"Roar—!!!"
A dragon's roar that seemed to tear through the firmament suddenly exploded. A massive purple dragon shadow rose violently into the sky from the gradually dissipating Underworld domain!
The shadow cast by its spread wings almost shrouded half of Crescent Lake beneath its vast pinions.
Upon the broad dragon spine covered in hard scales, Castorice stood quietly.
The fierce wind whipped her purple hair and clothes, but it could not sway her in the slightest.
Standing there, her cold gaze locked onto the Nether Moon in the night sky, which radiated endless malice and distortion.
"Pollux." Her voice was not loud, but it clearly pierced through the howling wind and the frantic ravings drifting from afar. "Attack."
Being a soul linked with Castorice, Pollux instantly understood her intent.
Its massive head lowered slightly, its chest expanded violently, and it took a deep breath.
In the next instant, an even more shocking scene occurred. Pollux's body began to rapidly swell and grow at a speed visible to the naked eye! Its already immense frame transformed into a floating, moving mountain range in the span of a few breaths. The shadow it cast no longer merely shrouded half of Crescent Lake, but covered almost the entire lake.
Castorice, standing on its back, appeared as tiny as a grain of dust on one of its giant scales.
Simultaneously, unimaginable, majestic energy gathered frantically before Pollux's open dragon maw. It was no longer a simple purple light, but a purple energy star that seemed to be burning violently.
The destructive energy contained within caused the surrounding space to begin to warp!
When the energy reached its peak, Pollux jerked its head up, aiming that death star at the sacrilegious existence in the heavens.
Roar—!!!!!!
A pure purple pillar of destruction that pierced through heaven and earth erupted from Pollux's giant mouth!
Everywhere the light pillar passed, space was brutally torn asunder, leaving behind long-lasting black trails. At a speed exceeding visual capture, it blasted toward that Nether Moon!
A few seconds later, on the distant horizon, the purple light pillar connecting heaven and earth hit its target with precision!
Boom—!!!!!!
Even from such a vast distance, Castorice could clearly "see" the light pillar, saturated with a massive amount of death power, smash ruthlessly into the writhing, grayish-white flesh of the Nether Moon.
In an instant, large, sickening chunks of grayish-white flesh mixed with viscous fluids and shattered, semi-molten humanoid remains flew in all directions in the vacuum!
A blackened crater, as vast as a basin, formed instantly on the surface of the Nether Moon. The flesh at the edges emitted a scalp-numbing "sizzling" sound.
At that moment, a great deal of liquid flowed from the depths of that horrific wound. However, those liquids were not blood, but a large amount of viscous, turbid, and extremely foul-smelling grayish-yellow pus.
"Ga—!!!!!"
A distorted shriek, a mixture of pain and rage, exploded directly on the soul level of all living beings!
All the flesh on the surface of the Nether Moon began to writhe frantically. The eternally suffering semi-molten humanoids upon it let out even more shrill, invisible wails, as if their very existence felt a doubled intensity of pain.
However, destruction was not the end. At that massive wound, a strange sight occurred once more.
Countless eerie and beautiful purple-white flowers defied common sense and ignored the obstacles of vacuum and distance. Like moss, they spread at an alarming speed within the blackened crater and then bloomed!
They took root in that decaying flesh. Their seemingly slender stems and petals radiated the purest power of the law of death, forcibly blocking the healing of the flesh. The charred black of destruction and the quietly blooming flowers of death intertwined, forming a cruel and bizarre aesthetic.
After firing one shot, Pollux did not pause. Its chest pulsed again, and a second, even more terrifying wave of purple-white dragon breath was already brewing, seemingly about to erupt again!
However, the Nether Moon, having just been struck hard, was finally completely enraged and launched a counterattack.
From its surface covered in suffering humanoids, at the forehead of every semi-molten humanoid, semi-transparent illusory tentacles composed entirely of extremely distorted and filthy mental power suddenly stabbed out!
The number of these tentacles was so vast that they seemed to weave a mental web covering the entire canopy of the night sky in an instant. Ignoring physical distance and carrying the horrific power to annihilate sanity and pollute souls, they swept toward the tiny Castorice in an overwhelming tide!
