Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 3070: Heading East

Emery and Soltz flew east toward the central continent, where the Pardera capital once stood.

Forty thousand miles.

At their full speed, the journey would still take two or three days.

Spatial gates could have shortened it to a fraction of that time, but speed wasn’t the point. Surveying the land between the two continents would reveal far more than any Waypoint ever could, and opening a spatial gate near the heart of Scourge territory risked attracting something neither of them was prepared to face.

More than that, Emery still held onto a thin hope.

Somewhere in the vast wilderness between here and the capital, there might still be survivors.

Someone who could tell them what had actually happened.

Below them, the desert stretched endlessly toward the horizon. Ruined outposts dotted the sands like broken teeth, their walls half-buried beneath dunes that had spent years reclaiming them. Cracked watchtowers leaned at impossible angles, while abandoned roads disappeared beneath drifting sand before resurfacing miles later.

Soltz’s expression darkened with every passing mile.

The desert stretched endlessly beneath them, but it was no longer the same golden wasteland they had crossed earlier. Patches of dark, hardened sand spread across the dunes, forming irregular stains that looked almost like scorch marks.

Here and there, strange fungal growths pushed through the sand in clusters. Pale, twisted stalks rose from the dunes, their swollen caps covered in gray-black veins. Some had grown into dense patches that stretched for miles, turning entire sections of the desert into a sickly gray landscape.

Farther ahead, the landscape changed again.

The endless dunes gave way to a vast field of jagged black stone. Thousands of sharp pillars rose from the ground at unnatural angles, their surfaces covered in dark cracks that pulsed faintly with purple light. Whatever had once formed this region was impossible to tell; the entire area looked as though the earth itself had been shattered and left to decay.

Soltz stared down at the corrupted landscape in silence.

He clearly remembered this region differently.

Once, this had been a fertile stretch of land dotted with villages, trade routes, and cultivated fields. Now, there was nothing but dead stone, drifting sand, and strange growths slowly spreading across the remains of civilization.

Even from thousands of meters above, the corruption was impossible to mistake.

"To think the Scourge could do this much damage..." the old man muttered, unable to hide the disbelief in his voice.

His shock was justified.

Tartarus—and Pardera in particular—had never been a weak realm. It possessed fewer people than the Magus Alliance, but nearly every one of them had been a cultivator. Here, becoming a Magus was the baseline, not the exception. Three Cosmos experts like Soltz were common enough to be found in any major faction, while Supremes numbered in the dozens across the realm.

And still...

This.

Knowing the scale of what they had been sent to investigate, Emery never relaxed his vigilance as they continued eastward. Even while maintaining his flight, a portion of his consciousness quietly withdrew into his inner domain.

There were still several things to confirm.

First was contact with the armada.

Veyarel was the key. Among them, his Khaos Seed gave him the deepest understanding of spatial laws, making him the most reliable candidate to serve as an anchor through Tartarus’s chaotic space. If anyone could maintain a stable connection across the realm’s interference, it was him.

Emery entered the Khaos Domain and called for him.

To his relief, the connection held despite the interference. A moment later, Veyarel appeared at the Waypoint beside him.

Emery gave his report first, explaining their current situation, what they had discovered, and their plan ahead to be passed on to the Supreme.

Then came Veyarel’s report.

The spatial anchor had been successfully established, and the armada was already making its way through. Discussions about their next move were already underway.

"The mission was to establish a safe bridge between realms," Veyarel said, his tone measured but pointed. "Not to charge headlong into a fight against the Scourge."

Emery understood the weight behind those words.

His intelligence would matter more than he’d initially realized. He didn’t want the armada to start heading straight toward a Scourge hive without knowing what awaited them.

The second matter was his own way out.

Emery tested his connection to Veyarel, using him as an anchor point. The link held, but only barely. The spatial interference here was heavier than anywhere he’d tested before, making the connection unstable and difficult to maintain.

He wouldn’t be able to move freely between Waypoints on a whim. Every crossing would require a massive expenditure of energy and considerable effort.

Not ideal.

But enough.

Next, he turned to his next task: creating his Khaos Legions.

Six shadow clones were dispatched toward Waypoints leading to six of the remaining habitable planets scattered across Tartarus, each one tasked with exploring the region and gathering whatever information they could.

Emery continued flying, his attention divided between the physical journey and the six threads of consciousness now spreading across the realm.

Then his expression changed as the clones began to encounter trouble.

"Dammit..."

One by one, they started to fail, their bodies being torn apart by the violent spatial anomalies within minutes of stepping through the Waypoints. The distortions were simply too powerful, and his shadow clones weren’t strong enough to survive the crossings.

Either he would have to go himself, or he needed something sturdier to send in his place.

As he considered the problem, Emery drew out an item he’d recently acquired, and the moment it appeared from his storage, the entire Khaos Domain seemed to shudder in response.

A dark shard floated before him, saturated with an immense concentration of pure spatial energy.

It was the same Tier 8 material he’d obtained as rewards for the Baeldum operation. It was the core of a Parasite X, extracted from its shattered corpse after the recent space battle.

Emery couldn’t help but smile faintly as he remembered the last time he’d absorbed something similar. That time, he’d caught a glimpse of the Origin itself, and he couldn’t help wondering if this material might gave him the same gains.

He closed his eyes and carefully drew the energy from the shard into himself. The moment it touched his soul, he immediately understood what needed to be done, though the process would be anything but easy.

The shard contained far too many impurities, and each one needed to be painstakingly refined before its energy could be safely absorbed.

Even so, Emery began the process, slowly drawing the spatial energy into himself while refining the impurities piece by piece.

Nearly an hour passed before Soltz’s voice suddenly reached his mind.

"Lifesigns up ahead."

Emery’s Divine Sense immediately flared outward, spreading across the desert until he sensed the movement Soltz had detected.

There were indeed signs of life.

Directly ahead, the dunes began to move as countless creatures emerged from beneath the sand, their numbers spreading across the desert in a wave that stretched almost from horizon to horizon.

Unfortunately, they weren’t humans, and Emery knew the creatures well enough.

Parasite Hounds.

Hundreds of them across the open desert.