After passing through the broken doors, Jack and Brock entered the final floor of the Hall of Trials. It was the reward they’d justly earned, now usurped by others.
A scene of pillage welcomed them. The room behind the gate must have once been grand and majestic. Murals used to cover the walls, painted with colors of the Dao itself and punctuated with gems. Golden statues stood at the back, depicting the eleven Old Gods besides Enas, while a massive empty throne rose against a sidewall to the right, another doorway below it.
Now, the colors had been scraped off the walls, the gems pulled out. The golden statues had been cracked open to get to whatever was inside them—if there was anything—and the throne’s velvet had been peeled off, leaving behind ugly tears and bare stone. The room had been ransacked. The only reason Jack and Brock knew the missing materials was their still-lingering aura—everything was constructed of the highest possible quality materials.
The scene sparked Jack’s anger. “Overlords, the highest under the heavens, and they behave like common bandits,” he spat out. “Shameful.”
“This is not the bro way,” Brock agreed with a dark gaze. “It’s bad enough to break into the shrine of your ancestors. To take the decorations? That’s going too far.”
“It’s pointless, too. They don’t lack gold or jewels. Why do this?”
“Guess we’ll have to ask them,” Brock replied, pacing into the room. It was depressing. This hall was meant to welcome the greatest talents of history, the people with the potential to reach or surpass the Old Gods. Perhaps the walls told stories about the creation of the universe or depicted epic heroic feats. Now, they’d been done so dirty even the murals were indistinguishable.
The two bros crossed the room quickly. The next one was similar—a grand show of wealth and knowledge, all stripped clean. Even the various pieces of furniture were missing.
“It’s a miracle they left the bricks behind,” Brock said angrily. “I’ll smack them in the head with one.”
The doorways led down a single path hugging the seventh level’s outer wall. Following it, Jack and Brock reached the third room, which was also the same. Stripped down, pillaged, destroyed. For three similar rooms to be placed in a row like this, and more to come, Jack assumed they were telling a story or shared a theme. They were meant to create in young monsters a feeling of awe and context before they received the inheritance of the Old Gods. Probably detail their mission of destroying the Ancients.
At the fifth room, however, Jack paused and stuck to the wall. He motioned for Brock to be quiet. The line of rooms hugged the outer walls, and they’d approached the corner now, so the next door was on the left wall instead of the back one. They couldn’t see behind it, but they could hear faint noises. It sounded like stone cracked in half, metal being wrenched free.
Jack felt the ripples of someone’s perception pass over him without stopping. The Dao signature of the pyramid hid them, just like Axelor had promised. Jack looked at Brock, who nodded. Carefully, he peeked through the corner, gazing into the next room over.
It was also pillaged. The next one, however, was in the process of getting destroyed. The two Overlords stood inside, Great Silver and Fiend King. The former stood with arms crossed—the latter dashed from wall to wall, taking everything he could into his space ring.
Jack quickly drew back, but he spread his perception over the corner, draping it over the Overlords as thinly as possible so it would go unnoticed. He saw Fiend King arrive before a golden statue—some six-armed humanoid monster—and crack it in half. He took a peek inside, snorted, then left it and proceeded.
“Can you not do that?” Great Silver asked with the tone of someone who’d already said it a dozen times.
“No. These statues are hollow for a reason. One will contain something inside it, I guarantee it, and when I find it you won’t be so smug.” Fiend King was completely unapologetic as he tore the room apart.
“Is it so bad to leave a treasure or two behind?” Great Silver pleaded. “These rooms are our legacy. They’ve stood undisturbed for billions of years. We’ll take the real treasures, of course, but these are just decorations. What you’re doing is completely unnecessary.”
“Weak thinking like that is why your faction is in decline.” Fiend King snorted. “Even the metals and paint on the walls are precious. Nobody will ever come here, anyway. We might as well take them. Maybe we can trade with the Immortals.”
“Ah, yes. Trade. The path to our enslavement.”
“Better than being conquered.”
While they conversed, the room had already been stripped clean, and Fiend King kicked down the doors to the next one. He charged in and continued ransacking.
“This guy is unbelievable,” Jack said after relaying everything to Brock. “The pettiest cultivator I’ve ever seen.”
“He deserves the slap of justice,” Brock replied.
“Yeah. A shame he’s too strong for my flip-flop.”
Through his perception, Jack had gauged the strengths of the Overlords. Having forced their way here without the Hall’s permission, they were under constant pressure. Part of their energy went into staving it off. Their energy levels had fallen from the Archon level to the peak A-Grade, but their Daos remained. Jack and Brock together might be able to fight one of the Overlords if they went completely all-out, but there was no way to struggle against two.
