WorldCrafter - Building My Underground Kingdom-Chapter 198: Ben vs the System and Aphopis

Chapter 198: Ben vs the System and Aphopis

“What did that bitch tell you!?” the knight growled. “You’re drunk on power now.”

Apophis let out a laugh, clearly amused by the situation.

“Hey, don’t blame me. Your host rejected my offer.” She gave a wicked grin. “If anything, you should curse your own luck. I’ve never seen anyone like him… fighting his own guideline.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed. The space around him began to crack and bend. With each second, his strength surged, climbing to a new peak.

He knew the system wasn’t wrong, not completely. Maybe he was drunk on power.

But even so… This was the first time in his life he felt truly in control. Not guided. Not manipulated. Free. And it make him felt complete.

“You feel it too, don’t you, system?” he said quietly. “The power I’m absorbing.”

“Yes,” the knight answered, his voice sharp. “It’s corrupting you.”

Ben’s gaze sharpened, but his tone stayed calm.

“Maybe you’re right. But now that I’ve felt this, I can see it. I can tell which part of my strength is yours, and which part is hers.”

He looked at his hands, pulsing with black-violet energy.

“Apophis isn’t entirely wrong.”

What he consumed from Apophis was completely different from the system’s energy.

All this time, he believed the system was part of him. But now, with his body flooded by dark aether, he could feel the difference.

It wasn’t a bond, It was an attachment. A leech latched onto his soul. ‘If the system can be separated from me,’ Ben thought, ‘then how much else have they been hiding?

“You’re a lost cause,” the knight spat.

Ben’s lips curled into a calm, dangerous smile. “We’ll see.”

Ben make the first move. His body blurred, propelled by twisting gravitational force. The cracked ground beneath his feet shattered as he attacked, not toward Apophis. Toward the knight.

The knight’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You, what are you doing!?”

Ben didn’t answer. He was already mid-strike. A appendage whipped forward it coiled around the knight’s sword like a serpent and yanked, pulling the weapon off-center.

The knight countered instantly, lightning exploding around him. Holy energy surged as he raised his hand, forming a glowing sigil in the air, trying to stabilize the battlefield.

But Ben slammed into him with full force. Their bodies collided, gravity against lightning.

The knight was thrown back, crashing into a floating slab of broken stone. Lightning arced wildly across his armor as he staggered to his feet, dazed.

“You would turn against the system? Against the very thing that’s kept you alive?”

Ben stepped forward, eyes glowing brighter than ever, appendages swirling like wings behind him. “I’ve realized something,” he said quietly. “The system helped me evolve. It gave me power.”

He raised his hand, where black-violet energy coiled like a second skin.

“But That power never came from you.”

The knight’s eyes widened.

“It’s part of me. The Hive Sovereign. That’s the real source. Not you.”

Ben clenched his fist, and the space around the knight collapsed inward, distorting violently. The knight vanished from sight for a blink, only to reappear, coughing blood from the sudden spatial crush.

“You transformed me, yes,” Ben continued, his voice now layered with something deeper. “But the moment I gained control… that power became mine.”

He shot forward again, and this time his strike landed clean.

A appendage slammed into the knight’s chest.

A surge of suction passed through it, Consume activated. The knight screamed as glowing threads of system-light began to pull away from his body, unraveling at the edges.

“You… can’t… do this!” he growled, struggling.

The system began to crack.

Now, with every second he devoured the system’s essence, something is breaking. He wasn’t just trying to kill the system.

He was going to break it, than take it all for himself. Not as a host. But as its master

The knight roared. A surge of light burst from his body, vaporizing the appendages around him in an instant.

The sky above fractured as radiant energy poured down, forming golden chains inscribed with ancient runes.

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The chains shot downward, aiming to bind Ben’s limbs, but Ben moved.

Gravity buckled beneath his feet, and with a twist of his will, he inverted the entire field around him. The chains bent mid-flight, slamming into the broken earth instead. “You’re getting desperate,” Ben said, stepping forward through the fading light.

The knight summoned his sword again, now burning brighter than ever, coated in divine flame and lighting.

“I won’t let you destroy everything,” he spat. “You’re a manace. That thing inside you, Apophis’s corruption, is already consuming you.”

Ben’s grin was gone. “I’m not destroying anything. I’m taking what’s mine.” He raised his hand, and Consume activated again.

