Supreme Monarch

At Tyler's confident declaration, Rain's cheeks became flushed as she could no longer bring herself to offer any resistance and meekly nodded in agreement. 

With that, Tyler smiled faintly at her as he patted her on the head and told her to rest up in the castle until his return. He did not even wait for a response as he immediately sent her back to the castle using Spatial Teleportation. The skill allowed him to not just teleport himself, but others as well, as long as he was touching them. 

He could also swap objects that were within a 100-meter radius of him without having to touch them but that was irrelevant to the present situation.

With Rain gone, the snow-filled rocky plains returned to an eerily silence as Tyler just stared at the ice prism that was still in place with a strange expression on his face.

He was surely angry but, he found it harder to maintain that anger as the massive disappointment in himself outweighed the bottomless rage that threatened to swallow his reasoning at the moment. He may not know it right now, but that disappointment had saved his soul.

"Why the fuck can't I get a break today."

A wave of frustration swelled inside of him. For some reason he had thought his luck since coming to Neron had changed for the better when he stumbled upon the magic library and attain power but it seemed he had been far too naive. 

The castle being invaded had already caused him enough trouble yet there was still the matter of the 20,000 plus undead legion that was marching this way. And now, this happened. This was by far the worst of all as if they somehow gain Liz's Ice Domain, it will not be funny.

Those factors made him angry and frustrated. However, most of those frustrating thoughts were aimed at him. Why didn't he see such a thing coming? He was the one that had ordered them out but failed to consider the possibility that there would be spies somewhere other than the safe zones in the Darknar forest.

After corrupting those safe zones, he may have unconsciously let his guard down and had fallen prey to a fast retaliation from one of the Great Five. He had expected them to take their time investigating but the fact that they had promptly chosen to target Liz was an anomaly in his previous calculations. 

Perhaps if he had given Z more details about the girls he would've been able to predict this anomaly but it was too late now. His lack of trust in his subordinates had led to him putting their lives in danger.

Tyler took several deep breaths to calm his nerves as well as use Placate on himself. After taking a minute to get himself together, he stood up from his crouching position and got out of his head as he needed to focus on the task at hand.

Rubbing his missing left arm, he grumbled about what he was about to do internally. Such a thing was something the previous him would've called crazy if someone told him about it. Yet, here he was, about to do something as stupid as storming into the energy's base head-on.

"Fine then, let's be crazy for a day." Saying that his eyes flashed with a cold glint as he used a skill.

•Spatial Perception•

While using this ability earlier, he had only been focused on the things below and not the space around him. However, as his focus was shifted, he soon noticed what he was looking for. 

Rain had told him the enemy had teleported away the first time so it made sense that they would do the same while bringing back a prisoner, so all he needed to do was locate the spot the space around her had been disturbed. It had been over three hours since they left so by now the space would've been fully recovered.

However, Tyler had still found something, this meant, rather than normal teleportation magic, they had used a gate.

"There you are."

He raised his head, and in the sky, directly above the ice prism, was a normally invisible distortion in space but with Spatial Perception and Spatial awareness, he could now see it clearly. 

His figure then slowly floated towards the distortion and stopped next to it. This was the point at which space was forced open, connecting this point to another. Making mass teleportation possible.

Without the use of similar skill as his Spatial Teleportation that controls space itself. A normal Teleportation Magic would only be able to force the connection between two points in space effectively tearing or damaging space itself in an insignificant way that would not have any lasting effects. However, such methods would surely leave behind a distortion in space just like the one Tyler was currently looking at. 

With this, he now had a link to the destination the enemy had taken Liz to. Although people that could use high-level magic like Teleportation or in this case Gate would usually set up measures against being followed by similar spells. Tyler didn't have to worry about that as Spatial Domination took over and he overruled the rules that had been placed on the space around the distortion as he reached in through the distorted space and reconnected it to the previous space it had been connected to. 

With that, his figure completely disappeared from the skies above the rocky plains close to the Darkin Mountain Range. As the monsters that had surrounded him could only look up in confusion as they wondered where their supposed prey had disappeared to.

••••••••••

••••••••••

—Taine Ze Region.

—Lerantel Fortress.

Located at the extreme end of the south Taine Ze Region. It was a Desert Fortress that borders the Delling Region. One of the Brimstone family's outter (vassals) families region. Thus, the fortress was hidden from the public and the only people stationed here were from the main family.

This was a small fortress that was used as one of the Brimstone family's research centers. It was a place where they would develop secret technologies that were not introduced to the public. It was possible that most if not all of the noble families that lord over their own regions would have a facility like this and naturally, the Brimstones had quite a few. 

This fortress could contain more than a thousand men but right now, it had only a little over 250 persons inside with the majority of them being non-combatant researchers. Of course, that didn't mean this fortress wasn't well protected or defended as it also contained 500 Mechanical golems serving as its guards.

