Chapter 517 - Integration
The people that were standing around the lake swiftly jumped into action seeing the creature make contact with the lava.
The creature thrashed about, sending large quantities of the viscous red liquid everywhere. But the more it struggled, the deeper it dug its own grave. From the bottom of the lava lake came thousands of serpentine beasts and started attacking the creature.
They were red and black in color, physically much similar to eels with wide mouths filled to the brim with even sharper sharp fangs that seemed to be made out of glowing red crystals.
They bit off chunks of flesh from the titanic creature and entered its body like maddened bulls, eating away everything in their paths.
These beasts themselves were a mix of spiritual and physical creatures, able to live off nothing but the spiritual energy and the lava that bore them.
But when given the opportunity they could bite through even the most durable energy shields with little to no effort.
The largest of them was only some tens of meters long, nothing compared to the sea beast that they were attacking.
But with their large numbers that kept increasing by the second, they rendered this once lord of the deep sea into a bloody and pitiful state.
In less than 10 minutes the thousands of meter long sea beast was ripped to shreds. Only its skeleton was left undamaged without even so much as a single scratch. Blue lights came out of the column-like bones of the sea beast and started gathering above the lava lake, forming a single symbol.
The hundreds of people that were waiting for just that, each quickly thrust out both fo their arms.
Hundreds upon hundreds of beastly roars echoed in the underground chamber as behind each person appeared several different apparitions.
They were transparent to a degree, floating in the air like ghosts. Their shapes and sizes were all different, showing a different beast. Together their numbers exceeded than ten thousand. Some people only had one or two, while a rare few even had several dozen.
Of course, their numbers dwarfed when compared to the man floating above the lava lake.
Above him were more than a hundred apparitions, each of a different creature. The tattoos on his body were all lit up, blinking continuously.
The roars of these apparitions seemed to have a suppressive effect on the symbol that was trying to fly away, forcing it to stay in one place.
The man raised his left hand, showing a symbol of a coiled rope. The symbol which was already in dire straits suddenly shook and decreased in size from over 50 meters to 25 meters.
Even the man's pupils had two identical tattoos on their surface that resembled black flames. And as soon as they started glowing, black fire materialized out of thin air and started surrounding the symbol.
The flames spun faster and faster around the symbol, reducing its size even more.
This continued until the symbol of the sea beast was reduced to just over 10 inches from its initial size of 50 meters. But now it was glowing with a much brighter light.
The man looked towards his left where an old man was standing in front of a cave. He nodded towards the old man, making him turn around and go into the cave. He came out a few seconds later with a youngster in tow. A boy of 14-15 years of age with white hair.
The old man eyed the brightly glowing symbol with envy before letting out a weak sigh.
"Go, you know what to do," he said lightly.
The boy, without any expression whatsoever, started walking and reached the edge of the lake. He took off his shirt and sat down cross-legged.
The sea beast's symbol floated down, under the supervision of hundreds of pairs of jealous eyes, and slowly etched itself onto the boys back. A sizzling sounds much like the burning of flesh came from him his back but the boy didn't falter even once.
The middle-aged man floated down, accompanied by an entourage of over a hundred beastly apparitions, landing next to him.
Two beautiful women came running out and helped him put on a black robe. He looked towards the boy whose face was covered with beads but still refused to even furrow his brow and a smile bloomed on the man's face.
"Refine it completely, I will watch over you," he said amusingly.
The beastly apparitions spread out and covered the boy from all sides, roaring into the void without any sound.. But it had an obvious effect on the symbol as it started integrating with the boy's back much more smoothly, reducing the stress he was in.