Her internal organs felt as if they were instantly ignited, her blood vessels breaking inch by inch only to be forcefully repaired.
The excruciating pain forced a sharp scream from Charlotte, but her eyes were fixed on Annabell in midair, without even a hint of retreat.
‘As long as I can save her… as long as I can pull her out of that icy abyss… even if I’m burned to ashes, I’d gladly accept it!’
The old lady in her jade pendant couldn’t help but let out a silent sigh.
Along with a deafening roar that seemed to tear the world apart, the 【Supergravity Ice Corpse Meteor】 crashed squarely onto the head of the Emperor’s Dragon Soul.
There was no suspense, no miracle.
The guardian dragon soul’s proud magic resistance was completely shattered like paper before absolute mass and extreme cold.
It didn’t even have time to let out a final scream; its massive body exploded in distorted space, scattering into golden mana particles that fell like a rainstorm onto the icy main hall.
“No… impossible… the Royal Family’s trump card… how could it be…”
Charles slumped onto the frost-covered ground, staring blankly at the dissipating golden light, muttering unconsciously.
His faith, his arrogance, crumbled to nothing along with the dragon soul’s fall.
“Your Highness! Run!”
The adviser who had been serving as Charles’s strategist was the first to react.
He abruptly pulled out a scroll radiating intense spatial fluctuations from his chest and crushed it without hesitation.
A silver-white spatial teleportation gate quickly formed behind him.
However, Annabell in midair only gave him a cold glance.
It was a gaze devoid of any human emotion, as if looking at an inanimate object.
She slowly raised a slender finger, its tip aimed at the gate about to take shape.
“【Space Freeze】.”
A crisp freezing sound echoed through the main hall.
The silver-white teleportation gate was instantly coated with a thick layer of frost, then shattered like glass hit by a heavy hammer.
“What?!” The adviser’s eyes widened in terror.
Before he could let out a second cry, a violent spatial storm mixed with extreme cold mana swallowed him whole.
Without even a single drop of blood, that high-rank mage adviser was sliced into a pile of ice shards right before Charles’s eyes.
“Aaaah! Monster! Don’t come near me!”
Charles finally completely broke down. He crawled backward on all fours, a pale yellow liquid flowing down his pant legs onto the ice, instantly freezing into ice.
The temperature in the main hall had dropped to an extremely terrifying freezing point.
Annabell, like an emotionless magic deity, stepped down one by one on an illusory staircase.
With each step she took, the ice beneath her feet spread outward several meters.
Her crimson eyes coldly locked onto the remaining Rosalind and Charles.
This scene was naturally seen by Rosalind, who had long been drawn to Annabell. As the Saintess of the Church, she knew all too well the consequences of Annabell continuing like this.
Now that Charles was no threat, there was no need to let Annabell keep rampaging.
Otherwise, she would definitely die a miserable death!
And the Church’s specialty was purification and healing divine arts, and as a Saintess, she was well-versed in them!
“Annabell! Stop!”
Rosalind forced herself to stand.
She recklessly clasped her hands in front of her chest and loudly chanted the secret art of the Church of Holy Light.
“Holy Light, dispel the haze before us—【Great Purification Spell】!”
A pure, flawless golden pillar of light descended from the sky, precisely enveloping Annabell.
The moment the warm holy light touched her skin, Annabell’s steps abruptly halted.
The pure brutality and crimson in her eyes actually showed a brief flash of struggle and clarity.
‘It’s working!’ A glimmer of joy flashed in Rosalind’s eyes.
But the next second, her face turned completely pale.
Because that fleeting clarity didn’t awaken Annabell’s reason; instead, it thoroughly enraged the destructive instinct of the First Magus King within her.
“Back off, scum!”
Annabell let out an inhuman growl from her throat.
She swung her staff violently, without even half a second of mana gathering, and a crescent-shaped 【Dimensional Wind Blade】 dozens of meters long tore through the void and howled out!
Because of that momentary struggle, the blade’s trajectory deviated slightly, grazing Rosalind’s cheek and cutting off a few strands of her golden hair.
But Charles, hiding behind Rosalind, wasn’t so lucky.
A sickening thud.
“Aaaah~ My hand! My hand!”
Charles let out a pig-like scream.
His right arm, which wore the ‘storage ring,’ was severed at the root! Blood had just gushed out when it was instantly frozen by the surrounding extreme cold into a bizarre blood-red icicle.
The severed arm fell onto the ice with a thud, the storage ring glinting enticingly in the dim light.
Annabell paid no attention to Charles, who was writhing on the ground.
Her gaze slowly swept around, as if losing patience with this cat-and-mouse game.
She held her staff horizontally in front of her chest, and a mana ten or a hundred times more violent than any previous magic began to compress crazily within her.
She was preparing to unleash an ultimate forbidden curse capable of leveling the entire ruins along with everyone.
“All… die.”
Seeing this, Rosalind was utterly despairing and collapsed to the ground.
At that very moment, a dazzling emerald flame suddenly erupted from a corner of the main hall!
That flame not only ignored the extreme cold domain Annabell had laid down, but also carried an immensely reassuring and warm aura, instantly melting the surrounding ice into vapor.
“It worked…”
In the center of the flame, Charlotte slowly opened her eyes.
The once frail girl now seemed reborn. After assimilating the Medicine God soulfire, her destroyed mana circuits had fully regenerated! And her mana was even stronger than before!
She had returned to the rank of Great Mage!
But Charlotte didn’t care at all about the rank of Great Mage. The first thing she did upon opening her eyes was look at Annabell, who was enveloped in a mana storm, preparing for mutual destruction.
“Miss Annabell!”
Charlotte unhesitatingly lunged forward, charging toward that deadly icy storm.
“Girl, are you crazy?! Her high-rank mana field will tear anything that gets close into shreds! Even if you’ve refined the soulfire, you can’t just barge in like that!”
In her mind, the old lady issued a frantic warning.
Charlotte turned a deaf ear.
She was bleeding. She didn’t care about any mana field, any magic common sense. She only saw the most important person standing alone in that icy abyss.
“Push through!”
Charlotte, surrounded by mana, her warm emerald mana like the sharpest blade in the world, forcibly melted a passage through the protective ice storm around Annabell.
The wild mana currents cut Charlotte’s cheeks and tore her clothes, but she didn’t pause at all.
Like a moth diving into a flame, she recklessly broke through the last magical barrier.
Then, in midair.
She opened her arms and tightly hugged that lofty, ice-cold, bloodstained mage girl into her embrace.
“I caught you.”
There was no magic roar, only an extremely soft whisper.