Read Novel Full Chapter 578: Crimson Labyrinth
Chapter 578: Crimson Labyrinth
Almond and Lily also won their Double Barrage Space Shootout game, and earned 15,000 Anchor Points each.
After returning to Arklight city briefly, they entered another game A-rank game.
The A-rank game portal shimmered like liquid mercury as Almond and Lily stepped through, emerging into a vast underground chamber lit by pulsating crimson crystals.
’The air itself is humming with hostile energy.’ Almond blinked.
[Game: Crimson Labyrinth]
[Objective: Reach the Core Chamber and defeat the Labyrinth Guardian]
[Participants: 20 players]
[Rules]
—The labyrinth reconfigures every 10 minutes.
"Twenty players," Almond muttered, his eyes scanning the cavernous space. Already, he could see other teams materializing across the chamber. "This won’t be a cooperative game."
Lily’s hand was already pressed against the obsidian floor. Purple-black energy spiraled from her palm. "Then we move fast and hit harder."
[Dreadspire’s Call activated — 20 Pulse]
A swirling Dreadgate materialized beneath her touch, immediately beginning to feed on the ambient crimson energy saturating the labyrinth. But Lily didn’t summon her main Dreadling Legion yet—those ten Tier-5 peak powerhouses were her trump cards.
Instead, she activated the evolved version of her Dreadbirth Tree card.
[Dreadbirth Tree—Eternal Genesis: 100 Pulse]
Within her inner space, the spectral trees pulsed with accumulated power. Dozens of Dreadling Eggs hung from the branches—each one birthed from the countless energies her Dreadgates had absorbed since she gained epiphany of this card and evolved it.
Three eggs detached and manifested through the gate, cracking open to release Dreadlings that perfectly adapted to the labyrinth’s crimson energy.
They mutated and evolved within seconds as their internal woven energies mixed with Labyrinth’s energy to give their birth form.
These weren’t as powerful as her main legion, but they were expendable scouts. The three shadowy forms scuttled into the darkness, mapping paths and detecting threats.
"Northwest passage," Almond said, his tactical mind already working. He touched the stone wall beside him.
[Grimblade Creation — 20 Pulse]
The wall transformed into twelve obsidian blades that orbited him like a deadly constellation. Each had absorbed the labyrinth’s phase properties, able to pass through stone.
An explosion rocked the eastern corridor. Someone had already engaged.
"Contact," Lily warned as three players rounded the corner—a standard formation team. The leader wielded some kind of flame construct, already building heat.
Almond selected one of his Tier-5 Rare Grimblades—Voidfang Severance, a blade forged from compressed spatial anomalies and body parts of a monster who had space powers and manifested through spatial anomalies.
[Grim Severam]
"Sever: Distance."
Voidfang flashed with dark light. The effect was immediate—distance became meaningless for those struck. When the flame-user launched his attack, it manifested directly in front of his own face. His scream cut short as his own fire consumed him.
The other two players scrambled backward, but one of Lily’s egg-born Dreadlings had already circled behind them. It wasn’t strong enough to kill Tier-2 players alone, but it didn’t need to be—it just needed to feed the Dreadgate.
Lily gave a bunch of effects to that dreadling, sealing the player’s fate as the Dreadling exploded in a burst of corrosive energy, weakening their defenses. Lily made a hand sign, and two more eggs dropped from her inner tree, combining mid-air before manifesting as a single, larger Dreadling.
This was the power of Eternal Genesis—infinite adaptability. Two eggs combined created something stronger than either alone.
The merged Dreadling struck with blade-limbs, forcing the players into Almond’s kill zone.
The base of his new Rare-rank Tier-5 Grimblade—Eclipsed Fate’s Edge, was made from the body parts of previous game’s space monsters that appeared during the shootout.
At Rare-rank, it had two effects.
It’s first effect—Eclipsed Fate: allowed Almond to mark anyone within his radar with Eclipsed Fate Mark, which allowed Almond’s attacks to reach the target by passing through all obstacles.
Because once marked, a line of fate would form between Almond and the target, beyond the constrains of space and time, allowing Almond’s blades to move through this line of fate to reach the target, bypassing all obstacles til they struck the target.
[3 Players Eliminated]
The Dreadgate pulsed hungrily, absorbing the residual energy and essence from the fallen. More eggs began forming on Lily’s inner trees.
"There’s one more at the corner." Almond marked the person. It was clear that two pairs had joined hands to become a squad of four, a temporary alliance.
The mantis-headed man who thought he was hiding suddenly felt his heart turning cold.
