Chapter 514: Open the Door (End of Main Text)

"So, you have finally revealed your true monstrous nature..."

The collective consciousness of the Utopia organization groaned heavily, driving the Outsider to lash out, dragging a vast expanse of the Void to collide with Wang Yu’s blood-wrought frame. Able to perceive the world through the Void, they could sense that the Chariot power surrounding Wang Yu was a field of far higher and more dangerous caliber than the energy he had used to cloak his human form.

"Boom!"

A fraction of the Void struck the field of Chariot power first. The Chariot energy ignored the Void’s unique properties entirely, violently tearing it apart piece by piece, though it did not truly harm the fundamental force that constituted the Void itself.

"Sizzle!"

The indescribable shell of blood extended a staggering number of tentacles, wreaking havoc within the Void. With blinding speed, it ripped open a rift to the material world, reached deep into the crust tens of thousands of meters below, and dragged out half a volcanic range—teeming with untold fire elementals—to smash against the Outsider.

The field of Chariot power stripped the surrounding Void of its inherent traits, rendering it unnaturally "material." The Outsider could no longer use intangibility to evade attacks; it had no choice but to engage in a brutal, head-on confrontation with the second-stage Wang Yu using its own raw power.

The priority of the Chariot power crushed the Void, forcing any entity within its domain to abide by its rules. It was fair, devoid of flashy tricks; battle aura, magic, life force, and even Void energy could be used as fuel, colliding until one body was utterly annihilated and the domain collapsed.

"Bang!"

From within the Outsider’s body, a beam constructed of stellar energy erupted, sweeping upward to bisect the massive volcanic range, shattering Wang Yu’s projectile in two.

"Come!"

The moment the mountain was cleaved, it detonated from the volatile fire elementals within. Amidst the firelight and turbulent energy, Wang Yu roared, charging from behind the debris and slamming his massive blood-shell into the Outsider below.

The Outsider, controlled by Utopia, did not retreat. It met Wang Yu head-on without hesitation, its own corruption-laden power beginning to erode Wang Yu’s body in the same manner.

One had to admit, the corrosive power of this stellar monster was terrifyingly destructive. Even in this state, Wang Yu’s blood was being disintegrated; at the point of contact, black-red mist hissed into existence as his blood was annihilated.

Yet, Wang Yu was a monster in his own right. His blood’s predatory instinct was etched into every drop. With his permission, they hunted anything that could be devoured, and the Outsider was the nearest prey.

After a brief period of adaptation and the loss of some blood-mass, Wang Yu’s body quickly mastered the trick of consuming the Outsider. In an instant, the one-sided disintegration turned into a mutual slaughter.

"Touching their power in human form was not a waste. Though brief, I was adapting and learning their traits before I was destroyed. Now, having truly touched their flesh, this shell can quickly adapt and master the method of consuming them as sustenance."

Wang Yu mused to Aivia within his body. The previous destruction of his form, pushing against their power step by step until death, was not for show; it was a deliberate act of learning through contact.

"It’s good, but Wang Yu, is an entity of this caliber truly enough to open the 'Gate'?"

The girl replied, while she quickly used the Chariot power to piece together the construct she was building inside Wang Yu.

"Absolutely! My body is absorbing their essence. The Outsider is the strongest creature I have ever encountered. My gut tells me it is sufficient to bear the load of 'opening the gate'."

His response was without hesitation. Wang Yu offered no explanation for his certainty; if he couldn't win, he would die, and that was that. He chose to believe that by giving his all, victory was inevitable.

"Understood. I will seize that moment."

The two behemoths remained locked in combat. Wang Yu’s flesh began to devour the matter constituting the Outsider, while the Outsider simultaneously tore at Wang Yu’s body. However, an external force forcibly broke this precarious, short-lived balance.

Golden-red war banners fluttered, pouring a mountain-like ocean of life force into Wang Yu’s massive blood-form. The Relic—an object whose essence no one had yet grasped—continued to exert its influence in this level of battle. As Wang Yu destroyed and killed parts of the Outsider, one-tenth of its life force arrived as scheduled, converting into easily absorbed nutrients for Wang Yu.

This extra power tipped the scales, allowing Wang Yu to grow as he devoured the Outsider.