The mechanical golems were a nightmarish combination of magic and technology first woven together in the mind of a madman from an ancient family. They come in many sizes but were generally man-like in shape with slender metal limbs. In previous iterations, they would have some manner of melee weapon built onto one of their arms and a cannon mounted on their chest as inspired by certain individuals.

However, such needless things had caused them to be too bulky and thus, they would move with a variety of whirs, clicks, and other mechanical sounds, occasionally releasing a hissing sound and a cloud of steam. Giving the creature a jury-rigged and somewhat shoddy appearance as well as making their fighting style a bit too predictable for skilled opponents. However, that was all in the past.

Although most high-ranking noble families would have a semblance on the method to create the original Mechanical golems, the Brimstone had spent hundreds of years and sparing no expense in improving the plans for their golems in the battle of attrition against the other Greats. Thus, creating a now slender and nimble build that took away all extra and unneeded weight, opting to create the machines with a new type of power core created from fire attribute magic crystals.

Being a family that boasted of the highest firepower and speed, they had created a fluid, smooth functioning, and deadly machines that were capable of wielding any type of melee weapon and shields, while also able to shape the energy within their cores granting them a limited ability to use skills and defensive spells.

This also granted them high damage immunity to most forms of attack, condition immunity, and various senses like Darkvision, Motion perception, and Heat sensors. Their skills also include Fire-based attacks with melee weapons and immutable form.

However, such massive improvements had drastically increased the cost of production. Making every single Mech Golem very valuable, so the fact that they had stationed over 500 of them on a small base like this showed how much the Brimstone's values the research being conducted on this facility.

♦️♦️♦️

—Three hours earlier.

Deep inside the main building of the fortress, or more precisely, one level below base level. A spatial gate suddenly opened in the interiors of a large and empty pure white room as five figures walked out of it. One of the said figures seemed to be unconscious as she was being carried by two other figures. However, rather than being simply unconscious, said figure was only in a state of forced zero kinetic energy and was unable to move even a single finger.

The other four figures were a pair of two males in black suits of high-quality black leather armors with very little metal inlaid in them. They carried or rather dragged the unconscious girl along and the last two were female demons that strolled forth without bothering to look back. One of these two female demons wore skin-tight leather armor with golden greaves and vambraces while the other had on a black cloak as she walked with light footsteps and a bright and cheerful smile was plastered across her pretty face. Her eyes carried a predatory glint.

"~Wow, that was the most fun I've had in years. I didn't expect her to switch up personality on us and even get stronger, what's up with that? I totally want that~"

"How would I know, I witnessed the same thing as you. If it wasn't for the unconscious dark elf she was protecting, I don't even think we would've been able to capture her alive even with both our innate abilities active at the same time. To think she could still freeze the domain, talk about a monster. How scary."

When it came to innate abilities, they were fundamentally different from other abilities and even unique skills. They could not be copied or learned and once a single individual had awakened one, that ability would never be awakened for anyone else.

However, high-level individuals such as demon nobles could pass the genes of their innate abilities down to their children, and as such, their power would not be lost. Still, innate abilities were random, and as such their strength varied from weak to strong and some could even be considered useless.

Still, they were a source of pride as not many people could awaken to an innate ability. This was also boosted by the fact that innate abilities could grow stronger with their owners, a fact that Tyler was yet to be aware of. Naturally, the innate ability of the Great Five was not something as simple as it appeared. Their abilities held hidden potentials and thus, we're the strongest abilities amongst all the noble families in the demon continent.

The innate ability of the Brimstone was called 'World of Inferno.' As with the other five, a domain type ability that grants the user absolute control over fire in their own domain. It was to the point that they could even affect the laws of reality in itself. Gaining the ability to control volatile force and even entropy to a certain degree depending on the strength of their mana bodies.

Meaning, the stronger their mana bodies were or the higher magic potential they had, the more powerful their innate ability was and the more influence they would have over the laws of the universe. So naturally, with both of them— who were high-level demons— using this ability at the same time, they should've had complete dominance in a fight against another member of the Great Five that was at the same level as them.

Yet, said person had been able to still freeze their active domain completely just by using their own innate ability. It was something that defiled the laws of this world and the reason they hadn't taken her to the main family castle for interrogation and rather to this facility after informing demon lord Malik about the situation and the drastic change in the white-haired demoness.

Surely, if Citrus hadn't found a way to steal her kinetic energy, completely reducing it to zero. It would've been a near-impossible task to stop her. 

For now, their new goal was to study the girl and figure out why her personality had changed, giving her a massive boost in strength. They would also use the time to extract her memories before conducting further experiments on how to transfer her innate ability to Demon Lord Malik.