And then pain assaulted him as he suddenly saw the world rotating and his own body below.
’What th-’
Did he just get his head chopped off?
[ You are eliminated. -1000 Anchor Points. ]
...
"Timer," Lily noted, pointing to countdown crystals overhead. "Seven minutes until reconfiguration."
They moved swiftly through the northwest passage. Lily kept the Dreadgate manifested but floating behind them, continuously absorbing ambient energy. Every thirty seconds, a new egg would birth and combine with others, creating specialized Dreadlings for scouting, defense, or ambush.
The labyrinth opened into a multi-level arena where two teams were already locked in combat. Six players total, three versus three. One team had the advantage, coordinated elemental attacks slowly overwhelming the other.
"We wait," Almond decided, positioning behind a crystalline outcropping. "Let them weaken each other."
While they watched, Lily fed compressed pulse energy into the Dreadgate. The portal shuddered and expanded, and she mentally accessed her true Dreadling Legion.
Her ten Tier-5 peak Dreadlings existed in her inner space, awaiting deployment:
1. Stormheart Chronolock Hunter
2. Pyrren Dreadrix Watcher
3. Voidweave Phantom
4. Ironmaw Dreadknight
5. Soulwhisper Banshee
6. Crimson Tyrant
7. Shadowstitch Weaver
8. Glacial Dreadmarch
9. Plague Architect
10. Dreadmaw Sovereign
Lily kept them in reserve. For now, the egg-born Dreadlings were enough.
The battle below concluded violently. The winning team—two players in matched armor—dispatched their opponents with brutal efficiency.
[2 Players Eliminated]
The victors began looting, a mistake that required time and concentration.
"Now," Almond commanded.
He released thirty common Grimblades simultaneously, each carrying different Severs:
The evolved version of 4-star Grim Severam was Grim Piercer.
Grim Severam essentially cut off the connection between two things. It isolated beneficial thing from the main target, crippling them in a sense.
On the other hand, Grim Piercer didn’t cut, but broke through whatever that was targetted.
If he applied Pierce: Defense, it would break through all defensive measures. Pierce: Will would shatter mental fortifications. Pierce: Fortune would break through luck-based protections.
Almond deployed Grim Piercer on fifteen blades:
Pierce: Awareness (they didn’t notice the attack until impact)
Pierce: Reaction (their bodies couldn’t respond in time)
Pierce: Magical Barriers (shields meant nothing)
The remaining fifteen carried Severs from Grim Severam:
Sever: Sound
Sever: Balance
Sever: Coordination
The two armored players were skilled, but the combination was overwhelming.
One managed to raise an earth barrier—the Pierce: Magical Barriers blade shot through it like it was mist.
The other activated some kind of speed enhancement card. But it was useless when Pierce: Reaction prevented his body from utilizing it.
But they weren’t going down without a fight.
The first player crushed a crystal, and suddenly both of them were surrounded by mirrored duplicates—twelve illusions each, all moving independently.
"Clever, but the number of illusions are too low," Almond muttered. His eyes tracked the movements, analyzing patterns.
Lily’s egg-born Dreadlings swarmed forward, but the illusions were physical enough to block them. Three Dreadlings were destroyed by coordinated counterattacks from the duplicates.
The energy from the destroyed Dreadlings fed back into the Dreadgate, immediately spawning six new eggs that combined into two larger constructs.
Almond pulled out another Tier-5 Rare Grimblade—Whisper of Ending.
This blade’s base material came from the crystallized consciousness of a psychic horror they’d fought in a previous A-rank game. At Rare-rank, it had evolved two abilities:
Whisper of Ending - First Effect: Truth Severance - Could distinguish truth from falsehood, real from fake, cutting through all deceptions.
He applied Grim Severam to it.
"Sever: Illusion."
Whisper of Ending pulsed with pale light. All twenty-four duplicates flickered—and twenty-two vanished like smoke. Only the two real players remained, suddenly exposed.
Their eyes widened in shock.
"Evermore Dreadspire Bloom," Lily whispered.
[Evermore Dreadspire Bloom — 90 Pulse]
For five seconds, she could stack unlimited actions and effects.
And she had already done that five seconds ago.
BOOOM!
The player was bombarded with a single beam that bloomed into a chaotic annihilation of over twenty meter radius around the player.
The Dreadgate near her swelled with power, absorbing all residual energies. In Lily’s inner space, the Dreadbirth Trees shuddered with growth, birthing new eggs in rapid succession.
[WARNING: LABYRINTH RECONFIGURATION IN 30 SECONDS]