"Wang Yu, it seems one trait of the Relic is clear: only beings with a stable consciousness can use them. Abyssal creatures, including the Outsider, cannot."

The girl noted. She was certain Utopia possessed Relics, yet they had not used them, confirming that the collective consciousness formed from countless souls and the Outsider did not meet the criteria.

"That’s good news. I hope they just stay still and let me swallow them."

"That is unlikely. Utopia needs more souls to strengthen their consciousness, otherwise..."

"They’ll lose control, right? I understand. The Outsider is manageable now because it’s hampered by a rational consciousness. It will be much harder to deal with later."

Utopia soon realized that relying on close-quarters combat to corrupt Wang Yu’s body was futile. Moreover, as Wang Yu and Aivia suspected, the Outsider’s corruption was beginning to affect the collective consciousness controlling it.

"Need more souls to gain influence over the Void and stabilize the will..."

Utopia’s decision was made. What they thought would be an easy kill had turned into a stalemate, and their very consciousness was now in need of replenishment.

Realizing their predicament, they turned to their pre-arranged reserves. What was meant for after Wang Yu’s defeat had to be used now...

"Boom!"

Without hesitation, they detonated the portion of the shell in contact with Wang Yu, blasting him away. The Outsider immediately ascended, heading toward the underground world where the Sky City had crashed.

"Sizzle!"

A Void rift was torn open. The Outsider surged out, preparing to capture the Alliance soldiers left behind. Those souls were linked to the Void; if only...

But Utopia immediately sensed something wrong. The beings below, who should have been easy to locate, had hidden their soul-Void channels. They could still be found with time, but...

"Don't run! Where do you think you're going!"

Behind the Outsider, a rift of equal magnitude was torn open by endless, twisting crimson tentacles. Wang Yu crawled out, shouting with manic intensity, in hot pursuit.

Utopia had no time. Even a brief delay would not be granted by the monster chasing them.

The only possibility for the Alliance members hiding their channels was that someone had revealed the truth to them while Utopia was occupied with Wang Yu.

This truth had changed their perception, allowing them to reclaim the power they had lost to the Void. Since all corruption was currently focused on the Outsider, reclaiming their power was safe.

But Utopia had accounted for this; the World Anchor was still running, and its secondary function included the distortion and integration of wills.

"Merlin!"

A message was transmitted from within the Outsider to the crashed Sky City, directed at the hidden Utopia member who had gained strong mental resistance and independence through mechanical existence—Merlin, or rather, the Tower Spirit Astartes.

"..."

Only silence returned. No response.

"Have you betrayed us, Merlin? Why do you just watch!"

A furious roar erupted from the collective consciousness controlling the Outsider. A torrent of destruction flooded toward the beings below, venting the madness of their burning rage through hysterical annihilation.

"Clang!"

A resonant, non-existent bell tolled. Everything froze. The Chariot power, spreading from Wang Yu, seized the surroundings in an instant. It was a technique Aivia had crafted by mimicking magic with Chariot power: Chariot Power: Commander’s Throne.

Time and space were forcibly halted. The dragons, humans, and dwarves in the underground world were locked in a frozen timeline. The static zone shielded them from the Outsider’s torrent of destruction.

"Come, let’s change the venue."

Wang Yu’s voice echoed. His massive body moved with impossible speed through the frozen time, reaching the Outsider. His expanding form wrapped around it like a net, and then, with violent Chariot power, he tore open space and dragged the Outsider into the rift.

"Bang!"

With a thunderous crash as the space rift buckled under the strain and was forcibly pried open by Wang Yu, he dragged the Outsider out of the underground space. After a brief delay, the area affected by the massive time-stop returned to normal, and the people began to move again.

Inside the stalled Sky City, Icarus operated the only device capable of resisting the underground power, speaking to the mechanical spider at her feet.

"It seems trusting you was not a mistake. Your guarantee that 'Utopia has no second means like that heart' seems quite effective."

"I had no choice. Letting consciousness rely on mechanical existence has its issues, but it is indeed less susceptible to external influence. I also said, 'unless I see another possibility,' and that person we both know, Wang Yu, seems to have provided one, doesn't he?"

"Indeed. Although he looks quite terrifying now, in my experience, he is a decent person. At least as a friend, he is very easy to get along with."

