As the pure soul fluctuations and life force of the collective will of the dragons poured into Rio’s body, he felt himself get stronger at a very fast rate.
He was already about to break through to the intermediate stage of S-rank before, and these blessings came right on time, boosting his strength tremendously in one go!
If not for the fact that most of the dragons had their soul and life force heavily corrupted, Rio could have inherited more from them and might have directly broken through to the peak of rank S.
But thankfully, they managed to upgrade Rio’s shadow robe with all of their powers and upgraded it to the level of a powerful legendary artifact!
Creating a legendary artifact is no small feat; you need tremendous power, as you need to make ’laws’ of the world manifest into them!
Rio could feel that the ’law’ of ’concealment,’ ’darkness,’ and ’shadows’ had all manifested into his ’Hell-walker’s Robe’ and had elevated it to the level of a genuine ’SS++’ level artifact, almost on the same level as his sword, ’Vinash.’
But of course, the real effect and power of artifacts still depend on their user a lot.
’Vinash’ in the hands of Rio is a perfect and insanely powerful weapon of mass destruction, but in other hands, it would be just a cursed sword that would cause its own user to die miserably.
The same is true for the ’Hell-Walker’s Robe’; it’s been customized and modified to only suit Rio after this blessing. Others will not even be able to wear it!
’Now I am armed to the teeth with legendary-grade artifacts... if it was in a game, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that now my character is equipped with ultra-rare equipment all over!’
Aside from the boost in power and equipment enhancement, Rio also got a memory fragment from the giant shadow dragon king.
It was the memory fragment that had records of Ellie and everything that he seemed to remember about her.
Although most of his memories were completely destroyed by miasmic corruption, Ellie was his daughter after all, and there’s no way a father would forget the existence of his child until his last breath.
’Even miasmic corruption could not strip him off of these memories... sigh, if only you hadn’t betrayed the world alliance, you might not have ended like this...’
Everyone in the world has dreams and ambitions, but you also have to bear the consequences of the actions you take to achieve those ambitions.
Rio shook his head, looked at the cube of possibilities, and found that the direction it was pointing to had now changed.
Rio didn’t have the time to read the memories given to him by the shadow dragon king at the moment, so he stored them for the time being as he hurriedly got ready to leave.
’Staying here any longer will be dangerous...’
The gigantic dragon tree had now lost all of its sanity, and it might get dangerous if Rio kept staying near it.
[If the summoner Ellie has chosen has lost his body... it will be difficult to save him... but just in case, take this with you...]
The shadow dragon king ripped out a massive dragon scale from the giant dragon tree and placed it in front of Rio.
[If you are able to purify the miasma in it somehow, a dragon scale of a peak SS-rank dragon can be used to create a temporary container for his soul...]
[Now... you should leave... Your friends are... waiting for you... tell Elisia... that... if possible... forgive her useless father....]
The shadow dragon king and all the other shadow dragon heads smiled at Rio one last time before all the pure soul fluctuation finally got extinguished.
Miasma took over the gigantic dragon tree, and before things could get tricky, Rio bowed slightly to pay his respects, grabbed the giant dragon scale with one hand, and jumped on his sword to fly away at full speed!
*BOOOM!* *BOOOOM!* *BOOOM!*
Rio didn’t even look back as he rushed away, but with his miasma detection ability, he could sense that all the dragon heads had gone out of control in an instant!
Some started ramming their heads on the ground, causing big tremors and earthquakes, and some started biting and attacking each other on the spot!
The entire tree body trembled; hundreds of eyes started firing miasmic beams in all directions, creating immense destruction.
Debris flew in all directions as the roots of the giant tree pulled themselves out of the ground and the massive plateau started collapsing on the spot due to so much chaos.
The flow of miasma went chaotic as cracks opened in the space-time fabric due to the world authority of that powerful creature blasting energy in all directions!
Miasma from all directions started rushing towards it, making it even more berserk and chaotic!
