Chapter 1000
Chapter 1000
Chapter 1000
With an ear-splitting roar, Lokta assumed the shape of a Blue Dragon and unleashed a torrent of sub-zero breath, freezing both the fortification walls and the advancing battalion of knights rushing Evelyn into towering monuments of solid ice.
[Uncle.]
Evelyn projected her intent through a mana transmission toward Lokta, who was currently soaring into the upper atmosphere to evade incoming ballistic spells and bladed attacks.
[Please refrain from causing excessive casualties among the common folk of this realm.]
It was undeniable that the inhabitants of the Lothair Kingdom had once thrown stones and cast vile slurs at Para, yet they had merely been led astray by the monarchy and the aristocracy. Her campaign was an act of vengeance, not indiscriminate slaughter. The edge of her wrath belonged solely to the primary architects of her misery: the monarch, the Sage, and the ruling lords.
[Understood, child.]
Lokta gave an imperceptible dip of his massive draconic head.
[I have already commanded our allies to hold back from needless bloodshed, so cast those worries aside.]
He urged her to remain entirely centered on the duel before her, puncturing his words by driving his massive talons into a fresh wave of oncoming soldiers. Those caught beneath Lokta’s crushing tread were reduced to mangled scrap metal, casually hurled into the far corners of the courtyard.
“Wiping the Lothair Kingdom from the map…”
Observing the monarch collapse in his final throes of decrepitude, the Sage wore a condescending smirk.
“I regret to inform you that terminating that withered fossil will not cause the Lothair Kingdom to cease existing.”
He dismissed the idea with a shake of his head, remarking that the underlying foundation of an entire realm does not simply dissolve so easily.
“A chief counselor referring to his sovereign as a withered fossil…”
Evelyn arched a brow in disdain at the Sage.
“It seems your mask has finally fallen off entirely.”
She let out a dry scoff, having grasped from the very start that the Sage was the true puppeteer governing both the crown and the nation.
“You speak the truth; an established domain does not vanish overnight. Be that as it may…”
Her gaze hardened into glacial indifference as a grim smirk formed at the corner of her lips.
“Once the ruler, every corrupt noble, and you yourself are dead and buried, a new reality will inevitably emerge.”
She openly gave voice to the seething fury she had harbored for over a decade, resolutely pledging the complete ruin of this corrupt realm.
“M-Merlin…”
“What madness is this!”
“You were never someone capable of such horror!”
The court spellcasters, who only a short while ago had lavished her with praise and congratulations, were now screaming in panic with trembling hands.
“Merlin!”
“What have you brought upon us!”
“Commanding swarms of abominations and dragons? You hold no ordination under the Dragon of Destruction, so how can this be!”
The companions who had gradually broken through her guarded exterior and earned her camaraderie wailed in desperation, pleading for her sanity to return.
“Treacherous harlot!”
“To think you were filthy Para blood all along…”
“Vile fiend! Have you harbored your true heritage beneath our noses just to execute this vendetta!”
“Execute her! Cut that demon down this instant!”
The instructors who had guided her mystical arts within the tower and welcomed her into aristocratic society now spat venomous curses in her direction.
“You are entirely correct.”
Evelyn adopted an overt sneer, masking the subtle turmoil beneath her composed exterior.
“Every step was meticulously calculated. I concealed my roots and embedded myself within the den of my enemies, gaining strength solely for retribution. For the sake of my slaughtered people, who were wiped out without ever understanding why!”
She slammed her heel against the ground, openly professing that her entire existence had been dedicated to this single purpose.
“Back away if your lives mean anything to you. As an outcast who dared to ridicule your kingdom…”
Calming the tremor in her spirit, she locked her blazing eyes upon the Sage.
“I intend to slaughter that abomination and shatter this wretched realm to dust.”
Channeling wild currents of mana into her hand, she recalled the image of her mother violently caving in the Sage’s countenance.
“Your progress is truly remarkable. The bitter rains of a blood feud invariably nourish exceptional sprouts.”
The Sage merely curved his mouth into an unfazed grin, entirely untroubled by her lethal glare.
“Even so, a decade is merely the blink of an eye. Even a prodigy cannot bridge every chasm in such brief years.”
He raised an arm with languid ease, and a brilliant radiance blossomed forth, engulfing Merlin’s form with terrifying speed. It was a spell far too rapid for seasoned swordsmen to perceive, but Evelyn anticipated the trajectory effortlessly, fanning out her fingers and rallying her core energy.