...

"Sizzle, rumble!"

The other end of the violently opened space rift tore open on the surface. This was no empty space, but the heart of a mountain. A normal being would have fused with the stone and died instantly upon teleporting here.

But these two were monsters who ignored the spatial collapse that could easily kill a legendary-tier powerhouse.

The space rift, its form already mangled beyond recognition, underwent total annihilation after spitting out the two monsters. A spherical spatial explosion pulverized the surrounding area.

"This place is truly disaster-prone!"

Wang Yu sighed, pressing the Outsider down with thousands of blood-tentacles as he emerged from the surface amidst the massive spatial collapse. The mountain range beneath them, already bombed once by Utopia, was the Santa Ana Snowfield. Once again, it became the first front of the battlefield.

The Saint Anna peak shattered into two, and Wang Yu’s tentacles gripped the mountain, one of the continent’s loftiest summits, dragging the Outsider upward with him.

"Awa-ji-a-o-o!"

The Outsider, dragged along the entire way, suddenly emitted a strange, illogical shriek. The frantic sonic waves pulverized the snow and ice within a ten-kilometer radius, along with the very rock face they clung to, into fine powder. Its body, a chaotic mess of colors resembling a corrupted data program, suddenly inverted, ejecting a mass of deep black filaments from within toward Wang Yu’s form.

"It seems it truly cannot withstand the Outsider’s mental corruption; the entire consciousness aggregate is spiraling out of control. Now, the real challenge begins."

"Boom!"

The power of the Chariot, wielded by Aivia, drew all the magic from the surrounding area into Wang Yu’s body, compressing it into a singular, infinitesimal point before releasing it in a directed strike, colliding the thick beam of light with the projected mass of pitch-black filaments.

"Sss..."

A strange sound echoed; the black mass illogically drilled into the beam, transforming the high-energy magic ray into a dense, chaotic polymer of black threads in a heartbeat, surging back toward Wang Yu.

"Bang!"

Blood-red tentacles lashed out at lightning speed to intercept the counterattack. Upon impact, the Chariot-empowered limbs shattered the black mass into oblivion.

"Tsk, though it is already quite powerful, is it still not enough to directly confront an Outsider freed from the shackles of logic?"

Part of his blood-constructed body was severed by Wang Yu, falling away and dissolving into nothingness in the air. Though he had dispersed the chaotic mass, that portion of his body was now lost.

The Outsider was liberating itself from the suppression of the Utopia organization’s consciousness. Previously, its attacks were bound by logic under that control, but no longer. The true power of the Outsider—an entity beyond description—would now be unleashed at will.

The power of the Chariot would not suppress the opponent’s strength as it did the Void, for that power belonged to the entity itself. If Wang Yu were stronger, the Chariot could crush all, but even in his second stage, he was still not strong enough.

"I... kill... Ke-hu-mo-yan-zhu..."

The Outsider uttered garbled, meaningless language. Its remaining logic was vanishing entirely, replaced by the Outsider’s true, chaotic essence, which could hardly be called consciousness.

Its body, looking like a glitch in the world, shrank inward, becoming a tiny point under Wang Yu’s gaze, and then vanished.

"Watch out!"

The girl’s instinctive warning came too late; the shield formed by commanding and compressing half a mountain peak was pierced. The Outsider appeared illogically around Wang Yu’s massive blood-form, transforming into a hideous maw and biting down hard.

"Truly disgusting. But if this is what you want to do to me, then I shall oblige."

Bitten, Wang Yu felt the Outsider’s counter-invasion. The opponent’s power was not something that could be harmed by magic or physical attacks driven by the Chariot; its composition was too bizarre, akin to those artifacts whose workings were entirely beyond comprehension.

To kill—no, not to kill; Wang Yu and Aivia had no certainty of killing it with this massive blood-shell.

To use the opponent to achieve his goal, he had to leverage his own adaptability. He had to use his body as a converter to apply a method that shouldn't work against the Outsider directly onto its very existence.

"Aivia, finish this quickly! Get ready; there’s no time for me to slowly adapt to this body. If we waste power, so be it!"

Wang Yu shouted to the girl, telling her to undo the "neural network" that helped him control the body. He needed to use his power in its entirety now.

