Chapter 227: True Apocalypse

Training under increased gravity was showing results. Luan's muscles that normally didn't ache when training started to ache, and he could feel a slight increase in his physique. That small percentage was enough for him to know it worked.

'But it's still weak, it's still not enough...' After getting used to it, it didn't have much effect, so Luan made the gravity increase by 300 kilos. His feet were sinking into the ground as he was doing the 48 technique moves with difficulty now, but it was still bearable.

When 3 hours had passed, he stopped and sat down. He swallowed a Qi Rank Heaven Collection Pill, created an eight-pointed pentagram, placed down 8 Third Order Monster Cores, and began to meditate.

The Qi around him turned into a typhoon as all the Qi of Heaven and Earth was spiraling toward him.

From all directions, the Qi was pulled by Luan. This was the result of having trained with heavy gravity and depleted a lot of his Qi. Now that he needed to replenish, his body opened every pore and sucked up the Qi like there was no tomorrow.

'Refine the LV1 Body... Refine the LV2 Body...' He felt the changes in his body and saw his body being refined. It was almost impossible for that to happen, but in fact, it was happening. However, once it got to LV2, it stopped, but this was already an incredible result for just the first day.

When Luan move the body, his bones cracked. Taking a deep breath, he felt stronger, and his body became lighter.

*Rip! Rip!*

A flesh ripping sound echoed and from Luan's back a pair of almost white, silvery wings appeared. It had almost two meters on each side, which was huge, and had four points that formed the division of the white wing into eight points in total.

The pain was a little too much, but Luan took it well. He spread his wings wide and they looked even bigger. With him in the middle, the length was over 400 cm wide. His arms were left with white dragon scales and his feet too. The sneakers ended up ruined by the claws of his feet that pierced them and Luan decided to take them off for good.

From a distance, Ingrid and the rest watched this scene with their jaws dropped. It was very unnatural. It was as if Luan had turned into one of those draconians from storybooks, only much prettier. In fact, Luan had no tail, at least not for now.

Luan's gigantic white wings began to beat. A gale was created by the wind produced by the wings. He started to pick up altitude. Because of gravity, he almost fell. Luan then took the pressure of the extra gravity off.

Luan had experience in flying, but it was the first time he had experimented with flying using wings. The feeling was more liberating, as the wings were a part of him now. The wings were part of his physique, meaning he didn't use Qi to maintain them. They were a lot like his arms, which meant he needed physical strength to move them. Also, if he used Qi, the wings got faster.

By controlling the clouds in his favor, he was able to make them fly even faster, and it was far past the speed of sound. The freedom to fly like this was a mystical feeling for him.

"Damn, it's starting!" Luan quickly flew back to the island.

For a moment, Luan was happy to fly, but suddenly the earth started to shake, and the moon started to split in two. It was as if it had cloned itself.

The sun seemed to have gotten bigger as it was warmer. Monster sounds echoed everywhere. The world had become a mess. Luan came back and his family was worried.

"This time it's definitive, not just a little taste of the apocalypse," Luan sighed. The sky that was clear before had turned dark, but it was because of the gigantic monsters that flew in the sky. Many of them were of the Third Order. But sensing Luan's dragon presence, these reptiles flew away.

"Everyone is here, yes?" Luan asked.

"Yeah," Maira answered. Luckily, Catharina, who had left earlier, had already returned.

Sebastian and his daughter, Arlinda, and her daughter were also on the island. Arlinda mainly because she became the girlfriend of her security guard Bruno Campos and they saw him almost every day.

At the top of the island, a tower started to grow. Luan automatically acted fast and created a formation of five seals and hid it.

The chaos spread throughout the world was a thousand times worse than before, different from before. The current monsters were more ferocious and powerful, and also had intelligent beings that wanted resources. They started to fight with the smaller countries while evaluating the bigger ones.

Five days later, the world governments even banned their citizens from leaving their homes. Because of strange creatures that had suddenly started appearing all over the world, 15% of the human population died suddenly. And those casualties were far fewer than they could have been because humanity  had been strengthened. If it had been before, perhaps more than 30% would have died. Although the military of several countries managed to expel some of the intruders, guns, knives, and even missiles were less effective against those above the Second Order.

These monsters ended up bringing some countries to ruin, and sensing the danger of these monsters, the remaining countries formed a strong alliance against them. However, even allied forces only managed to thwart their advances.

In this situation where the Earth was going crazy, people appeared who could fight the monsters. Mainly those who had advanced far in the "Online Survival" tournament. With that, the fight between skill users and monsters began.

In humanity's sudden moment of crisis there was no time for countries to fight each other. Soon, a global anti-monster institution was established and the monsters were driven out until they no longer appeared in areas inhabited by humans. Consequently, monsters began to gather in previously unpopulated areas or areas that had been abandoned by humans.

As a result, the government began to change the way they worked. They started to use these special divisions, formed to protect citizens, to collect these resources. People were very sensitive to this change and, under the guise of protecting the rights of capable practitioners, many left government divisions and formed their own institutions.

Luan and Ingrid mostly stood out amidst this chaos. The number of monsters capable of destroying countries that were killed by them was immeasurable. Their power gave off hope and they also saved many people, and now that nearly 15 days had passed since the beginning of the apocalypse, people started to find out about how the power towers worked and another war broke out.

Luan, along with Ingrid, returned to the island. He didn't intend to participate in this war for the towers. After all, he already had his from the beginning.

On Sunday, April 30, 2010, Luan trained under gravity at a weight of 500 kilos, and when he finally finished and meditated, he broke his body limit and moved up to Stage: Meridian Veins Link.

'Now I am of the Third Order with the body too, and I can start to prepare myself to enter the Fourth Order...' Living Beings of the Fourth Order did not exist yet, or at least none had revealed themselves.

If someone were at the peak of power, he or she could easily destroy a country like Japan, China, Brazil, the United States, etc.