“Die together? Do you even deserve that?”
Annabell’s lips curled into a bloodstained cold smile.
“Forbidden Spell — [Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin]!”
As the last words left Annabell’s mouth, time within the entire Ruins came to a halt at that instant.
Nine enormous Black Dragon Phantoms roared out from the void, pulling an ancient bronze giant coffin behind them, carrying a suffocating pressure that seemed to suppress the heavens and all realms, and descended with a thunderous crash.
In this brief moment of frozen time, Annabell entered a state of hyper-speed.
She transformed into a silver streak of lightning and charged directly in front of the Demon God. The two eyes of the Demon God, condensed from flames, still held expressions of terror and disbelief.
“Take your ambition and burn in hell.”
Without any hesitation, Annabell raised both hands, gripping the highly unstable absolute zero ice core, and smashed it down viciously onto the Demon God’s head.
The collision of ice and fire. The annihilation of laws.
A cataclysmic magic explosion erupted instantly with them at its center.
Blinding intense light devoured everything. The indestructible Ruins Hall was reduced to dust the moment the explosion hit. The entire Ruins Space, like an overinflated balloon, completely burst apart!
That day, the entire Continent trembled.
“What kind of commotion is that?!”
Inside the Cathedral of the Church of Light far away in the Royal Capital, the Pope abruptly rose from his throne and stared north in shock.
It wasn’t just the Church. Countless reclusive Saint Domain experts and ancient family monsters across the Continent opened their eyes at the same moment.
They sensed a terrifying fluctuation of mana, powerful enough to tear the Continent apart, erupting violently deep within the Warcraft Forest.
At the center of the explosion, space had already been reduced to a void of chaos.
In a charred crater hundreds of miles from the blast’s center, a pale but blood-streaked hand struggled to push out from the rubble.
Annabell clawed her way out of the debris.
She was in an utterly pitiful state. Her once-luxurious mage robe was torn to shreds, her silver-white hair caked with dirt and blood.
Her mana circuits were completely drained, her internal organs convulsing violently, and every breath carried the thick taste of blood.
“Did it succeed…?” Annabell collapsed onto her back, staring up at the massive mana vortex churning in the sky from the explosion. Her vision gradually blurred.
She had exhausted every ounce of her power, not even enough strength left to stand.
But just as she thought it was all over—
Riiip.
The space in front of her was violently torn open like a ragged cloth.
A nauseating burnt smell, mixed with an extreme aura of resentment, surged out from the space crack.
“Bitch!!! I’ll kill you!! I’ll make your life worse than death!!!”
The Demon God’s soul fire burst out.
It could no longer be called a “Demon God.” Its originally massive body had been blasted down to less than two meters tall; the purple-black flames were so faint they seemed like they could be extinguished by a single breeze.
Frost that couldn’t be dispelled still clung to its heart core.
But even so, its bone-deep hatred and madness burned more intensely than before.
It was still alive!
Annabell’s pupils sharply contracted.
Gritting her teeth, she tried to raise her wrist to cast even the simplest wind blade, but her dry mana circuits only returned a tearing pain.
“Despair? Fear?” The Demon God dragged its shattered body step by step toward Annabell. Its flame-condensed arm turned into a blade burning with black flame. “I’ll carve your flesh off piece by piece, pull out your soul, and roast it over the fire!”
The deadly demon flame had already licked at Annabell’s eyelashes.
‘Is this… as far as I can go?’ A flicker of unwillingness passed through Annabell’s heart.
Charlotte’s smiling face flashed through her mind.
‘No… I can’t die here.’
Annabell bit down hard on the tip of her tongue. An even more desperate act than exhausting her mana began inside her body.
She started burning her life force!
If she had no mana left, she would sacrifice her life.
But the moment a faint golden flame of life began to rise from her skin—
An incredible, gentle force appeared out of nowhere, like a spring breeze turning into rain, easily suppressing the life flame she had just ignited.
Annabell froze.
Before she could react, a pair of warm and soft arms suddenly wrapped around her from behind in a gentle embrace.
