The clone jabbed a couple more times before shrinking the lava sphere to a certain extent. More than half of the entity's body within was peaking out now. But out of nowhere, before it could react, the entity curled its body and leaped out, falling straight towards the sea of lava below.
It seemed intent to enter the sea of lava and build itself slowly over time, just like what it had done at the start.
In any case, it didn't have any methods to accelerate itself. All it could do was freefall towards its destination. Unfortunately for it, Krune had a lot of methods under his disposal.
The clone flew and caught up to it, using its hand to grab hold of the entity. Fortunately, the entity lacked the strength to resist. It seemed it was only able to maintain the floating island and didn't have any other abilities.
Krune stared at it for some time through the shared thoughts with the clone. Eventually, he decided to carefully cut out the rock cluster sphere embedded in the center of its body.
Though, the moment the clone did so, the entity stopped moving, no longer behaving like something alive. It froze up, now no different from rigid rock.
The moment Krune grabbed hold of the rock cluster sphere from the clone, he sensed the dot on his glabella stirring up. He then summoned the tablet and noticed the string of words that appeared on it.
[Obtained 1 Floating Island Core]
[Reward: 1 Godly Point]
Krune then punched the tablet, looking at the stats to see his name appear on the fourth row, right under Grancey as he muttered to himself, "I'm the fourth person to obtain a Godly Point here."
He calculated the time taken from the start to the end, chuckling, "Only 16 hours. Alright, then. Let's get rolling."
Krune then stared at the body of the entity that remained behind, thinking for a moment as his clone held it. It then seeped in a bit of Godly Energy into it, noticing how there wasn't any reaction. In fact, the rock wasn't even capable of absorbing Godly Energy.
Krune tried to attach the floating island core to the rock entity, failing to do so. After trying for a couple of minutes, he left it as is, storing both in his storage ring. "I'll think about them later."
After everyone retreated into the subspace, the Escapist flapped its wings and sped towards the nearest floating island it could spot. Followed by it was the thunderous rumble of the Pestlor slamming into the floating island.
The advantage he had coped up allowed him to execute the process with ease. With that, Krune was just chilling on the side while three of his clones did all the work. If not for the fact there was only one Pestlor, he would have employed the other clones as well for the task. After all, he had six of them to use.
Unfortunately, he was pressed for time and wasn't able to make another one. Moreover, now that he was wielding Pestlor, Krune also noticed something, realizing that his previous conjecture was slightly wrong.
The rocks in the region, Epic Hell, would lose their property the moment they left the region. They wouldn't lose their inherent quality, though, but just that they would remain in a deactivated state.
And suppose Krune returned to Epic Hell, their property would become active once again. When he left the Sub-Realm, they would turn into normal rocks. Upon realizing that, Krune sighed, shaking his head in pity.
Even then, one of the clones stored a large-sized boulder in a storage ring prepared exclusively to store it. It was just in case he obtained another idea. It would be regretful if he didn't have the necessary materials by then.
Days passed in such a manner as Krune's score increased rapidly. Soon, he tied with the one at third place, Grancey, causing three individuals in the region, Epic Hell, to be shocked.
"That demon beast I saw before, was it Krune?" Clutching a floating island core in her hands, Grancey frowned. She regained third place immediately upon obtaining the recent floating island core. But she wasn't satisfied with that.
At the speed Krune was accumulating Godly Points, it was certain for him to overtake her soon enough. "Thankfully, there isn't even a day left. He has just obtained a Godly Point. Considering his speed over the past 17 days, he needs around 15-18 hours per Godly Point."
Currently, Krune had 25 Godly Points while Grancey had 26. They were neck and deep against one another. In order to stay ahead, Grancey immediately pounced upon a floating island she had been eyeing all along.
It was the smallest out of all the floating islands she had encountered. It barely had a radius of thirty meters. With that, she had enough confidence in obtaining one more Godly Point before their stay in the region ended. That would fortify her third position. After all, even if Krune obtained an easy floating island, he would still need two points to draw with her.
Thankfully for her, Krune wasn't focused on getting Godly Points any longer. After obtaining 25 Godly Points, his priority changed as Krune arrived before a certain floating island once again.
This floating island had a radius of one kilometer. It was one of the biggest in the area. There was one hill on its end while a large pond covered its surface. Surprisingly, situated on the shores of the pond was a tablet, gently washed by the waves on the pond.
Arriving right above it was the Escapist. The moment it arrived, the pond water stirred as it rose like a tsunami. The water and a large pile of rocks condensed together into the rock giant once again. This time, it was small than before. Nevertheless, it still had an imposing presence.
