Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2654: Into the Beast

Silence.

For a moment, there was nothing. No light, no pressure, no sound. Just a void deeper than anything Emery had ever experienced.

The teleportation had worked—they had narrowly escaped the crushing jaws of the serpent horde. But what they had entered... was something else entirely.

Gone was the static emptiness of the void. Now, gravity returned—heavy and urgent. Wind howled around them like a storm in a vacuum, and it felt as though they were plummeting through an endless night sky lit by eerie, shifting auroras.

”Where... where are we?” Soltz asked, his voice sharp with lingering panic.

All eyes turned toward the dark Emery—the split soul who had cast the spell. But it was the Supreme Magus Rosin Karat who answered instead, his voice grave.

”We’re inside it,” he said. ”Inside the World Beast.”

”What?!”

Shock rippled through the group. But there was no time to question. Already, the distorted laws of this place pressed in. The sensation was alien. The very fabric of reality here bent in unfamiliar ways.

”You—why did you bring us here?!” Galael roared, pointing accusingly at the dark Emery. Rage boiled behind his crimson eyes.

But Rosin Karat interrupted him, firm and commanding. ”Enough! We are not out of danger yet!”

Just as his words left his mouth, the winds around them shifted again—faster, sharper.

They were descending, falling into another swarm of flying serpents, hundreds of them. They slithered through the air, wings spread like devils, forming a tightening net around the plummeting group.

Another terrible realization hit.

The laws of this place were warped. Spirit energy felt heavier, slower. Movements dragged like wading through molasses. Kaelyin reached out, attempting to cast, but her face turned pale.

”My power... it’s restricted!” Kaelyin cried, the divine light in her hands flickering.

”Hold on!!” Rosin Karat bellowed. He extended both arms, and from his storage rings erupted clusters of metal. With a roar of will, he transmuted them into spears of high-grade steel and launched them forward, blasting through the swarm to carve a narrow escape path. ṙàΝÓᛒЁș

But the respite was short-lived.

With a shattering crack, the already-damaged platform beneath their feet gave way. A shockwave tore through it, breaking it into splintered fragments.

Thrown into the wind, into chaos.

Panic surged as they plummeted through the surreal, distorted atmosphere. The swarm of serpents gave chase, but only a few kept up, their long forms spiraling behind like ribbons of steel.

Each of them began to fall—faster, faster—like shooting stars cast from the heavens.

Below them, a vast expanse of land emerged from the shadows.

They had seconds to act.

Emery twisted midair, spreading his Soaring Light Wings. With a surge of soul force, he managed to slow his fall. Dark Emery, Galael, and Rosin Karat managed to stabilize themselves with varying techniques. Kaelyin and Soltz crashed with lesser grace, landing hard and tumbling through stone.

Veyarel, unconscious, was shielded by a protective dome Rosin Karat had conjured mid-fall. The fey warriors, already wounded from the battle, hit the ground badly. Two lay barely moving.

When Emery rose and looked around, he froze.

They had landed on solid ground—but what surrounded them defied reason.

Mountains stretched across the horizon in every direction, glowing faintly with a bluish hue. The terrain shimmered with spectral energy, yet felt tangible. The sky above wasn’t sky at all—it was the same swirling void, with distant lights like stars swimming through ink.

”Is this... really the beast’s belly?” Galael asked, his voice filled with awe and disbelief.

”This is a pocket dimension... a domain. Formed within the beast’s body.” Rosin Karat said, his gaze scanning the surreal landscape.

Everyone stood stunned. Until Kaelyin’s voice broke the silence.

”You led us here—why?!” she shouted, pointing at the dark Emery.

But he didn’t answer right away. His gaze was distant, unfocused.

”Someone... led me here,” he finally muttered. ”A voice. I felt a pull... a strange energy in this place..”

Emery turned to look at his darker counterpart. As two halves of the same soul, he could sense when the other was lying—and this time, there was no deceit. Yet despite the conviction in Dark Emery’s voice, Emery himself felt nothing unusual. Frowning, he pushed his divine sense to its absolute limit, scouring the landscape for even the faintest ripple of energy. But there was nothing. No fluctuations, no creatures, only what his eyes could already see.

”The restriction is too great... be careful,” warned Rosin Karat, his voice sharp with unease.

A sudden panic gripped Soltz. ”I can’t feel the cosmos at all—nothing! I can’t channel any power!”

That declaration struck hard. The entire group immediately realized the horrifying truth: within this mysterious dimension, their connection to the cosmic force had been severed. All that remained to them was their own internal soul force, a drastic limitation that dragged even the strongest among them down to the level of a mere magus.

As tension grew thick in the air, a burst of excitement broke through unexpectedly.

”This is amazing!” Galale’s voice echoed from a nearby hill, where he had wandered off. He was crouched beside a cluster of strange flora, holding up a spiny, glowing blue cactus-like plant with trembling hands. ”This is Selkra Thorn! A rare Tier 7 herb—it went extinct in the Tartarus Realm a thousand years ago. This could be worth a fortune!”

Emery climbed the hill to get a closer look at the plant, curiosity momentarily piqued. But before he could reach it, a flicker of movement from a distant slope drew his eye. Something was shifting behind the rocks—subtle, deliberate.

”There’s something here!”

His warning came too late. A blood-curdling scream rang out from behind him. Emery whirled around to see one of the unconscious fairies being dragged away by a creature that had emerged from the stone itself. It was lizard-like in form, four-legged and covered in jagged, rock-like scales, but its head bore a striking resemblance to the horned serpents from before.

”Another godly beast...?!” Soltz shouted in alarm.

Rosin Karat reacted instantly, leaping down to smash at the creature and pry it off the fairy. But then the very ground trembled beneath their feet as more beasts began to rise—emerging across the rocky hills.

Godly-level monsters, all of them.

And with their cosmic powers sealed away, facing even one would be a deadly challenge.