame or a cloud of gas whose shape defied description. A little farther from the "battlefield," Gaoyang even glimpsed a faint humanoid outline—it looked like a giant wielding a longsword, clad in battle robes woven of starlight and flowing fire, striding across the waves, blood-red flames blazing along the blade...
Gaoyang had already begun to move, racing across the motionless sea toward that "battlefield ruin" at the vortex's center. A Legendary knight's charge approached the speed of sound; he skimmed like a phantom among those vast shapes and drifting wreckage, all the while keeping his eyes on every detail of this strange "battlefield."
Though the "attackers" besieging the great vortex were grotesque in appearance, every one of them was exceptionally huge. In Gaoyang's memory, only the true forms of the Great Stag Amon or the upper narrator Narytir-Duvalt bore any resemblance to such scale—and once that association surfaced, he could no longer suppress the direction his thoughts were taking—
Who were these colossal "attackers"? Why had they gathered here? Were they attacking that steel construct at the vortex's center? This place looked like a battlefield—but a battlefield from when? Everything here was frozen... How long had it been frozen, and who had frozen it?