Chapter 85: The World Shall Burn

Chapter 85: The World Shall Burn

Lyman stared fixedly at the silver-haired maiden floating in the air.

The last time they met was on Prison Island. Livia had entered Cape Prison alone to "make contact" with him, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for her destruction of the prison.

She had turned Deputy Captain Edton into a monster in order to free her imprisoned brother. So what was her purpose this time? What nefarious scheme was the Black Sun Cult plotting on elven soil?

He pointed the Blade of Revelation at Livia and asked coldly, "Why is the Black Sun Cult doing all this?"

Livia tilted her head. "Why what?"

"All of this—conspiring with the Holy Councilor, assassinating the Elven Saint, creating human pikes, turning the Verdant Court into this state..."

"Isn't it obvious?" Livia's face seemed to bear the words "Why ask what you already know?" "Of course—to completely destroy the elves."

"...What?" Lyman hadn't expected that answer.

He had assumed that followers of an evil god like the Black Sun Cult must have extremely complex reasons for everything they did—perhaps orchestrating an elaborate sorcery ritual to achieve some twisted goal, just as Cape Prison was a sorcerous device for suppressing an evil god, with all the prisoners serving as components to keep the mechanism running.

Lyman hadn't expected the Black Sun Cult's reasoning to be so simple—they simply wanted to destroy the elven race.

Sometimes the most high-level battles require only the simplest methods. Against an enemy, you just need to destroy them on a physical level.

"What grudge does the Black Sun Cult have against the elves?"

"Oh, no grudge at all. It's just that they might get in the way of our Lord in the future, so we're eliminating this unstable factor in advance." Livia smiled. "The elves may be stubborn, set in their ways, and think they're better than everyone else, but they're actually a formidable army—even if they themselves seem to have forgotten that. A race this ancient is hard to kill from the outside; you have to make them destroy each other."

Her tone was casual, as if she were stating something obvious and self-evident.

But Lyman could tell from her subtle expressions and barely noticeable micro-movements that she had other reasons.

"No, you're after something else, right?" Lyman's gaze landed on the wooden box in her arms. "Is it for that?"

As he did, Livia instinctively clutched the box tighter, which silently confirmed Lyman's guess.

He pressed on: "You conspired with the Holy Councilor for that thing. Once you got what you wanted, you killed him to cover your tracks."

"That's part of it, yeah." Livia admitted frankly.

"Does your Black Sun Cult want to destroy this world?"

In a lot of Earth's stories, destroying the world is always the ultimate goal of villainous dark organizations.

Livia laughed shortly. "Of course not. I'd say it's the exact opposite. The great God of the Black Sun, the one and only True God in this world, has always been about building a better world. Some sacrifices along the way are unavoidable.

"The world will burn with fire, and the elves will serve as kindling. When they're burned up, their ashes will nourish the earth, and from them will grow a more beautiful new world! After all—"

With that, Livia's smile widened even more. She parted her lips and spoke firmly: "Only after darkness can you see light; only after death can there be new life!"

Livia couldn't see Lyman's true face, but Lyman could see Livia perfectly.

The same silver hair, the same crimson eyes—their features were so alike. Anyone who wasn't blind could see the bloodline that tied them together.

Even their clothes were similar. Someone who didn't know better might mistake them for members of the same order.

But Lyman knew very well—just as he knew the sun rises in the east and apples fall from trees—that they were fundamentally different, like day and night, two completely opposite concepts.

They could never reconcile. They were like fire and water, and one day they'd fight to the death.

To free one prisoner, she destroyed an entire prison. To obtain one treasure, she incited an entire race to slaughter each other. For a so-called "new world," she would destroy the entire existing one.

Are you kidding me...?!

This world has plenty of darkness and injustice. Lyman thought of the merfolk hunted as prey, the miners swallowed by the Earth's Maw, the children turned into weapons.

But there were also youths who would turn their own bones into ferry boats, maidens who shattered darkness with flaming iron fists, craftsmen who gave up their futures to build in unknown lands, and villagers who held fast to a vow for a thousand years.

