I Regressed With a 10,000x God-Tier Multiplier-Chapter 13: The Bleeding Soul

The descent into the Deep Roads was a descent into a forgotten hell.

The temperature plummeted the further Lucifer and Elara marched downward. The air grew completely stale and heavily suffocating. It reeked of raw sulfur and ancient undisturbed rot.

The massive spiraling stone tunnel was clearly not a natural formation. It was perfectly carved. The walls bore the faded jagged patterns of an extinct dwarven empire.

Lucifer walked near the front of the column strictly flanked by Elara. The five thousand heavily armored Cryo-Vanguards marched behind them in perfect synchronized silence.

The pitch-black darkness of the tunnel was completely banished by the blinding sub-zero blue glow radiating from their heavy ice-rifles.

"The structural integrity of this tunnel is severely failing," Elara noted. Her silver wings were folded tightly to avoid scraping against the narrow rock walls. "I sense massive hollow caverns directly ahead. The magical resonance is chaotic and deeply hostile."

"We are entering an active biome," Lucifer confirmed and checked the glowing blue mental map he had downloaded from the Church Archives.

"The Cult of Decay operates below this sector. The tunnels themselves are populated by scavengers."

They marched for another hour. The narrow tunnel suddenly opened up. Lucifer stopped perfectly still at the edge of a massive sprawling underground cavern.

A sprawling chaotic city constructed entirely from rusted scrap metal, jagged black rock, and glowing green fungal spores sat in the center of the massive space. It was built in jagged vertical tiers that clung to the cavern floor like a massive metallic wasp nest.

It was a slaver city run by Deep Gnomes.

These were short deeply hunchbacked creatures with completely gray leathery skin. They had massive black eyes adapted perfectly to the dark and rows of razor-sharp needle-like teeth. They were vicious highly organized predators.

Lucifer did not hesitate. He knew the stronghold of the Cult of Decay was located directly past this city. He could not afford a protracted siege. He could not afford to let his army get bogged down in the narrow junk-filled streets.

"Vanguard! Form a staggered firing line along the ridge!" Lucifer commanded loudly. "Target the defensive structures. Execute them all."

The five thousand Elven snipers dropped to one knee. The mechanical whine of recharging arcane batteries screamed through the cavern.

"Fire!"

A devastating volley of hyper-compressed absolute zero beams rained down from the ridge. The blue beams violently struck the rusted metal shacks to instantly flash-freeze the structures and shatter them into useless shrapnel.

The Deep Gnomes shrieked in absolute terror and scrambled completely out of their ruined homes. They grabbed crude poison-tipped crossbows and jagged spears.

They did not just blindly charge the ridge. The Deep Gnomes were intimately familiar with their subterranean environment.

A cluster of heavily scarred Gnome Shamans began frantically chanting deep within the center of the junk city. They slammed heavy glowing brown wooden staffs repeatedly into the cavern floor. The ambient earth magic in the cavern spiked violently.

Lucifer felt the sheer kinetic vibration through his boots a second before the spell completed.

"Earthquake!" Kaelen yelled and grabbed the shoulder of Elara.

The Gnome Shamans did not target the Vanguard directly. They targeted the fragile heavily cracked dwarven stone ceiling located directly above the army of Lucifer.

The spell detonated. The ceiling of the massive cavern groaned loudly and violently fractured under the magical pressure.

"Incoming!" Elara roared and stepped directly in front of Lucifer. She flared her metallic wings outward to create a physical canopy.

Massive jagged boulders rained brutally down from the darkness above. Some were the size of small carriages. The heavy rocks smashed directly into the firing line of the Vanguard.

Lucifer did not get crushed by the physical rocks. The celestial wings of Elara easily deflected the falling debris. The resulting magical damage bypassed his physical body entirely.

The heavy boulders violently crushed three dozen Cryo-Vanguard Snipers in rapid succession. The Elven soldiers did not scream. They simply dissolved into blue light as their physical forms were destroyed.

The Soul-Link Drain hit Lucifer like a speeding freight train.

"Gah!" Lucifer dropped to both knees and clutched the center of his chest. The agonizing hollow tearing sensation instantly returned and was amplified tenfold.

The sheer volume of simultaneous deaths ripped thousands of mana points directly out of his newly restored core in less than two seconds.

