The second wood pillar was already upon her.
Then came the third, the fourth, and the fifth.
The Priestess dodged continuously through the gaps between the pillars.
She moved so fast she left afterimages behind, her pale green figure darting swiftly through the forest of wood pillars.
She swung her short staff repeatedly, her emerald-green light blades slicing the wood pillars she couldn't dodge into a flurry of splinters.
But there were too many wood pillars.
Dozens of them thrust out simultaneously from different angles, sealing off any room to dodge.
She dodged three on the left and avoided two on the right, but she could not evade the thick wood pillar thrusting straight at her chest from the front.
She held her short staff horizontally in front of her.
An emerald-green barrier expanded from the tip of the staff, forming a spherical protective layer around her body.
The wood pillar slammed into the barrier.
The barrier shuddered violently, dense ripples spreading across its surface.
Then, the barrier shattered.
The fragments scattered in the air, turning into countless tiny emerald-green light spots.
The wood pillar pierced through the light spots, striking the Priestess squarely in the chest and abdomen.
Her body was sent flying backward.
The short staff slipped from her hand, flipping several times in the air before clattering onto the gravelly ground.
She crashed heavily to the ground, sliding more than ten meters before finally coming to a halt.
Her dark green robe was torn in several places, and pale green blood welled from the corner of her mouth.
She pushed against the ground with both hands, trying to stand up.
A vine burst from the ground, wrapping around her ankle.
Then came a second, and a third...
Vines bound her limbs, waist, and abdomen, hoisting her entire body into midair.
The vines tightened, and her bones creaked under the unbearable pressure.
The Priestess struggled desperately within the vines' grasp.
Her eyes glared fixedly at Ethan, the greed within them not yet fully dissipated.
Ethan walked over and looked down at her.
“You've been staring at my armor. The greed in your eyes is practically overflowing. Do you think my defense relies on some Wizardry Tool?”
The Priestess's pupils contracted sharply.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Ethan's right hand had already pressed down on her face.
Emerald-green light poured from his palm.
Vines sprouted from the light. Emerald-green vines as thin as hair bored into her eye sockets, her ears, her nostrils, and her mouth. The vines spread inside her cranial cavity, wrapping around her brain, her nerves, and everything they could reach.
The Priestess's body suddenly tensed. Her limbs twitched frantically within the vines, her fingers splaying and clenching, nails digging deep into the flesh of her palms. A raspy shriek squeezed from her throat.
The vines tightened.
The shriek cut off abruptly.
【Life Energy +138,441. Current Life Energy: 2.8 million.】
Ethan casually tossed the corpse aside.
He turned around, his gaze falling on Roly, who was still suspended in midair by the vines.
Roly was no longer crying.
She just stared blankly at the Priestess's corpse on the ground, her eyes completely hollow. Her long, pointed ears sagged on both sides of her head, and her chest barely rose or fell. She looked like a corpse herself, hanging from the vines.
“Roly,” Ethan said.
Roly's shoulders trembled.
“You were so close to saying it just now.” Ethan walked up to her. “What were those words? ‘I choose’? Right?”
Roly's lips quivered.
“But things have changed now.” Ethan reached out and tapped the twenty light spots in the air. “You attacked me just now. According to our previous agreement, the deal is off.”
Roly's eyes widened suddenly.
“No! No, no, no! I didn't attack you! I just acted on impulse! I—”
Ethan crooked his finger.
The twenty light spots went out simultaneously.
Roly's mouth hung open, but she couldn't squeeze any sound from her throat.
Her eyes reflected the extinguished light spots, reflecting the last trace of emerald-green light dissipating from the air.
Then, screams echoed from deep underground.
Inside the twenty bunkers, plant roots suddenly surged.
Vines burst from the cracks in the rock walls, tore through the soil, and hung down from the gaps in the wooden ceilings.
They bound every living thing—the elderly, the women, the children, and the wounded lying on the ground.
Screams and the sound of crushing bones faintly drifted up from below, muffled by the thick layers of earth.
Roly couldn't hear those sounds.
But she could imagine them.
Her lips quivered, a breathy whisper squeezing from her throat, as quiet as the buzzing of a fly's wings.
“No... No... No...”
Then, the corpses began to be dragged out from underground.
Vines wrapped around pale green bodies, bursting through the sand.
One by one, the corpses were dragged to the surface, piling up into a small mountain in the open space behind Ethan.
The elderly, the weak, the women, the children, the lightly wounded, and the warriors who had been maintaining order—every Amons hidden in the bunkers was turned into another layer of the corpse mound.
Roly stared at the mountain of corpses.
Without blinking once, her amber eyes reflected the piled-up pale green bodies.
Some corpses still clung to each other in their final embrace, while others were still wrapped in broken bits of vines.
Her mouth remained open.
But she could no longer make any sound.
Out of thirty-seven bunkers, seven were gone when she refused to choose.
Then, she chose ten.
Ethan had promised to spare the remaining twenty.
But then she was forced to choose again.
Yet, she hadn't chosen.
Now, everyone in those twenty bunkers was dead.
Thirty-seven bunkers, nearly forty thousand people, had all become bricks for the corpse mound before her.
She had chosen.
She hadn't chosen.
What difference did it make if she chose?
She was the one who had pointed at those light spots.
She was the one who had killed those people.
No, it was that demon who killed them.
She had only chosen ten.
She had only wanted to save the other twenty.
But those twenty were dead too.
Because she had attacked the demon.
Why did she attack the demon?
Because the demon had told her to choose five more.
She couldn't take it anymore. She had lost her mind and charged forward, wanting to strike the demon.
Then, the demon called off the deal and slaughtered everyone in the bunkers.
So, those people died because of her.
If she hadn't attacked, if she had just obediently chosen five, then at least fifteen of those twenty bunkers would have survived.
At least.
Fifteen.
Now, they were all dead.
All dead.
All dead, all dead, all dead.
Roly's body began to shake.
Starting from her fingertips, it spread to her hands, wrists, forearms, and shoulders, until her entire body was convulsing violently within the vines' binding. Her teeth clattered together, making a rapid clicking sound.
Tears poured from her eyes, mixing with the dried tear tracks from before, carving new paths down her face. Her amber eyes trembled wildly, her pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks.
Her mouth fell open as a raspy howl squeezed from the depths of her chest, echoing across the empty ruins.
“You are a demon, you are a demon, you are a demon.”
She repeated the words, her voice growing increasingly high-pitched and hoarse.
“You killed them, you killed them, you killed them.”
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