Climbing the Tower to Be a God With 10x Gacha System

Chapter 258: Into the Dirty Mana

The foothills had been crossed, and the northernmost part of the empire, the clearing, had been reached. James and Ariel sitting on his back, could see the scene before them.

It was instantly clear what the Oracle was talking about, it was a frightening sight indeed.

For almost two hundred metres there were only dead and decayed bodies of men, animals and monsters. This area had turned into a desert. The vultures sitting in the dead trees around were watching the trio with ever-changing pupils.

When Chao descended to the ground, James and Ariel got off his back and the old holy Gryphon Chao returned to his human form. "Be careful, even if you are strong, the dirty mana around you is enormous," Chao warned, instantly protecting the duo.

James and Ariel were surprised by these words, they had not even traced the dirty mana, and they could not even feel a small part of it.

"What dirty mana?" James asked, and with that, an unexpected but incredibly frightening sentence was heard from Chao:

"The area of influence is so huge that it may have already covered the entire empire, even I barely realise it, but it's at an incredible level."

Both James and Ariel became as cautious as they could be as Chao's seriousness about his words became apparent.

James took out the Lumen from his inventory and began to hold it with one hand, he also made sure to take out Selene's Throwing Knife from his inventory just in case, he might not be untouchable with these weapons, but it was clear that he was at the maximum side of his power right now.

It was evening weather, close to dark, but the sun had not yet set, in short, a red sky was waiting for unknown dangers.

The trio continued to move forward cautiously. It was strange to see more than a dozen vultures flying in the air just above them, strangely frightening them, or rather it would be more accurate to say that instead of fear, a deep apprehension gripped their hearts.

James could sense that something was wrong, and he wasn't the only one. Both Ariel and Chao, like James, could sense that something was wrong.

Something...or rather, something was watching them.

While all these sensations were increasing, James suddenly felt all the hairs on his body standing up and instinctively activated the time element.

He ran to the place where he felt the danger, that is, immediately to where Chao and Ariel were, and within a second he managed to transfer his aura to his sword Lumen.

He attacked the incoming blow with the glowing sword, and at that very moment, the one second from the time element ended.

"SHING!!!"

James seemed to have cut a huge fly. The fly had claws and a big nose.

While Chao and Ariel were trying to figure out what was going on, James immediately started drawing some runes on the ground.

He quickly began to cover them with a medium-sized rune shield with his Arcana spell, and then muttered under his breath, "What's going on?"

He had plenty of mana to use the time elemental, indeed he could have used the spell that gave him this one-second effect at least fifty or sixty times, but now he was out of breath.

"Watch out, there is a weakening spell set!" Chao suddenly shouted, and everything became clear.

There were different types of debuff spells, the least used being something called "Ignorant Spell", which was used to restrict the spell.

This spell was used to shut down the stores of climbers with larger stores of mana. This meant that the mana James used for the time elemental was not the mana around his heart, but the mana already spread throughout his body. That was why he was tired.

Using the rune spell did not tire him because the arcana energy used for the rune spell was very different from normal mana.

This meant that whoever had cast the debuff spell must have been directly afraid of mages, which was a good thing, because if they managed to destroy the place where the debuff spell was, James would have a huge advantage.

Still, the group was lucky. Both Chao, Ariel, and James had a better ability with aura. As a result, they would have every opportunity to protect themselves and attack.

"Are you all right, James?" asked Ariel.

James nodded his head in agreement, it was obvious that the rune magic wasn't going to last long, not only the personal magic but the magic spread around had become quite weak. That explained why there was a huge amount of dirty mana around, as Chao had said.

At this moment, there was a value of dirty mana scattered around that could cover even the farthest reaches of the empire.

As soon as the rune shield was broken, the trio were able to sense exactly what was coming towards them.

Each of them lunged forward and began slashing at the monsters one by one with tiny but effective moves. Chao was using his clawed hands, Ariel was using her blades covered with a thin layer of aura, and James was swinging the Godly Sword Lumen in his right hand while constantly throwing Selene's Throwing Knife around.

It was obvious that such weak monsters were unlikely to put up much of a fight as if they were insects sent to tire out the trio.

These fly monsters were insectoids after all.

Nevertheless, it was still a matter of going on the offensive. It could be seen with the naked eyes where these fly monsters came from, and with each step, the dirty mana became more and more obvious, and James and Ariel began to feel this dirty mana little by little.

I think they were approaching the centre of this dirty mana.

The vultures were eating the monster corpses left behind. As the different kinds of monsters came at the group, more and more bodies were left behind, but there was no sign that the group was getting tired.

They were maybe a hundred metres from the centre of the dirty mana. They could see everything with the naked eye. They could easily see several monsters in the centre of the dirty mana.

The trio started to walk cautiously towards the mana. When they looked carefully at the monsters around the centre of the dirty mana, James shook his head left and right and then said, "Demons? I thought they were friends."

Suddenly James saw a message [These don't belong in our heaven or hell, look at the shape of their wings]. The fact that this message was coming from Lucifer himself was confirmation enough for him.

He instantly covered his body with his aura and attacked without a second thought.

Even though Chao and Ariel were surprised by the sudden attack, they had another job on their hands rather than helping James. They seemed to be surrounded by a truly enormous horde of monsters.

Among them were monsters that could be found on the upper floors of the tower, such as night dragons, infernal imps, and black knights of destruction. It was obvious that the unclean mana had attracted such a dangerous group, and this was why the unclean mana was here.

The thing inside the dirty mana, the person who created this mana was the demon itself, and it was in a sealed form, and the fact that the dirty mana was so scattered had only one meaning:

[The demon's seal was about to be broken.]

As James lunged forward, he enveloped Selene's Throwing Knife in his aura and then threw it at the demon, which immediately started running towards him.

The blade sliced right through the demon's throat and the demon instantly fell to the ground and died.

Exactly eleven more demons were around the centre of the unclean mana.

James instantly covered Lumen with his aura, he had so many abilities he wanted to use, but he couldn't use any of them because his mana was blocked.

The only thing he could do now would be to use aura-linked attacks. The aura covering his sword instantly began to burn. 8 Sacred Fire might have been a spell, but it was an elemental that merged with the body, it was the main elemental itself.

It was precisely for this reason that this element was able to burn itself as it had done in the duel in the arena in the first place. Merging with the aura was nothing more than a piece of cake for these eight living flames.

Suddenly the flame roared, the heat reaching almost four hundred metres. James' aura had reached such a great distance thanks to the aura training he had received from Chao. Even the demons and monsters around couldn't help but be amazed as they burned alive, each monster seeming to recognise the dead lands covered in black and azure flames as hell.

Even the demons guarding the centre of the tainted mana were stunned for a second. Until James appeared in front of one of them.

"SLASH!!!"

A sudden slashing sound seemed to wake the demons from their reverie. As another demon's head fell to the ground, the remaining ten instantly realised that they had to fight together.

The seal was so close to being broken, that the main battle hadn't even begun.