This time, it wasn’t just appendages. The air itself around Ben twisted into gravitational spirals. They spun and screamed, bending the fabric of space as they shot toward the knight.

The skill have evolved…

The knight raised his blade, bracing for the impact.

CRASH!

The first spiral hit him head-on, detonating in a shockwave of black-violet light. The second and third followed, pushing him back, tearing at his armor, unraveling more of the system’s presence with every hit. His sword clashed with one appendage, then two, but it wasn’t enough.

Ben appeared behind him in a blink.

“Consume.” A appendage struck directly into the knight’s back, and this time, it dug deep.

The knight screamed as white blood poured from the wound, sucked into Ben’s core like smoke through a vortex.

Ben eyes narrowed, as at this moment he begin to understand what’s the system.

“You were the one who made me fight daemons.”

He stepped closer, eyes blazing.

“But you never told me you were one.”

The knight’s face twisted with rage and pain. “I am a failsafe! A construct of order! If I die, so do you!”

But he didn’t get to finish, Apophis make her move. In a blur she was in front of him, claws gleaming. Her palm struck his chest like a comet, launching him backward through a cluster of floating debris.

CRASH!

Stone shattered. Blood sprayed. Ben hit the ground hard, sliding across broken terrain, appendages thrashing as he stabilized mid-air.

“Time for me to join in,” Apophis said with a smile, already diving again.

Before Ben could fully recover, another surge of energy crackled behind him. Lightning.

The knight, his ruined armor blazed with searing white light, barely holding together as divine sigils burned across his skin like brands.

“You should’ve finished when you had the chance,” the knight growled, eyes glowing.

Ben turned, only to take the full brunt of a lightning-coated slash. His body twisted from the impact, sparks and corrupted aether flying from his side as he spun mid-air.

The blow should’ve torn him apart. But he caught himself, gravity field flaring, the wound sealing almost instantly with stolen power.

Apophis was already upon him again, dark water forming sharp blades around her arms.

She swung.

Ben blocked with his appendage, but another claw slipped through, carving a line across his cheek.

The knight struck next, sword cleaving downward. Ben twisted using gravity to push himself between both attacks. But the pressure was mounting.

“You’re not ready to carry this power!” the knight shouted, lightning storming behind him.

“You’re already breaking apart,” Apophis added, her voice like silk drenched in venom. “Return my power than I will help you!”

Ben didn’t reply, He couldn’t. He was fighting to stay conscious. His mind swam with overload, the pure energy from the system start clashing against the dark aether.

But in the chaos, his eyes flicked between the two, and he grinned.

“Perfect,” he whispered.

His appendages shot outward, another six of them now, each larger, sharper, glowing in light and dark aether. The ground beneath him shattered as he forced himself upright.

“Then come at me together,” he said, voice cracking with energy. freewebnøvel.coɱ

The black hole in his palm began to spin again, faster than before. Gravity shrieked. “Let’s see who gets devoured first.”

The space cracked as power clashed. Ben launched forward like a living meteor, dragging trails of warped space behind him. Six appendages whipped outward, slamming into Apophis’s blades and wrapping around the knight’s glowing sword in the same breath.

Apophis let out a shriek of fury and spun mid-air. Her wings folded in, channeling pressure into her core, then burst outward, releasing a shockwave of dark water that twisted gravity with it.

Black torrents rose from the cracks of the fractured terrain, moving upward like reversed waterfalls, carrying razors of solidified shadow.

Ben crossed his arms, and a spherical gravitational shield snapped into place. The storm crashed into him, tearing at the edges, but couldn’t reach his core.

Then lightning struck. The knight dropped like a hammer from above, his broken armor pulsing with desperate radiance. His blade ignited mid-swing, blinding white-hot light clashing against Ben’s shield.

BOOM!

Ben was thrown downward, his feet smashing through a floating stone platform and carving a trench into the warped ground below. Dust and black liquid flew skyward, caught in Apophis’s spinning cyclone of power.

But Ben didn’t stay down. He pushed up, blood running down his brow, eyes gleaming brighter.

He opened his palm. A miniature singularity formed, smaller than before, but far denser. It let out a high-pitched hum, so intense it made the air ripple like heat.

“Try this.” He hurled the singularity upward.