Devouring Dragon Heir
Chapter 72: Ch 72 UTTER DOMINATION!! - 3

Chapter 72: Ch 72 UTTER DOMINATION!! - 3

Klaus looked at the various attacks: fireballs, ice shards, lightning bolts, and physical charges hurled at him by the rushing participants.

He conveniently dodged them all, moving with precise, minimal effort, his Apex Velocity allowing him to disappear and reappear in subtle shifts.

He moved around the edges of the virtual arena, completely avoiding any incoming attacks.

Klaus appeared at a safe distance, far from the impact zone, and then, using his amplified voice, loudly declared, his words reaching every participant and viewers outside.

"Dear ladies and gentlemen, this is a goodbye from my side. If you ever, in your pathetic and cheap existence, feel the thought of messing with Klaus Bennet, then just wait for the sky to fall.

Because you can’t comprehend the thing you have touched. Your foolishness will be your end."

Henry Chromewell, who had been watching Klaus’s apparent evasion, sneered, completely missing the threat in his words.

"Hey, coward! First, show yourself! Stop running!" he shouted, his face twisted in mockery, his voice filled with contempt.

"Yes, coward! Coward!" everyone else in the mob started spouting, echoing insults as they saw Klaus seemingly making a distance, retreating from the fight. Their perceived victory fuelled their arrogance.

"Sorry, guys," Klaus’s voice resonated through the arena again, calm and dismissive.

"I don’t want to be a roasted chicken." His words confused the crowd both outside and inside the VR, who were still thinking that he was simply avoiding combat.

But the confusion was not long-lived.

"Goodbye, everyone. Enjoy the sun bath."

His words confused the crowd, both those inside the VR arena and the onlookers outside.

They exchanged bewildered glances, trying to understand his peculiar parting remark.

But the confusion was not long-lived.

As Klaus finished his farewell, the light around them in the virtual world started turning a deep, ominous orange, and the temperature in the arena began to rise rapidly, growing intensely hot.

Before they could even fully comprehend the meaning of Klaus’s words, someone in the crowd,

a young girl, pointed frantically at the virtual sky, her voice a high-pitched scream.

"Look! What is that?!" Her voice was filled with a desperate terror, her face pale with sweat.

All eyes, both in the virtual arena and those watching on the massive screens outside, shifted to the sky.

The screens in the viewing area immediately switched to an overhead shot of the virtual battlefield. What they saw horrified them.

The sight of a rapidly approaching meteor. It was colossal, as large as a blazing sun, a terrifying orb of pure, incandescent fire, plummeting towards the arena with impossible speed.

Its descent was deafening, and the sound of compressed air and searing flames filled the virtual world.

In their sudden, overwhelming panic, the fifty-plus participants caught within the arena scattered, screaming.

They tried to escape, but it was useless.

The meteor was simply too large, too fast in its descent, making evasion impossible.

It was an apocalyptic sight. They had not even fully registered the horror of the sight, the sheer scale of the imminent destruction, when the meteor finally crashed.

BOOM!!!!

A deafening, earth-shattering explosion ripped through the virtual arena.

The ground convulsed, and a blinding flash of pure light and searing heat filled the entire space.

The shockwave was immense. The virtual world dissolved into a chaos of fire and shattered debris.

The VR system was set up in such a way that any eliminated hunter would be automatically ejected from the simulation.

At this precise moment, as the virtual explosion consumed the arena, the VR pods of all the players from the major Legacy Families simultaneously opened up.

A gush of compressed gases escaped from the pods, releasing the internal pressures built during the simulation.

All the youth stumbled out of their VR pods, visibly flustered.

Their bodies were trembling, their faces pale, and many of them immediately puked onto the polished floor of the Association’s testing facility.

They crawled on their knees, unable to stand, the simulated pain, which had been set at 100% intensity at the demand of the Paragons.

They had believed Klaus would be the one to experience agony, but now their own heirs had been roasted alive in a virtual inferno. The stench of vomit and sweat quickly filled the room.

The expressions of the five patriarchs who had orchestrated the rules, and also Edward Ravenstein, and the heads of the Helios, Cromwell, Hawkins, and Ashford families, were grim.

They had just experienced a serious, public humiliation, a devastating loss of face.

Their faces were a mix of rage, disbelief, and silent fury.

Even though the media wasn’t allowed into this restricted area, they were certain that the other Paragons, particularly William, Lady Crimson, and Lord Blackwood, would not hold back from tarnishing their reputation further.

"We are leaving!" the five opposing Paragons declared in unison, their voices tight with suppressed rage.

There was nothing left for them to see or gain from this humiliating spectacle. They began to turn, their intent clear.

"What is the hurry, dear guests?" The calm, clear sound of Klaus’s voice suddenly pierced the tense, almost silent declaration.

He had already emerged from his own VR pod, his posture relaxed, his breathing even. He stood beside William, looking entirely unaffected by the devastation he had just unleashed.

