Chapter 138: The End of an Era
"YOU EXPECT ME... TO RETREAT FROM HIS EDGE?!"
Two voices roared in unison within the theater of every mind on the battlefield.
In the next heartbeat, the world lost its voice.
The screams of the dying, the shriek of steel on bone, the thunderous detonation of high magic—all of it was erased in a singular, absolute vacuum. One white streak and one black streak of light lanced through the center of the plain, colliding with a force that defied the laws of the world.
There was no explosion. No sound.
At the point where the two magnitudes met, a dull, lightless sphere manifested. It began to consume everything in its vicinity. Light was twisted and sucked into its core; sound was severed; even the fabric of space itself buckled and collapsed toward that singular point of annihilation.
The sphere expanded to its limit. Then, it imploded.
Silence. A graveyard silence.
Seconds later, a ring of pure white energy erupted from the epicenter, sweeping across the earth like a scythe.
Whether it was the skeletons of the Evernight Legions or the knights of the Crusade, any unit touched by the expanding ring was reduced to fine powder instantly. A perfect, circular crater over a kilometer in diameter appeared in the dead center of the battlefield.
The energy dissipated.
In the middle of the hollow earth, two silhouettes stood once more.
Skele-Pride was down on one knee. His obsidian frame was a map of millions of hairline fractures. The arm composed of pure shadow energy had vanished entirely.
And behind Pride...
Altlais still stood.
He maintained his finishing stance, the Holy Sword pointing diagonally toward the heavens.
In the distance, Pope Hupert, who was still locked in a desperate struggle against Lust and Greed, witnessed the sight.
He won!
As expected of the continent's strongest Hero!
Within the Alliance lines, after a heartbeat of stunned silence, an earth-shaking cheer erupted.
"HE DID IT!"
"LORD ALTRAIS HAS WON!"
"THE SPIRITS HAVE NOT ABANDONED US!"
But in that fleeting moment of relief—that microscopic slackening of Hupert's guard—two shadows manifested behind him without warning.
Lust and Greed.
"[Holy Aegis]!"
Hupert's reaction was near-instantaneous. Driven by the raw instinct of a century of practice, he threw a barrier behind him.
It wasn't fast enough.
A cocktail of contradictory destructive elements erupted from Lust's fingertips. The structure of the Holy shield was dismantled in a micro-second, shattering into a million glittering motes. Greed's claws, silent as a whisper, followed through.
Squelch.
Hupert's body went rigid. He looked down to see a hand protruding from the center of his chest.
Clutched in those pale fingers was a still-beating heart.
Across the battlefield, the cheering soldiers froze as they watched the silhouette of their Pope plummet from the sky. The shouts died in their throats, replaced by a cold, rising dread.
"ROAR!"
King Barock let out the final war-cry of his life. Ignoring the lethal wounds riddling his torso, he gathered every scrap of his remaining Od. He hurled his massive greataxe at Skele-Sloth with a force that broke the sound barrier.
Sloth's figure blurred, merging back into the shadows to evade the desperate strike. The axe missed its mark, embedding itself ten feet deep into the solid rock of the earth.
Barock, the Hero-King of the Dwarves, crashed to the ground. Even in death, he remained in a charging posture, his sightless eyes fixed on the enemy.
On the other flank, the duel between Grom and Wrath reached its conclusion.
The Warchief's body was a ruin of gashes and broken bones, but the battle-fever in his eyes burned with a manic intensity. He abandoned all defense, allowing Wrath's lance to punch through his sternum.
In exchange, he swung his jagged axe with the final pride of the Orcish race, cleaving through the neck of Wrath's skeletal warhorse. The mount let out a hollow shriek, disintegrating under the impact. Wrath was launched from the saddle by the sheer kinetic force.
Grom pulled his lips back in a tusked grin, intending to let out a roar of victory. Instead, a fountain of blood and organ fragments erupted from his mouth. The Great Warchief slowly toppled over, dead before he hit the dirt.
"HUPERT!"
A scream tore through the sky. Queen Elina had seen the Pope fall. Ignoring the black necrotic spears Envy was launching at her back, she dived through the air.
She took several hits to her wings and shoulders, her body tracing a jagged path through the smoke before she skidded to a halt beside Hupert's broken form.
"Oi! Kid! Stay with me! You hear me?!"
Elina cradled the dying Pope. Looking at the man who always had a scripture on his tongue, her voice carried a frantic edge she hadn't felt in decades.
Hupert coughed up a mouthful of crimson. He looked at Elina, then at the six Tier 6 Generals who were now closing in on their position. He offered a weak, rattling smile.
"It seems... the Spirits... were busy elsewhere today..."
Elina gritted her teeth and gently set him down. She raised her longbow, leveling it at the six monsters before her.
In the distance, the common soldiers watched their Kings and their leaders fall one by one. Their numbers were hemorrhaging. In contrast, the enemy only grew. Every fallen comrade stood back up seconds later, their eyes burning with a hollow red light as they turned their blades upon their brothers.
A crushing sense of powerlessness drowned the survivors.
But they did not retreat. This was their choice. This was the battlefield they had stepped onto for the sake of their convictions.
Gripping their weapons with the strength of the doomed, they launched a final, suicidal charge into the infinite ocean of the dead.
A struggle until the final chapter.
The Eye of the Storm.
Skele-Pride flexed his shattered arm, the obsidian bone knitting back together as necrotic Od flooded the fractures. He looked at the stationary figure before him, the Soul Fire in his sockets dimming with a rare touch of respect.
He raised his intact bone blade, preparing to take the human's head as a trophy.
Just then—
A petite silhouette stepped into his path.
It was Alice.
Pride tilted his skull, appearing genuinely perplexed. He could sense zero threat from this human girl.
"Tier 3?" he asked, his voice a flat, hollow rasp in her ear.
Alice didn't answer. Her gaze moved past Pride's shoulder, settling on the man standing behind him.
Her teacher. Altlais.
He still stood perfectly straight. His Holy Sword pointed toward the dirt as if he were merely catching his breath before delivering another world-shattering strike.
But Alice had seen the truth while she was in the air.
Her teacher's eyes, which had once shone like the brightest stars of the Empire, were now hollow. The light was gone.
Altlais was already dead.
Alice's frame shook with a violent tremor, tears spilling uncontrollably from her eyes. But she refused to let a single sob escape her throat.
Pride turned his head, finally noticing Altlais's internal state. So, he is already a corpse.
His interest evaporated. A dead man was not worth another swing of his blade. Pride turned away, walking toward the other sectors where the high-tier battle still raged. There were still living powerhouses to harvest.
In the center of the crater, only Alice and the standing corpse remained.
She walked forward, step by slow, agonizing step, until she stood before her mentor. She reached out, her fingers ghosting over the Holy Sword that still hummed with a fading radiance.
Without his hand to anchor it, the sword lost its final support. It fell with a heavy, metallic clang onto the stone.
Altlais's body followed, pitching forward into the void.
Alice caught him. She held her teacher's cold, heavy frame as she sank to her knees in the center of the cleared battlefield.
Around her, the roar of slaughter reached a fever pitch.
The next moment, a complex magic array ignited in the air directly above her. The Arcane Legion had marked the coordinate. She was locked on.
Alice did nothing. She simply sat there, cradling her teacher in a silent, broken embrace.
A pillar of pure, destructive energy descended from the heavens.
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