After the heat of the battle subsided, the dwarves on top of the tower slowly descended to ground level.

  The dwarven chieftain’s gaze automatically seeks Mizuki’s presence who were standing in the middle of the pza, encircled by a gssed patch of soil. As he got closer to the bck, towering figure, the winds blew onto his direction through the power armor, allowing him to get a feel of Mizuki’s extremely low ambient temperature. Although there was no frost covering the armor, there were some ice fragments mixed with gssed soil.

  The chieftain tried to call him several times, but Mizuki acted as if he couldn’t hear the chieftain’s call. Instead, he made some hand seals after dropping his weapon. Each hand gesture does not st more than a fraction of a second, the transformation of hand signs were quick and mysterious that despite seeing it directly, the chieftain seems to forget what hand gesture he had done.

  At some point, a spectral book appeared in front of the armored Mizuki. “Rank 3 soul-path killer move, [Scattered Chapters of Lemegeton: Grand Wraithfeast]!” He muttered in an alien nguage that the Dwarven Chieftain couldn’t understand.

  Then, there were something, some sort of shadowy figures that crawled out from the spectral grimoire. Since the only source of illumination that remain is the lightcrystal with its weak light, the dwarven chieftain rubbed his eyes multiple times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, but he could’ve sworn to the Dwarven Gods that he saw multiple long, shadowy figures with cws and talons materialized from the semi-translucent dark grimoire before they depart towards the molten ndscape where the insect swarm had previously massacred.

  Pssh! Frigid air is being exhaled from the armor’s interior as Mizuki took a step out, pulling his attention back. The bck grimoire has already faded into obscurity as if its existence were a lie. ‘With the Wraithlords restocking my inventory with fresh souls, it should buy more time before I fall into a rank 3 Legendary…’ He thought to himself as he took a deep look at the dwarven chieftain.

  “The swarm. Can no longer. Bother you.” Mizuki spoke in dwarvish. The transtion has become far better after Ayumi was given some time to analyze.

  The dwarven chieftain put his right fist on his left chest before bowing 45 degrees. “A thousand thanks for saving us in our predicament, respected Mage… you are our benefactor!” His gestures were mimicked by the rest of the dwarves that have came down, which Ayumi hypothesized to be an expression of respect and gratitude.

  Mizuki waved his hand, “Gratitude, accepted. Please, stand up. I want to ask you, situations.” Mizuki muttered. “But first, an introduction. My name: Mizuki. I hail from faraway nds.” He did not eborate his affiliation as according to his understanding, Otherworldly Invaders, which refer to those who hailed from other worlds, aren’t seen in a good light in this gactic supercluster.

  As if realizing now, the dwarven chieftain spped his forehead. “Where are my manners? My name is Vorrath Hallowforge, I served as the leader of these refugees.”

  Mizuki’s ear perked up. “Refugees? You were. Driven away from your home?”

  Vorrath made a strange confused expression, “Didn’t I tell you earlier?”

  Mizuki received a prompt from Ayumi that Vorrath’s word was true. Amongst the training data used by Ayumi, there were some expnations that stated this group of gray dwarves were refugees. However, even if he could multitask there are still some words that are unfamiliar. Besides, more training data will help Ayumi decipher the nguage faster, therefore he asked him politely to eborate again after learning his nguage as the reason.

  Vorrath was convinced because according to his personal experience, some mages truly picked up new nguages that fast so it wasn’t a unique case.

  “It happened four months ago…” Vorrath began narrating as he took a deep breath.

  Mizuki deduced this ter, but like most dwarven cns in this world, the Hallowforge cn was a subterranean dwarven cn that excels in refining magical artifacts. Their original home was located in the Underground World.

  The Underground World itself is an expansive realm hidden beneath the surface, a pce where light was a distant memory. When the everpresent light of the sun stopped shining upon the surface world, the underground world’s situation wasn't affected by too much as they were already living in the dark. Bioluminescence and magical radiance amplified by phosphorescents were the staple source of light in this dark world.

  What changes, however, was the influx of new people from the surface seeking refuge.

  When the surface world is infested with perpetual darkness and the astral beast’s myriad parasites with its countless varying bioforms, it is natural that the native seek a safer pce. For some inexplicable reason, the higher the elevation, the stronger the parasite becomes. This, however, also works on the opposite. The closer it is to the surface, the weaker the parasites become, and this extends to the Underground World as well. This means that only weaker parasites enter or stay deep underneath the world’s surface.

  However, that doesn’t mean the Underground World was safe.

  Vast caverns stretch endlessly, some housing entire civilizations of intelligent races, while others serve as homes to monstrous creatures born of darkness and evil, forgotten and left alone to their devices for countless millennia. The intricate tunnels connect these spaces, forming a byrinth where getting lost is a death sentence for the unprepared. If you were lucky to stumble upon intelligent civilization, more often than not it was a chaotic region filled to the brim with rejects so crime and murder was the norm.

