Simulated Black Hole Deep beneath Khaenri'ah
From the moment he received the order, Dainsleif raced toward Rhinedottir's laboratory without pause.
This was no time to follow protocol.
Using emergency passages, he reached the facility in the shortest possible time.
Yet when he arrived, the once-familiar place had changed beyond recognition.
The path leading into the laboratory was now flooded with rippling, pitch-black corrosive liquid, slowly devouring the ground itself.
Had he come any later, even a foothold might not remain.
Without hesitation, Dain plunged in.
Compared to last time, the ominous pressure was far stronger.
His instincts screamed danger his head spun, nausea rising but he clenched his teeth and pushed forward.
Soon, he reached the vast underground chamber.
Most of the incubation tanks were gone.
Only the enormous central one which housed the obsidian dragon still stood.
Scanning urgently around, Dain called out, burned by the need to find Rhinedottir and carry out the king's orders.
But she was not at the dragon's side.
"Rhinedottir! Rhinedottir!"
His shouts echoed through the hollow space.
A few seconds later, her voice rose from behind him.
"You again? What is it this time?"
The cold, austere woman brushed past him, returning to her workstation with a strange alchemical device in hand.
"Khaenri'ah is under attack by the Seven!"
"The king ordered me to bring you before him hurry, we must leave!"
"I see."
She murmured this to herself, showing no reaction whatsoever.
Experimenting at a time like this?!
Dain nearly exploded.
He moved to forcibly drag her away but the moment he stepped within ten meters of her, the world changed.
The entire chamber trembled.
Black mist surged from the ground, swallowing everything.
Runes of unknown alchemy lit up across the cavern walls.
Only then did Dainsleif realize:
This entire underground complex…
had long been transformed into a colossal ritual array.
The fog thickened until he could barely see his own hand.
A crushing dizziness struck him his knees buckled.
He clutched his head in agony.
"What… is happening…?"
Rhinedottir offered no answer, her figure fading in the fog.
As consciousness slipped away, Dain saw the immense incubation tank shatter.
A pitch-black dragon erupted from within, wings spreading wide, releasing a sky-splitting roar.
Around it, rents in space tore open, spewing forth hound-shaped horrors—beasts of another realm until they filled the underground world.
Dimly, he heard Rhine dottir whispering phrases like "Phlogiston Layer… Corrosion Stratum…"
Then his vision went dark completely.
Above Ground
At the same moment the underground transformed, Luo Li sensed a tidal surge of malice rising from below.
"Something's coming."
Before he finished speaking, he felt space itself distort ripped apart like cloth by a foreign power.
The answer arrived instantly.
Beasts.
Tens of thousands.
Clawing through the torn space, dragging an army of abyssal monsters behind them.
"Abyssal vanguards… Beastrealm Hounds."
Spatial rifts bloomed like diseased flowers
within seconds, over a hundred thousand monsters poured into the battlefield.
They attacked everything, friend and foe alike.
Already bogged down fighting ruin automatons, the Seven Archons now turned grim.
Luo Li finally understood how despite divine power some gods perished during the Khaenri'ah war.
No god can withstand an endless war of attrition.
Even a single Beastrealm Hound was troublesome; its claws could tear open space itself.
A moment's carelessness, and even an Archon could be overwhelmed.
And more creatures were still coming through.
Some beasts, finding no target nearby, instinctively tore new paths and scattered toward the continent beyond.
Seeing this, Luo Li's expression hardened.
He could no longer afford to "go easy."
If these things reached Inazuma, the damage would be unbearable.
If the rifts continued expanding, Teyvat itself would drown in a tide of Abyss.
The world around him darkened hundreds of thousands of monsters filled every visible space.
The other Archons were buried beneath the living tide, their light flaring only occasionally from within the mass.
Luo Li exhaled.
"Enough.
Let me show you how stars are crushed."
All twelve Herrscher cores flickered
the ninth glowed brightest.
The six blades of Subspace Spears swept out, clearing a protective circle around him and Makoto, each stroke harvesting thousands of monsters.
Blood soaked the ground.
Abyssal ichor seeped into the soil, staining the land a ghostly blue-black.
In Luo Li's right hand, the orb of condensed gravitational force shrank tightening, collapsing.
The result:
The gravitational field over Khaenri'ah suddenly inverted.
Space warped.
The rifts at their source twisted and imploded.
At the center, a singular point darker than darkness expanded outward.
A point where not even light could escape.
"Herrscher Authority
Celestial Black Hole."
The power of a Herrscher of Earth
mastery over physical law itself.
Gravity bent.
Space folded.
A black hole was born.
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