The Rise of the Black Plain

After appearing in that red place, scorching to the point of making even they, Spiritual Emperors, sweat, the wives of Minos looked at the area with wide eyes.

That was particularly true for Ruth, who had never seen transformations of the kind in her life. As for Gloria and Abby, although neither had seen anything like this personally in their lives, they had heard stories or memories of analogous situations.

But still, they were surprised to see such a shocking transformation.

That previously green area, full of mountains, and unique landforms, vibrant with life, had turned into a place without much variation in the blink of an eye.

It was now just a gigantic crater, which they could not even see the edges of, giving them the feeling that such a thing was not a crater but a small sea of magma.

Streams of this scalding material could be seen passing from one side of this 'sea' to the other, with stress points where lava was gushing out as if there were springs there.

"Unbelievable!" Ruth exclaimed as she circulated her energy to protect her body from the intense heat it was doing where they were flying, even considering they were over 100 kilometers from the lava.

The crater formed by the explosion of Minos' mass destruction weapon had destroyed the surrounding area. So, obviously, such a thing had created a crater whose deepest point was over 100 kilometers deep.

Considering that Minos and his wives were flying a few meters above the ground when he threw the previous mirror sphere, as they escaped to the Spatial Kingdom and returned from there, they were about 100 kilometers from the deepest point of that scorching area.

"It's pretty impressive. I didn't expect it to be so extreme..." Minos smiled as he observed his creation with Abby.

But he knew that this power was not his. Without the stupidity of the level 73 Spiritual Saint who had given his body to that black hole or the many bodies swallowed earlier, that bomb would not have produced something so shocking.

He knew that his black hole should not be able to threaten the life of a level 70 Spiritual Saint until many bodies or powerful beings fueled it. That also meant that the Black Hole Bomb would not be as potent in a 'normal' situation.

But still, he could not help but admire the destructive power of his most powerful weapon.

He alone could not develop something that powerful at the moment, but besides being able to eventually reach the requirements for it, there were ways for him to 'fatten up' his black holes. So, he did not attribute this event to luck!

"Well, let's go..." He was saying to his wives when suddenly, the tip of a wormhole appeared a few hundred meters from where they were.

Seeing that, the four of them understood that a Spiritual Sage was coming!

They had two alternatives now. Escape to the Spatial Kingdom and be stuck in that place indefinitely, or stay and receive that person.

Since they were weak to the point that they had a high chance of being ignored, they decided to stay after looking at each other.

'That person didn't come here by chance...' Minos pondered as he slowly saw a body coming out of that wormhole. 'This Spiritual Sage was nearby, so he probably comes from Vogel.'

'That person probably comes from the Church...' He then had his thoughts confirmed when the level 81 Spiritual Sage, who was looking after Vogel on behalf of the Spiritual Church, appeared in that place.

'Uh?' Such a person looked at the surroundings and saw how this bit of the border of Rosser and Flaming Empire had changed.

'So the attack from before was not on the Vogel border...' He pondered this as he noticed that he had mistaken the location of the explosion by a few hundred kilometers.

He was not from the area, and it could be challenging to analyze the origin of something thousands of kilometers away.

But while he was relieved that this occurrence was not a challenge to the Church, he noticed the group of four Spiritual Emperors flying toward the southeast, passing through the middle of such an area.

"Hey!" He shouted to the four, curious to know how Spiritual Emperors had passed this place before him.

The explosion from earlier had been shocking. He could tell that just by the appearance of this place. So any living being below his level should have at least been injured to withstand something so extreme. But their group was unharmed and was composed of mere Spiritual Emperors.

On the other hand, the explosion had just happened, so if they had come from outside the blast radius, how had they gotten there so quickly?

A Spiritual Sage like him could traverse space and significantly shorten distances. But mere Spiritual Emperors could at most fly.

Then doubt arose in his heart. "Where did you come from? How can you be here in this place? Do you have any relation to the event that occurred here?"

Gloria was not dressed in the uniform of the Spiritual Church at the moment, so there was no way that man could connect them to such an organization.

That's why he questioned them so actively, while his hands appeared to manipulate the space in the surrounding area so that if those individuals tried to escape, he would arrest them.

Minos and his wives stopped flying towards the Flaming Empire, and he responded while looking at that man. "Sir, we were passing this place a few moments ago when we saw something shocking. After that, we all used our teleportation devices to escape."

"Since we are in the middle of a journey, we teleport back after the time needed for the main effects of that explosion to pass."

"Teleportation?" That individual's eyebrows frowned as he realized there really was a spatial disturbance in the surroundings beyond the one he created.

'Really, someone teleported from this place...'

"But how did you get back here so quickly? Teleportation items usually use marked places to work."

Minos nodded and said. "Yes, we marked our last camp in the surrounding area. Then since we weren't sure if it would be destroyed during the explosion, we teleported to another place during our escape. After a few minutes, we testes with such a location had not been destroyed and luckily teleported to a place about 300 kilometers from here."

"Oh?" The Spiritual Sage believed the story Minos told since it made no sense to think that Spiritual Emperors would have anything to do with what happened in this place.

At the same time, as much as the levels of these four, as well as the formation of this group, three women and one man, were similar to that of the young man who had a weapon supposedly capable of doing something like this, this Spiritual Sage did not even consider such a possibility.

There were millions of Spiritual Emperors in this part of the Central Continent, so it was not impossible that a group so similar to that of the young Pyke would appear there.

Considering the spatial fluctuations of the area that indicated teleportation, he believed the lie and let his guard down for these youths.

"All right, go away. I don't want you to contaminate the area any further." He waved one of his hands, causing them to suffer a space 'jump', appearing hundreds of kilometers ahead of that place in their flying direction.

With that, Minos just smiled at that fellow's help, not giving much thought to the matter, before heading alongside his wives to the first area of the Flaming Empire they would pass, the territory of the Holy Sect!

...