[Sword Intent: Maximum Output!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Space Type: Cosmic Warp!]
As the space-time fabric inside the spirit realm was weaker, Rio could use space warp, as he could bend the space-time fabric here despite being only an S-ranker.
*SHMMMMMMM!*
With a single burst of power, Rio sped up tremendously and almost teleported hundreds of kilometers away in just a matter of mere milliseconds before stopping.
Rio then immediately activated his shadow robe and other stealth-related powers to enter absolute stealth mode!
[Elemental Sword Art: Miasma Type: Miasmic Extraction!]
Rio placed his sword on the giant dragon scale and extracted all the miasma from it at an extremely fast rate before throwing all that miasma away!
It was like he had used his sword like a vacuum cleaner, which sucked up all the miasma from the scale, and then he threw it all away like trash!
After getting purified completely, the pitch-dark dragon scale finally revealed its true colors.
It was grayish black in color and shone brightly with great luster; the color was almost identical to what Rio had seen on Ellie, confirming that the scale belonged to a shadow dragon.
Rio immediately stuffed the giant dragon scale inside his space ring and then immediately rushed away at a slow but steady pace to create more distance between him and the giant dragon tree.
The beams of miasma fired by that giant dragon tree were so powerful that they were travelling several hundred kilometers in a mere fraction of a millisecond.
And their power was so strong that mountains and hills—everything that came in their way was erased almost instantly and turned into molten liquid miasmic filth!
Rio even had to use cosmic warp various times just to dodge those unintentional attacks, and sometimes they were so concentrated that Rio had to hurriedly dig a hole in the ground to hide from the attacks!
’It’s really gone crazy... it’s attacking everything in sight and rampaging crazily...’
Thankfully, Rio’s destination was thousands of kilometers away from this place, so he had the chance to leave far away from this place.
’Cosmic warp consumes too much mental power; otherwise, I would have just spammed that and rushed away from here...’
Cosmic warp was a very power-consuming technique; it cost an immense amount of mana, and even when Rio was using miasma as his energy source, it still cost so much that the miasma density in the area would get thinner after usage.
But if it was just about energy, Rio wouldn’t have cared, as he could just easily absorb more miasma to use from the surroundings, but the main problem was his own mental fatigue.
Rio technically had limitless energy, as he could just keep using the miasma from the surroundings over and over, but cosmic warp needed precise calculations and a lot of control.
One slight miss and you would get caught up in chaotic spatial fluctuations; moreover, the space-time fabric in the spirit realm is already quite unstable.
It’s possible that you might accidentally crash into some area with powerful spatial fluctuations rampaging around or might end up falling into some random spatial crack somewhere.
Cosmic warp worked by folding space and reducing the distance between points A and B by manipulating the space itself.
But if the space is unstable and prone to cracks at any point, cosmic warp becomes more dangerous and power-consuming.
Thus, Rio had to use it sparingly.
Rio had to escape while dodging attacks for an entire week before he finally managed to reach a safe area and get out of the range of that rampaging dragon tree.
He had switched between stealth and speed mode over and over several times before he finally managed to get out of its range after travelling nearly ten thousand kilometers of distance!
’Even when doing unconscious and not properly aimed attacks, peak SS-rankers are still really way too overpowered...’
Thankfully, the dragon tree was incapable of using its world authority for attacks, as it had lost nearly all of its sanity; otherwise, if it used that, its attacks would have had such range that Rio couldn’t have escaped safely.
’The ’Hell-walker’s Robe’ sure is a good piece of equipment... as long as I have mana or miasma to power it up, I can ignore almost all elemental or physical damage...’
The shadow robe helped Rio in many difficult situations, and the occasional flaws were patched up with his powerful sword intent.
’But still... it’s too early for me to pick up fights with peak SS rankers as of yet...’
Rio shook his head and found a random place to sit down to rest and relieve his mental fatigue while also replenishing his mana and miasma reserves.
He was running almost empty after escaping for an entire week straight!