Thirty years had passed in the blink of an eye. For the prisoners of Gobada, it was merely an insignificant stretch of time in an endless sentence.
But for Barn, those thirty years had been cause for celebration—he had finally found an opportunity to fuse Water Element with the Water Body Technique!
"Water Element is absolute control over the elements, while the Water Body Technique lets the physical body merge with the laws of water. There's always been a hint of common ground between them."
"I never expected that the Round Soft Profound Mystery, which I'd pinned my hopes on, would make no progress toward fusion, while the Water Element I comprehended later would be the first to fuse with the Water Body Technique."
Barn had just opened his eyes after a sudden insight, and his heart was full of emotion.
Water Element magic power surged slowly around him. He could clearly feel that the Water Profound Mystery's enhancement to his body's speed, defense, and explosive power had more than doubled. Of course, such a marked increase also came from how shallow his previous understanding of the two Profound Mysteries had been. Only after fusing them had he truly begun to grasp their workings.
"Next, I'll slowly work out the fused Profound Mystery. I hope I can break through to godlevel soon."
Fusing Profound Mysteries was the most difficult bottleneck for a Sanctuary expert seeking to break through to godlevel. Once that hurdle was crossed, all that remained was to steadily develop and refine the ability; there would be no more insurmountable chasms.
But Gobada had never been a true haven from the world. In the end, the quiet life of the guards was bound to be disrupted.
Over the past thirty years, the guards aboveground and underground had already rotated twice.
Just as Barn was intently working out the fused Profound Mystery and making steady progress, Declan's voice suddenly sounded in his mind, urgent but composed. "Barn, notify Miss. There's unusual movement underground. The presence is very faint!"
Barn's heart tightened. Without showing it, he extended his divine sense toward Fukaloss, who was meditating beside him with her eyes closed, and conveyed the message through Soul Transmission.
Fukaloss did not open her eyes or rashly release her divine sense to notify the other two squads. Instead, she spread her soul power over the entire squad and calmly warned them, "Everyone, stay alert. Don't act rashly."
Sure enough, just seconds later, an extraordinarily violent surge of fire-attribute Divine Power erupted in the distant sky. A scorching wave rolled toward them, distorting even the air with its heat.
"Careful! One of the attackers is a fire-attribute Midgod! You Lowgods, help me fend them off at once!"
The taciturn old man who had guarded the center of the orchard for years finally opened his eyes. His divine sense swept across all three squads in an instant. Before he had finished speaking, he transformed into an ochre streak of light and shot more than ten meters into the air.
Above ten meters in this region, Spatial Rifts were everywhere. That was precisely why it made such a perfect battlefield for the gods: it was easy to defend and hard to attack. Though Midgods were powerful, they did not dare fly recklessly through Spatial Rifts and could only fight within the narrow space available.
"Protect the ground and the orchard. Don't let anything go wrong." After leaving them with that reminder, Fukaloss's Water Clone instantly became a pale blue streak of light. She shot into the sky alongside the old man to meet the fiery red figure.
At the same time, three streaks of light shot out from the other two squads in succession. Clearly, each squad had a god stationed among them to deal with sudden attacks.
The thunderous shockwaves from the violent clashes of Divine Power rolled over them. Barn looked up to see the distant sky dyed a blazing red, interwoven with ochre Divine Power. The rumbling shook the ground beneath their feet.
"The attacking Midgod is pretty strong." Barn felt a pang of worry. "And our Midgod clearly broke through by refining a Divine Spark. Midgods who refine Divine Sparks are inherently weaker in battle than those who break through on their own. This fight could go either way."
If their side lost, there was no chance that he and the other Sanctuary experts would survive a battle between gods.
But at that moment, the threat from underground demanded their more urgent attention.
"Boom!"
A deafening crash shook the ground, and shockwaves from the battle swept outward. But the disturbance had not come from beneath Barn. It had erupted beneath the earthen house of another squad.
Declan's voice came again, now tinged with concern. "There's another god! At least one Lowgod is attacking from underground!"
The surging Dark Divine Power made no attempt to conceal its ferocity, and defensive Divine Power immediately flared underground beneath that squad. Clearly, the other side had also stationed a god belowground. They were already fighting.
"Gods willing to form an Ice Blade Squad really aren't weak," Blair said gravely, his slit pupils narrowing. "I just saw one of the gods in that squad send a clone up into the sky to fight, while the one left underground should be his other clone."
Being able to form two clones as a Lowgod made him exceptional among his peers, far beyond an ordinary Lowgod.
Then a third battle broke out in the area guarded by the squad with two gods. The last of the attacking Lowgods finally revealed himself.
And the fourth disturbance came right on schedule, striking precisely beneath Barn and the others.
"It looks like a sneak attack, but it's really no different from a frontal assault," Barn thought as he and the others moved to surround the edge of the orchard.
Fortunately, Fukaloss had anticipated that the enemy would attack from underground and had left her Death Clone guarding the passage. The sounds of Death Divine Power clashing with Wind Divine Power were already rising from below.
With the gods fighting fiercely on all four fronts and unable to spare any attention for the ground, the battle between the Sanctuary experts began in earnest.
More than fifty Sanctuary experts, divided into three squads, charged toward the orchard with bloodshot eyes and the desperate frenzy of people willing to risk their lives. The three defending squads had only eighteen Sanctuary experts between them. They were outnumbered by a wide margin.
Over the years, the three squads had seen each other often. Though they weren't particularly close, they knew one another's strengths and weaknesses.
The squad once driven out of the Royal City had eight members: two gods and six Sanctuary experts. But what drew the most attention was that the entire family belonged to the same kind of magical beast—the Sanctuary Beast, the Moonflower Deer.
Apart from the two gods currently fighting, the rest still retained their white spirit-deer forms.
The third squad had a more mixed membership. At full strength, it had ten members: one god and nine Sanctuary experts. Some were humans, others magical beasts. It seemed their leader had simply gathered them together from whoever was available.
Faced with the oncoming horde, a weathered-looking human Sanctuary expert was clearly experienced in defensive battles. He immediately shouted, "Hold your ground! The Sanctuary experts who've come to seize the orchard aren't that strong! Most were recruited from the wilderness by gods at the last minute. They're gamblers who were starving or dying of illness, risking their lives for a sliver of hope. Their actual fighting strength is far below ours!"
He wasn't exaggerating.
There were only a dozen or so short trees at this resource point, and they bore nothing but ordinary fruit—just a snack for gods to enjoy in their spare time. Otherwise, a Midgod who had refined a Divine Spark would never have been able to occupy it for so long.
Truly powerful squads chose to seize high-quality resource points rich in materials for Divine Artifacts and elemental energy. This kind of mediocre resource was only worth a gamble to a few gods, who hastily rounded up a group of dying Sanctuary experts: win, and they'd get some scraps as payment; lose, and they'd merely sacrifice a group of insignificant prisoners without a second thought.
The three defending squads each guarded one direction, holding the orchard under their protection.
Before you continue