The automaton wasn’t done. It teleported away just in time to dodge a slash of Great Silver’s claws, which hit the ground at that spot and broke it further. The automaton reappeared behind Fiend King, wide sleeves rising against the devil, the white light stopped by sheer muscle mass. Fiend King turned around, grabbed the automaton, spun thrice around himself and slammed it against the ground. Coincidentally, it crashed into the same spot as before, further deepening the crater.
Of course, grabbing your opponent was a Dao clash in and of itself. The Fiend King had used his Dao to penetrate the other’s barriers, releasing shockwaves which crashed against the walls, shaking the pyramid and threatening its structural intensity. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Jack hesitated. This stone automaton—the Stone’s father?—was in a tough spot. If he and Brock joined in, there was a chance they could help it turn things around.
“Let’s wait a bit,” Brock whispered. “We’re hidden. We can ambush them at the critical moment.”
Jack nodded. That was the best way to win here.
“What sorry excuses you are for monsters!” the automaton roared. “You’re Overlords, yet you couldn’t match me alone! You amount to nothing! You have less talent than the rabid dogs whose behavior you so shamefully copy!”
“Shut your stone mouth!” Fiend King roared, appearing over the fallen automaton and punching down. White light formed a barrier—it held against his punch, but not against the beam of dragon silver which came right after. Great Silver rammed bodily into the automaton, pushing it hard into the ground, the cracks expanding widely.
At that precise moment, something changed. The dragon Overlord couldn’t have seen it, so tightly pressed against the automaton, but Jack did. Fiend King’s face warped into a fiendish grin. His hands blurred. He reached inside his robes, pulling out a miniature of the twelve-layer totem and snapping it in half. In the same motion, his other hand aimed downward, unleashing a torrent of energy he must have been building for a while. Crimson power buried both the automaton and Great Silver, not harming them, but using a momentum-adjacent Dao to heavily push them downward.
Great Silver roared. “Fiend King! What are you doing!?”
The floor below them had already suffered multiple strikes. Even the pyramid’s precious materials couldn’t handle such impacts forever—the bricks split, then cracked, then shattered, revealing a hole to the sky below. Great Silver and the automaton were both right above it, momentarily immobilized by Fiend King’s attack.
Normally, this would have meant nothing. As Great Silver realized to his horror, however, the spot they occupied was located precisely above the beam of golden light from before. A beam which was rapidly destabilizing—Fiend King had crushed the control totem, and the forceful override of the Hall’s security was deteriorating. The golden beam shuddered, then roared out in fury, the process reversing in an angry lashing of the Hall of Trial’s energies.
The smooth golden light leading upward turned into a siphon, pulling everything down. It wasn’t particularly powerful, certainly not enough to threaten an Overlord—unless, say, one was floating right above it, with another Overlord’s power pushing down on them.
“No!” Great Silver roared.
“I counted our steps since entering this place, Silver!” the Fiend King shouted, roaring with laughter. “I aimed for that spot in particular, and you helped me break it like the fool you are!”
“I trusted you!” Great Silver roared again, his draconic fury bursting forth. “This concerns the survival of our species!”
“There is no compassion amongst monsters, Silver. Only winners and losers—and you are the latter.”
“HOW DARE YOU!” the automaton roared in turn. “IN THE NAME OF THE GODS, I WILL VANQUISH YOU!”
Great Silver and the automaton released their energies together, pushing upwards, but they couldn’t overcome the sum of Fiend King’s pressure and the golden beam’s pull. Not when they were right over it. With a series of frustrated roars, Great Silver and the automaton were both sucked into the golden beam, falling downward at extreme speed. Their anger was so great that they kept tearing at each other as they fell past the layer of clouds, their future unknown.
Jack and Brock still waited in hiding, this turn of events too sudden for them to react. They were waiting for the final cataclysmic clash between the automaton and the overlords, when nobody would bother with defense. This...was a bit too unexpected!
Suddenly, everything was quiet. Fiend King stood alone in the room—the golden beam remained, but its suction power wasn’t enough to threaten him unless he stood right next to it.
“Fuck off, loser,” he said, dusting himself as he turned towards the three golden doors. “Now, let’s see... Where do I begin?”
“How about you begin by dying?”
Fiend King jumped, then whipped around. “Who’s there!?” he roared out. As he took in the new arrivals, however, he paused. “Jack Monstrous?” he said in disbelief. “Brock the brorilla? What are you doing here? How can you even stand in this pressure?”
“We stand for what is right,” Brock said, angrily cracking his knuckles.
Jack smiled. “And we’re here to destroy you.”