Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!

The worm had not left.

Lin Yi registered this through Predatory Instinct’s passive positional tracking approximately two seconds after the surface settled back into its compressed mineral form.

The void eroding soul king had not departed after consuming Sun Tian. It had submerged again, which was different from leaving. The energy signature it produced was still present in the substrate beneath the island, moving in the slow deliberate pattern of something that had fed and was now reorienting rather than retreating.

He looked at the island surface.

The system prompt appeared as the creature’s proximity triggered his scan range.

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[Void Eroding Soul King]

Level: 195

Apex Predator

HP: Unknown

Physical Attack: Unknown

Physical Defense: Unknown

Magic Resistance: Unknown

[Classification: UNKNOWN. This entity does not match any registered monster classification in the standard awakening database.]

---

He looked at the prompt for a moment. Unknown HP. Unknown defense. Unknown attack values. The system’s classification failure was not a display error. It meant the creature operated outside the database’s reference range, which meant it was either new to the environment or had never been formally documented in combat conditions.

He thought about that.

The Awakening Bureau’s research archive at Heavenly Phoenix Academy had a section on unclassified entities. Most of it was dry documentation of things encountered in the outer layers of dimensional rifts that didn’t match established monster taxonomies. He had read it during the formation theory study period in his first month at the academy, not because it was directly relevant to his coursework but because he read everything in accessible ranges that might become relevant at some unspecified future point.

One entry had stood apart from the rest. Not because it was longer, or more detailed, but because of how it had been flagged. A single-observation record. Seen exactly once. Logged by a monitoring satellite stationed at the very edge of Blue Star’s atmospheric boundary, during what had been a routine outer-space drift observation sweep.

The document itself was precise, almost clinical in tone, but the content carried weight. It described a creature of immense, almost incomprehensible scale moving through open space, skirting the outer limits of the planet’s gravitational influence. Its body generated a dissolution field, a phenomenon that steadily consumed the ambient void energy around it as it traveled, as if the surrounding space itself was being thinned or erased in its presence.

The Bureau had classified it as an apex-category entity of unknown origin. No confirmed ecosystem. No known point of emergence. Just a single sighting, cleanly recorded and left without follow-up. They had given it a tentative designation, but the classification read less like a conclusion and more like an admission that they were naming something they did not yet understand.

Void Eroding Soul King.

He looked at the island surface where it had submerged.

"The Bureau spotted it once," he said quietly. "From space. Moving through the outer atmosphere." He paused, as if weighing how much the classification itself actually meant. "They concluded it was a space-native entity that occasionally drifted into planetary gravity wells. Not something born from a dungeon. Not something produced by a standard dimensional rift." Another brief pause followed, his tone lowering just slightly. "They were in the process of cataloguing it as a cosmic-class natural entity."

The Greater Qilin stood still, its gaze fixed on the island’s surface with a level of intensity it reserved only for things it had already judged worthy of its full attention.

"And it’s here," Lin Yi said. "In the Allheaven Expanse. Which is a dungeon event environment connected to the Heavenly Dao." He processed the connection. "The Heavenly Dao’s reach is not limited to what the Bureau has documented. Whatever it has access to, whatever it can draw from, this is apparently within that range."

The surface broke.

The Void Eroding Soul King emerged again, this time not in the arced trajectory of an ambush strike but in a direct vertical rise, the leading edge pushing straight upward and expanding as it cleared the mineral substrate, the full diameter of the creature becoming visible as it rose above the island level.

The diameter was extraordinary.

At ground level, the leading edge’s ring of rotating dissolution mechanisms was each approximately three meters in diameter. There were forty-seven of them arranged in the concentric pattern of a dune worm’s standard attack face, but these were not standard, the dissolution field they generated was visible as a distortion of the space immediately adjacent to the mechanisms, the air around the leading edge shimmering with the void energy the creature consumed and processed.

Lin Yi drew the Celestial Lord Blade.

The worm’s full leading edge oriented toward him.

He released Celestial Sword Qi in single-target concentration mode. The full output of Strength 5,751 and Spirit 4,931, the Blade Domain’s ambient amplification adding to the base, the Heaven’s Will synergy passive providing the additional output it generated for combined active skill deployment.

The arc reached the worm’s leading edge.

The dissolution field absorbed it.

It Absorbed it. The celestial energy of the strike reached the dissolution field and was consumed by it, the void energy processing mechanism of the creature’s external layer taking in the attack the way it took in ambient energy, as fuel rather than threat.

Lin Yi’s eyes narrowed.

"The dissolution field," he said. "It doesn’t just protect the surface. It converts incoming energy into void energy and processes it." He watched the leading edge’s rotation pattern. "Which means energy-based attacks feed it."

The Greater Qilin had positioned itself at his left flank, Heaven Step carrying it into engagement range as the worm’s body continued its rise. It was reading the same information Lin Yi was reading, the spatial awareness it had developed overlapping with his own assessment in the specific synchronization their movement had developed over weeks of working together.

"Physical attacks," Lin Yi said.

The question was whether the physical component of a blade strike carried through the dissolution field separately from the energy component, or whether the field processed both together. He needed the data. And there was only one way to get it.

He activated Phantom Void Step and appeared at the leading edge’s lateral surface, outside the direct orientation of the dissolution mechanisms, and drove the Celestial Lord Blade against the worm’s exterior skin at full Strength output.

The blade struck.