"The parasitic core will now activate."

"Brace for the impact!"

Wait a minute, what impact?

Despite continuously pouring all I had in me into healing Eve, I used one of the freshly appearing wounds to drip a few drops of my blood on the top of the core before covering it with the loose earth.

The system reacted right away.

As if willing to let the suspense chew away at my confidence and already fragile state of mind, Bonger left me hanging.

Suddenly, the tomb that I created for the core, exploded!

With the clumps of earth falling everywhere around, I s.h.i.+elded Eve's lifeless body with my own. Her state was already too close to the point where no matter what I do, I wouldn't be able to save her. I wasn't going to let this dirty and unsanitised earth enter her wound as well!

Raising my head, I saw the most beautiful picture, that was still capable of invoking a deep terror inside my spirit. 

A sphere of semitransparent energy was violently cras.h.i.+ng against the walls of the barrier created by the core in the first place. 

To put it in simple terms, do you know how the plasma ball toy looks like? The one that makes what looks like a bolt of lightning appear on the spot you touched?

What I had in front of me, was like this plasma ball squared.

At first, it looked like a d.a.m.n big bang, with the entire universe of energy forming inside it. Then, it started reaching outwards.

With my body infinitely close to just falling apart and dying Eve on my hands, I had nowhere to escape when what looked like lightning bolts appeared, and tasted the earth. As if not satisfied with the outcome, they started crawling with all directions, while thickening up.

Prepared for the worst, when those energy tentacles touched me, I gasped in surprise!

Instead of being electrified, I felt all my mana leaving my body for a fraction of a second before everything returned to normal as the thick arm of the energy reached beyond me.

The longer the bolts of lightning were, the higher the entire sphere raised into the air.

The atmosphere turned tense. While in the beginning, the show was purely visual, as the energy tentacles reached the thickness of my arm, I could hear a slight buzz in the air. But the intensity of this slightly annoying sound only grew!

It was one thing for everything to grow in scale, but the speed of said growth was also exponential!

The buzzing turned into a high pitched sound resembling what one could make by moving two perfectly flat objects against each other after dripping a few drops of water on the surface. The lightning arms reached for over a kilometre, and then for two, four and so on.

When everything reached the point when I was almost unable to stomach it anymore, The orb that already raised to over five meters high, suddenly plummeted back to the ground. 

With the tentacles of the energy still stretching to the distance, they all disappeared under the veil of the ground, making the entire area around where the orb buried itself pulsate just as if some heart was pumping the energy around.

Before I managed to make any sense of what had just transpired, the tomb of the parasitic core unveiled itself once again, with a small, dome of solidified something peeking out of the ground.

"Blop!"

"Locking the core."

At first, the barrier had only a pale blueish tone to it, but with every pulse of the energy that shook the ground a bit, the colour of its exterior was saturating more and more. 

"Blop!"

"Locking successful.

"Initiating the merging process."

Still vary of this thing because of the system order to brace myself, I hugged Eve's to my chest while pouring more and more mana into my healing. I would be dumb if I didn't realise that the more I used it, the lesser its effects were. At first, it was capable of regenerating few her tissues, slowly filling the gap, but right now, I was using it only to keep her condition from deteriorating even more!

"Blop!"

"Merging successful."

"Please, pick the rate of absorption."

Bonger, a word of explanation maybe? How I'm supposed to pick something when I have no idea what choices are there and what would be their consequences?

"Blop!"

"The higher the rate of the absorption, the greater the chance of successfully forming the hibernation chamber, but…"

Good, set it to the highest.

"Blop."

"..."

"Blop!"

"Setting the rate of absorption to its maximum level can cause…"

I don't fricking care! 

I'm losing my ability to heal her anymore. If you stall me any longer, I can promise you, that I will never ever trust you again! I don't care if I die, but I will be sure to report how bugged you are to your maker!

"Blop…"

"Fine."

"Setting the rate of absorption to the lord of evil mode"

"Prepare for the retaliation from the local lifeforms."

"Advice, conscious living being is capable of resisting the absorption!"

As soon as these words resounded in my head, an insane wave of energy swept through the area. 

If I thought that my vortex was able to pull on the energy, then I was truly a d.a.m.ned frog in the well!

Only at this moment did I realise that not only the local energy was far more responsive, it was also thicker than what various sect could offer in their cultivation chambers!

As soon as I got more or less used to the continuous storm of the energy all gravitating towards the parasitic core, I managed to raise my eyes only to see how the lush forest that was there just a moment ago, already withered down and started crumbling into the dust!

I think I get now what does this 'parasitic' adjective in the name of this core means!

"Blop!"

"Gathered enough energy to form hibernation chamber. Please, create a core tower to proceed!"