Death... and me

Heading back to the main building, Rean brought everyone to the floor above where the core was. "Alright, wait here as I analyze the formations inside the floor with the core. Roan will tell you what to do when needed." After that, Rean entered the floor below once again.

This time, things weren't as simple as before. Rean had to spend an entire day analyzing the runes, with many of them being more or less unknown to him. He also asked Sister Orb to save the information of those runes for him to study them later. Eventually, Rean believed he recognized the feeding path of the World Beast Formation and began to instruct the others outside.

Meanwhile, the demon was confused after seeing no change in his outside surroundings. 'Weird...it has already been two days since they last tried to attack my defensive formation. Could it be that they gave up? Oh well, whatever. They probably noticed it was simply impossible to enter this place. You just wait. It's impossible to leave this realm without my key. Once I recover and gather enough Underworld Energy, I'll come back out once again. You won't escape this time.'

Little did he know, but many formations were being built outside the main building where the formation's core was located. As Rean mentioned before, he couldn't make formations inside the core room because of the balance. Fortunately, the formations and connections feeding the core with Spiritual Energy could also be found outside.

On the fifth day, Rean and the others excavated the area above the demon's chamber, exposing his protection formation a lot more. Following that, Rean began to connect the protecting formation with the multiple Energy Transfer Formations on several levels.

Sure enough, a formation that could work over an entire planet had many different Spiritual Energy Gathering Formations and connections to the core. Each one of them could only feed a specific amount designated to them. That was also the reason why Rean took so long to identify each type, and he wasn't entirely sure either.

"Alright, let's give it a try!" Rean said as he prepared to activate the formations. At the same time, Duran and Frin, who were already fully recovered, were ready to attack.

Rean then activated everything when suddenly...

*Boom, boom, boom...*

Many of his formations exploded or were damaged.

Seeing that, Rean could only sigh, muttering as he shrugged his shoulders, "Well...I already expected that things would work that easily." Rean knew that there were just too many runes in the Energy Gathering Formations that he didn't know. That being said, failure was already part of his plan. "The good thing is that there are a few of them who worked fine, even if just for a second. That helps out a lot in figuring out what's wrong already."

Rean then turned to everyone before saying, "Alright, time to get back to work. Don't think about the failures too much. I'm sure we will see it happen a few more times until I get all the levels right."

Duran and the others nodded in response, knowing that Rean was right.

The demon could still see through the glass container and the protection formation of his. He saw how Rean tried to work on his protection formation many times, just to see things eventually go wrong. However, the more he saw it happen, the more nervous he became. After all, he only had this formation to protect himself. 'You guys better not force me...'

One month and thirteen days later...

"That's it! I refuse to believe that the levels of absorption and transfer are wrong this time. There's only one passage that gets a little more Spiritual Energy than it should, so it must be fine now!" Rean exclaimed as Roan, Duran, Frin, and everyone else looked at him. Frin and Duran didn't even take a combat stance anymore as they were fed up with it.

"Yeah, yeah... just go ahead with it already. Maybe it works," Kentucky could not help but say, not believing in Rean's words too much.

"Hmph! If you think it won't work, then why don't you come here and make the formations yourselves?" Rean obviously felt annoyed with everyone's attitudes.

Roan, who couldn't care less, simply hurried Rean up. "Stop wasting time and activate it. If it doesn't work, you just need to keep trying."

Rean nodded and immediately activated all the formations.

*Bzzzzzz!*

Everyone looked around, waiting for the explosions to happen when suddenly...nothing happened. Well, at least no explosion happened. Rean's formations then began to shine as a huge amount of Spiritual Energy started to pass through them.

All that Spiritual Energy was then divided accordingly through the various Energy Transfer Formations, each a specific amount. Frin and Duran's eyes showed some interest as they immediately prepared themselves. After all, Rean's formations hadn't worked for this long before. "Could it be that it's working now?"

Back in the main building with the formation's core, the core itself began to shine with intense white light. Spiritual Energy kept pouring into it from many different connections coming from outside, making the World Beast Formation gradually get fully activated again.

*Rumble!*

The ground trembled as the Blood Lake outside the area they were in began to converge above the island, where Rean's group saw the demon beast souls entering.

At the same time, inside the demon's chamber, he saw his Rank Seven and even his Rank Eight Spirit Stones begin to lose their energy. His eyes widened in shock since he had hundreds of each of them. Then again, they looked nothing more than Rank 1 Spirit Stones that could be turned into dust in a few moments of cultivation to a being of his level. "How's that possible?!"

He then looked above and noticed the multiple formation runes attached to his protection formation. He wasn't an idiot and could tell that those runes were responsible for absorbing all of the energy in his protection formation. If things continued out like that, it wouldn't take more than an hour before he lost everything! The worst part was that he had no way to stop it from happening. "Damn you all!"

At this point, Rean's group couldn't even hear the demon's voice anymore. Instead, they were curious about what was happening on the island with the Blood Lake.