There were those who burned with passion, willing to throw themselves into the fire to light up the world.

A world like this—

"You're absolutely right," Lyman said coldly.

Livia was a little startled. "Oh? You actually agree with the Black Sun Cult's philosophy?"

"Only after death can there be new life, so..." Lyman lunged forward, leaping high off the dragon's back.

His movements were as agile as a dragon's, his black cloak billowing in the wind like the spread wings of a dark raven.

"Then let the Black Sun Cult die first!"

—I don't want it to be destroyed.

[You have completed the mission "Pillar of Faith IV." Please choose one of the following three supernatural abilities as your reward. Please note: your choice cannot be undone. Think carefully about the timing and choose the right reward.]

"Supernatural Ability: Gravity Reversal (B-rank). You live on the earth, yet you can defy its call, reversing gravity's effect on your own body. Newton would scream that physics doesn't exist anymore if he saw you."

"Supernatural Ability: Golden-Tongued Persuader (A-rank). You have a silver tongue that can easily convince others. You're always at ease in debates, effortlessly shooting down opponents. You have an astonishing knack for stirring up others' emotions."

"Supernatural Ability: Rapid Learning (C-rank). You're a master of learning, an expert at solving problems. You can master knowledge and skills faster than others, and you have a photographic memory."

No need to think it over—there's only one ability that's best for fighting Livia right now!

"I choose 'Gravity Reversal'!"

*

Livia watched Mr. Shadow. Like someone diving off a high platform into water, he took a single step off the dragon's back, muttered something, and then his whole body hung suspended in midair.

Oh? Does he have a flying relic or supernatural ability like I do?

Livia raised an eyebrow.

Mr. Shadow paused in midair for a moment, as if he wasn't used to flying. But he quickly got the hang of it. He adjusted his center of gravity, then dove at Livia at breakneck speed.

His dark figure tore through the air like a thrown javelin, kicking up a gale.

The dagger in his hand was a terrifying red, looking less like metal and more like solid crimson light.

Just as the scarlet blade was about to touch Livia's forehead, the silver-haired maiden suddenly retreated with an elegance that defied physics, letting the fatal strike graze right past the tip of her nose.

Her silver hair drifted forward, the crimson dagger flashed past, and a few strands of hair fell in the wind.

"Are you just going to run, Livia?!" Mr. Shadow growled, his assault intensifying instead of letting up.

Livia let out a light laugh. This time, she didn't just dodge.

As she leaned back, her long leg lashed out like a whip at the side of Mr. Shadow's wrist holding the blade.

Clang!

This strike failed to inflict real damage, but it stalled Mr. Shadow's assault for a moment, pushing his blade a few inches off target.

Livia kept her ever-graceful smile, yet her crimson eyes held no trace of mirth, mirroring the man's figure, dark as night.

Seizing that brief opening, she pivoted at the waist and lashed out with another kick, this time aimed at Mr. Shadow's head!

Just as it was about to land, Mr. Shadow plummeted abruptly. Livia's kick met only air, whipping up a violent gust.

Mr. Shadow regained his balance and lunged back at her. The dagger blazed with crimson light, weaving a net of death.

And Livia danced within that blood-red web. She shot upward, dove suddenly, and ghosted around into Mr. Shadow's blind spots.

The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving only the moon and stars to cast their pale light upon them. Their forms collided again and again midair, tangling into a dark vortex.

This was an aerial duel of power and grace, a deathly dance of rage and calm.

Suddenly, a massive shadow surged up from beneath Livia.

A stone dragon lunged upward, jaws gaping wide to bite Livia in half.

The strike caught the Silver-haired Maiden completely off guard. For the first time, panic flickered in her crimson eyes.

She'd been so focused on Mr. Shadow that she'd forgotten the monstrous beast lurking nearby!

At the last second, she twisted with astonishing flexibility, bending her body into an arc midair.

The stone dragon's jaws snapped shut an inch from her back with a sickening crunch of rock.