"Understood!"

Responding instantly, the girl focused on her task, unraveling the "neural network."

"Come!"

The amorphous blood-giant rapidly shifted under Wang Yu’s roar, transforming into a human shape scaled to size. This limitation of form wasted a vast amount of power, but it made control far more intuitive.

"Snap!"

His arms, imbued with the power of the Chariot, clamped onto the "maw" biting his upper body. Ignoring all the destruction and depletion the Outsider inflicted upon him, he ripped it off and hurled it toward the Endless Sea.

"Boom!"

The Outsider struck the sea, but instead of sinking, it slid across the surface as if it were solid ground, stopping abruptly. Lacking any concept of front or back, it unleashed countless intangible attacks at the descending Wang Yu.

These attacks had no substance and no sense of impact; Wang Yu only felt his body constantly shattering, vast amounts of blood changing nature and vanishing from his perception.

"Bang!"

Wang Yu didn't bother to ponder what the Outsider was; such an attack form was beyond his comprehension. The Chariot didn't need to understand to be effective. A kick from the sky struck the Outsider squarely, shattering the sea surface and driving it deep into the depths of the Endless Sea.

"Come, come, come!"

With a manic, deranged cry, Wang Yu plunged into the sea, grappling with the Outsider, clutching it to his chest. Tentacles of blood extended from his giant human form, piercing into the opponent’s body, gnawing and advancing.

The Outsider launched a counter-devouring. Wang Yu felt several vortices appear within him, his flesh being erased and—by some unknown principle—converted into the Outsider’s own resources, allowing it to grow and devour him further.

Wang Yu’s blood attacked in turn, but it was slower than the Outsider, which was no longer bound by logic. The destruction of his body accelerated, but he didn't care, pumping his blood into the Outsider’s core.

In a short time, they entered a bizarre state: the Outsider was frantically invading and devouring Wang Yu with its toxicity, while Wang Yu used his seemingly infinite blood to envelop and infiltrate the Outsider.

They were so entangled that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. To an outside observer, it was merely a mass of indescribable, sanity-shattering chaos churning violently.

"That’s it. And, sorry about this."

A quiet whisper. Wang Yu’s consciousness smiled. He felt it—his body, even with its slight disharmony, could perceive certain things by instinct.

His current chaotic state could be counted as injecting a toxic substance into himself. The Outsider was that toxin, but regardless, it was now "within his body."

"Boom!"

A spark of flame was created, spreading uncontrollably and igniting Wang Yu himself. This was the Flame of Sorcery, fueled by a life force so vast it might rival the sum of all living things on the continent.

Was he trying to burn the Outsider? One had to remember that in this world, aside from the power of the Void, no attack could affect the Outsider; otherwise, the ancients would not have sacrificed so much to suppress it to the bottom of the Void.

Indeed, the Flame of Sorcery could not affect the Outsider, but the flame Wang Yu had learned could. The manic fire burned Wang Yu himself, and it burned the Outsider’s shell, incinerating everything and converting it into sublimated life force.

Wang Yu had been entangled with the Outsider long enough. He had learned its traits one by one; now, aside from pure physical strength, his body’s properties approached those of the Outsider, the entity with the "optimal" flesh.

The Flame of Sorcery naturally affected his own body, and since his body now possessed the Outsider’s properties, the flame naturally extended to the Outsider currently "within him."

The fire continuously converted both their bodies and the power within them into a higher, sublimated life force. The Flag of Triumph even generated life force out of thin air, feeding the giant furnace of Wang Yu and the Outsider, making the flames burn ever brighter.

The entire ocean was illuminated by the terrifying fire, yet no bubbles rose, for the seawater was annihilated the instant it touched the flames. All that remained visible was the sea level rapidly receding.

"Now!"

Wang Yu shouted.

Both the entangled Outsider and Wang Yu were ignited by the sorcery fire, their combined power forcibly converted into an immense surge of life force. But this life force had no vessel, and thus no use.

If left like this, Wang Yu might be burned to nothing, and heaven knows what would remain of the Outsider—it would be meaningless. Besides, Wang Yu had no intention of sacrificing himself; he was not that noble.