The Ravenstein patriarch’s face was contorted as he turned around slowly, looking at Klaus with a cold, murderous glint in his eyes.

"What do you want?" he demanded, his voice low and dangerous.

"The Deal," Klaus said in a knowing tone.

"Speak then," the Ravenstein ancestor said in a hurry and with a hidden furious expression.

Klaus was silent for a moment, contemplating what he should ask for. He did not have anything on his mind right now.

But as he thought about specific demands, money, resources, and apologies, they all seemed insignificant.

His revenge was not about material gain from these petty individuals. He had what he needed. His gaze briefly flickered to William, who watched him with a knowing smile.

"I will pass the chance to Grandpa," Klaus said as he made a decision.

He then casually walked over and went back to stand beside William, as if he had merely observed a minor skirmish, not orchestrated a massive virtual massacre.

William was smiling with a mocking expression on his face. He went ahead and said, "I’ll write you a letter, dear friend" to the Ravenstein paragon.

"Till then, see you!!" William said with his ever-so-loud mocking laughter before standing up and walking away.

Followed by Klaus, who now followed behind him.

"Dogs got tamed," Klaus commented at last, and his voice was loud enough to enter the ears of the concerned parties.

His comment earned a few people’s bleeding noses and silent snarls.

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It had been three days since Klaus had attended the Blackwood family banquet, and the single event had unexpectedly brought him an overwhelming amount of fame.

Everywhere he went in the capital city, people recognized him.

His striking appearance at the banquet and his newly revealed identity as William Bennet’s grandson had made him an instant sensation.

Walking down any busy street now meant being subjected to curious stares, hushed whispers, and even occasional attempts by bolder individuals to approach him.

He liked attention, in a detached, analytical way, as it confirmed his growing influence, but not this much; the papparazzi were a constant headache.

He found William in his grand study, a room filled with towering bookshelves, the scent of aged paper and polished wood permeating the air.

Klaus had a specific question, one that had been bothering him since his SSS-rank assessment.

"Grandpa," Klaus began,

"I wanted to ask about training in the VR. I plan to use it for continuous growth, but when I asked Andre, he said it consumes too much energy.

Then how does the Guardian Academy allow its students to practice and train in VR so freely?"

William paused, setting down a heavy file he had been examining. He settled into his large, leather armchair, his expression thoughtful.

"Ah, yes, the VR," he began.

"You see, the VR’s current version, the one accessible to the Association and its facilities, consumes truly immense amounts of energy to operate. Its prolonged use could dry the entire continent of fuels."

He then elaborated on the energy source.

"The fuel currently used is magifuel, a potent mana-rich substance extracted from deep within the Earth’s crust."

Klaus remembered fossil fuels on Earth, which were extracted similarly, and he then listened to William as he continued speaking.

The only critical difference he noted was that, unlike fossil fuel, magifuel did not combust or cause pollution.

It was simply consumed, its inherent mana directly converted into usable energy. He then continued to listen to William.

"This fuel is formed from the ancient, dense remains of powerful magical beasts and elemental cores from ancient eras, compressed over millennia.

And since humanity hasn’t yet developed the means to synthesize another fuel source rich enough or efficient enough for widespread consumption,

The VR systems, with their unprecedented power demands, consume staggering amounts of it."

"So, how does the Guardian Academy manage it?" Klaus pressed his earlier question.

"Because they have discovered another source of energy, Klaus," William replied, a subtle gleam in his eye.

"A truly revolutionary one, one that doesn’t rely on Earth’s finite resources. Magnus didn’t elaborate on the specifics during our conversations, but he uses the power source of the Watchers’ spaceships to power the VR facilities and almost the entirety of the Academy’s domain.

According to him, it is a source of energy that could completely revolutionize Earth’s advancement, granting us a limitless supply of clean magical energy."

"Then why doesn’t he share the source with you?" Klaus asked directly, a pragmatic question.

If it could revolutionize Earth, surely it should be shared with at least the allied organization fighting for humanity’s future.

William’s smile was grim. He didn’t answer immediately with words. Instead, he gestured with a slight tilt of his head towards the confidential reports and encrypted data pads scattered across his desk, all related to the ongoing purge of traitors.

"Didn’t you see the number of spies cropping up in the Association, Klaus? The depth of the infiltration?" He paused, then continued,

"Did that cultist you killed, even tell you once about even one spy operating at the Academy?"

"No right? because there are none"

At this point, everything clicked into place for Klaus.

The Association, despite William’s best efforts, was a colossal organization, vast and sprawling.

Its sheer scale of operations made it inherently vulnerable to spying and infiltration by the corrupt Legacy Families and their alien collaborators.

The Academy, however, was a closed, tightly controlled environment, far more secure.

Klaus knew why the Academy did not share the power source with the Association, because the Association was a net, too vulnerable to infiltration.

Sharing such a critical, revolutionary power source would be akin to handing it directly to the enemy, to the Watchers themselves.

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