Six figures streaked across the sky over the Endless Mountains.
The Captain flew at the very front, his expression exceptionally grim.
Five Rank 9 powerhouses followed closely behind him, each of them maintaining a mana shield to resist the increasingly dense Demonic Energy pollution in the air.
“Captain,” an elderly man couldn't help but speak up, “have you noticed anything strange?”
“Strange?” The Captain didn't look back. “What do you mean?”
“We've been flying for so long...” the elderly man said hesitantly. “Logically, we should have left the range of the mountains by now. But look below.”
The Captain looked down.
Below them were still the same continuous gray mountains, and the massive crater in the distance was still clearly visible.
It seemed they had been... circling in place the entire time.
“Spatial distortion?” The Captain's pupils constricted. “Since when...?”
“Ignore it for now, keep moving!” he barked, increasing his speed once more.
The others didn't dare say more and could only grit their teeth and follow.
They flew for another ten minutes.
Suddenly, the world began to spin.
The sky and the earth seemed to be twisted into a knot by an invisible giant hand, and the surrounding scenery began to warp.
“Steady yourselves!” the Captain roared, his body erupting with a brilliant golden light as he attempted to stabilize the surrounding space.
But it was useless.
The spinning grew faster and faster until everything in their vision turned into a blur of colors.
By the time they regained their senses, they were standing on a street.
In the distance, they could faintly see a plaza and a clock tower.
The gray sky emitted a dim, dark-red glow.
“Th-this is...” the old man with the giant sword said, his voice trembling.
“C-Captain,” another Rank 9 powerhouse swallowed hard, “we seem to have returned here.”
The Captain's expression was terrifyingly grim.
He looked around and confirmed that they were back in the town at the bottom of the crater. They had clearly left through a spatial crack, yet here they were again.
“A spatial loop,” the Captain gritted his teeth. “Someone has folded the space in this area, causing us to keep circling inside.”
“To be able to achieve something of this level...” an elderly man's face turned pale. “It must be a spatial-attribute powerhouse who is at least above Rank 9.”
“Not necessarily spatial-attribute,” the Captain shook his head. “It could also be some mechanism within the ruins themselves.”
Just as he finished speaking, a sudden cry of alarm came from nearby.
“Look! This flower...”
The group turned to look.
There, growing in a crack between the stone slabs in the middle of the street, was a bizarre flower.
The flower was dark red, its petals layered as if carved from coagulated blood.
A faint black mist drifted from the stamen, looking exceptionally eerie under the dark-red light of the sky.
One of the Rank 9 powerhouses walked over curiously, crouched down, and reached out to touch it.
“Don't touch it!” the Captain's face changed drastically as he roared.
But it was too late.
His finger touched the petals.
In the next second—
“Psh.”
Countless red tendrils as thin as hair suddenly erupted from the stamen, instantly entangling his arm. The tendrils spread with terrifying speed, covering his entire body in the blink of an eye.
“H-help me...” He only had time to utter those two words before being dragged underground.
The stone slabs on the ground seemed to turn into liquid, and he sank instantly as if falling into water.
“Boom!”
The ground exploded, spraying out a massive amount of blood mist.
The bright red mist spread out, carrying a heavy scent of blood.
The remaining four men froze in place, their faces pale.
A Rank 9 powerhouse... just died like that?
Without even a chance to resist?
“Back away!” the Captain growled.
The others finally snapped out of it and retreated over a dozen meters in unison, staring warily at the flower and the ground around it.
But the flower had already vanished.
Along with the young powerhouse's body, it had disappeared without a trace.
All that remained was a shallow pit in the ground and the lingering scent of blood in the air.
After a moment of silence.
“A Rank 9 is dead as soon as we arrived, and in such a bizarre way.”
The Captain's heart sank to the bottom.
“To be able to kill a Rank 9 in an instant... it must be an existence above Rank 9. This is trouble.”
He looked up at the gray sky.
Then, his pupils shrank.
In the sky, countless red eyes had opened at some point.
They turned slowly, scanning the town below.
A pressure above Rank 9 spread out like something physical.
“C-Captain...” an elderly man's voice trembled.
“Don't move,” the Captain whispered, his golden pupils fixed on the sky.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the mastermind behind this to reveal themselves.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, one of the eyes in the sky stopped turning.
It looked in one direction—toward the roof of a stone house at the edge of town.
A person was standing there.
A person wearing black robes, with a hood covering most of their face. They were clearly casting a spell.
“Found you.” A cold light flashed in the Captain's eyes.
His figure vanished instantly.
The man in black robes clearly realized he had been exposed as well. He immediately stopped his spell and turned to flee.
But at that moment, every eye in the sky turned toward him in unison.
“Buzz!”
An invisible pressure descended from the heavens. The man in black robes froze, unable to even lift a foot.
“What is this?” his voice was hoarse, filled with disbelief.
Before he could react, countless eyes in the sky simultaneously fired crimson light beams.
Those beams instantly pierced through the body of the man in black robes.
The dense sound of flesh being punctured rang out.
The man in black robes didn't even have time to scream before he was riddled like a pincushion.
Hundreds of red light beams had skewered his body, pinning him to the ground.
The light faded, but it did not disappear; instead, it transformed into solid pillars of red light, firmly fixing the man in black robes in place.
The Captain slowly descended from the air and stood on the rooftop, looking at the man pinned before him.
“Are you the mastermind?” he asked.
The man in black robes kept his head down, his face hidden by the hood, making it impossible to see his expression.
But the Captain could hear him laughing.
A low chuckle drifted out from beneath the black robes.
It was soft at first, then grew louder, finally turning into a manic laugh.
“Haha... hahaha... hahahaha!”
The laughter echoed through the empty town, sounding exceptionally grating.
The Captain frowned. “Death is imminent. What are you laughing at?”
The man in black robes laughed for a full thirty seconds before gradually stopping.
He looked up, his hood slipping back to reveal a pale and handsome face. He looked to be only about twenty years old, with blood still clinging to the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were full of mockery.
“If you have time for this,” he grinned, revealing blood-stained teeth, “you should go check on your subordinates.”
With that, his body suddenly began to melt.
And those red light pillars, having lost their target, shattered with a crash and dissipated into specks of light.
The Captain's expression changed.
“Oh no!”
He reacted instantly, turning to fly back toward their previous position.
But it was already too late.
...
Rate on N.U.