A hair's breadth more, and she'd have been ripped in half.

Mr. Shadow had clearly foreseen this. As Livia scrambled to dodge the stone dragon, he came down from directly above!

He seized that split-second opening, pouring every ounce of power into a single strike. The crimson dagger shot toward Livia's heart like a blazing comet!

It was a perfect coordination between man and statue!

Death closed in from above and below, sealing off every escape route.

The Silver-haired Maiden's pupils shrank to pinpricks. She wrenched her body aside at the last instant, barely avoiding the fatal strike.

Squelch!

The crimson dagger sank deep into her right shoulder.

The blade was made of some unknown material, cutting through her flesh like butter.

A muffled cry of pain slipped from Livia's lips. She hung in the air, breathing hard, her silver hair plastered to her pale cheeks with sweat.

On one side, Mr. Shadow loomed, brandishing his sinister red blade. On the other, the stone dragon prowled in circles, scales glinting.

She was well and truly cornered.

Livia hadn't expected an ambush on this trip and had brought no relics suited for combat. With her subordinates gone, the only thing she had that might work was...

Her gaze dropped to the wooden box in her arms.

Unsealing the holy relic would let her borrow its power—likely vaporizing Mr. Shadow and the stone dragon in an instant. But what disaster might follow once the relic was freed from its seal, she couldn't say...

Her crimson eyes gleamed with resolve.

Finding this relic was a divine command. If she died here because of it, so be it—that was the gods' will!

With that, Livia threw open the box.

Inside lay several severed pieces of a limb.

Any anatomist would recognize these as pieces of an adult male's right leg, snapped into several sections. Two still had scraps of flesh clinging to them; the rest were bare bone.

The instant the lid came off, a sinister, overwhelming force rippled outward from the box.

Livia's veins felt like they were on fire. Immense power flooded her limbs, surging through her blood, and she let out a roar of pure joy.

"This is the end, Mr. Shadow!"

She thrust her hand toward the dark figure above, lightning crackling at her fingertips. With the holy relic's godlike power, even the elements themselves bent to her will!

Then she heard a strange hum.

Buzz... something was buzzing.

It took Livia a few seconds for her fevered mind to clear. She realized the relic in her arms was trembling.

It seemed to sense something, radiating a frenzied joy.

The next moment, Mr. Shadow hurled something skyward. Then he ripped off his black cloak in one swift motion.

Underneath the cloak wasn't a human body—it was a bizarre wooden puppet.

—Was Mr. Shadow not even alive? Or was his real body somewhere else, puppeteering this shell from afar?

Before Livia could think further, the tattered black cloak spun in the air, swelled, and morphed into a new figure in black.

Under his hood, there was no face—just emptiness.

The black-clad man stretched out his hand toward the relic: "Come back!"

The relic tore itself from her grasp!

Livia clutched the box, but it was useless—the severed limbs floated up into the sky and began to reassemble themselves. Shattered bones knit back together, fragments snapped into place, and scraps of flesh began to regrow...

The black-clad man soared toward the relic. His cloak billowed outward, swallowing the fully restored limb.

"Thanks, lady of the Black Sun Cult, for giving back what's mine!"

The black-clad man burst into wild laughter, the sound booming across the sky and earth.

Livia's mind spun. How had he taken her relic? She'd already bonded with its power—unless she died, it shouldn't have left her control...

"Who are you?!" Livia's lovely face contorted in rage for the first time.

"Go ask your god yourself!"

With that, the black-clad man morphed into a savage bird and dove straight at Livia.

The stone dragon, Mr. Shadow, and that masked stranger... Livia was completely surrounded!

She clenched her fists, burning with humiliation she hadn't felt in years... No, the last time she'd felt this powerless rage was a lifetime ago. She'd never imagined she'd feel this seething, helpless fury again!

"I'll remember every one of you. Next time, you'll regret ever crossing the Black Sun Cult!"

Livia pulled a golden glass bead on a cord from inside her collar.

