WorldCrafter - Building My Underground Kingdom-Chapter 213: It Broke

Chapter 213: It Broke

Apophis landed before Ben, the ground beneath her feet breaking into floating shards. Her hair swirled like shadowfire, her wings spread wide, and gold-veined darkness leaked from her hands like liquid law.

“Still standing?” she asked coldly.

Ben exhaled once. The blood on his lips boiled off in the heat of his aura.

“I’ll stand until one of us stops breathing.”

He moved first.

BOOM!

The air split as Ben surged forward, his body wrapped in spinning rings of dark aether. His appendages shot outward like a storm of blades, slashing toward her from every angle.

Apophis stepped forward, once, and met the strike.

CRACK!

Her hand caught one of his appendages mid-swing and shattered it with a squeeze. Ben spun, launching a kick charged with compressed gravity into her side. The impact hurled her across the space, slamming her into a fractured wall.

Ben didn’t stop. He blinked above her mid-recovery and drove both fists down.

BOOM!!

The impact cratered the entire zone, sending shockwaves across the broken plane.

Apophis exploded upward from the dust, her scream more fury than pain. Chains of void lashed from her wings, aiming for his limbs.

Ben snarled. “You already tried this!”

He caught two with his bare hands, dark energy bursting from his palms. The chains recoiled, twisting, then turned liquid, slashing toward his face.

Ben ducked and rolled, then snapped his fingers. The air above him tore open. Dozens of gravity-spears plummeted downward like meteors, glowing with his will.

Apophis raised both hands and detonated her aura outward, vaporizing the front line, but not fast enough. One spear struck her shoulder. A second grazed her wing. A third pierced her side and detonated.

She screamed as she flew back, spiraling, only to catch herself midair.

Ben was already there. He blinked behind her and slammed both palms into her back.

“Collapse.”

A dark aura lit beneath them, collapsing space inward like a vacuum imploding. Apophis shrieked as her aura flickered, just for a moment.

Then she twisted.

Bam!

Her tail shot out and caught Ben in the ribs, hurling him sideways through three layers of soul-construct. He hit the ground hard, coughing blood.

Apophis descended like a queen of ruin, black energy swirling around her frame. “You have no change, just free me, or I will kill you.” she hissed.

Ben forced himself up, one eye bleeding, half his runes dimming.

“Not sure yet,” he growled, wiping his mouth. “Why waste time like this? Just kill me if you want to be free, except this is all the strength you can use.”

Ben looked up. The system core was visible now. it was bound in chains, already cracked and leaking fragments of golden data. And standing beside it, Another Apophis.

She looked down on him, her gaze cold, unmoving. “You want proof?” she said.

“Then survive this.”

The moment her words ended, one of the massive chains shot downward like a divine spear.

Ben’s grip tightened. His pickaxe ignited with a pulse of purple light, then flared darker, black veins running across its surface as his will surged through it.

“You think this is enough to deter me?” he growled. “You still haven’t seen my limits.”

Space cracked beneath his feet as his aura flared.

‘Fine then.’

Since the situation had come to this, Ben decided to destroy the seal.

Apophis had her body. The system was breaking. Holding back now only made things worse.

He needed to shift the battlefield. Tilt the board in his favor.

Ben roared, and hurled the pickaxe.

But his target wasn’t Apophis.

The weapon spiraled upward, trailing dark aether like a comet. It smashed into the chain wrapped around the system core, clashing with a shockwave of force that rippled across the space.

And at the same time, Ben moved. He clenched his fist, surged forward, and punched through space itself.

Cracks spread outward like lightning bolts, splitting the very air around them. The ground ruptured. The sky split apart.

Then, outside, The Empyrean crystal shattered. It had already been fragile, spiderwebbed with cracks from the seal’s overload. But Ben’s attack tipped it past the limit.

BOOOOOOM!!!

A blinding light erupted, pure white, endless, swallowing everything.

The space howled as reality twisted, the seal formation rupturing completely. The dimensional scaffolding collapsed as the entire structure began to fall apart from within.

Everything turned to light and sound and chaos. Silence.

Then, A single heartbeat.

Ben stood at the center, body scorched, breath ragged His arms trembled from the force of the impact. One leg barely held steady.

But he was still standing, dark aether flickering off his shoulders as he looked around.

The air trembled faintly, as if reality hadn’t fully settled. The shattered space around him resembled the sealed ground, but… not quite. It was twisted, distorted.

And he cannot find the knight, or apophis main body. No trace at all.

Ben’s eyes narrowed. ‘This was not the real world… just where am I? Still on the Sealed place?’

But this should not be possible, as he already destroyed the anchor. The empyrean crystal.

Even tough there’re multiple core, the empyrean act as the main one, fueling everything without it the space should have dissolved.

His gaze than flickered toward Smoke It dissipated, Revealing her. Apophis stood amidst the still-settling debris, her silhouette sharp against the bleeding sky. But this time, she felt different.

The fractured presence she had earlier was gone. And in her hand, A softly glowing sphere of light, dense with flickering golden rune. It pulsed like a heartbeat. The remain of the system.

Her fingers curled around it tightly. Her golden eyes narrowed but it only lat a moment before She laughed.

She turned her gaze toward Ben, her lips curled in a sharp smile. ”

Well?” she asked, lifting the sphere slightly. “Still want to fight me?”

Her aura pulsed outward, black and gold light rippling across the ground like a rising tide.

Ben’s fists clenched, his breath slow but steady. “You’re still not complete, don’t think you can fool me. Part of your soul still inside me.”