Blood violently sprayed from his mouth and splattered entirely across the stone ridge. His vision doubled. The edges of his sight turned completely black.

┏━━━━━━━[ Critical Alert ]━━━━━━━┓

│ Level: 15 | Class: Apprentice Mage

│

│ 36 Vanguard Snipers Destroyed.

│ Applying Soul-Drain Penalty (-18,000 Mana)

│

│ Mana: 2,000 / 15,000 [CRITICAL]

│ Mana: 1,000 / 15,000 [CRITICAL]

│

│ WARNING: Soul-Fracture Imminent.

│ Initiating forced unsummon sequence...

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

"Do not unsummon!" Lucifer gasped furiously to fight the automated safety protocol of the system. The falling rocks and the charging Gnome horde would instantly overwhelm Elara and butcher him while he was incapacitated if he unsummoned the army now.

He needed mana. He needed it right now.

Lucifer frantically reached down to his heavy leather belt. He unhooked the Carnage Core. The fist-sized cursed artifact pulsed heavily with a dark red light.

He could not use potions because the drain was happening far too fast. He needed an active intake of life force.

"Elara!" Lucifer choked out and gripped the glowing red core tightly. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

Elara did not hesitate. The Valkyrie completely abandoned her defensive posture upon seeing Lucifer bleeding heavily from his eyes and mouth.

She launched herself off the high ridge. Her wings carried her directly down into the sprawling Gnome city.

She landed in the center of the chanting Shamans with the kinetic force of a meteor. She did not use magic. She used sheer unadulterated celestial violence. She drove her silver spear directly through the chests of the Shamans to physically rip them apart.

The surviving Cryo-Vanguards on the ridge immediately recovered from the rockfall. They aimed their rifles downward to unleash a rapid continuous volley of absolute zero death directly into the charging Gnome horde.

The artifact in the hand of Kaelen woke up completely as the Gnomes died.

The Carnage Core went berserk. Thick luminous red tendrils of pure magical energy whipped out from the black crystal.

The tendrils plunged directly down into the sprawling city and sank into the shattering dying bodies of the Deep Gnomes.

The core actively drank their death energy. Lucifer forcefully reversed the internal flow of the artifact instead of storing the kinetic power for a weaponized strike.

He commanded the Carnage Core to aggressively pump the stolen life force directly into his own fractured soul.

It was a brutal agonizing tug-of-war.

A poisoned crossbow bolt struck a Vanguard sniper on the ridge and he died. (-500 Mana). Kaelen screamed as his back violently arched.

Elara simultaneously decapitated ten Gnome warriors. The Carnage Core absorbed their deaths. (+800 Mana).

The dark red energy flooded into the chest of Kaelen to forcibly stitch his tearing soul back together.

The system interface became a chaotic terrifying blur of rapidly fluctuating numbers.

[Mana: 800 / 15,000]

[Mana: 3,400 / 15,000]

[Mana: 1,200 / 15,000]

[Mana: 5,600 / 15,000]

Lucifer stayed on his knees and gripped the rock edge. He was completely soaked in his own sweat and blood.

He kept the artifact engaged to act as a living conduit between the massacre below and his own survival. He watched the absolute destruction of the subterranean city through bloodshot eyes.

Elara and the Snipers slaughtered another hundred Gnomes every time his mana dipped dangerously close to zero. This violently force-fed his Warlord core just enough energy to keep his internal organs from rupturing.

The cavern finally fell silent after ten agonizing minutes of relentless unyielding slaughter.

The sprawling underground city was completely wiped out. Every shack, street, and tunnel was coated in a thick bloody layer of shattered blue ice and pulverized rock. The red tendrils of the Carnage Core slowly retracted completely sated.

Lucifer collapsed entirely onto his side on the cold stone ridge and gasped heavily for air. His chest heaved. The brutal mana hemorrhage had finally stopped.

[Ding!]

[Host has slain Deep Gnome (Level 18) x 15,000]

[Host has slain Deep Gnome Shaman (Level 22) x 500]

[Apex Multiplier triggered...]

[Host has reached Level 18!]

The golden light of multiplied experience washed over him. It completely burned away the internal damage and forcefully expanded his magical capacity.

Lucifer lay on the stone and stared up at the dark cavern ceiling. He had survived. The brutal lesson was permanently etched into his mind. His army was invincible. His mortal body was a terrifyingly fragile weak point.