Nightmare Graveyard.
This place wasn’t so much a graveyard as it was a wound—forgotten by the world and left to rot.
There was no wind, only eternal twilight and dead silence.
A Blood Moon hung high in the gray-purple sky, casting an ominous cold glow like a bizarre eyeball.
On the ground, long-dead twisted trees stood like skeletal remains writhing in their death throes. Countless broken ancient weapons lay scattered across the earth, as if still echoing the curses and wails of their dying masters.
Faint whispers drilled into the ears from every direction, as if countless spirits murmured of their endless torment.
Any sane creature who set foot here would be driven mad by the sheer malice within three seconds.
Yet Laxana was in her element.
The purple-black energy around her body merged perfectly with the atmosphere of this place.
The curses potent enough to corrode souls and the whispers of the dead were anything but torment to her—they were the most beautiful symphony, making the power within her boil and her spirit burn ever brighter.
Behind the possessed female mage floated two figures: the unconscious Astreia and Wendy, sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the fate that awaited them.
Soon, Laxana reached the center of the graveyard.
There stood an altar that seemed to have been built long ago, forged entirely from the fused bones of some colossal creature. The stark white bone surfaces were covered in strange natural patterns, and vicious bone spikes jutted skyward, pointing straight at the Blood Moon above.
Above the altar, a slowly rotating vortex hovered in midair. Negative Energy, dense enough to be nearly tangible, converged here into a sea.
This was the perfect stage prepared for the [Eternal Bond].
Laxana casually tossed Astreia onto the cold bone altar.
The black handwritten notebook automatically floated up from her side, hovering in midair.
Rustle. The pages turned on their own, finally stopping at the page radiating eerie blood-red text.
[Eternal Bond].
On the page, those writhing ancient characters seemed to catch the scent of flesh and blood, growing ever more active.
Laxana raised her wrist. The nails on her other hand suddenly lengthened and turned black, and without hesitation, she slashed open a gash across her wrist.
The blood that flowed out already shimmered with an ominous purple-black hue.
Drip… She walked to the edge of the altar, bent down, and began drawing an extremely complex Magic Inscription on the bone-paved ground with her own blood.
Just then, in the sky not far from the altar, a sudden crack split through the air like a mirror shattering.
A distorted spatial rift was forcibly torn open, and the figures of Layana and Aurelia were violently hurled out from within.
Thud! They tumbled several rolls across the bone-littered ground before barely managing to stop.
The Nightmare Graveyard’s chaotic Magic Power had severely interfered with the stability of the Spatial Teleportation. Even Layana, a master of Spatial Magic, couldn’t achieve precise positioning; her landing posture was barely better than face-planting.
Aurelia braced herself against the ground, her head spinning.
“Cough… this old body of mine… I almost threw up the elven black tea I had at lunch.”
Layana was in even worse shape. Gritting her teeth against the dizziness from Magic Power backlash, she struggled to lift her head.
However, the moment they appeared, the entire Nightmare Graveyard came alive.
Hum—! The broken swords and fractured spears scattered across the ground quivered simultaneously, transforming into streaks of black projectiles that shot toward the two women from every direction with piercing howls!
Beneath the earth, countless pale skeletal hands burst through the ground, grabbing at their ankles!
“Watch out!”
Aurelia let out a low shout, ignoring her dizziness, and raised her scepter without a moment’s delay.
“HOLY WORD: SHELTER!”
A soft milky-white barrier instantly expanded outward, enveloping them both.
Clang! Clang! Countless cursed weapons slammed against the barrier, erupting in bursts of black-red sparks, yet unable to shake it in the slightest.
But Aurelia’s condition was far from good. Maintaining such a high-intensity Holy Light Shield in an environment saturated with evil energy consumed several times more power than it would outside.
“Layana!”
“You don’t have to tell me!”
Layana’s robe billowed without wind. In both hands—one left, one right—blazed scorching flames and condensed pale white ice.
“ICE ANNIHILATION PATH!”
She thrust both hands forward violently!
Twin torrents of ice and fire intertwined in a spiral as they surged outward. Wherever they passed, the skeletal hands bursting from the earth were instantly incinerated to ashes or frozen into ice sculptures before shattering!
The two pinnacle powerhouses of the continent displayed seamless coordination and terrifying strength in that moment.
They pressed forward step by step, advancing with difficulty toward the altar despite the endless onslaught.
At last, they broke through the outer defenses, and the bone altar was right before their eyes.
Layana stared at the daughter almost completely obscured by purple-black energy, her chest heaving violently. A scream—a tangled mess of fury, heartbreak, and disbelief—rang out once more.
“Laxana! Stop! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?!”
Hearing the voice, Laxana, who was in the middle of drawing the final inscription, slowly paused.
She turned around.
On that once-delicate, beautiful face now spread a cruel, gleeful smile, her eyes burning with madness.
“Mother, you’re too late.”
Laxana’s voice rang out, carrying an eerie distortion as if countless voices were overlapping into one.
“Soon, I’ll have everything I want. Wendy will be mine forever, and we’ll never be separated again.”
She spread her arms wide, as if embracing her victory.
“And you… will have the privilege of witnessing it all with your own eyes.”
Stalling for time? No, she simply wanted her mother to see it more clearly.
To see more clearly the taste of this power.
Laxana’s hand pointed toward a broken, colossal battle-axe—one that belonged to an ancient Demon King—slanted into the ground beside the altar.
The axe was enormous, covered in cracks, yet still exuding a terrifying Oppressive Pressure.
The black notebook by her side blazed with light.
ROAR—!!! The great axe let out an unwilling roar as it was wrenched from the earth by dense Black Qi, lifted high into the air.
Layana and Aurelia immediately assumed defensive stances, thinking the attack was aimed at them.
However, Laxana’s target wasn’t them at all.
She viciously swung her hand upward!
The massive Demon King’s Great Axe, carrying a terrifying force that tore space itself, transformed into a black meteor—not crashing toward the two Deans, but… hurtling at breakneck speed toward the sky!
Toward the Holy Barrier that enveloped the entire graveyard, sealing off this forbidden zone!
BOOM—!!! The sky let out a groan of unbearable strain.
Beneath the Blood Moon, a colossal crack—visible to the naked eye—spread rapidly outward from the point of impact.
It was like a giant pane of glass shattered into a spiderweb of fractures.
The next second, Crack—! The sky shattered.
Chaos Energy from the spatial rift poured down in a frenzy like a collapsing waterfall through the enormous fissure!
A gray energy storm connecting heaven and earth formed within a single second.
And it completely severed Layana and Aurelia from the bone altar.