Just as the black-clad figure closed to within an arm's reach, she crushed the bead in one swift motion.

The silver-haired maiden's body instantly crystallized into a transparent glass statue, and a second later, it exploded with a resounding boom.

Countless thumbnail-sized crystalline shards burst outward, refracting starlight and moonlight into a brief, ethereal crystal mist.

Her clothes drifted away with the wind. No blood, no organs—just shimmering crystalline fragments scattering through the air like a rain of ice crystals, drifting down in a gentle cascade.

Livia had vanished.

*

Lyman stood frozen, completely unable to process what had just happened. The stone dragon looked up in confusion, its massive head swaying left and right as if sniffing the lingering traces of strange energy in the air, but it could no longer sense the enemy's life force.

"Livia?" he tried calling out.

The crystal fragments scattered swiftly in the wind. No one answered.

Lunast flew to his side and, with his one hand, pulled off the "Shadow Play" and tossed it back to Lyman.

He rolled his eyes—those silver pupils, like molten, unpolished mithril, narrowing as he scanned the empty air where Livia had vanished, and the fading crystal fragments.

"She escaped," the black-haired man explained. "That was a relic that lets you swap places with a distant crystal statue—kind of like General Shevard's proxy ability. It probably only teleports her body, not her belongings, which is why she saved it until her life was on the line."

Lyman draped the "Shadow Play" over himself, once again becoming the enigmatic, inscrutable Mr. Shadow.

"Don't go stripping my clothes off!" he snapped, glaring.

"What was I supposed to do—I don't have any clothes!" Lunast protested indignantly.

"Then go naked!" Lyman shot back.

Just then, he noticed Lunast had acquired something new.

His head bobbed in the air, his thick black hair like torn scraps of night sky, whipping wildly in the high-altitude winds, lending a wild, untamed edge to his handsome features.

His right hand floated beside his head. An arm had no business being there, and the sight made Lyman instinctively queasy.

And clutched in that right hand was... a right leg.

"...What is that?"

"One of my legs. Didn't expect the elves to have sealed it away. Those pointy-ears really know how to stash things. If your sister hadn't pulled it out, I might never have found it."

Lunast grinned, swinging the leg around like some kind of weapon. Strictly speaking, it could indeed serve as a bludgeon. Anyone hit by it would take far more psychological damage than physical.

"...Luna, stop playing with your own leg." Lyman looked away, pained.

"Why can't I play with my own leg? Hehe, it's so fun—I could play with it all year long."

Lyman rolled his eyes hard, then darted forward, grabbing Lunast's hand and leg and shoving them into the Divine Casket.

Lunast pouted. His face was nearly perfect—chiseled features, a jawline sharp as a knife—yet he was always making weird faces, with zero regard for his image.

"Speaking of which, do you know the god the Black Sun Cult worships?" Lyman asked.

Earlier, Lunast had yelled at Livia, "Go ask your god!"—which suggested the Black Sun Cult's deity might know who he was.

"I was pretty famous a thousand years ago. If the Black Sun Cult's god is old enough, they ought to know my name." Lunast preened smugly.

"So do you know what god the Black Sun Cult worships?"

"I'm not entirely sure." Lunast frowned. "I've been in pieces for a thousand years. That's plenty of time for a true god to fall into corruption, get tainted by some outer-world evil deity, or have their power and divine seat usurped by another god. The gods I once knew might not even be themselves anymore."

He lowered his gaze, all traces of joy gone, a flicker of sorrow rippling through his silver eyes.

His dejected look stirred something uneasy in Lyman—a strange sense of kinship. Maybe because they were both evil gods, they felt for each other's kind.

"Don't mope like that—you don't look like a god," Lyman said. "You've got another piece of your body back, right? Maybe soon you'll find them all, and then you can reclaim your divine seat..."

He paused, thinking, "...and help me reclaim mine!"

"Well said—a perfectly useless statement!" Lunast suddenly perked up again, as if his sorrow had all been an act.