He had to put this life force to use, and the girl had been waiting for this moment.

Opening her Eden Seed space, she released a small pool of Wang Yu’s blood. The Chariot’s effect, prepared in advance, linked a corner of the surging, infinite life force to that pool of blood.

"Pop, gulp..."

A faint, audible swallowing sound. The blood consumed the sublimated life force, turning it into its own power.

Then, it spiraled out of control. The blood began to devour the life force without limit, self-replicating as it grew—one became two, two became four, growing infinitely. As the Outsider and Wang Yu were burned into sublimated energy, the blood absorbed it all to fuel its own expansion. Gradually, a colossal entity stood tall above the Endless Sea.

What was that blood? It was Wang Yu’s, needless to say. What mattered was what it had learned. Combined with his earlier apology, he had clearly done something underhanded. The answer was obvious.

Wang Yu had swallowed the Holy Spear, Casimir, whole... completely analyzing and learning its effect of converting life force into energy. Hadn't Aivia speculated that the Holy Spear was actually a sapling of the Life Tree of Liahim?

Wang Yu found that to be true. After learning its ability, he discovered that the Holy Spear could grow infinitely as long as life force was provided; its final form should have been the Life Tree. If provided enough, it could even grow into a new World Tree.

And Wang Yu? He had swallowed the spear, so it would never become a World Tree. But in exchange, Wang Yu’s blood—or rather, Wang Yu himself—now possessed the ability to grow infinitely by absorbing life force, which was exactly what he was doing!

Though he was not yet skilled enough to manifest the essence of this ability—converting life force into any form of physical matter—he could at least grow into a "tree."

The growth accelerated. The giant tree named "Wang Yu" grew without limit, using the life force converted from his second-stage self and the Outsider as nutrients, transforming into the very substance of his body.

What a massive amount of power it was. One could glimpse it from the scale of the tree: its branches reached ten thousand meters into the sky, nearly touching the dissociation layer, and its roots plunged into the seabed. The trunk’s emergence even caused the sea level to rise by over ten meters, with tsunamis churning endlessly.

"Ah, just as I expected. I don't have the ability to kill this thing called the Outsider, so don't make it hard for me. I’ll just let my 'cheat'—er, no, my boss—handle this monster."

Wang Yu murmured to the girl currently nestled within the heart of the colossal tree. This titan of timber had grown from his own blood, so it was, in essence, still him; and now that Wang Yu had grown stronger, there were things he could finally achieve.

The Outsider’s power had been all but incinerated, yet a stubborn core remained that Wang Yu could not excise. This remnant, locked deep within the tree’s heart, was even attempting to siphon power back from him.

Burning away the "shell" of the entity seemed only to have fully liberated the Outsider’s true essence. At his current level, Wang Yu still could not dismantle it entirely; when all was said and done, the power he could channel from the previous world remained insufficient to crush the Outsider into nothingness.

"Can you open the door now?"

The girl’s tone was uncharacteristically hesitant. She had waited a long time for this moment, and now that it had arrived, she could not help but feel a flutter of nerves.

"Don't worry. What parents would ever mind their child bringing their wife home?"

Wang Yu replied with a smile. He could now perceive echoes of the previous world, such as the room that had always existed within his "mental space."

"Hehe, then let's go?"

The girl had been quite tense, but seeing Wang Yu speak to her through the small cube—the vessel of his "soul" that she had been cradling—made her chuckle. Her mood softened, replaced by a long-awaited sense of anticipation and excitement.

"Let’s go, and we’ll take this unkillable thing with us to be erased."

Wang Yu answered, sinking his consciousness fully into his mental space. He reached for the door that had always stood there, gripped the handle, and pushed.

This time, it was not merely an act of consciousness. Using the physical shell of the giant tree—a vessel fused with the Outsider’s traits and nourished by vast, stolen vitality—he anchored enough power projected from the previous world to force open a gateway between the two realms.

"Uh, the door is a bit small. You might have to carry me; there's no way I can bring this massive tree back with us."

Wang Yu felt a touch embarrassed. The portal appearing in the heart of the tree was indeed small, identical to the one in his room. The girl could pass through easily, but the tree was out of the question. He decided it was best to have her carry him—the cube—back instead.

"Mm!"

