Chapter 19: Like Torture, It's Time
He was annoyed.
. . .
He was extremely annoyed.
Ye Xing watched as the countdown for the dungeons fell once again.
He had already searched through the entire world's dungeons for all the changes and possible clues to whatever his target was going to be.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing useful had been found.
. . .
He was going to have to search through the entire solar system. From the position and number of dungeons outside of Earth, that meant that he would have to go on an expedition for at most one month to completely scan each and every dungeon out there. Of course, he most likely wouldn't need one month because he might end up finding whatever he was looking for earlier than the last dungeon in the quickest planned route.
It's just...
He really didn't want to take so much time, needing to exert his full effort the entire time. Ye Xing wanted to just relax and enjoy himself with whatever hobbies he ended up picking up, eventually.
Even if he could use his drones to do the work for him, not only do they detect less than he can, he was also much faster than them.
Perks of being as strong as he was, really.
The real problem with this situation was that, according to his calculations, the majority of humanity needed the ten years before the first divine tier dungeons opened to barely reach demigod-level strength.
Whatever was happening to the dungeons was cutting down the time the people had to grow strong enough to survive against whatever was inside those dungeons. The more time passed, the more time would be cut away. The less time available, the less strength humans would have.
In the end, he would still have to do all the work because no one else could.
Annoying. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If there was one positive from Ye Xing's active exploration and investigation into the dungeons and their workings, it was the fact that he found out that dungeons converted the mana inside them into the spiritual energy the portal outside expels and how the process was done.
Compared to spiritual energy, the methods to efficiently use mana meant that it was more technically challenging than spiritual energy, but the trade-off was the more effective means of magic.
While spiritual energy is more useful for more brute-force or frontal type techniques like qi sword slashes, explosions, or something similar, mana is more effective and efficient at techniques that require more finesse such as enchanting, warding, cursing, transmutation, and more like that.
Teleportation is another.
Really, the ease and range of mana-type teleportation compared to spiritual-energy-type teleportation was the real reason why he needed only a month to get around to and completely investigate every single dungeon in space.
Although, these dungeons were really a little weird.
Ye Xing knew these dungeons were 'divine tier', but that shouldn't mean actual 'Gods' were in them, right?
Wrong.
So wrong...
Because, apparently, the many legends, myths, and deific religions of humanity had come to life. However these dungeons were formed, whatever formed these dungeons, it was definitely related to humanity somehow.
Maybe he should've tried looking for the origin of the dungeons, earlier?
. . .
Well, whatever.
In any case, Ye Xing was sure he had an idea on what exactly was causing the estimated time of the dungeons' arrival to drop over and over.
If his theory was correct, either a godling in one of the dungeons had awoken early, for some reason, and started attacking the other divine tier dungeons around it, for some reason, or a foreign entity had entered the solar system and started invading the dungeons. He had a reason for stating this possibility, of course. He had found that after a godling dies, the dungeon it resides in is also destroyed and that destruction transfers whatever energy that was held within to be transferred to all other dungeons.
He had found this clue when he had, uh, accidentally destroyed one of the dungeons in a fit of... irritation. It wasn't his fault, really. He only threw a single punch at the thing. The fact that he used his full strength doesn't mean anything.
Anyway!
None of that matters. What does matter, however, is that he had discovered what he should look out for. He already had a record on pretty much all of the dungeons in the solar system, unless he missed some or more were spawned over time, without him noticing. With this, he just needed to have all the drones on Earth search starting with the area nearest to Earth and radiating outwards, while he himself would just head to the farthest dungeons and begin his own search from there.
The plan was set.
Only six days had passed so far, too. Seems like he could finish up with this errand much faster than he had originally thought. He should celebrate with his lovers after this short expedition.
After sending the command to his drones both on Earth and those still roaming through space to begin searching for their new objective, he immediately began heading towards his first destination with a targeted teleportation to the outermost edge of the solar system.
Channeling the vast amount of mana required for the operation, a glint of immense killing intent flashed inside his pupils.
'Whoever is messing with my plans, I'm going to find you... I'm going to find you, and I'm going to have fun torturing you until I've made up all the amusement and joy I've missed out on because of you!' _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In a random god's dungeon, a lich wearing some divine artifacts that seemed oddly conflicting to the robes on its body was playing with a slightly weathered-looking trident.
Below it, a dying godling was struggling to destroy himself, unable to succeed due to being interrupted by several other undead godlings surrounding him. A distance away, his fallen devoted soldiers were being slain and raised to join his enemy's horde.
Dismissively throwing the trident to the side, Pluto lazed on its throne, glancing at the easily defeated foes before it.
The more godlings it had enslaved, the quicker and easier it had become to raid each and every godling afterwards. It didn't even need to do anything, anymore. Spending an entire century doing nothing else but working on its greatest masterpiece of magic was the definitely the best decision it had ever come up with.
Pluto decided, after the godlings were finally all taken down and when it moved to take over Earth, it would spare the humans and allow them to serve as living slaves.
After all.
It had discovered the idea of transmigration from humanity.
As Pluto finished with that thought, the pathetic godling futilely fighting against his fate was finally killed and it raised the fool and sent him off to join his former legion.
At this time, Pluto would've continued to the next kingdom to invade, maybe even split his much larger horde to attack multiple kingdoms at the same time. However, something new and terrifying had just announced itself to Pluto.
This feeling was something that wasn't unfamiliar to Pluto. No, instead, it knew this feeling very well.
And that just made it even more terrifying.
What was happening? How was it happening?
It should've been the only entity that could do something like this, at this time. Something impossible had just happened.
Pluto's aura fluctuated violently, its grip on its staff tightened, its posture frozen.
After all...
Pluto's dungeon had just been invaded by something.
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