CHAPTER 353: CHAPTER 353: THE SIZE OF THE MACHINE

Belgrod looked down in shock, unable to understand what was happening immediately.

The thin red line stretched from the left side of his abdomen to his right. He felt cold down there.

There was a stinging pain coming from the red line that had mysteriously appeared on his abdomen and he didn’t dare to move for fear of making the pain worse.

As milliseconds passed, his brain began to register what had happened.

With his head still faced down and his eyes locked on the thin red line, his hand which was clasped tightly around Katari’s neck slowly let go.

Katari fell to the ground, coughing vehemently after taking a few breaths. She didn’t take any chances to attack the stunned tigers.

Instead, she ran over to Kael’s body and hugged him tightly. She used her body to shield him from the sun and from the eyes of those who might attack him. She might not have much power left at her disposal but she still had her body.

This was the final act of loyalty which she could bear to perform, self-sacrifice for the sake of a twisted feeling of love.

Thankfully, the tigers in their human forms were too distracted to care about Katari’s touching act.

"Belgrod, are you...alright?" Constantyne asked as he stepped closer to Belgrod. He saw Belgrod’s eyelids sliding down slowly as if he were losing consciousness.

Belgrod said perfectly still despite his unstable conciseness. His eyelids were getting heavier but his strong will kept him going.

He didn’t even dare to answer Constantyne. The smell of blood permeated the surrounding area as red drops fell from the thin red line on his abdomen.

The cut was clean, way too clean.

However, the pull of death was just too strong and Belgrod had no way to fight against it. He hadn’t even been able to defend himself.

His eyes remained open as he refused to close them but the light of life gradually faded away from within. His gaze turned blank and his upper body turned stiff.

Like a pack of wet noodles, he fell to the metal surface, splitting into two halves that spewed blood from their ends.

One upper half and one lower half.

The blood flowed down the slope of the metal surface, reaching the edge of the vessel and falling away like a small red waterfall.

"Belgrod," Agatha gasped in horror as she rushed at his body, precisely his upper half. She held up his head and rested it on her bosom.

A chilling frost emanated from her body, she was trying to freeze him and slow down his heart in order to save him.

But it was too late. She couldn’t feel any heartbeat and his body.

Just like that, Belgrod, the master mind and brains of their little group, was dead.

Constantyne’s head snapped to the left suddenly, his whole body igniting momentarily as he moved fast enough to cause friction with the air.

The air behind him and the cloud further away were cleanly split apart. The air instantly ended itself but the cloud drifted away into two parts.

"Who’s there!" Constantyne shouted to the sky, but there was no answer.

His ears were more sensitive than Belgrod who had depended on magic senses. He could hear the slightest shift in the air molecules and calculated the direction the spatial blade was coming from.

He didn’t bother accusing Katari as he could tell that she was also drained of most of her energy. If she had any she wouldn’t be able to kill Belgrod, even in her peak.

"Agatha, let’s go," Constantyne barked at the white-haired woman.

Agatha could also sense that something was wrong and left Belgrod’s very valuable body alone.

Bwlgbidt had already begun to shift, slowly changing back to his original tiger form.

Meanwhile, Agatha and Constantyne took several steps back while observing their surroundings.

Just then, Constantyne’s ears twitched as he heard it again, this time more than one was coming, and it was coming very fast.

Not having time to even think, Constantyne reacted instinctively. Flame burst from his chest while his hand grabbed onto whatever he could hold of Agatha.

Unfortunately, the only thing he could hold on to at the nick of time was her tail.

Agatha was not able to react quickly as Constantyne leaped off the metal surface, yanking Agatha back into the process.

Everything happened extremely fast.

Agatha felt a stinging pain in her feet as one of the spatial blades cut the sole of her feet, leaving a shallow injury.

It wasn’t life-threatening, but it was painful.

The two of them sped off like a frost-covered flaming meteor.

This caused a spectacular scene as they fell from the sky, leaving a train of steam, red, and white, behind them.

Their bodies could not be seen, just a ball of flaming ice.

While falling, Constantyne and Agatha were able to glimpse the full body shape of the machine they had been standing on and they were flabbergasted.

They had expected the Arkship to be huge but his thing was simply...it was hard to explain.

They had never seen anything so big fly so high. It was incredible and awe-inspiring.

It was a technological wonder, something that stirred emotion within the hearts of all those who saw it from below.

Its design was meant to spur such feelings, it was an intentional and well-thought-out design by the makers of the machine.

Its sleek metal hull, if it could still be called that, seemed to be comprised of many metal plates, each the size of a large mountain.

As they fell further away, they saw the edges and made out the overall structure from the outside.

No wonder the part sticking out of the ground that time was curved.

The Arkship was shaped like a disk, like a flying saucer.

Its edges were curved and seemed to bend light and space around them. The whole vessel gave off the aura of an incredibly ambitious king, someone who desired to control everything his eyes saw.

Well, such a king could see almost everything from such a height and with such a vessel.

And this was just the visual shock, they had not yet felt the truly disgusting level of power that could come from this Arkship.

They had even tried to take it, what could they have done with it?

This thing was more or less close to five thousand kilometers in diameter.

It wasn’t this big before, they were sure of that. When they saw it burst out of the ground, it had been around three hundred kilometers in diameter, not that they could accurately measure it.

But now, it seemed that while they were distracted by their fighting, the Arkship had grown in size.

There was a reason why it always felt like the inside of the Arkship was larger than the outside.

Constantyne and Agatha’s fall seemed to occur for eternity as they stared at the Arkship through the fiery blaze and their icy shell.

Unfortunately, their attacker was not so keen on letting them go so easily.

The air split apart as a spatial needle shot down from the Arkship, racing after the duo.

The needle was invisible, yet very much tangible, and interacted with the air, causing it to screech in protest.

The needle was fast, fast enough that Constantyne nor Agatha were able to notice it on time...

It struck them, piercing through their frozen fireball and sinking quietly into the ground.

*BOOM!*

Constantyne and Agatha hit the ground, destroying it further and creating another small creature amidst the rubble.

The flames and ice cancelled out to reveal their unconscious forms. Both of them had a tiny red hole at the center of their abs.

They were still alive, but unconscious.

Silence.

The world had gone silent.

The saucer-shaped Arkship floated in the sky, covering a significant portion of Eridoria’s land in darkness and shadows.

Beneath it, what was once called the peach valley was nothing but ruin. This place was not conquered, it was destroyed.

The peach trees were gone and those that were left were no longer rooted to the soil. Some fruits, due to their small sizes, managed to survive, along with their seeds.

Still, most of the trees and unique flora had been crushed by the shifting earth or the burning lava that had already cooled down by now.

If the peach valley were to ever survive, some actions would have to be made.

Even the area beyond the peach valley was affected. It could no longer be called a valley. Rivers would have to be artificially reconnected to create what was lost.

But the peach valley, for any creature who survived the ascension of the Arkship, should be the last thing on their mind right now.

This was because all over the world of Eridoria, from the birds, to the crawlers, to the aquatic creatures, every living thing felt it.

The Origin Essence, it had increased.