"Is it using pure mental power as a means of attack?"
Castorice murmured as she gazed at the mental tide that seemed to be composed of countless vengeful spirits.
This kind of attack was formless and immaterial, yet more dangerous than any physical impact. If an ordinary powerhouse were touched by even a sliver of it, their soul would be instantly polluted, and they would become a mindless puppet.
But Castorice was never an "ordinary" existence.
Facing this mental storm sufficient to make anyone turn pale or even fall into despair, she stood on Pollux's back, her expression remaining calm.
Then, a giant scythe flowing with deep purple light appeared in her hand. Castorice called out softly:
"Dark curtain, walk with me."
The moment the words fell, her wrist turned slightly, and she swung forcefully in a horizontal arc toward the boundless sea of mental tentacles ahead.
Swish—
A profound purple trace, accompanied by three giant dragon claw phantoms that seemed capable of tearing the starry sky, flashed and vanished in the night sky!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a subtle sound as if all things were being forcibly severed.
In an instant, the overwhelming network of mental tentacles was like a struck spiderweb; the vast majority were sliced clean by the three invisible purple glows in a single moment!
Once severed from their source, those mental tentacles emitted silent wails and then rapidly dissipated into the void.
The residual power of the attack acted directly upon the distant body of the caster!
Rumble—!!!!
Immediately, on the surface of the Nether Moon's massive sphere, three incredibly vast and "bone-deep" horrific canyons were formed.
The flesh at the edges of the canyons rolled frantically but could not heal. More grayish-yellow pus began to surge rapidly from the cracks, instantly staining nearly a quarter of the Nether Moon's surface a filthy, murky yellow!
Following that, along the path where the giant scythe had carved, those purple-white flowers symbolizing death and rebirth arrived as promised. They stubbornly drilled out from these horrific canyons flowing with pus and then bloomed quietly, continuing to hinder the recovery of the evil god's body.
Whoosh—
At this time, a small portion of the remaining mental tentacles that had luckily escaped being cut down by Castorice's first wave continued to stubbornly pierce through space, attempting to attack Castorice on the dragon's back.
However, they failed to even get within a hundred meters of her.
Pollux merely lifted its scale-covered giant claw nonchalantly and took a casual swipe at the void.
Where the tips of the claws passed, space warped slightly. Those remaining mental tentacles instantly snapped at that moment, eventually turning into a sky full of energy debris.
Ga—!!!!!!
The Nether Moon once again emitted a distorted shriek mixed with extreme pain and rage!
The mental pollution contained in this sonic wave was like a tangible tsunami, slamming hard into Castorice's eardrums.
Although this could not cause her substantive harm, the sudden surge of frantic ravings and wails made her feel as if a giant stone had been tossed into the calm lake of her mind. The noise was suddenly amplified, causing her to frown slightly.
"Its size is too massive... conventional attack methods are too inefficient, like using a rifle to shoot a giant whale..."
She gazed at the grayish-white giant ball of flesh writhing in the sky and spoke in a low voice to herself.
Although this so-called "evil god" had failed to produce an attack capable of truly threatening her and Pollux so far, in terms of the tenacity of its vitality, she admitted it was the first of its kind.
Despite commanding Pollux to launch a dragon breath capable of tearing through mountains and personally swinging a strike imbued with the law of death that left shocking scars on its surface...
Through her perception, she could clearly sense that the chaotic yet majestic life aura at the core of the Nether Moon had diminished by only a minuscule amount.
To put it simply, these seemingly tragic injuries caused by the combined efforts of her and Pollux were perhaps merely equivalent to a few deep but non-fatal skin wounds on a human body to the massive entity of the Nether Moon. Although painful, it was far from being killed.
"Pollux, continue the attack. Do not give it a chance to breathe."
Receiving the command, the death dragon began to growl lowly again. Destructive energy began to gather once more, the light shining as brilliantly as a small sun in the night sky.
A second later, a pillar of purple-white dragon breath, even thicker in diameter than before, erupted from the dragon's maw. Carrying the power to annihilate everything, it went straight for the Nether Moon again!
