Chapter 411: Emperor class beast

Chapter 411: Emperor class beast

“The planet?” Noah stared at the Queen like she’d just announced the sky was actually made of cheese. “What the hell does that mean, the planet is waking up?”

The tremor struck again, stronger this time, and Noah could feel it in his bones. The carved stone beneath their feet vibrated with a rhythm that felt almost… organic.

Kelvin’s eyes went wide, his cybernetic arms beginning to twitch as his mind raced through possibilities. “Wait, wait, wait. When you say the planet is waking up, are you talking about seismic activity? Geological instability? Some kind of tectonic shift?” His voice was rising with each word. “Because planets don’t just ‘wake up’ like they’re taking a nap!”

Uncle Dom, meanwhile, had settled back against one of the carved walls with what appeared to be complete calm. “Oh, this should be interesting,” he said cheerfully, as if they were about to watch an entertaining performance rather than face potential planetary destruction.

The Queen rose from her throne, her earlier composure completely shattered by Diana and Sophie’s brutal honesty about the Eighth Ancestor. Now she looked like someone who had been carrying the weight of terrible knowledge for far too long.

“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Where you’re standing right now… this isn’t actually a planet. Not in the way you think of planets.”

“What do you mean it’s not a planet?” Lucy demanded, her lightning crackling slightly around her fingertips as stress began to affect her control.

The Queen took a shaky breath. “What humans would classify as a Category 5 beast. But not just any Category 5. An Emperor-class.”

The silence that followed was broken by Kelvin making a sound like a dying dog.

“Emperor-class?” he whispered, his face going pale. “Oh no. Oh no no no no.” His voice began to rise in pitch. “I’ve heard of those! They’re theoretical! They’re supposed to be Category 5 beasts so powerful they exist in a class of their own! Beast kings!”

He began pacing frantically, his cybernetic arms gesticulating wildly. “The EDF classifications stop at Category 5 because anything beyond that is supposed to be impossible! Planet-killers! Civilization-enders!”

“Kelvin, calm down,” Sophie said, but her own voice was strained.

“Calm down? CALM DOWN?” Kelvin spun to face her, his eyes wide with panic. “Sophie, we’re standing inside something that could probably eat solar systems for breakfast!”

The Queen nodded grimly. “Eons ago, according to our oldest legends, this creature was drifting through space—a beast so massive, so ancient, that it had grown beyond any normal understanding of life. It came across a planet rich with core energy, and instead of simply feeding on it…”

She gestured around them, encompassing the entire underground city. “It consumed the planet’s core completely, merged with it, absorbed its very essence. The planet’s mass, its gravitational field, its ability to support life—all of it became part of the beast itself.”

“So we’re inside it,” Diana said, her mind trying to process the implications. “This entire underground city, it’s built inside the body of a Category 5 Emperor-class beast.”

“The caverns, the carved chambers, even the air we’re breathing,” the Queen confirmed. “All of it exists within Lilivil’s body. We are, quite literally, parasites living inside a sleeping god.”

Noah felt his system responding to this revelation:

[MASSIVE ENERGY SOURCE IDENTIFIED]

[CLASSIFICATION: EMPEROR-CLASS THREAT LEVEL]

[STATUS: DORMANT BUT SHOWING SIGNS OF INCREASED ACTIVITY]

[WARNING: THREAT ASSESSMENT EXCEEDS CURRENT CLASSIFICATION PARAMETERS]

‘That explains the energy readings I’ve been getting since we arrived,’ Noah thought grimly. ‘The system’s been detecting the life force of the most powerful creature any of us have ever encountered.’

Kelvin was still pacing, his mind clearly struggling to process what he was hearing. “Okay, but that raises about seventeen thousand questions! Like how do you even exist as a species if you’re all female? Binary fission? Parthenogenesis? Some kind of advanced cloning?”

“Kelvin,” Lyra said sharply, “maybe focus on the more immediate crisis?”

“The more immediate crisis is that we’re standing inside a waking planet-beast and I have no idea how to deal with that!” Kelvin shot back. “The EDF doesn’t have training protocols for ‘what to do when the ground you’re standing on decides to get up and stretch!'”

Another tremor shook the chamber, this one lasting longer and feeling more purposeful. Like something enormous shifting in its sleep.

“Usually the tremors don’t last long,” the Queen said quickly. “As long as we maintain the work, it settles back into dormancy.”

“What work?” Lucas asked, though Noah was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t like the answer.