He zipped excitedly around Lyman, chattering nonstop: "So what do we do next?"

Lyman stuffed him back into the Divine Casket. "Off to the Verdant Court!"

*

The battle at the Verdant Court was already finished.

The stone dragon strode proudly through the remains of the flesh monstrosity. The stone-carved elven warriors stood in silent, loyal guard over the withered sacred tree. Those who had fled to safety were drifting back, staring in shock and unease at the blood-soaked plaza around the sacred tree.

Lyman rode the stone dragon down to the edge of the plaza. The thick stench of blood hit him like a wall, nearly making him puke on the spot.

The ground was littered with shredded flesh, blood pooling into streams that made sticky, squelching sounds as the stone statues waded through. Many of the stone warriors still had bits of entrails hanging off them. The Verdant Court had become a sea of red—Lyman felt like he'd stepped inside some creature's body, surrounded by rotting flesh on all sides. And the sacred tree, charred and withered, stood like a thorn jammed into the flesh.

"Those chunks of flesh... they look like the monsters that attacked Harbor Prison," Lyman said telepathically.

"I did sense traces of my residual divine power coming off them," Lunast said, his voice turning grave and deep.

"The Black Sun Cult again..." Lyman's gaze darkened.

Lyman spotted Sylvira leading a squad of court soldiers, directing them to keep order and register those in need of aid.

She still wore her tattered battle robes, her face crusted with dried blood, her hair matted with gore—she looked nothing like the noble, holy saint she was supposed to be.

But the people around her regarded her with even more reverence than before. If they'd once respected her for her title as saint, now they feared her for who she actually was.

"Ah, Mr. Shadow." Sylvira nodded politely. "Did you catch the Black Sun Cult member?"

Lyman shook his head. "She got away."

"I heard the Black Sun Cult took one of our elven sacred relics..."

"I've already recovered it and offered it to my master. It's very important to him."

Sylvira's lips parted slightly, then she nodded without a word. Now that she too was an Apostle of the Lord of the Abyss, if the deity demanded a sacred relic, all she could do was hand it over.

"There's just one thing I don't get," Lyman said. "How did that sacred relic end up with the elves?"

Sylvira thought for a moment. "I once read in the records left by the previous Holy Son. A divine war occurred a thousand years ago, and the remains of one of the gods fell near the Verdant Court. It would cause irreversible, terrible mutations to the surrounding environment, so the previous Holy Son and the Holy Councilors of the time joined forces to seal it away.

"I've heard that someone once extracted a 'holy blood' from the relic—those who consumed it gained extraordinary physical prowess, but it easily brought side effects. So the previous Holy Son ordered a ban on producing more of it, and all existing 'holy blood' was sealed away. But I never expected..."

She gazed sorrowfully at the corpses strewn across the ground. How those deformed monsters had come to be was now painfully obvious.

So that's how it is, Lyman thought. He had previously assumed the Black Sun Cult had obtained a portion of Lunast's remains and extracted the "holy blood" from it. Now it seemed they had acquired it from the elves instead.

"That's somewhat good news," Lunast said. "Since the Black Sun Cult had to obtain the 'holy blood' from the elves, it means they don't have my remains—at least not yet."

Sylvira looked at Lyman, "Is the sacred relic of great significance to the Lord of the Abyss?"

"It is the remains of an ancient deity. My master is collecting it," Lyman said vaguely.

Sylvira did not press further. As everyone knew, some things in the world were better left unknown, especially matters concerning the gods. Sometimes, the more you knew, the sooner you died.

"The Lord of the Abyss takes an interest in the elven race, not only to counter the Black Sun Cult, but also to vie for that sacred relic... Truly an unfathomable, mighty being. Such a meticulous, two-birds-with-one-stone plan—even I couldn't have dreamed it up."

Ha, hilarious—honestly, I couldn't have either. Lyman thought to himself. But he did not correct Sylvira; let her think what she wanted.

A commotion arose not far away. A large crowd of commoners dragged the Holy Councilors out of the Great Council Hall.