The power coalescing around Evelyn’s hands manifested as layered bulwarks of blazing fire and biting rime, neutralizing and engulfing the Sage’s radiant assault entirely.
The blinding bombardment dissolved into vapor before ever grazing her skin.
“To completely cancel out kinetic shock through elemental equilibrium… a fascinating technique indeed.”
Murmuring his admiration, he touched his fingers in tandem. Arcane resonance erupted from the tiles beneath his feet and swept outward in a wide radius. An unseen, stifling force seized the atmosphere, bearing down upon Evelyn with enough pressure to pulverize her flesh.
“Indeed, I remember falling victim to this exact pressure once.”
Despite the crushing gravity assaulting every inch of her frame, Evelyn’s faint smile never wavered.
“Your repertoire has grown painfully stagnant.”
She had faced this exact incantation a decade ago, back when Lokta had carried her away in a desperate escape. The memory was carved deep into her mind.
“Just like my mother before me, I do not stumble into the same trap twice.”
Evelyn shaped her gathered mana into an impossibly razor-thin edge, slicing straight through the invisible nexus of the spell. The suffocating atmospheric compression vanished like smoke under the ferocious cut of her mana blade.
“What?”
The Sage’s brow furrowed, caught entirely off guard.
“This is how it is done.”
Evelyn smiled serenely as she brought her palms together, provoking the latent ambient energy into a violent surge that coalesced into translucent bindings around the Sage.
“What sort of sorcery…”
His eyes widened in shock as the spectral chains tightened with crushing force, shattering his collarbones and ribs. Internal organs ruptured and skeletal structures turned to dust in an instant, leaving the Sage dangling limply in midair like a dangling corpse.
Evelyn shut her grip tight, and the Sage’s shredded form disintegrated like withered foliage, tumbling into the mire of blood below.
She instantly blanketed the remains with cold blue flames, charring every remnant of flesh to prevent any chance of spontaneous restoration.
“Ugh…”
“The… the Sage fell so effortlessly…”
“This cannot be real!”
Witnessing the blazing wreckage of the Sage, the surrounding knights and aristocrats shrieked in horror. It was beyond their comprehension that the peerless figure they revered could be dismantled so swiftly.
“I suggest you direct your terror toward your own fates rather than mourning that monster.”
Evelyn dispersed her gathered energy into the sky. Beams of azure light bridged like celestial constellations, plunging through the torsos of the nearby nobility and military elite.
“No!”
“B-block the strikes!”
“Deploy your aura reserves immediately!”
The soldiers made frantic attempts to guard themselves, but her magic far outstripped their defensive capacity, easily piercing their protective auras and shredding their throats and chests.
“How can an Archmage possess this caliber of destructive might…”
“She must be drawing power from the nether realms! It is unnatural otherwise!”
“She is a devil…”
“We should have wiped out every single Para down to the infants…”
“Fiendish mongrels. The Sage spoke nothing but truth when he declared the Para to be demons incarnate…”
The dying lords and warriors perished spitting vitriol at Evelyn, maintaining to their last breath that their prior atrocities were justified.
“M-Merlin. Even with the horrors your clan endured, this senseless slaughter will right no wrongs!”
“He speaks the truth! This will only spawn an endless cycle of torment!”
“This is unadulterated butchery! Call an end to this!”
“Drive back these savage beasts! You heartless fiend!”
The kingdom’s onlookers vacillated between prostrating themselves in frantic pleas for mercy and screaming curses at her back. A wave of disgust rose within her chest. The very hypocrites who had looked away while harmless Para were butchered now wailed pathetically when the flames finally reached their own doorsteps. Such foul duplicity was laughable in its depravity.
“If that is what you believe…”
Evelyn stepped deliberately across the gore-soaked earth, nodding in grim agreement.
“Then a devil I shall be. It was my will that brought forth these hordes and agitated the forces storming your gates.”
To this moment, she had targeted only those tied to the eradication of her kin. While some innocent lives might inevitably be caught in the crossfire, she accepted the title of a monster, knowing there was no turning back from the path she had carved.
“Yet do not forget that your own hands summoned this demon into your world.”
Her hands flickered, severing the windpipes of the sneering aristocrats whose double standards still dripped from their lips. Right at that moment, the Sage tore himself free from the azure inferno, once again restored, idly rolling his shoulders.
‘He has returned to life.’
The sight did not startle her. She had already deduced his nature after remembering that his core reservoir of power had remained entirely undiminished even when her mother had crushed his skull to powder.
“You have indeed evolved.”
