Chapter 334 Training Ends
After Malgortha killed the unfortunate individuals who stood against her, no other individual appeared to challenge her, and after moments of silence, she disappeared from the scene.
The city was echoing with cries and screams of terrified individuals, but everyone went silent as eerie roars, more akin to chilling screams, echoed through the world, and what followed was a flood of nightmarish entities clawing their way out of the rift.
The grotesque entities emerging from the rift were Chaos Spawns, nightmarish creatures that induced nausea in the faint-hearted and prompted even the most resilient to avert their gaze from these monstrous horrors.
Their bodies were a grotesque blend of contorted flesh, deformed limbs, and elongated appendages, some thin and wiry, others unnaturally muscular, extending far beyond the bounds of normality and ending in razor-sharp claws.
Their bodies were deformed and contorted, resembling various creatures but only in form, as some had wide, twisted bodies reminiscent of ferocious predators, while others took on the grotesque appearance of mutated insects.
Their twisted forms revealed faces contorted into hideous expressions, displaying a disturbing blend of joy and madness with their eyes glowing with an eerie gray shine, and they seemed devoid of any trace of free will.
The creatures emanated an aura of malice, and as they flooded out from the rift, they didn't fall to the ground. Instead, they seemed to defy gravity, spreading through the sky as if an invisible platform supported their nightmarish advance.
Alex quickly learned from the whispers that spread like wildfire in the city that those creatures were walking through the sky by stepping on the space, which shouldn't be possible for most of them were fourth and fifth-Rank.
By this time, the city was completely cloaked in a barrier, while the war gear was pulsing with energy, ready to defend against the incoming calamity. After half an hour had passed, and a palpable tension gripped the city as its inhabitants braced themselves for an imminent attack, and above, in the sky, the numbers of chaos spawns continued to swell, adding to the growing unease among the populace.
They moved in every direction just enough to keep the space around the rift free, not going further, as if they were gathering and awaiting a command.
Their numbers reached an unimaginable figure, the sheer quantity and their echoing cries spreading dread and chaos throughout the world.
Despite the impending threat, there was no visible attempt by anyone to address the rift, or at least it seemed to the eyes of the common folk.
In the midst of escalating chaos, a colossal humanoid creature emerged above the Chaos Spawn army. Towering over a hundred meters tall, he dwarfed even the largest of giants, capturing the immediate attention of everyone with his imposing presence.
Its features were a nightmarish amalgamation with light grayish-purple skin, a face with multiple eyes, fang-like teeth covering its visage with no lips, and an elongated skull that stretched like a flat hammer to the sides.
The most distinctive feature was the infinity symbol on the right side of the creature's chest, glowing in oozing darkness.
The creature made no gesture, yet multiple rifts tore open in the fabric of space, and with their appearance, the assembled Chaos Spawns roared to life as they surged forward, entering the newly formed rifts.
Alex's attention shifted from the sky as alarms blared throughout the city, accompanied by announcements warning of a spatial rupture in the distance.
Alex took to the sky and instantly spotted a massive space rift tens of meters in height and width just hundreds of meters away from the city, and within moments, thousands of creatures were pouring out of it, rushing menacingly toward the city.
The massive cannons, which were fully charged, roared to life as concentrated energy shots rained down on the approaching creatures, ripping their bodies to shreds.
The fight for survival started, but everyone in the city was feeling despair even after seeing hardly any creature getting past the barrage of energy blasts because the number of chaos spawns was immense, and they were increasing with every passing moment. Amidst the chaos, the colossal creature loomed in the sky like a harbinger of doom, allowing the citizens a brief moment of struggle before it would bring an end to their lives.
The city's protective barrier succumbed after four hours, leading to a relentless struggle endured by citizens, soldiers, and various elemental Rulers for an additional two hours.
Ultimately, the majority of the city's inhabitants met their demise, and Alex was no exception, facing death when the prospect of survival, let alone victory, was nonexistent.
Alex returned to the training chamber with many questions in mind, but he was also eager to return to the battlefield against the chaos spawns because he learned more about Chaos element in a few hours than in the last few months.
The Chaos Spawns utilized the chaos element and their raw physical strength in battle, providing Alex with numerous opportunities for observation and learning.
On a battlefield where fear and disorder reigned supreme, and chaos element was going wild, Alex sensed the thick concentration of chaos enveloping the surroundings like an oppressive blanket, making it much easier to rapidly learn to wield his manipulation.
Alex got the answers to why no one came to close the rift, how long the chaos spawn invasion lasted before it ended, and other questions related to the technological advancement of the old world.
There were seventeen rifts like Alex saw, and each of them was protected by hundreds of chaos spawns through the void, with even the weakest among them being middle-stage elemental Ruler.
Alex also learned that the vast number of creatures he saw were foot soldiers who were called mindless, and in the eleven years the invasion lasted, more than a hundred billion of them invaded the world.
As for the technologies, they were not lost and were still available but either upgraded to be more efficient or replaced or completely removed from use because of the resources needed to maintain them.
After taking some time to recover from the slaughter he had witnessed, Alex returned to a world plunged into chaos and, this time, several weeks after the invasion had started.
Alex followed his new routine and spent ten hours in every training session for the following six weeks reliving the Chaos apocalypse event, and although it taught him things of tremendous value, it also made him develop some of the worst memories of his life.
Alex saw so much death and destruction in the fifteen days of total time he spent in the apocalypse setting that it made the carnage and slaughter on the Elven continent feel acceptable, as the scale of devastation eclipsed any previous horrors he had witnessed.
Alex had spent sixty-seven days training, a week more than the two-month target he had set for himself, but he was extremely happy with his progress as it was on the sixty-seventh day he reached the requirements to get his class and advance to the Firth Rank in the real world.
While in the ancient world, he was a just step away from achieving the second goal besides the Fourth Rank promotion he had set for himself, which was to have a proper battle against his perfect self.
This goal was why he was holding back on performing his best newly created skills outside of illusion, knowing that once he advances through Rank, he would lose the chance to stand on equal footing with his perfect clone, even for a few seconds.