And this time, the Nether Moon, having been hit hard repeatedly, seemed to have learned its lesson.
Just as the destructive light pillar was about to hit its body, its grayish-white flesh surface began to secrete a large amount of viscous dark matter. Quickly, in an instant, a thick defensive shell was formed, attempting to tank the horrific dragon breath.
Boom—!!!!!!
The deafening explosion echoed once more in the high heavens! The purple-white destructive energy collided violently with that dark rock layer, erupting in blinding light.
However, this hastily constructed defense lasted for less than a breath before being instantly disintegrated by Pollux's intensified dragon breath.
The majority of the dragon breath's power pierced through the defense and struck the body of the Nether Moon squarely again. Another giant crater was blasted out, and viscous, foul-smelling grayish-yellow pus surged frantically from it, staining another large section of the Nether Moon's surface yellow and making it look even more filthy.
"It has still fallen into the stalemate of a war of attrition..."
Seeing this, Castorice sighed softly.
This evil god's attack methods were relatively singular, and to her, it truly was like a giant punching bag. But precisely because of its massive size and extremely tenacious vitality, it had become a "tough bone" that was difficult to resolve quickly, leading the battle into a long-term consumption that she least wanted to see.
As for why she didn't choose to have Pollux charge forward and launch a more powerful self-destruction attack...
That kind of ultimate move was indeed immensely powerful, enough to heavily damage or possibly even destroy the opponent, but the price was that Pollux would need to slumber in the depths of the Underworld for a period of time to recover its power.
Until she was one hundred percent certain she could use it to completely annihilate the Nether Moon in one go, she was unwilling to launch such an attack lightly.
If it failed to kill the target, it would be equivalent to throwing away most of her own attack methods; the loss would outweigh the gain.
Thus, the battle temporarily fell into a tug-of-war.
One side constantly launched attacks capable of destroying cities and nations, while the other side relied on incredible vitality to endure it all.
Although the Nether Moon would occasionally extend mental tentacles to attack Castorice, they were all completely destroyed by a single sweep of her scythe.
This resulted in neither side being able to take down the other for the time being.
...
Meanwhile, in the ravaged Shadow-fold Valley below.
"Hröa valta!" (Soul, build a barrier!)
An old Elvish chant rang out. Accompanied by powerful magic fluctuations, a soft blue light, like an inverted giant bowl, instantly enveloped the entire residential area centered around the elven treehouses.
Ancient runes that soothed the mind and warded off external evils flowed upon the light screen.
Thorne, the patriarch who had performed this large-scale protective barrier, looked even paler than before. The hand holding his staff trembled slightly from the excessive consumption of magic, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip.
He panted, looking with deep concern at the valley outside the barrier, which had fallen into chaos and despair.
When the gods fight, the commoners suffer.
High in the sky, every collision between Castorice and the Nether Moon—especially the Nether Moon's shrieks filled with pain and anger—was no different from mental storms sweeping through the ordinary elves below, whose mental strength was already significantly depleted by the sinister moonlight.
Many clansmen didn't even last long enough to be rescued, falling into total unconsciousness one after another under the continuous mental impacts, their lives or deaths unknown.
Looking around, the once vibrant Shadow-fold Valley now rarely showed a conscious figure, as if it had undergone a silent plague.
Seeing that he had successfully stabilized the core residential area's protective barrier for the time being, Thorne suppressed the sense of weakness in his body. He turned to look at Elder Orion, the only one who still retained the ability to act, and spoke in an urgent and solemn tone:
"Orion, time is of the essence! I need you to immediately organize those who can still move and put all effort into rescuing the clansmen unconscious outside! Prioritize transferring them into this residential area barrier! The barrier can, to some extent, weaken the influence of the evil god's ravings. At the very least, it will prevent them from continuing to suffer mental erosion!"
"Understood, Patriarch! You must also take care of yourself!"
Looking at Thorne's obviously overextended state, Orion's eyes flashed with worry, but he also knew this was not the time for hesitation.
After nodding heavily, a look of determination appeared on his face. He gripped his staff tightly and turned to rush out of the blue barrier's light screen without looking back, beginning the arduous search for his fallen compatriots.