Chapter 215: Heaven and Earth Shake
"Hmph!" Stelle flicked her arm, attempting a dramatic sword flourish. The triumphant look of someone who had finally gotten her revenge was plastered all over her face. "That's what you get for calling me weak!"
However, the moment she moved, a disconcerting lightness bloomed in her hand. The sensation was utterly wrong. Confused, she glanced down... only to see that the magnificent crystalline sword she had been wielding was now just a hilt.
The blade itself... had been completely annihilated in that single, overwhelming strike. It had disintegrated into a cloud of fundamental particles, dissipated by an ultimate power it could not possibly bear.
Stelle: "!!!"
She froze solid. The proud smirk on her face went rigid, then crumbled into an expression of pure, panicked agony.
'It's over, it's over!'she screamed internally.'I got too carried away showing off! This... this sword wasn't even mine! It was March's gift for becoming her disciple! How am I ever going to explain this?!'
Her movements as stiff as a rusted automaton, she slowly turned her head toward March 7th, forcing a fawning smile that looked far worse than a grimace of tears.
March 7th was also staring, dumbfounded, at the naked hilt in Stelle's hand. Her small face immediately puffed up with incandescent rage. She clenched her fists, shaking them furiously at Stelle from across the battlefield, silently mouthing each word with venomous clarity: "Stelle! We'll... settle... this... later!"
Stelle's neck shrank into her shoulders. Knowing she was entirely in the wrong, she didn't dare make a sound.
Just as everyone thought the battle was finally over and allowed themselves a moment to relax, Paimon frowned, her voice laced with confusion. "That's strange... Nikador has been defeated, so why... hasn't the Kindling appeared?"
Her words had barely left her lips when a terrifying anomaly erupted.
From the massive Hollow torn into Nikador's chest by the Golden Light of Demon Subjugation, and from every crack spiderwebbing across its titanic body, the Black Tide energy surged. The power, which had been temporarily suppressed and balanced by the Optimization Power, now burst forth like a dam collapsing under unimaginable pressure.
This time, there was no reason, no Optimization Power to restrain or balance its ravenous nature.
The dark, materialized cubes of energy erupted and spread with an unmatched speed and density, rapidly filling the Hollow in its chest before spilling out to cover its entire body.
In the space of a few short breaths, Nikador's colossal form was completely transformed, becoming a being of pure, deep, despair-inducing black. It had been utterly corroded and devoured by the Black Tide.
The aura that once held a hint of sorrow and tragic majesty was gone, replaced by the purest, most primal hunger for destruction and madness.
"ROAR—!!!"
A completely different roar, one devoid of any reason and filled with only endless savagery, tore from the throat of the black Titan.
Everyone's expression changed drastically. Though physically and mentally exhausted, they gripped their weapons without a second thought, forcing their battered bodies to rally. They prepared to face this final, and most terrifying, new form.
"How does it still have more forms?!" Stelle couldn't help but exclaim, feeling utterly drained. "Is there no end to this?!"
Yet, the completely corrupted Nikador seemed to have lost all interest in the small figures on the ground.
It abruptly raised its head, its dark, vacant eyes fixing upon the enormous Heaven's Scourge suspended high above Hanging Edge City. At the tip of the gigantic sword, a terrifying energy was rapidly gathering and compressing at an impossible rate, emitting dreadful fluctuations capable of annihilating everything.
Its target was clear: the distant Sky Father—Kephale.
The charge was complete. Destruction was about to descend. In the next instant, it seemed the city would be wiped from existence, its people turned to dust.
At this critical juncture, Zhongli, who had been standing silently at the edge of the Stone Stele array as if detached from the entire battlefield, finally moved.
He showed no sign of urgency. He simply took a calm step forward, his golden, draconic eyes peacefully observing the giant sword poised to deliver its judgment. With his arms crossed over his chest, he calmly uttered two words:
"Planet Befall."
Buzz—
The sky above Hanging Edge City seemed to be violently torn asunder by an invisible, giant hand.
Space itself hummed under the strain. Then, several colossal, mountain-sized Stone Steles materialized from thin air. They glowed with a heavy, amber divine light, their surfaces inscribed with ancient, geometric patterns. Their sheer scale and might were easily comparable to the Heaven's Scourge itself.
Like meteors tearing through the firmament, they descended with unmatched weight and majesty, striking the body of the Heaven's Scourge with pinpoint precision.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE—
The deafening roar seemed to tear at everyone's eardrums. The entirety of Hanging Edge City trembled violently from the devastating collision.
After all, the Heaven's Scourge was a gargantuan object controlled by an insane, corrupted Nikador. It didn't know how to evade, and its colossal sword body made it far too clumsy to do so anyway.
Under the sudden, precise assault, the massive blade of the Heaven's Scourge tilted violently. Its tip, which had been aimed at the distant Kephale, was abruptly wrenched sideways, pointing obliquely toward the boundless sky.
And in the very same instant it was deflected—
WHOOSH—
A thick, dark-red beam of light, containing the ultimate destructive energy, erupted from the tip of the Heaven's Scourge. It shot straight into the heavens, instantly piercing and evaporating the clouds, leaving a terrifying trail burned across the sky before finally disappearing into the void.
With its strike having missed and its energy depleted, the massive body of the Heaven's Scourge let out a series of grating, metallic wails. It finally lost its power of suspension and plummeted toward the quarry area of Hanging Edge City like a broken mountain.
BOOM—
Another devastating roar echoed out, accompanied by a towering cloud of dust that blotted out the sun.
However, the terrifying shockwave that everyone expected to engulf the entire city never appeared.
It turned out that the numerous barren star steles previously arranged by Lumine in the quarry now formed a natural buffer, greatly weakening the impact of the Heaven's Scourge's fall. By the time the residual shockwave spread to the Suspended Edge Colosseum, its power was less than a tenth of its original force. It merely caused an imperceptible ripple in the Stone Stele array set up by Zhongli before quietly dissipating.
All of this happened with stunning speed. From the moment Zhongli made his move to the fall of the Heaven's Scourge, only a matter of seconds had passed.
Inside the Colosseum, a deep silence reigned.
Aside from Lumine and Paimon, who had already witnessed some of Zhongli's power (though even this scale far exceeded their daily understanding), all the other members of the chat group were utterly dumbfounded, their faces frozen in disbelief.
This was the first time they had personally witnessed Zhongli truly "take action."
Previously, his setting up of the Stone Stele array and providing the Jade Shield, while deep and powerful, had mostly showcased his defensive and control abilities. But the immense power he had just displayed—summoning giant steles comparable to the Heaven's Scourge itself and effortlessly resolving a world-ending crisis—completely redefined their understanding of the strength of this seemingly gentle and refined consultant from the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.
"Oh... my... god..." March 7th murmured, her grip on Sode no Shirayuki going slack.
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