The Sage remarked smoothly, maintaining his unruffled veneer.
“Yet in the grand scheme, you will meet the exact same end. Identical to your mother’s demise.”
With an icy smirk, he snapped his fingers. His mystical power snaked deep into the flagstones, prompting an enormous botanical monstrosity to burst forth in the heart of the capital. The titanic tendrils of the colossal flora seized the beasts and fighters breach-charging the outer barriers, compressing them into ruined pulps of sinew and gore.
Without pausing, the Sage called forth legions of crimson-skinned abominations directly from the heaps of corpses, creating a barricade to halt the foreign monsters’ advance.
“Praise the heavens!”
“Lord Sage!”
“Deliver us from ruin!”
The city dwellers began chanting his name, deliberately looking past the macabre spectacle of his resurrection. In their panic, they had practically crowned him their new sovereign on the spot.
“To be frank, that burden was becoming somewhat tedious…”
The Sage dropped his voice to a low murmur meant exclusively for Evelyn’s ears.
“You have my gratitude for resolving it on my behalf.”
With a flick of his finger, a bloody rupture burst through the throat of the ruler standing behind Evelyn, spraying crimson across the stone.
“Guhk…”
The dying ruler stretched a desperate hand toward the Sage before his vitality collapsed entirely, tumbling to the floor. The greedy sovereign who had chased perpetual youth met an end far more pathetic than ordinary men.
“So consuming this kingdom was your objective from the very beginning.”
Evelyn curled her lip in contempt as she glanced down at the ruined corpse of the king.
“Your efforts are entirely wasted. This realm will be reduced to ash before this day concludes.”
Observing the gigantic vine structures coiling skyward toward Lokta, she inscribed a glyph into the air, summoning a sudden cascade of pristine snowflakes. The instant the fragile crystalline frost touched the towering tendrils, the gargantuan flora—rivaling the royal castle itself in scale—was instantaneously encased in solid ice.
“I have harvested more than enough public adoration…”
A dark smirk surfaced on the Sage’s lips as he crossed his forefingers.
“It is time we commence in earnest.”
Acknowledging that the true battle had arrived, he threw wide the gates of his conceptual domain. The firmament tore apart, allowing ancient figures of legend to step forth into reality.
Shinryeo, who had ascended to divine heights through pure martial mastery; Yeomra, who traversed the abyssal domain clad only in mortal flesh; and Jecheon, whose celestial cudgel had allegedly fractured the heavens themselves—all leveled their arms toward Evelyn, their eyes burning with a dreadful crimson light.
Simultaneously, cavernous fissures split the bedrock, disgorging the seven arch-fiends and primeval terrors from the lower depths. It appeared as though every apocalyptic fable ever recorded was converging upon this single coordinate. Beyond initiating this grand-scale phenomenon, the Sage had simultaneously primed the swiftest application of light sorcery, intent on obliterating Evelyn without leaving a single trace behind.
‘Illusionary constructs, yet deadly all the same.’
Evelyn aligned her fingers, synchronizing the rhythm of her inner life force with the boundless currents of the world. The exact millisecond her intent merged with the unified thread of mana, the horde of mythological entities and primeval terrors storming her position was cleanly split down the center, as though an immaculate white path had been inscribed through their midst.
Spatial manipulation. Originally utilized as a repositioning spell to traverse distance, she had refined it into a devastating severance art capable of carving through reality itself.
Positioned behind the tidal wave of manifested horrors, the Sage found his torso sheared clean in two before his mind could even register the strike.
“Sp-spatial dissection?”
Gasping for breath, the Sage stared in horror at the void carved through both his midsection and the fabric of the atmosphere behind him. Yet, almost instantly, his physical form began knitting backward, as if unwinding the march of time itself.
“What…”
“Is that… the Sage?”
Even the watching spectators began to perceive the grotesque, unnatural cadence of his survival, their jaws slackening in growing dread.
“Be at peace. I shall cleanse this wicked spirit from our presence without delay.”
The Sage offered a placating gesture, flashing a confident smile, only to freeze stiff in place.
“What?”
His eyes bulged outward as he realized the pinky finger on his right hand was completely absent.
“Is this the piece you are missing?”
Evelyn wore a mocking grin, casually turning what appeared to be his severed finger between her knuckles.
“The secret to your persistent survival is finally laid bare to me.”
The Sage had layered a stasis charm to preserve his biological threshold an instant before fatal damage, operating it in concert with accelerated restoration arts to feign the spectacle of infinite rebirth. To an untrained observer it seemed an act of godhood, yet stripped of its facade, it was nothing more than an elaborate trick.
