At that moment, the entire vine-infested world was quaking violently.
That terrifying extreme heat was no ordinary heatwave but an overbearing sequence power.
Although Nine Gloom had no idea what exactly this sequence power was, he could more or less judge that it was an extreme flame with powerful destructive and combustive characteristics.
On a certain level, this type of flame was even more volatile than most Dragon Flames.
Horrified, Nine Gloom’s true form fled deep underground. At the same time, he manipulated countless vines to smother the flames. He no longer harbored any unreasonable hopes of extinguishing the blaze; he merely hoped to suppress it a little, as well as shrink its scope.
‘Did that lunatic Silver Armor self-destruct?’ Nine Gloom secretly cursed as he hastily fled as far away as he could. He did not even dare to release his Divine Telekinesis to do any probing, for fear the flames would burn his spirit.
However, very soon, he retracted his previous speculation.
This was because he could clearly sense that apart from himself, there were remnants of an aura in his God Territory.
Silver Armor was still alive!
Not only that, a humanoid monster formed from dark red flame was slowly stretching its body inside a deep, scorched pit.
Impressively, the monster’s body was seventy to eighty percent similar to Silver Armor, but his head was many times larger. He was at least one thousand meters tall.
Unlike his body, which was completely dark red, there was an incandescent blaze of white where the pupils of his eyes should be.
He stood where he was as if momentarily dazed, but the incandescent white in his eyes soon blazed up brightly.
All he did was lift his legs slightly, and he was able to stride out of the deep pit that had just been blasted into the ground. Each time he took a step, the ground would split, and fiery red larva would ooze from the cracks.
He walked aimlessly forward, swinging his heavy fists wildly to bombard every obstacle in his path.
Mountains, rivers, swamps… Wherever he passed, that place would become a sea of lava.
Naturally, Nine Gloom also sensed that his God Territory had been severely contaminated.
Each step Silver Armor took—and even every punch he threw—would contaminate and assimilate Nine Gloom’s God Territory.
After forcibly restraining himself for a long while, in the end, Nine Gloom could no longer hold back and spread his Divine Telekinesis to sense out the situation.
As his Divine Telekinesis swept the area, he immediately noticed the flame monster that seemed to have descended into madness.
Although the aura and size had changed significantly, Nine Gloom could tell at once that it was Silver Armor because traces of Silver Armor’s aura still remained on the other’s body.
“How did that fellow transform into something like this?!” Nine Gloom was extremely baffled. This was another life form entirely.
However, very soon, Nine Gloom was unable to continue pondering the matter because he sensed that Silver Armor’s gaze was fixed on the direction where he was hiding.
His probing with Divine Telekinesis had exposed him!
Nine Gloom frantically fled without a second thought.
Meanwhile, the flame giant that was at least ten thousand kilometers away had his gaze locked onto Nine Gloom’s aura. His eyes spewed forth white sparks as he ran like a maniac toward Nine Gloom.
Nine Gloom was fast, but the flame giant was even faster.
In merely ten minutes or so, the flame giant had caught up with Nine Gloom.
The sole of the giant’s massive foot came stomping down without hesitation, and the entire surface of the ground collapsed.
The cracked ground rapidly began to soften, turning into dark red molten lava that began spreading in all directions and contaminating the area.
The stomp was vicious, but Nine Gloom managed to dodge it in time. Right as the flame giant’s foot came down, Nine Gloom wormed his way out from the ground and just managed to evade the attack.
However, his evasive maneuver had completely exposed his form.
It was a black vine resembling a giant python, with a reflective surface that looked like snake scales.
Just looking at him on his own, Nine Gloom’s size was indeed quite massive, over half a meter thick and at least a hundred meters long. However, right now, in the presence of the flame giant, he was not so different from a mudfish.
At this moment, fisherman and mudfish seemed to have exchanged positions.
Nine Gloom knew that he could not escape now.
While he observed Silver Armor’s altered form quietly from close range, he also rapidly checked the revenants’ imprints, attempting to summon them again.
“Silver Armor, why don’t we just end the battle here.” Nine Gloom tried to buy himself some time. “Look, we’ve shown all of our trump cards. If we continue battling it out, it will be a fight to the death. There’s no need to go to that extent…”
However, the flame giant completely ignored what Nine Gloom said. Without waiting for him to finish speaking, the huge palm of flame came down in the direction where Nine Gloom was.
The sky seemed to collapse as the massive palm hurtled down.
Nine Gloom did not dare to mount a direct resistance and swiftly teleported once again.
He could not outrun this current Silver Armor, but he could at least teleport a short distance to avoid any attacks.
The flame giant flew into a mad rage when the attack missed and began striking wildly at everything around him. Nine Gloom’s mind loosened up, and he began to think.
Silver Armor’s mind was obviously immature when he was in this state. One could even say that he was completely functioning on battle instinct alone.
Although his opponent was very powerful in this state of being, for Nine Gloom, there was a fatal flaw in it.
This was because when fighting while being controlled by instinct, Silver Armor did not have the ability to be calculative. He could only function in a very straightforward manner, and all of his actions could be predicted at a glance.
