Chapter 69: The Anchor’s Heart

The Frost-Blight Sovereign was dead, its massive, eighty-foot-long carcass rapidly freezing to the polished mirror of the plateau. But the true source of the mountain’s terrifying atmospheric pressure remained untouched.

Dead center on the flawlessly flat summit stood the colossal, two-hundred-foot-tall spire of hyper-compressed black ice.

It was a localized evolutionary anchor, a terrestrial battery that had spent the last eight months violently siphoning the ambient mana of the entire northern territory. The obelisk pulsed with a deep, rhythmic, blinding internal light. Every throb sent a massive, suffocating wave of heavy, raw energy washing over the plateau.

Ren walked toward the towering structure, his Level 28 frame completely absorbing the oppressive gravity of the spire.

His dark, tungsten-sheened Iron Skin had evolved into a light-absorbing, pitch-black void. The jagged, overlapping obsidian plates of his Chitin Shell now carried a faint, iridescent glimmer, a direct biological assimilation of the Sovereign’s diamond-hard scales. The heavy, matte-black ballistic canvas of his ruined trench coat hung in absolute stillness.

He stopped directly at the base of the colossal obelisk.

The black ice was so dense it looked like polished onyx. The temperature immediately surrounding the spire was a localized absolute zero, actively trying to flash-freeze the moisture in Ren’s eyes.

“The Sovereign was merely a parasite,” Ren stated, his deep, resonant voice vibrating the freezing air. “It did not create this anchor. It simply nested here to gorge on the radiation.”

Chloe pushed herself up from the shattered ice fifty yards away.

She kept her distance, her unmutated human biology entirely incapable of withstanding the sheer, localized zero-point energy radiating from the base of the spire. She clutched her fully loaded FN P90 tightly to her chest, her Level III-A plate carrier feeling entirely useless against the cosmic scale of the anomaly.

“Can you break it?” Chloe whispered, her voice a terrified, raspy scrape. “It’s the size of a skyscraper.”

Ren didn’t respond with words. He responded with absolute, undeniable physical supremacy.

[Skill Activated: Rending Claws]

The ten-inch, pitch-black talons erupted violently from his knuckles. He didn’t bother drawing the Crimson vibro-sword. A mechanical weapon would instantly shatter against the hyper-compressed density of the terrestrial anchor.

Ren raised his right arm, channeling the massive, unadulterated kinetic torque of his newly acquired Level 28 Strength. The thick, pulsing sapphire veins on his neck and forearms flared into a blinding, furious cobalt.

He drove his fist directly into the colossal wall of black ice.

The impact was catastrophic. The sound was not a shatter; it was a deafening, seismic boom that physically shook the entire mountain peak.

The hyper-compressed black ice, harder than Old World diamond, completely surrendered to the localized biological force of the Abyssal Tyrant. A massive, ten-foot-wide crater exploded inward, showering the polished plateau with thousands of razor-sharp, heavy shards of frozen mana.

The spire let out a deep, structural groan.

Ren didn’t stop. He unleashed a brutal, continuous barrage of localized kinetic strikes. His fists became a terrifying blur of dark armor and blinding cobalt light.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

He carved directly into the two-hundred-foot obelisk, physically tunneling his massive, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame into the frozen heart of the anchor. The massive blocks of shattered black ice rained down around his heavy combat boots.

Ten feet deep into the spire, the dense ice abruptly gave way to a massive, hollow central chamber.

Ren stepped into the core of the obelisk.

Suspended in the absolute center of the hollow chamber, floating entirely unsupported in the freezing air, was the true anchor. It wasn’t a solid crystal. It was a massive, swirling sphere of pure, liquid mana, easily the size of a military transport vehicle. It shifted and boiled with a chaotic, blindingly bright mixture of deep purple and toxic green light.

It was the raw, unrefined lifeblood of the entire northern ecosystem.

The Gluttony skill in his chest surged with an overwhelming, violent hunger that entirely eclipsed anything he had felt before. It wasn’t just demanding a meal; it was demanding regional assimilation.

Ren stepped directly under the massive, floating sphere of liquid energy.

He tilted his head back, his completely solid violet eyes burning with absolute dominance. He opened his jaws wide.