“The facility your enemy built,” the Queen explained. “It’s positioned directly above one of Lilivil’s core chambers. We believed the ancient one’s people were conducting research, but now…”

“Now you think they’re doing something to keep the beast asleep,” Sophie finished.

“Or something that’s starting to wake it up,” Noah said grimly. The pieces were clicking together in his mind, and the picture they formed was not encouraging.

“Wait,” he continued, his tactical training kicking in. “If the facility is built on top of a core chamber, then it’s probably sapping energy from the beast. That’s what’s causing the disturbance. We destroy the facility, we stop the drain on its energy, it goes back to sleep.”

The Queen’s expression grew even more pained. “There’s a problem with that approach. My people… some of them are still in there. And the… the offspring from the ancient one’s time here. They’re trapped in that facility.”

Lucy let out a long, frustrated sigh. “So now we have to somehow rescue adaptive malformed creatures AND destroy the facility without waking up a planet-beast. Perfect.”

“The offspring aren’t malformed by choice,” the Queen said defensively. “They’re victims of the ancient one’s experiments just as much as my people are.”

“Then we go in, get everyone out, and blow the place to hell,” Diana said pragmatically. “It’s not pretty, but it’s straightforward.”

Uncle Dom finally spoke up from his position against the wall. “Oh, I do love optimism. Though I suspect you’ll find the situation is somewhat more complicated than that.”

Before anyone could ask what he meant, another tremor shook the chamber. This one was different—stronger, more rhythmic, like a massive heartbeat starting to accelerate.

“We need to move,” the Queen said urgently. “If Lilivil fully awakens while we’re still inside…”

“What happens?” Noah asked, though he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

“Everything on the surface gets shaken off like fleas,” the Queen replied. “Including your facility, your people, and anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.”

They made their way back through the underground city with unprecedented speed, the Queen’s guards clearing paths through the increasingly panicked elven population. Word of Lilivil’s awakening was spreading, and Noah could see families gathering their possessions, preparing for whatever came next.

The journey back to the surface felt like it took forever, but Noah’s mental watch told him it had only been about two hours since they’d first been captured. As they emerged from the hidden entrance, the forest around them felt different—more unstable, like the ground itself was uncertain about remaining solid.

The facility looked exactly as they’d left it, dark and abandoned on the surface. But as they approached, Noah could feel the tremors intensifying.

“Alright,” Lucy said, taking charge as they reached the building’s entrance. “Same formation as before, but this time we’re going in to extract people, not explore. Get in, find the prisoners, get them out, destroy the facility.”

They descended back into the sublevel where they’d encountered the creatures before. Noah expected to face the same adaptive threats they’d fought earlier, but what they found was… different.

The creatures were still there, still moving, but when Sophie accidentally triggered one of their defensive systems, something unexpected happened. She slashed at one of the beings with her energy blades, expecting it to regenerate and develop fire abilities like before.

Instead, the creature simply fell down, a clean cut across its torso, showing no signs of regeneration or adaptation.

“That’s… not what happened last time,” Sophie said, staring at the fallen creature.

“Lucy, don’t use your abilities!” Noah called out urgently as another creature approached their group. “Something’s different about them!”

Lucy held back her lightning as Diana stepped forward, using her momentum nullification to stop the creature’s advance. It froze in place, but unlike before, it didn’t adapt or learn from the experience. It just… stopped.

‘They’ve lost their abilities,’ Noah realized, watching as Kelvin took down another creature with physical strikes from his cybernetic arms. ‘It’s only been two hours, but whatever was giving them their adaptive powers is gone.’

The answer became clear as they moved deeper into the facility. The creatures weren’t just losing their abilities—they were becoming templates again, returning to some kind of base state.

But they were also becoming increasingly distressed. The ones that could still vocalize were making sounds that spoke of pain and confusion, and Noah noticed that they seemed to be gravitating toward specific areas of the facility.

“They’re trying to get back to something,” Lyra observed, watching the creatures’ movement patterns. “Like they’re being drawn to specific locations.”

That’s when they found the first of the Queen’s people.

The elven prisoners were in a separate section of the facility, held in conditions that made Noah’s stomach turn. They were chained up and from all indications, made to eat and sleep on their own shit, literally.

But what was worse was the realization that came when they tried to move the rescued creatures away from the facility.

The malformed beings couldn’t survive outside the building. The moment they were taken beyond the facility’s walls, they began to deteriorate, their bodies breaking down at the cellular level.

“They’re not just experiments,” Noah said, the pieces finally clicking together in his mind. “They’re part of the facility itself. Part of whatever’s keeping the beast dormant.”