This relieved Nine Gloom’s mind. He did not hurry to escape; instead, he remained where he was and dealt with the flame giant.
While dodging the flame giant’s repeated attacks with ease, he planned his next attack.
The sudden explosion caused by Silver Armor’s transformation had destroyed almost all of the revenants that Nine Gloom had summoned.
Most of them had not only been destroyed on a physical level, but even their soul imprints had disintegrated as well.
At this level of obliteration, Nine Gloom had no way of summoning these revenants again.
However, fortunately, there were still a handful of revenants that had only been destroyed on the physical level—their soul imprints were still intact. Not only that, the few that remained were the most powerful of the lot.
Nine Gloom was ecstatic when he sensed the remains of the soul imprints.
He secretly gathered his Divine Power and waited patiently for an opportunity to summon the revenants again.
Ten minutes or more passed.
At a moment when the flame giant bent to strike the ground, countless vines unexpectedly extended from thin air and entangled the flame giant’s neck and limbs en masse.
Although the flames on the giant’s body did wild damage to the vines that entangled him, vines kept surging over endlessly, merely to temporarily restrain his movements.
With this abrupt temporary restraint in place, Nine Gloom summoned the revenants again without hesitation.
Giant Sarcoma, Crimson Eye, the three-tailed snake lady… All these powerhouses of overlord-rank with abilities close to overlord-rank were summoned once again.
As soon as the several dozen revenants appeared, they worked together without hesitation to attack the flame giant, who had now been immobilized.
Even Nine Gloom seized the opportunity to fight, unleashing his fatal move.
Countless vines began to devour the Divine Power within the flame giant’s body by force.
Right as this wave of assault began, the flame giant roared and struggled free from the vines that had entangled him.
However, he was a little too late. He was only able to defend himself from a small percentage of the attacks; the majority of the other attacks scored definite hits.
Although the flame giant was not killed in this round of attacks, his size had clearly diminished quite a bit, while the color of his body had dimmed significantly.
When he saw these changes, Nine Gloom knew that his strategy was the right one.
“Continue attacking and drain his Divine Power!”
In this state, Silver Armor quite possibly had up to a hundred times more Divine Power within him than before. However, there was no qualitative change in his nature.
His attacks were more powerful only because every time he attacked, his consumption of Divine Power was higher than before.
Judging by the change in the flame giant’s size and color, he did not have endless Divine Power; it could be drained.
Nine Gloom was relieved to discover this.
This God Territory was his territory. In a competition for draining Divine Power, he feared no one at all.
Nine Gloom became calmer after ascertaining his strategy.
He no longer directly clashed with the flame giant. Instead, he manipulated the several dozen revenants to conduct guerrilla warfare by constantly harassing the giant and draining his Divine Power.
Each time the flame giant attacked, Nine Gloom would control the revenants so that they dodged and ran, avoiding direct conflict as much as possible.
Over half an hour passed.
Only half the revenants under Nine Gloom’s control were left. Even though he manipulated the revenants to evade attacks as much as possible, there were times when they could not dodge in time.
However, his consolation was that the flame giant’s size had shrunk to a mere100 meters tall now, and the flame on the giant’s body had begun to become unstable.
Nine Gloom patiently dragged the battle out.
After some ten minutes had passed, the flame giant’s size suddenly shrank dramatically. Nine Gloom was stunned when he saw it happening.
He immediately halted the attacks and waited patiently for his opponent’s form to finish transforming.
Within merely the time it took for a few breaths, the flame giant’s height of over a hundred meters shrank to around two meters or so—even smaller than Silver Armor’s initial size.
After his body stopped diminishing, the flame on Silver Armor’s body slowly began to fade away.
Two to three minutes later, the flame faded completely, revealing a new body.
Instead of silver armor, this body was clad in bronze armor.
The bronze armor looked rather beaten-up, and it was considerably smaller than the silver armor.
If Nine Gloom had not sensed the remains of Silver Armor’s aura on the other’s body, he might have had some doubts as to the other’s identity.
“So this is the price to pay for becoming a flame giant?” Nine Gloom smiled and looked at the bronze-armored man whose aura had plummeted to rock bottom.
The bronze-armored man before him only possessed the combat strength of an eighth-rank Heavenly God—he had dropped one entire level!
Nine Gloom stared for a while at the unconscious bronze-armored man, but he did not kill him. Instead, he extended a black vine and plunged it into the vicinity of the bronze-armored man’s heart.
A moment later, the vine was retracted. The smile on Nine Gloom’s massive constructed face was even broader now.
“What an excellent live seed cultivation bed…”
Now that this battle with Silver Armor had ended, Nine Gloom released a long sigh of relief. Subsequently, his God Territory began slowly disintegrating, revealing the original ancient forest.
Right at the very moment that his God Territory had been completely recalled, Nine Gloom suddenly heard a languid voice very clearly drifting to his ears.
“This battle between the two of you dragged on for so long, I’m a little sleepy from all that waiting.”
