The Glorious Evolution

A few minutes before Nick grabbed the Sun Amulet and unleashed hell...

Levi was flying across the desert sky, pushing Vyra to her limit... His jaw was tight, and he looked like he was burning with panic.

The capital was still far ahead, but he couldn't shake the dread crawling up his spine... his mind ran wild as he tried to piece everything together.

'The Emperor… it has to be him,' he thought, gripping Vyra's rugged leather tighter. 'He must've been the one who went through the Glorious Evolution... the Dawn Phoenix fought him... it must've defeated him and sealed him inside the Sun Amulet... I knew that something was off about the whole history of this damned empire and had a feeling that it was related to the emperor... It's always them! Always, Levi! How can you be so naive!'

The moment the letter's tone changed in Levi's mind, he finally understood that he was looking at it from the wrong angle.

As Nurah always said and repeated... it could never be the Dawn Phoenix since World Class Ender Beasts treated their own bloodline as royalty.

It didn't matter if it was a mere citizen with the faintest amount of bloodline... as long as they shared its ancestral bloodline, it accepted them as part of their race and protected them from outsiders, regardless of the situation.

How could such a loyal beast to the ancestral bloodline cause such a heinous crime of making its race go extinct? It couldn't, but the clues and information they got villainized the Dawn Phoenix left and right until everyone started questioning themselves.

Maybe they were wrong? Possibly, some beasts were capable of doing this in the right circumstances? And so forth.

Levi was a victim of misinformation too... but he didn't trust it fully, which was the reason his instincts never quietened down the moment he read the letter.

But now? His instincts went silent, confirming that he was on the right track.

'God damn it... There might not even be a plague in the first place... it must be a cover-up released by the High Priests after the Dawn Phoenix fought the emperor to halt his attempt at the Glorious Evolution... I don't know why they fought for it, but I am almost certain the Dawn Phoenix has sealed the emperor inside the Sun Amulet, and the High Priests were tasked to save him. However, the Dawn Phoenix refused to hand over the Amulet, and the High Priests could do nothing against it.'

'Because the Dawn Phoenix was occupied with keeping the seal intact, the Ashora Empire has lost the two strongest entities in their empire at the same time, while the Shadow dimension's invasion was going all out.'

'How could they survive it? The planet became infested, and the Ashori were either corrupted or slaughtered across years until... only some surviving refuges hid in bunkers under the High Priests' leadership.'

The more Levi thought about it, the fuller his mind got... the dots kept connecting nonstop into a story... a story that made more sense than the Dawn Phoenix going berserk and ending its bloodline with a "plague."

'When they knew that nothing but death awaited them, they left letters behind in case outsiders arrived at their empire... building on the previous rumors they spread to villainize the Dawn Phoenix and push them to free their emperor from his seal.'

'Now... if they remove the Sun Amulet from the Phoenix's hands… they'll release him, and it will be their end.'

Levi's expression turned as grim as it could get.

'Seems feasible.' The Titan nodded.

'Damn it...I am not worried about Arthur and the girls, but the others.'

Levi understood that his friends would never take on such a serious task without him being around... they would wait for him, he was sure of it.

However, he couldn't be as certain about the others... especially since each of them had egos shaped by their immense strength and top-tier potential on Earth.

As the wind screeched past his ears while he leaned forward, piercing through the skies like a white comet, a sharp crack suddenly echoed through the air.

Levi's head snapped up... his expression turning ugly. But then came another crack, louder… then a third.

'Oh no, oh no...' His lips tightened as the realization hit him.

The dimensional membrane was breaking apart!

"No… no, no, no..."

Levi kept repeating as he used the Sensebound Pearl to enhance his spiritual prowess, if only by a little. Then, he focused his spiritual vision as hard as he could... his sight pierced through the layers of light and air until it arrived at the Pyramid... and what he saw made his stomach drop in horror.

His worst fears had come through...

A colossal orange spiritual aura was raging out of control in the shape of a massive phoenix crafted out of flames... it was so big, its form exceeded the pyramid's structure, peeking through its edges.

Levi wished that it belonged to the Dawn Phoenix... but alas, the proud noble face of the Emperor was the one gazing into the distance.

Levi's blood ran cold, and before he knew it, he found himself shouting at the top of his lungs, "ARTHUUR!!"

His voice cracking as his heart kept beating rapidly in fear of the worst possibility... Death.