  When a cn of surface dwellers who have been exploring the underground world found the location of the Hallowforge cn’s home, the Fortress City of Kaer’Zanthur, greed took the better of them. The Fortress City has a direct connection to the surface world. This meant it was the inhabitants responsibility for blocking the parasite’s advances upon the underground world. For hundreds of years, the various gray dwarf cns in Kaer’Zanthur were able to fulfil the duty as a bulwark, but eventually, under the scheme of the surface dweller that turned some of the crucial gray dwarves into traitor, the proud city has fallen into the hands of the surface dwellers.

  In reality, the gray dwarves couldn’t fully bme the traitors either, as the Underground World is extremely scarce with supplies. Clean water is a miracle born out of magic and desperation, even rotten sewer rat meat is a rare delicacy that has caused some fights. Cannibalism is a common occurrence. Only the rich and powerful can have a ‘normal’ life without worry of light, water, food, and shelter.

  The underground world is truly a difficult pce to live, filled to the brim with intrigue and conflict, but at the very least, the inhabitants do not suffer from the despair-inducing situation of the surface world, as they were already far worse than them. The weak simply do not survive the underground world, and those who survive are extremely stoic.

  However, Mizuki couldn’t deny the fact that it was the best pce to survive. After all, the culture and technology of the underground world is all about darkness and optimizing the usage of every resource that they can find. It has an inherent advantage when plunged into a situation where everything becomes scarce, compared to the surface world where everything was originally abundant. They are the least affected by the Astral Beast’s invasion.

  In fact, the lightcrystal on top of the tower was actually a technology of the underground world being brought to the surface.

  ‘Who would’ve known such a dark pce would be where people would flock into?’ Mizuki pondered to himself.

  In any case, he has zero intention to go to the underground pce for now. Currently, his sensors are not specialized in penetrating mineral yers, he would literally be blind down there. And most importantly, he has to take care of his decaying cultivation base as soon as possible, and that’ll take most of his computation resources.

  “I understand.” Mizuki nodded in understanding as his dwarvish has improved by leaps and bounds after hours of long conversation, “So for the st four months, your people have been trying to build a haven for yourself, but the lightcrystal’s power has been reduced significantly after it was being taken out from the underground?”

  “Yes.” Vorrath answered candidly, “the mana concentration on this mountain should be sufficient to sustain the Lightcrystal, but the miasma brought by the Nyctor is corrupting the mana, rendering it unstable.

  ‘Ayumi’, Mizuki prompted his AI companion internally.

  < Processing… Correting with Ancestor Grimsong Specter’s archived message… > Ayumi’s response fshed in his neural interface. < Cultivators on this gactic supercluster should primarily cultivate ‘Magic’ through the manipution of ‘Mana’ as their primary energy source. Conjecture: The Astral Beast’s parasites are designed to counter magic cultivators. Further analysis on miasma is required. >

  Mizuki mentally acknowledged her request, his focus shifting back to Vorrath. “This miasma, can you eborate on what it is?”

  His mind wandered briefly as Vorrath gathered his thoughts.

  When Mizuki had still been in the upper stratum of the world, dangerously close to the Astral Beast’s colossal body, his sensors had detected countless unfamiliar energy signatures saturating the atmosphere. At that time, he’d dismissed them as residual primal chaos from hyperspace as it has infinite variation. But as his cultivation base fell from rank 5 Epic to rank 4 Paragon, his AT-Field became weaker, turning many of his high-end sensors into useless scrap. This made him unable to analyze the anomalies further.

  By the time he reached the surface, the concentration of these energies had diminished so drastically that none of his remaining sensors could detect at all. Whatever miasma the Nyctor, the astral beast’s parasite, carried was subtle, insidious, and beyond the capabilities of his failing technology to fully comprehend.

  “The miasma is the source of the dark corruption…” Vorrath expined, his tone heavy. “It seeps into everything—mana, nd, rocks, trees, the air, even other beasts. It drains strength, warps minds, alters the environment, and mutates animals into dark variations of its former selves, though for some reason, it is more effective on insect beasts. It is why the Lightcrystal is weakening. Its power to fight back darkness is being weakened by miasma. In the underground world, the miasma is so weak that we can’t even feel it, but on the surface world, it is overwhelming.”

  Mizuki’s crimson eyes narrowed in thought. If the miasma could contaminate the power source of this world’s cultivators, mana, then it wasn’t just an environmental hazard. The Astral Beasts’ abilities seemed to be in line with the concept of corruption.

  ‘As expected, rank 6 beings is truly beyond the scope of my understanding…’ the Armored Soul Tribe thought to himself.

  “It’s subtle,” Vorrath continued, his hands tightening into fists. “To those who cannot sense mana, it’s almost imperceptible. But to us Mages, it's suffocating, like trying to breathe through ash.”

  Mizuki remained silent for a moment, absorbing the information. ‘Ayumi, log this as a priority anomaly for future analysis’, he instructed internally. The Astral Beast’s parasites weren’t merely forces of destruction, they were corrupted agents of entropy, sowing decay and chaos even far away from its host body. And the root cause of this corruption is the miasma.

  “Understood.” He said finally, his tone measured but resolute. “If the Lightcrystal's survival hinges on combating the miasma, then I’ll need to understand it better.” It seems like there’s a need for his deyed pn to achieve lightcrystal integration with his AT-Field to be accelerated. He took a deep breath. “Vorrath, are you aware that I am an undead?”