No! This isn’t right! The script shouldn’t be like this!
She should have furiously cast a spell to blast me off the cliff. She should have wanted to tear me apart!
She shouldn’t be reacting like this! She should be looking at me with that same disgusted expression reserved for garbage! But her eyes… could they really hold heartache? This can’t be true! This absolutely cannot be true!
The curse magic blade pierced deeply into Annabell’s chest, beyond my control.
At the last moment, Annabell shifted ever so slightly, just enough to avoid her heart’s vital point, but that exceedingly vicious curse power immediately burrowed into her body like a parasite clinging to bone, wildly drilling through the wound!
Crimson blood dripped onto the stone slabs of the High Platform.
As if sensing the sweet blood of supreme lineage, the sacred weapon embryo deep within the Abyss below descended into complete frenzy!
The blade shook violently, releasing a terrifying surge of mana potent enough to destroy heaven and earth.
The black flame within the furnace churned like boiling black seawater,surge upward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The malevolent, sky-piercing demonic flames coiled into a colossal fire serpent, opening its gaping maw, attempting to devour both figures on the platform in a single gulp!
The dagger stained with Annabell’s blood slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground.
She staggered backward step by step, tears streaming down her face like pearls from a broken string.
“Why apologize? Why didn’t you dodge? Why did you have to…”
Looking at Annabell before her—wounded by her own hand, half of her ritual robe dyed crimson with blood—Xue Lei’s heart felt as if an invisible pair of massive hands were crushing it violently.
A suffocating panic and heart-wrenching pain instantly flooded over her.
The power was rampaging ferociously through her limbs and bones.
Annabell let out a muffled groan, feeling an extremely insidious curse power spreading wildly through her body.
It was a poison specifically designed to counter her trandi pure blood. The two clashed violently within her, making her movements abnormally sluggish and weak.
Xue Lei’s hands trembled as she wanted to step forward and support that swaying figure, but the fear and guilt inside her froze her hands mid-air, daring not to reach out.
Annabell, her steps unsteady because her bloodline was suppressed by the curse, walked right up to Xue Lei.
Xue Lei—whether from fear, nervousness, or being drowned in that agonizing self-blame—stood there dazedly looking up, like a child who had done something wrong, not daring to move an inch.
Annabell coughed up a mouthful of bloody spittle and struggled to stand straight.
“I… cough… can I…”
She slowly raised her right hand, the one unstained by blood. A flash of light shimmered in her palm, and a delicate crystal twin pendant—crafted from the finest elven mithril and inlaid with star meteorite—appeared in her hand.
Annabell bent down slightly, her movements extraordinarily gentle as she fastened the newly crafted pendant around Xue Lei’s pale neck.
Then, she extended that hand—cold from blood loss—and tenderly wiped away the tear beads at the corner of her eye.
Her blood-stained fingers softly caressed Xue Lei’s tear-streaked cheek, then gently brushed across her forehead, like a loving older sister.
“Go now… you’ll be fine…”
Against the backdrop of roiling seas of fire, Xue Lei looked through tear-blurred eyes at Annabell before her.
That Villainess Sister who had always been aloof and arrogant, at this moment, showed her an extremely weak yet gentle smile—one so tender it seemed to reach the very bone.
***
The next second, a line of shocking blood tears—a crimson oath—flowed from the corner of Annabell’s eye.
She abruptly shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the patterns within those red-blue heterochromia pupils instantly expanded. The kaleidoscope form was forcibly pushed to its absolute limit, filling her entire eye sockets!
“Amaterasu!”
Annabell shouted, and with the full force of her pupil technique, she hammered it directly against the solid seal above—the one belonging to Grand Duke Camilla.
That barrier, rumored to be unbreakable by anyone below level 9, actually let out a crisp crack under the kaleidoscope magic eye’s overloaded attack. A fissure just wide enough for a single person was forcibly torn open!
“Sister, what are you doing?!”
Xue Lei finally realized what was happening and screamed in terror.
But her body was completely beyond her control.
Annabell used the last of her mana, shaping it into a gentle yet irresistible invisible hand that lifted Xue Lei’s body and hurled her without hesitation toward the seal’s opening!
The moment her body soared into the air, Xue Lei’s mind went completely blank.
The icy pendant on her chest, Annabell’s tender heart-wrenching eyes, and that final smile carrying relief and redemption—all flashed wildly through Xue Lei’s mind like a revolving lantern.
By the time she passed through the seal and crashed onto the hard stone slabs outside the Forbidden Area, she whipped her head around and caught her last glimpse: Annabell’s white ritual robe, utterly swallowed by the surging black malevolent flames rising from below. A devastatingly beautiful scene.
The fissure in the barrier healed in an instant before her eyes, restored to its former impregnability.
“No… this isn’t right… it shouldn’t be like this…”
Xue Lei slumped outside the gate of the Forbidden Area, murmuring in despair like a completely broken doll.
She reached out that trembling hand, trying to grasp something, but could only wave it futilely through the air.
She herself, with her own hands, had pushed the person who truly wanted to protect her with her life into the abyss of death.
And at this moment, beyond the seal, the entire Trandy Family had already descended into chaos, as if a cataclysmic disaster had struck…
Within the abyss furnace.
The roiling sea of fire and sword qi had already devoured the entire High Platform.
Annabell stood at the absolute center of the storm, kneeling on one knee, tightly clutching her left chest where blood still seeped.
Although the insidious power of the abyssal curse in her chest was like thousands of ants gnawing at her bloodline, making her body sluggish and numb, for a villainess accustomed to dancing on the edge of life and death, this was still within tolerable limits.
A layer of pitch-black flame, as profound as a black hole, clung tightly to the surface of her body, burning steadily.
[Void Black Flame]!
This was a strange fire drawn from the bond gacha of the System, Charlotte—a flame that specialized in burning mana and the laws of cause and effect.
Under this layer of black flame’s absolute protection, even the sky-piercing malevolent flames erupting from that abyssal holy artifact could not harm Annabell in the slightest.
Any tongues of fire from the outside that approached within one meter of her were mercilessly devoured by the void black flame.
“Phew… this gamble was a bit risky, but judging by Xue Lei’s devastated expression at the end, the affection level should have bottomed out and rebounded to maximum, right?”
Annabell gritted her teeth, casually pulling the remnant blade fragment from her chest and tossing it into the black flame to be burned into nothingness.
She slowly rose to her feet, looking down from her elevated position at the bottom of the furnace where that eerie cursed sword—still trembling madly, its dense crimson eyes all locked onto her—awaited.
“The development of this broken script matches my predictions exactly. The only surprise was that the girl actually dared to stab me.”
Annabell rolled her slightly stiff neck, and her right hand grasped empty air. The bone-chilling mana staff appeared in her hand once more.
“Well then… my dear little sister’s emotional knot is untied.”
“Next… it’s time to get down to business.”