Demon King Ascension System

246 The Stone Warden

Blake has been put in quite a sticky situation. On choosing whether he should walk forward with confidence or would he try to find a way to bring Cyra, Robus, and Vra inside the darkness elemental dome.

It was a no-brainer that he would have the courage to face any kind of danger waiting inside the dome if he brought his group with him. Having Robus as his literal mountain shield, Vera as his mentor that was knowledgeable about almost everything, and Cyra that could easily defeat hundreds of weaker demons with a few casual waves of her hand.

With that kind of lineup backing him up, it was rather hard for Blake to think of a challenge that they couldn’t overcome.

But the problem was, they really couldn’t do anything about the darkness elemental dome that blocked their way. No matter how hard Robus hit, how powerful Cyra’s flame tried to break it down, or no matter how thoroughly Vera searched for any kind of runes or anything that she could temper to destroy the darkness dome, the group didn’t find any way to go inside the darkness elemental dome.

Of course, Blake had also checked the same weakness that his domes had, which was going inside it through the bottom of the dome, underneath the ground, but different from his dome, the darkness elemental dome in front of him seemed to have extended deep underground as Blake couldn’t find any openings even after digging 2 meters down the ground on the edge of the dome.

Blake tried putting his hand again to the darkness elemental dome, and just like before, he could easily pass it as if he was meant to do that in the first place.

“Do I really need to go alone? Is there no other choice?” Blake muttered out loud this time, his words being heard by the three other demons around him.

“We’ve tried searching for other ways to go in, but there’s nothing we can do, Blake,” Vera said as she kept circling around the barrier, finding nothing such as rune formations on or around the darkness elemental dome.

“I don’t know where you got your unknown evolution catalyst from and who had given it to you, I don’t even know any kind of bloodline power like yours that enabled you to get other affinities that you are not born with. All I know is that whatever helped you and guided you all this time was not something or someone ordinary.”

.....

“Having the ability to make a darkness construct with this caliber in the first demon realm without leaving a single trace of runes or weakness outside to exploit, it certainly wasn’t the work of anyone random.”

“And it seems that whoever it was that guided you, wanted you to go through inside the darkness dome alone.” Vera shook her head as she once again failed to find anything on the darkness elemental dome in front of her.

Vera then added, “Trusting a demon, an unknown one at that, was something that could be said to be anything other than smart, but in your case, this unknown person had helped you so much. I don’t think they would be willing to harm you since it would also mean harming their own investment, which was yourself.”

“Rrr.rr” (Go on and get your evolution finished, Blake. You can do it.) Robus said after failing to leave even a single scratch mark on the darkness elemental dome using his dark earth spear.

Understanding what was happening around her, Cyra chimed in saying, “Don’t worry brother. No matter how long it takes for you to complete your evolution, we will all stay here waiting for you to come back. We will not go anywhere until you come back to us.”

Blake already considered the possibilities that Vera mentioned and had his motivation to go inside the dome raised by Robus’ short yet encouraging words. And finally, after hearing Cyra’s words, Blake’s choice had finally been decided.

Blake took a single step closer towards the darkness elemental zone, his head looking at the three other demons beside him, noticing their eyes staring straight back at him. Blake then nodded with conviction on his face. “I’ll be back soon, folks. And I will return as an evolved demon!”

With those last words, Blake took another step forward, this time his feet went right through the darkness elemental dome as he carried his body inside it.

Blake had his eyes wide open when his body phased through the darkness dome, but his eyes turned black the second his head went through the dome.

And when Blake opened them back up again, Blake could see the familiar scenery as the one that he saw outside. Black barren lands that had nothing other than empty grounds and rocks, with the red sun shining above his head.

Even though the darkness dome should have blocked everything from the outside, including the red sun above his head, Blake could still see the red sun above shining despite there should be a thick darkness elemental construct in its way.

However, Blake soon realized that being able to see the red sun was not the peculiarity here. The fact that he turned his head backward and failed to see the thick wall of darkness behind him and instead only saw the black barren lands was the thing that Blake couldn’t figure out.

“Robus! Cyra! Vera! Can you hear me!?”

Blake tried screaming and calling out to the three demons that had promised to wait for him, but even after waiting for 5 whole seconds, not a single voice called back to him.

‘Where did they go? Or rather, where did I go to…? Blake observed the scenery around him, but he couldn’t see anything different in the monotonous scenery of the nether rich zone that he has been in.

Everywhere he looked, the scenery seemed to have looked the exact same. The only thing that didn’t make Blake think that he had been teleported far away from his previous location was the fact that the system told him that he was very, very close to the thing that he was searching for.

Blake still didn’t know what he was searching for. Well, he knew the name, but he didn’t know what this ‘Condensed Darkness Elemental Stone’ looked like.

Fortunately, just like how the system wanted him to find the condensed darkness elemental stone and finish his evolution soon, it seemed the stone had the same thought as Blake could feel the stone moving closer towards him.

‘It could move…?’ Blake then began looking all around him once again, this time making sure he looked in all directions, right, left, front, and back.

He didn’t see it at first due to the terrain of the place around him being nothing but empty ground, but after observing the ground behind him carefully, Blake noticed that there was actually a slope that leads to the lower side of the ground.

And by moving in that direction, Blake could feel that he had in fact, moved closer toward the condensed darkness elemental stone.

Blake hurriedly took more steps forward, moving closer to the condensed darkness elemental stone that somehow also moved towards him.

But when he finally stood on the edge of the slope, only a step away from walking down from it, Blake froze in place as his eyes finally laid onto the supposed condensed darkness elemental stone that he was looking for.

Instead of a stone that floated and moved on its own towards him, what Blake saw instead was a humanoid demon walking slowly on its two feet going up the slope, right towards him.

The humanoid demon, at the first glance, looked fairly similar to the undead demons that were controlled by the necromancer variant that Blake defeated back then. But with a stark difference being the humanoid demon’s body was free from any kind of wounds unlike those undead demons.

The thing that made the humanoid look similar to the undead demons were the lifeless eyes that seemingly didn’t have a single desire in its mind as it walked mindlessly up the slope.

However, Blake didn’t think of these characteristics for long as his eyes were locked onto the humanoid demon’s head. More particularly, the center of the humanoid demon’s forehead.

A black stone, one that was as black as Blake’s skin and emitted a thick, abundant amount of nether from it, was planted right in the dead center of the humanoid demon’s forehead.

As Blake wondered about what he should do with the humanoid demon in front of him, a mechanical voice and a line of text suddenly appeared in his mind.

———-

Quest:

+(Main) Reach level 15 and Evolve!

+(Evolution) Defeat The Stone Warden!

Due to the host’s unique constitution, the evolution process needed more than just nether of the realm to complete. With the evolution catalyst as the first requirement, the second requirement is a condensed darkness elemental stone that was found in one of the nether rich zones in the first demon realm. The stone was guarded by a warden that Host needed to defeat to acquire the stone. Please defeat The Stone Warden and place the condensed darkness elemental stone in Host’s evolution catalyst to complete Host’s first-ever evolution!

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