Chapter 440 Beating Heart

There was actually not much left for him to do after all Ascenders inside the settlement had been killed.

Dilan collected all Essence crystals and he absorbed them without hesitation. The Essence crystals of humans were exceptional because they provided status points in all possible situations.

That was quite advantageous as it made things a lot easier for Dilan. He received quite some Essence and status points even if the Essence crystals were mostly Tierless and Tier-1, rather than Tier-2 crystals.

[4721 Tierless Essences, 7325 Tier-1 Essences, and 495 Tier-2 Essence crystals have been absorbed→ +6.1 Strength, +3.9 Health, +7.5 Mana]

[Essence pool has been filled. Host reached Level 26(Tier-2)! +1.0 Status points can be allocated!]

[Essence pool has been filled. Host reached Level 27(Tier-2)! +1.0 Status points can be allocated!]

"That's more than I expected," Dilan mumbled to himself as he left the settlement. He left all the unleveled humans behind without taking any of the equipment that had once belonged to the Ascenders which the Nightmares had torn apart.

Some ordinary humans would definitely be able to defeat Tierless opponents. However, even if that were not to be the case, Dilan couldn't be bothered about the fate of the people of the settlement.

He had other things to take care of, such as making sure that the remaining people of his group would be safe from the Hordes of Chaos and Destruction.

There was no time to waste and Dilan returned to the Sanctum after he stored the Orb of Mantras in his storage ring. He had finished what he'd planned to do and it was now time to level up again.

His stats had to increase and he was in dire need of powerful Essence crystals. Being in possession of an ability similar to the Nightmare Demon's powers would be great but Dilan was not sure if he should consider looking for an ability like that as his last active ability.

'Time will tell what ability will be my last one,' Dilan thought when he arrived in the Sanctum.

But the moment he stepped in and even before the others could greet him, he felt that something was odd.

Two system notifications popped up along with the tiny black heart, the Soul Collector of the Drakins, that appeared in front of him.

[The Soul Collector has fully matured. Descension of the Dragon Temple will be initiated!]

[The Host has 100 Minutes to find a suitable location for the Dragon Temple. If no place has been allocated in the given time, the Dragon Temple will descend at the location of the Soul Collector!]

"That….is unexpected…" Dilan blurted out while he grimaced. He stared mindlessly at the tiny black heart that had begun to beat and a deep frown appeared on his face.

"What's the matter, Dilan? Did something go wrong?" Xenia was the first one from his group who saw Dilan. She had approached him without letting him realize, just to see his deep frown. It looked like Dilan was contemplating something.

That usually meant there was trouble somewhere, which was bad, obviously.

"What place would be the most suitable for Dragons, or beings with the blood of dragons running through their veins to spawn?" Dilan asked as he lifted his gaze to look straight at Xenia's face. She was confused but tried to make sure that nobody could see how baffled she actually was.

"Most suitable place for dragons to appear? I don't know…do you want them to have a hard time, or do you want them to have it easy and comfortable?" Xenia enquired even though she was truly confused.

Dilan smiled at her response before he shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask the others to join us. We need to hold a meeting in ten minutes," Dilan said, turning serious as he added, "It's an emergency so tell them to hurry!"

Xenia didn't know what was actually going on but she nodded her head and followed his commands. It was not difficult to gather everyone because they could call each other using various means.

By now, the Undying group was in possession of numerous magic devices that could be used in various ways. This included various effective and speedy means of communication.

In less than 10 minutes, everyone, who was close enough and could reach the meeting spot, appeared in their gathering place. The large office was usually used for the group meetings, which made it an ideal place for the given situation.

Seeing that Dilan was alive, all the higher-ups of the Undying Group were relieved and happy. Some had expected the worst and their loud sighs of relief could be heard clearly.

They had many questions in their mind but Dilan didn't intend to give them the necessary time to ask anything. He signaled everyone that he had to tell something, which was enough to quiet them all.

"Let me get straight to the point. A race called Drakins reached out to a group of humans, they collected souls of all kinds of living beings using this object and I received these notifications around ten minutes ago!" Dilan summarized the most important facts shortly before he showed the black, beating heart and the notifications to everyone.

All present Ascenders were given permission to read the notifications and they began to frown one after another.

"There is not much time to decide what to do, so we will have to come to a decision in the next 30 minutes at the latest!" He informed and the others nodded.

After half an hour, they would have a whole hour to make sure that the plan they had to come up with would work out. 60 minutes were more than enough for Dilan to run far away. It was possible for him to go far enough to prevent encountering whatever would come out of the Dragon Temple.

However, the most important question was if that was truly necessary. There were many things they could potentially do with the Dragon Temple and the right to decide where exactly it would emerge.

"Do you think that the Dragon Temple will allow the arrival of monsters or Drakins that are powerful enough to defeat you? The fact that they use a unique way to bring over a temple to Milarn is a bit worrisome!" Sven asked Dilan.

It was obvious that Dilan was extremely powerful but he had heard from Victoria and the others about what exactly had happened to him before. He was not invincible, which was something that became even more obvious now after the incident in Shiron.

Sven didn't want to take any risks, especially with the threat of the Hordes of Chaos and Destruction getting closer. The Ascenders of the Undying group were quickly getting stronger but sometimes it was better to take it slow to prevent biting off more than one could chew!

"I doubt that the Dragon temple will be given the authority to bring over existences at Tier-4, but I cannot promise you that it will be easy to kill everyone in the Dragon temple if they have some special means of protection. It's possible that they can use Mantras similar to the ones that nearly killed me, or that the Divinity Fragment installed in the temple will restrict my strength, or increase the power of the beings inside the temple," Dilan tried to prepare his people for the face-off.

He knew that there were many uncertain factors that couldn't be ignored. That was the whole reason behind this gathering.

If Dilan knew what he had to do to achieve the best possible result, he wouldn't have wasted the short time they'd been given to gather everyone and discuss things, to begin with.

"So what are we going to do?"