He didn’t need to chew. He utilized the raw, localized gravitational pull of his Level 28 Gluttony skill.

The massive sphere of liquid mana violently destabilized. It collapsed inward, forming a blinding, pressurized funnel of pure energy that poured directly into Ren’s open mouth.

The physical sensation was a localized nuclear meltdown.

The raw, unfiltered terrestrial energy flooded his vascular system. The biological furnace in his chest detonated, the extreme heat instantly flash-boiling the freezing air inside the hollow ice chamber. The thick, glowing cobalt veins on his body expanded to their absolute limits, throbbing with the sheer, impossible volume of the regional anchor.

[Gluttony Activated.] [Consumed: Terrestrial Mana Anchor (Northern Region)] [Warning: Massive Energy Influx. Stat Assimilation Exceeds Safe Biological Parameters.]

Ren completely ignored the System’s terrified warning. He forced his heavy, hyper-calcified muscle fibers to endure the catastrophic pressure, swallowing the entire, vehicle-sized sphere of liquid mana in one continuous, agonizing, glorious surge.

[Strength +15] [Vitality +12] [Agility +10] [Intelligence +8] [Perception +8]

The massive, completely unprecedented stat boost hit his marrow like a physical hammer.

[Level Up!] [You are now Level 29.] [Level Up!] [You are now Level 30.] [Level Up!] [You are now Level 31.] [Level Up!] [You are now Level 32.]

The terrestrial battery was completely drained.

Without the massive, stabilizing core of liquid mana to hold its hyper-compressed structure together, the two-hundred-foot spire of black ice instantly lost its molecular integrity.

“Brace!” Ren’s deep, vibrating voice roared, echoing violently out of the hollow chamber.

Chloe threw her arms over her head, burying her face into the shattered black ice of the plateau.

The colossal obelisk violently detonated.

Millions of tons of heavy, black ice shattered simultaneously, collapsing in a deafening, apocalyptic avalanche of localized destruction. The sky above the mountain peak, previously choked with the heavy, bruised clouds of the mana-storm, was instantly violently cleared by the massive upward shockwave.

The heavy, pulverized dust of the ruined spire rolled across the plateau, completely obscuring the sun.

When the freezing, chaotic whiteout finally settled, the summit was entirely unrecognizable. The flawless mirror of the plateau was heavily cratered and buried under thousands of tons of shattered, mundane grey ice.

The two-hundred-foot obelisk was completely gone.

Standing in the absolute dead center of the massive, central crater was Ren.

He was Level 32.

His physical evolution had stabilized into a terrifying, flawless paradigm of apex lethality. His towering frame remained at exactly two hundred and seventy pounds of hyper-condensed kinetic mass, but the dark, iridescent obsidian plates of his Chitin Shell had fused so seamlessly with his pitch-black, tungsten-sheened skin that he looked like a single, unbreakable monolith carved from the void itself.

He didn’t radiate an oppressive, suffocating aura anymore. He didn’t need to. The total, absolute absence of ambient mana around him was infinitely more terrifying. He had consumed the entire region’s energy.

The mountain was dead. He was the mountain.

Chloe slowly pushed herself up from the shattered debris, her thermal blankets caked in grey ice dust. She looked up at the completely clear, blindingly bright blue sky. The suffocating, heavy atmospheric pressure of the high-altitude zone was entirely gone. The air felt normal. It felt like the Old World.

She looked back at the towering, dark executioner standing in the ruins of the anchor.

“You drank the region,” Chloe whispered, her mind entirely failing to comprehend the scale of the gluttony.

Ren turned his completely solid, unblinking violet eyes toward the northern horizon. With the localized storm entirely dissipated, the view from the summit stretched for hundreds of miles.

Far in the distance, past the jagged peaks and the deep, shadowed valleys, a massive, sprawling Old World metropolis loomed against the horizon. It was heavily choked with thick, dark, mutated vegetation, its towering skyscrapers leaning heavily like ruined tombstones.

“The terrestrial battery is assimilated,” Ren stated, his deep, resonant voice perfectly calm, entirely unbothered by the fact that he had just rewritten the region’s topography. “Our physical parameters are heavily maximized. We are descending to the urban grid.”

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