“You wretch…”
The Sage’s glare turned venomous as he watched his finger dissolve into liquid ash within the aura of Evelyn’s magic.
“How refreshing. You have finally discarded that sanctimonious, respectful tone.”
Evelyn tilted her head, signaling her approval of his slip.
“Listening to you feign courtly etiquette while harboring such putrid filth was thoroughly sickening.”
She sneered, dismissing him with an icy tilt of her head.
“…I will tear you apart.”
Trembling in a fit of raw indignation, the Sage clasped his hands together to weave a twin matrix of arcane circles and divine incantations. As the firmament split and the bedrock threatened to collapse, Evelyn joined her palms as well, manifesting her own design.
“That…”
Vast arrays of radiant sigils unfurled behind Evelyn, spreading outward in the silhouette of towering butterfly wings.
“That declaration belongs to me.”
With an imperious wave of her wrist, devastating high-tier enchantments erupted from the celestial wings, cascading over the Sage in an unrelenting bombardment. Though he raised layers of energy barriers and invoked runic barricades to withstand the onslaught, her barrage showed no sign of faltering.
Inevitably, the Sage’s wards buckled under the ceaseless pressure, allowing Evelyn’s concentrated fury to crash directly upon his physical vessel.
His limbs were torn asunder, his lower body was obliterated into red mist, and a gaping chasm was carved through the center of his torso.
“Guh-aaah…”
He fought desperately to initiate his regenerative spell, but Evelyn surged her own mana into the wounds, suffocating his cellular recovery. She strode calmly toward the ruined figure squirming upon the stone.
“A decade might seem like a mere passing season to an immortal fiend, but to an orphan bound solely to the promise of vengeance, those ten years were an eternity in purgatory.”
Exhaling a long, weary breath, she aimed her index finger squarely at his shattered brow.
“I would gladly prolong your torment, but knowing the tricks a monster like you holds, taking chances is a luxury I cannot afford…”
She prepared to finalize the spatial severance and end his existence then and there, when without warning, the silhouette of a golden-haired woman with crimson eyes, trailing a familiar, delicate scent, materialized directly above the dying Sage.
“…Mother?”
Standing right before her was the golden-haired, red-eyed form of Cela. She gazed upon Evelyn with the exact tenderness she had shown during their heartbreaking parting. This was no mystical fabrication or phantasmal projection. The presence was unmistakably Cela.
“Mother!”
Canceling her spatial spell, Evelyn rushed toward the figure of Cela. Standing in front of the beloved maternal figure she had yearned for in every waking and dreaming moment, all tactical caution vanished from her mind.
“H-hold on, I will sever the bindings right now!”
Just as Evelyn reached out to dismantle the mana tether anchoring Cela to the Sage’s core,
[Step back!]
Before Lokta’s panicked roar could finish echoing across the clearing, a pale, blood-slicked hand erupted through the center of Evelyn’s stomach.
“Ah…”
Evelyn slowly lowered her gaze, turning to look past her shoulder. The Sage, having somehow slipped behind her blind spot, had selectively reformed only his right arm to run her through from behind.
“Haaah… preserving that husk truly turned out to be an inspired decision.”
Exhaling a ragged breath of exhaustion, the Sage murmured about his fortune in keeping Cela’s remains intact.
“Kuh…”
Evelyn gritted her teeth against the agony, staring at the limb protruding through her midsection.
“Did I not remark that offspring always walk the path of their sires? The final outcome remains precisely the same.”
Assuming the struggle had reached its conclusion, the Sage smiled faintly as his ruined anatomy resumed its rapid restoration.
“…”
Cela wrapped both arms firmly around Evelyn, locking her in place. The embrace was freezing, confirming beyond doubt that she was embracing a lifeless relic. Even so, the faint, comforting perfume drifting from the strands of her hair was enough to vividly summon the warmest memories of her youth.
“Mother…”
Evelyn returned Cela’s embrace with both arms, her expression softening into a peaceful, unblemished smile.
“I thank you. And I beg your forgiveness.”
It appeared she would fail to honor the final vow they had shared. An unprecedented, apocalyptic density of mana began to coalesce around Evelyn’s clenched hands.
“W-wait! Cease this at once!”
Perceiving an astronomical surge of power that defied all comprehension and control, the Sage cried out in pure terror.
“We shall descend to the grave together.”
Carrying Evelyn’s final thought, a blinding crimson deluge consumed the entire Lothair Kingdom.
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