The girl nodded. Without hesitation, she opened the weathered white wooden door that manifested before her and stepped through, with Wang Yu in tow. Before crossing the threshold, Wang Yu used the power of the Chariot to shove the remnants of the Outsider through the gate.

...

"Hey!"

With a strange yelp, Wang Yu sat up in his own bed. He examined his body, patting his limbs—original, authentic, and unchanged.

Well, not quite unchanged. It was like when he had first arrived in the other world; it was truly him, but optimized, far removed from his previous sub-optimal health. The familiar, faint scent of wood in the room confirmed he was home.

The next instant, abandoning all pretense of dignity, he threw his head back and shouted the girl’s name: "Avia, where are you!"

Before the echo of his voice died away, he looked up and saw her. Her long, golden hair glowed with clean, ethereal beauty under the gentle sunlight filtering through the window. She was standing on the windowsill, peering outside.

"Over here, over here!"

Hearing his call, Avia, who had been lost in thought, snapped back to reality. She turned toward the bed—barely two meters away—and waved her arms, shouting back at him.

Their eyes met. The absurdity of the situation brought a fleeting moment of awkwardness to the room, but it was shattered in an instant by the two of them.

The girl lunged forward in a flying leap. Wang Yu caught her firmly in his arms, kissed her forehead, and pulled her down to lie beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

"Is the Outsider gone?"

The girl asked, her eyes scanning the room as she leaned against her lover.

"Gone. Not a trace left. Look, I have a body again; it was incinerated into dust. By the way, how do you feel?"

Wang Yu waved a hand, responding with ease. He could sense the process of his return; the world had reconstructed his body, and the unwelcome Outsider had been ground into nothingness. As for Avia, the world seemed to welcome her with open arms.

"Hmm... how do I look to you?"

She playfully waved her hand in front of his face, smiling as she asked.

"Perfect!"

The answer came without a second of hesitation.

"Haha, then that’s it. I feel great—light, unburdened. Though, I don't feel any magic or Void energy in the air here."

Amused by his bluntness, she patted his chest, describing the sensation of her new body. She couldn't quite put it into words, but it felt wonderful.

"That’s normal. My world doesn't have any of that messy magic stuff. I’m not sure about the rest of the universe, though."

Wang Yu rubbed his chin.

"Oh, right. Lady Darkness, are you there?"

Suddenly remembering, the girl spoke up, and Wang Yu immediately pricked up his ears.

"Yes, I am here."

The Lady of Night’s voice resonated in Wang Yu’s mind, her gentle tone carrying a hint of imperceptible joy.

"I heard her too!"

The girl said, surprised. Avia had heard the voice that should have been exclusive to Wang Yu.

"Maybe it's because we’re both followers of Lady Darkness? Who knows. But that explains why she used this world as an anchor back then. No wonder it was so special."

Wang Yu shrugged. He still didn't fully grasp the mechanics, but his friend was safe, and that was enough to make him and the girl happy.

"Can we go back there?"

Avia asked, a flicker of worry in her eyes. She feared being unable to return, especially since her mother and the others were still on the other side of the door.

"We can. The 'tree'—or rather, 'me'—well, the conditions for opening the door still exist. It’ll just take a little time to stabilize before we can link the two sides again."

Wang Yu replied. He could feel it—just as he had sensed the door and this room while in the other world, he could now feel that tree, whatever its connection to him might be. Opening the door again would not be as arduous as it had been before.

Wang Yu climbed out of bed and took the girl’s hand, leading her toward the door to show her the world he called home—the world she had always wanted to see.

"Hey, let me show you my home. It’s a shame my physical stats aren't as terrifying as they were over there, and I can't use any spells or battle aura..."

He hopped a few times on the floor, testing his physical strength. There was no longer the power to shatter mountains or cleave stone, and he spoke with a hint of regret.

It was to be expected. His world was stable, devoid of magic, the Void, or battle aura. Naturally, he couldn't use such supernatural...

As he experimented with his strength, confirming that his supernatural powers were indeed gone, he instinctively snapped his fingers. In that instant, a small, ghostly green flame bloomed at the tip of his right index finger.

"Wang Yu!"

"What the hell!"

(The Wandering Magic Knight, Main Text, Concluded)