Varian and the team now had to deal with transportation issues.
If they tried to travel plainly by ghost ship, it'd take around five days.
It'd be too late for Varian to join the expo.
They had to find another way.
And that brought them to Pluto.
Shortly after Dreamer and team escaped, multiple abyssal reinforcements reached Pluto and started cursing the leaders.
Of course, security wasn't neglected. In fact, it rose multi-fold.
No core facility could now be touched. Even if Bali did his best, he wouldn't be able to break into a core facility.
Fortunately, ghost ship was only looking to enter a dungeon and despite the heightened security, it was still easy.
And once inside the dungeon, they waited patiently.
Inside the ghost ship, Enigma looked at Varian and said slowly. "She…she is really willing to help."
Blue Flash nodded with a sad expression. "Space stones aren't cheap. For our one-way trip, I sold everything I owned. Now, she's spending double. But I sold everythi—"
"Stop!" Varian raised his hand and glared at Blue Flash.
She repeated this a zillion times already. If not for knowing that she's a level 9 powerhouse, he would've 'donated' to this poor woman.
"Master, they're coming." Boo's voice was followed by a blinding light and a human appeared in the dungeon, a few hundred meters below the ghost ship.
"WHO?!" The abyssal in charge of the dungeon discovered the change and slammed the emergency button.
The abyssals nearby were mobilized and quickly shot towards them.
Ghostship quickly reached the man. He was short, stout, and had bright red hair with a rather long beard. His hairs had strands of white, indicating he wasn't as young as he looked.
He didn't even glance at ghost ship and snapped his fingers. A large formation was spread on the ground.
It was the CTF. The destination was Thunder Abyss.
"STOP!" An abyssal roar shook the skies.
Unlike the stationed troops, the reinforcements had Space Abyssals.
Thus, a level 8 quickly reached the ghost ship right before it was about to enter the CTF.
Pa!
A loud crack sounded, followed by the sound of a glass breaking.
"Nooo!" The space awakener abyssal's screams were cut short as the space broke and spliced him into pieces.
Ghostship entered the CTF and a light flashed again. This time, they were back in Thunder Abyss.
"Junior, you dare?!"
The terrifying roar was followed by a rumbling thunder that seemed to announce the apocalypse itself.
Even from the ghost ship, Varian felt huge pressure.
The pressure of a Sovereign.
Thankfully, he was shielded from most of the pressure.
Not the Thunder Abyss.
The sky of thunder abyss had gone completely dark and a bolt of terrifying golden lightning condensed.
"Quick!" The man in red shouted and teleported away. Then, he jumped into a spaceship and escaped.
Ghostship too shot out at full speed.
Right behind it, lightning dragons whose dimensions made mountains look smaller chased them.
"Gulp." Varian gulped as he realized that the dragons weren't easy to throw off.
They moved at extremely high speed and destroyed whatever obstacles that came in their way—abyssal or not.
On the other hand, ghost ship was attacked by the lightning that dropped from the abyss sky every second.
"DREAMER!" Thunder King's voice reverberated across the Thunder Abyss.
The weak, but clever ghost ship dodged the lightning bolts—the lightning bolts that burned down entire mountains to ashes.
The lightning dragons came dangerously close to tearing down ghost ship.
The situation didn't get better. In fact, with each passing second, the distance between the ghost ship and lightning dragons shrunk.
Each escape was more dangerous than the last.
"Gulp." Varian gulped and held his breath.
Sooner or later, the lightning dragons would catch up and take them down.
He checked his comm and saw that Zich Nial, the man who escorted them was chased by archdukes.
Fortunately, he was able to escape. Unfortunately, he couldn't help them against an abyss king.
As they inched closer and closer to the final clash, Ghostship exited the thunder abyss.
BOOM!
Space trembled as the lightning dragons shook suddenly, but immediately followed ghost ship.
"Wait…" Varian squinted his eyes at the two lightning dragons chasing them.
These beasts were so large that they might as well be larger than a city, yet their speed so far was impressive.
They were even faster than ghost ship. It was only because the initial distance between them was high that they took so long to catch up.
Even then, it looked like they were about to bite down ghost ship any second by now.
But now…
"Their speed slowed down…by a very small bit," Varian muttered and realized it was the effect of Abyss Will.
He raised his head and saw a figure glowing in a golden light outside the thunder abyss.
Thunder King.
He was far behind the lightning dragons. Perhaps, he was at the other end of the abyss when the chase started, that's why he used the lightning dragons.
And now that he's out, the speed slowed.
Even though the decrease is small, it brought down the speed of lightning dragons to nearly the same as ghost ship.
Of course, the creatures were still slightly faster.
But with this change, ghost ship won a few minutes.
And they made full use of this few minutes to widen the distance from the thunder abyss. Now, they were no longer in the immediate neighborhood of Thunder Abyss where abyss patrol teams frequented.
But whatever they did, the time finally arrived.
"Roar!"
"DIE!"
The lightning dragon was about to devour the ghost ship.
At any moment now, it'd happen.
Blue Flash and Enigma stood beside Varian, though Enigma was a bit far. Glancing into each other's eyes, they understood what to do next.
Enigma clenched her fist but finally nodded.
Blue Flash teleported to the hatch and took a deep breath.
"Wait, wait!" Varian tore his gaze from the lightning dragon and yelled at Blue Flash.
"Avenge me."
"Oh stop it! We can still escape." Varian facepalmed.
He pointed to a weird formation in the corner of the ghost ship.
Boo created it long, long ago using its broken space sub-system and the CFTs.
This formation allowed one long-term teleportation. It was also Varian's biggest safety assurance.
With Boo's explanation, Enigma and Blue Flash stopped their actions.
Meanwhile, Varian looked at the lightning dragon opening its mouth behind ghost ship and prepared to activate the formation.
Right then, a blinding golden light flashed across space.