It was an extremely light hug, yet one brimming with boundless vitality and affection.
In this debris field filled with the smell of scorching and death, this sudden embrace carried an exceptionally clean, pure scent of the forest.
The touch of those arms was so familiar… as if…
As if every time Charlotte secretly hugged her from behind.
“Yo… you…”
Annabell’s pale lips trembled slightly. She struggled to turn her head.
The moment she turned, her heterochromia—one red, one blue—collided with a pair of deep, emerald-like eyes.
Time seemed to stop completely at that instant.
Standing behind her was not some divine knight descending from heaven, but a phantom figure wearing an ancient royal robe.
She had long hair cascading like a waterfall, and on her head rested a crown woven from life tree branches.
It was the Elven King of ancient times.
But what made Annabell’s breath stop entirely was the face of this supreme deity.
“Charlotte?”
Annabell’s mind went blank.
Too similar.
No, it was completely identical! The delicate features, the slight droop at the corners of the eyes—except for the divinity and compassion that came with millennia of vicissitudes, this phantom was the spitting image of Charlotte.
Why was she here? What was the relationship between Charlotte and the ancient Elven King?
The Elven King’s phantom did not answer the storm raging in Annabell’s heart.
She simply gazed quietly at the silver-haired girl before her. Those green eyes swirled with indescribable pain and a sense of fate that spanned eons.
Then the Elven King lowered her head slightly, bringing her cheek close to Annabell’s ear.
“Don’t fail this time.”
A whisper, as soft as a gentle breeze yet weighty as a thousand tons, an ancient murmur resounded in Annabell’s ear.
The moment the words fell, the Elven King’s phantom dissolved into countless radiant green fireflies. Following the embrace, they directly merged into Annabell’s ravaged body.
One shot.
Annabell’s eyes shot wide open.
Her fatal wounds did not fully heal, but this influx of mana from nowhere was just enough to support her in unleashing the last and strongest attack.
Only one chance.
“What’s going on?! What kind of aura is that?!”
The Demon God, now so close, sensed something wrong.
“Too slow.”
Annabell’s voice turned utterly cold, as if she were an emotionless deity.
She didn’t even stand up. The moment the Demon God lunged at her, she calmly raised her right hand, extended her index finger, and pointed it straight at the frost-covered heart core in the Demon God’s chest.
No lengthy incantations. No massive magic arrays.
Extreme power often requires the purest form of release.
‘…Extreme Light Beam.’
A piercing beam of extreme cold shot out from Annabell’s fingertip!
The beam made no sound and triggered no massive explosion.
It moved with absolute speed, ignoring the distance of space, and before the Demon God’s black flame blade could fall—
Pshh.
It effortlessly pierced through the Demon God’s chest.
The extreme light beam struck the heart core, the vessel carrying all of the Demon God’s vitality and power, shattering it with perfect precision.
The Demon God’s movements froze.
It lowered its head, staring at the rapidly collapsing hole in its chest.
Highly concentrated light and extreme cold mana were disintegrating it from the inside.
The fear of death, along with an all-too-familiar sense of humiliation, surged at once.
The Demon God raised its head, glaring fiercely at the silver-haired girl before it—pale-faced yet with a disdainful gaze.
Then it looked at the dissipating green specks. Deep in its shattered memories, images of the ancient divine war that had buried the gods overlapped once more.
“That face… that mana…”
The Demon God’s flame-formed face twisted into an expression of extreme reluctance and collapse. It let out a piercing, desperate scream:
“It really was you!!!”
Whoosh.
With that final, wretched farewell, the Demon God’s remaining body could no longer hold. It dissolved into black-gray powder, scattering into the air, completely annihilated.
When Annabell finally witnessed the Demon God’s death, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion crashed over her consciousness like a tsunami. Her head lolled to the side, and she collapsed heavily onto the scorched earth.
Time passed—how long, she didn’t know.
“Annabell! Annabell!”
A frantic, tearful voice echoed through the ruins.
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.