Levi didn't think anymore... He leaped off Vyra mid-flight, igniting the sun jets on his legs and combustion leaps on his palms.

He summoned Vyra back inside a sealing totem and swiftly launched himself forward... the sudden burst burned his skin instantly, but he didn't care.

Whoosh!!

He blasted forward with two long, concentrated blue pillars of sunflames, resembling a fighting jet.

But then... the world broke.

SHATTER!

A thunderous sound like glass shattering snapped through the air, and Levi suddenly felt like someone, or something, was tugging his armor from above.

Stunned, he glanced up and saw nothing but pitch-black darkness... his auditory vision failing to reach such heights.

However, once he noticed the ground, the sand, the ruins, even the atmosphere itself getting pulled upward toward the sky, he knew immediately that the final hour had started for the planet.

"No… this can't be happening! I am going to make it!!"

Levi yelled furiously as he fought to control his flight, pushing his jets even harder until his soles were emitting a burnt flesh smell. Yet, he felt nothing but dread of not making it to the pyramid.

Unfortunately, he was no Azhukar.

The more he tried to resist the pull, the more he felt like he was trying to outswim a collapsing ocean... the force pulling him upward didn't care about his speed or strength. The pyramid and ruins below split apart like sandcastles. Even the sky seemed to bend toward the tear... How could he resist it?

Thud! Bam!

Rubble slammed against him as he dodged what he could, broke through what he couldn't... His chest ached, his body screaming, but he kept pushing.

'Arthur… Nurah…Jasmine... Shia… Jojo… please, hold on.' Levi kept repeating in his mind, not thinking about anything else.

However... Ash'Kral was there.

"Levi!" Ash'Kral's solemn voice echoed in his head. "Even if you reach them, you can't stop him. The Emperor's power is beyond anything you've seen. If he has failed the Glorious Evolution, it means he has been regressed to a Tier 8 powerhouse minimum. Even weakened, he's still a deity compared to you... What you're doing is nothing but walking towards your death."

"Shut up!" Levi roared as he kept unleashing flames out of his soles. "That's my brother down there! I'm not leaving him! If you can't accept that, then f*ck off and find another partner!"

Just as Ash'Kral opened his mouth, the Titan shook his head... it was like he was telling him that nothing he said was going to change Levi's mind... and he was right.

All Levi had left from his family was Arthur... his little brother. He would die gladly first if it meant getting a slight chance of saving him. Why? Because his little brother would do the same for him.

That's the kind of relationship they had... they would die for each other, no questions asked, no hesitation, no doubts.

The Larsons never forsake each other.

Ash'Kral went silent for a long second, many thoughts running through his mind... in the end, he kept his silence, leaving Levi to do as he pleased.

Even if he said anything, Levi would have ignored him as he was too focused on flying, on fighting the rubble, on refusing to give up.

Sadly, the pull just kept getting stronger until his control slipped... The world started spinning for him, his Sun Jets making it near impossible to regain his balance.

BOOOOM!

Before he could react, Levi slammed into a floating ruin... the force was so strong, he felt his guts rearranged and his brain rocked like it was smashed by a sledgehammer.

His body bounced off, blood seeping down his mouth and nose... his internal system was all f*cked up as his aetheric barrier had saved him only from turning into a meshed-up corpse.

To smash against a hard surface while going at supersonic speed... not even Levi could walk out of it with no injury.

As the Sun Jets were turned off after he lost focus, fading between consciousness and unconsciousness, Levi's limp body spiraled upward... straight toward the tear.

'N..o... Arthy... n..o...'

Even when he was disoriented and barely conscious, Levi refused to give in to the peacefulness of letting go...

His limp body kept smashing through debris after debris while going up, and yet... his spiritual vision never left the pyramid that had its ceiling torn up.

When his spiritual vision cleared for a moment, he saw something that he wished with all of his heart to be... a dream.

A celestial spiritual tree burning at the heart of the chaos... A tree of fire so intense it seemed to blur reality around it... Levi tried his best to see his brother and everyone's spiritual auras, but nothing... they all vanished with the Pharaoh.

And then everything went black... his body had crossed the spatial tear, thrown off inside the Shadow dimension, and in the direction of the Hungering Dark.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!"

Levi's despairing scream tore through the void as his arm was extended in the direction of the spatial tear... alas, no one was there to catch it.