Kaia, who had been examining some of the equipment, called out from across the chamber. “Noah, you need to see this!”

She was standing next to what appeared to be a massive crystalline formation that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. But as Noah got closer, he could see that it wasn’t a natural formation—it was constructed, deliberately shaped.

“The beast’s core,” the Queen whispered, recognizing what they were looking at. “But it’s been… fractured.”

Noah could see it now. The massive crystal wasn’t whole—it had been deliberately broken into thousands of pieces. He turned around to look at all the dormant beings. Realizing immediately that each piece had been embedded into one of the experimental creatures they’d been fighting.

‘The Eighth didn’t steal the beast’s energy,’ Noah realized with growing horror. ‘He broke apart its core and distributed it among living vessels. That’s what’s been keeping them alive—the beast core energy, scattered and contained in creatures that can’t leave the facility or without it

What didn’t actually make sense to Noah though was why?

Why each being, from all indications some kind of bred offspring of the eight surviving on the core crystals of a beast like some beast gear.

Why couldn’t these crystals function like batteries outside of the facility.

The only explanation was that these crystals were different. The fragments of the beast core were engineered to only be usable within the range of the living beast itself.

This was solely the beast’s doing. It reminded him of something he’d learned in the academy.

‘ S cores. Many beasts pose no harm once they have been killed. But S cores or suicide core beasts would explode when their cores are tampered with carelessly. However this beast takes owning it’s core to the next level,’

As Noah watched on, he could see the ground around the facility beginning to change. Tendrils of organic matter were rising from the earth, reaching toward the building like fingers trying to reclaim something that had been stolen.

‘The beast is trying to reabsorb its own core energy. That’s what’s waking it up.’

The facility shook as another massive tremor ran through the ground, this one strong enough to crack the walls around them.

“We need to get out of here,” Lucas called out. “This whole place is coming apart!”

But as they reached the facility’s exit, Noah looked up at the horizon and felt his blood freeze.

Three shapes were approaching through the ahead, each one massive enough to blot out sections of the horizon. His system immediately began analyzing the incoming threats:

[THREAT ASSESSMENT: CATEGORY 5 ENTITIES DETECTED]

[ENTITY 1: ABYSSAL BASILISK ]

[ENTITY 2: CINDERHEART BEHEMOTH]

[ENTITY 3: PHANTASM HYDRA]

[WARNING: MULTIPLE EMPEROR-CLASS SUBORDINATES APPROACHING]

‘Emperor-class subordinates,’ Noah thought, understanding flooding through him. ‘Lilivil isn’t just a planet-beast. It’s a living ecosystem. Those are parts of its body.’

The three Category 5 beasts were moving with obvious purpose, converging on the facility where the fragmented core was housed. They weren’t random threats—they were Lilivil’s own immune system, coming to reclaim what had been stolen.

“I could have gone with Kelvin’s wet dream about this place over anything else,” Noah sighed as his mind already calculating their chances against three Category 5 threats simultaneously.

Then, like a gift from whatever gods looked after soldiers in impossible situations, he heard a familiar chime in his mind:

[STORM HAS COMPLETED HEALING CYCLE]

[STATUS: AWAKENED AND COMBAT READY]

[NOTICE: EXTENDED DORMANCY HAS RESULTED IN INCREASED APPETITE]

[WARNING: STORM IS HUNGRY]

Noah smiled, feeling some of his tension ease. “Storm,” he whispered, his voice carrying across the battlefield, “Fall.”

The sky above them immediately began to darken as clouds gathered with unnatural speed. Lightning began to dance between the storm fronts, and Noah could feel the familiar presence of his bond-brother awakening from his healing sleep.

“Nyx,” he called out next, his voice growing stronger. “Ascend.”

Reality tore open above them in a brilliant purple portal, red mist beginning to pour through the dimensional breach. The temperature around them spiked as the Red Death Dragon prepared to answer his summon.

But then Noah paused. He could sense that Ivy was waiting in his domain, the beautiful and deadly Thorn Empress who had suffered so much at the hands of people like those who built this facility.

She deserved a call phrase as beautiful and powerful as she was.

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASSIGN A CALL PHRASE FOR IVY?]

[YES] [NO]

Noah’s finger hovered over the mental selection, three Category 5 beasts bearing down on them, his two other dragons preparing to enter what would undoubtedly be the most challenging battle of their lives.

This was it. The moment when everything would be decided.

What should her call word be?