The moment it appeared, the rock giant began to shoot out tiny water spheres towards the Escapist. The Escapist had attained maximum altitude already. This distance allowed it to calmly dodge all the water spheres with ease. After all, by the time the water spheres reached such a height, they had already lost all the momentum in them.
After making an arc, they fell into the lava flowing on the ground.
Standing atop the Escapist was Krune, currently controlling a shield using both Godly Energy and Mental Energy. A clone carried the Pestlor and positioned itself right under the shield. Then, followed by a bellow, Krune activated the maximum limit of the Balance Laws on the shield, causing it to hum with a sonorous sound as it radiated with the rainbow light.
The clone, on the other hand, changed its Godly Energy signature and slammed all its Godly Energy into the shield, experiencing enough repulsion that it was almost crushed. Thankfully, it was alive, having transmitted all the repulsive force to the Pestlor.
The Pestlor shot forth with a tremendous speed, heading straight towards the rock giant as it began to expand in size. The increase in weight further accelerated it, making it suffuse with deadly momentum, enough to make the rock giant shiver.
It was similar to shooting a bullet from a gun. But during its travel, the bullet transformed into the size of a truck. At the same speed, its weight increased exponentially. Therefore, the momentum it contained became terrifying.
From a length of 60 centimeters to a length of 80 meters, the increase was too much, causing a piercing sound through the air as it cracked. The Pestlor slammed into the rock giant with all its might.
Due to how fast Krune launched it, the floating island wasn't even able to move to evade the attack. All it could do was lean on the rock giant to tank the attack. Upon seeing the approaching attack though, even it didn't have the guarantee to survive.
Just as it had expected, the force from the impact and the heat it had built up from the friction directly vaporized all the water on it, fully expending the Godly Energy contained within.
The rock giant completely collapsed as the Pestlor slammed into the ground, rupturing the land from the impact as the entire floating island broke down into ten pieces. All the energy from the poor cultivator it had absorbed to grow was released in the process.
Having timed it right, the subspace appeared in the clone, summoning twenty Pseudo-Wisps around it. All of them resembled the Pestlor weapon spirit. They immediately began to siphon all the Godly Energy in the area, having activated the Myriad Energies Technique.
The Godly Energy formed a vortex and directly gushed into them. Even their godly meridians cracked under the pressure as all the Pseudo-Wisps haphazardly absorbed the Godly Energy without even bothering to circulate it once.
Followed by the intense cracking, the Godly Energy meridians in all the Pseudo-Wisps were about to rupture within a couple of seconds. Nevertheless, Krune didn't care, stuffing all the Pseudo-Wisps with Godly Energy to the limit before storing the shrunken Pestlor into the subspace.
He swiftly retreated from the scene as a hurriedly formed hand of the rock giant flailed past him.
8th Stage God Foundation Realm!
Even Krune had taken part in absorbing the godly energy. Upon his increase in cultivation stage, it meant that all his Pseudo-Wisps were able to absorb some more Godly Energy. He immediately unleashed them all and activated the Myriad Energies Technique.
For a moment, there was no effect. But an instant later, all the free Godly Energy in the place was stirred up like a violent storm as it turned into a tornado and headed straight towards Krune.
The flailing giant had to stop its actions and resist the suction effect. It wasn't even able to reform its body, only left with the hand it had formed.
Krune opened the entrance to his subspace as all Pseudo-Wisps entered it one by one, pulling in the Godly Energy tornado along with them. As it was a place he had absolute control over, Krune placed a filter in the entrance, preventing even a dust particle in the region from entering.
The massive tornado of godly energy entered his subspace and saturated the environment inside. The five clones inside struggled to control the chaos, trying their best to subdue the violent Godly Energy that had been stirred up by the group activation of the Myriad Energies Technique.
All the Pseudo-Wisps soon began cultivating, absorbing the Godly Energy, eventually turning the environment inside the subspace tranquil. Seated on the back of the Escapist, Krune heaved a sigh of relief as he muttered, "I have replenished my Godly Energy reserves to a significant extent. My losses sustained in this region have almost been negated."
As he muttered, formless energy wrapped around him and the Escapist, causing them to disappear from the place. The only thing that remained behind was the gruntled roars of the rock giant that had shrunken to a height of three meters now. It almost seemed to be wailing at the loss it had suffered, not to mention that its floating island was only a patch of rock spanning 10 meters now.