The head of the withered wooden figure shattered under her boot, black juice splashing onto Valentine’s greaves. The moment the liquid touched the metal, it hissed, burning a pit the size of a fingernail into the surface of the silver-white shin guards.
She did not look down.
The second window at the end of the corridor was smashed open. Three withered husks tumbled in simultaneously, their twisted knees bending at unnatural angles, bark-like claws gripping the window frame as thick black liquid seeped from between their fingers.
Valentine raised her foot.
The gray ripples of the Desolate Realm spread from her toes. The patterns on the stone floor aged three hundred years in a single second, and the moss growing in the joints turned yellow, fell off, and turned to dust. The gray waves rolled over the three withered husks, the bark surfaces cracking rapidly, and the dry internal fiber tissues disintegrated into scraps, scattering on the floor.
There were no signs of reconstruction.
Within the Desolate Realm, destroyed husks didn't even have the chance to pull themselves back together.
But in the sky outside the window, more than a dozen black shadows were falling.
One side of Valentine’s silver wig had come completely loose in the rush of air, exposing her short black hair at the temple. She reached out and tore away the annoying silver strands, throwing them to the ground.
A muffled impact came from the other end of the corridor. The floor was vibrating.
She stepped forward.
With every step of her boot, the Desolate Realm advanced three meters.
The screams outside the city grew denser by another layer.
...
Grant’s fist smashed into a withered husk’s chest for the eighteenth time.
His entire arm sank into the dry body, piercing through from the back. Shattered bark fragments flew in all directions, embedding themselves into the walls on both sides of the corridor.
The husk fell.
Two seconds later, the fragments scattered on the ground began to tremble, sliding slowly back toward the fallen main body.
Grant glanced down at the reconstructing remains and crushed the largest piece of the sternum with his foot. The fragment turned into smaller pieces, which continued to tremble and move toward the main body.
“Won’t die.”
He spat out those two words and stepped back, the skin of his right fist already burned with several black marks from the corrosive juice. The Blood Race’s self-healing ability was repairing the wounds, but the speed couldn't keep up with the rate of corrosion.
A fourth withered husk fell from a hole in the ceiling above him. Grant sidestepped it and smashed it into the wall with a backhand punch. The wall dented, and gravel flew.
The husk was embedded in the wall, its limbs twisting at impossible angles, making a dry, creaking sound.
A low-frequency vibration reached Grant’s eardrums.
Lilian’s voice.
It wasn't a shout. The positioning ripples of the Bloodline Aria had penetrated the entire Moon Phase City ley line network, pouring precisely into the sensory channels of every member of the Blood Race.
“East District, first to third blocks, Grant is responsible for clearing. Civilians are to evacuate to the central shelter via underground passage B3. The seriously injured are to gather at the west wing of the palace.”
A pause. Half a second.
“Elizabeth, seal the north wing. Altan, hold the main gate. Victor, command the werewolf guard to escort civilians. All Blood Race members below C rank are forbidden from participating and must evacuate immediately.”
The interval between each command did not exceed one second. The priorities were clear, the coverage was complete, and she was even precise down to the block numbers.
In the gap between crushing the nineteenth withered husk, Grant looked back toward the palace’s main hall.
That woman stood on the highest step, her scepter touching the ground, her skirt motionless.
He turned back, said nothing, and continued fighting.
...
Leon’s Northland Galaxy covered the entire main street of the commercial district.
Ice spread from beneath his feet to both sides, the temperature dropping to sixty degrees below zero within three seconds. The movements of the withered husks that landed on the ice were visibly sluggish, white frost condensing on the bark surfaces, and the twisting frequency of their joints dropped by half.
Leon smashed the withered husk in front of him with a punch.
The fragments scattered on the ice and did not reconstruct.
The moisture inside the fiber tissues was completely frozen, the movement at the molecular level had stopped, and the driving force required for reconstruction was sealed inside the ice.
It was working.
He immediately adjusted his output, the Ice Spirit Sky Frost spreading a continuous cooling zone across the ground, maintaining a state of extreme cold within a thirty-meter radius. The withered husks that fell into the range slowed down one by one, froze, cracked, and were crushed by him.
Tia was fifteen meters to his right.
Liquid Mithril extended from her fingertips into blades, each swing precisely cutting a withered husk in half along its longitudinal axis. Mithril was unaffected by the corrosive juice, and the black liquid slid off the blade’s surface and dripped to the ground.
The two of them cleared half the street back-to-back.
The density of the husks was increasing.
The rift in the sky had expanded again.
When the first anomaly fell from the rift, Leon’s peripheral vision caught that wrong silhouette.
Three meters tall. A black withered fruit was embedded in its chest, with fine patterns on the fruit’s surface pulsing faintly.
The moment it crashed down, the ice beneath Leon’s feet cracked into a spiderweb pattern from the point of impact. The shockwave overturned the remains of the stalls on both sides of the street, sending wooden boards and gravel flying through the air.
Leon was tossed up by the shockwave.
His body flipped backward uncontrollably. He forcibly twisted his torso in mid-air, condensing Ice Spirit in his right fist to shatter a fragment of a withered husk flying toward his face.
He landed.
His right knee struck the edge of a stone step. A crisp sound came from inside the joint, and the dull pain of a dislocated bone surged from his knee all the way to his lumbar spine.
He knelt on one knee, his teeth clenched so tightly that his right molars ground against each other.
The three-meter-tall anomaly had already stood up. The pulsing frequency of the black fruit accelerated, and with every pulse, the air within three meters of it would ripple with a layer of withered yellow mist.
Leon stared at that fruit.
That thing was not a normal driving core. The pulsing frequency was perfectly synchronized with the pulsation of the sky rift.
Tia’s Mithril blade cut in from the side.
The blade edge swept across the anomaly’s left arm, the sound of Mithril cutting through the bark layer crisp and clean. The internal structure exposed by the arm’s cross-section was different from that of a normal withered husk; the fiber tissue was denser, wound into spiral-like bundles, with a dried-up pipe in the center.
The remains of Wood Elf mana circuits.
Tia did not pause, her second strike going straight for the fruit in the chest.
The anomaly’s right arm bent backward at an angle that violated biomechanics, blocking the blade. Mithril collided with the withered wood, and sparks flew.
“It’s protecting that thing.”
Tia stepped back two paces.
Leon stood up from the ground. The pain from his right knee was pushed to the edge of his consciousness. Ice Spirit condensed on both his fists again, the cold air overflowing from between his fingers, trailing white mist ribbons in the air.
“I’ll freeze its lower body. You cut that fruit.”
Tia nodded.
Leon slammed both palms onto the ground. Thousand Snow erupted from the contact point, the ice layer climbing up from the anomaly’s feet, freezing all its joints below the knees within two seconds.
The anomaly’s upper body struggled violently, the force of its torso twisting causing the ice layer to emit dense cracking sounds.
Tia had already cut in.
The liquid Mithril deformed in her palm, splitting from a single blade into three fine needles that pierced into the anomaly’s chest from three directions simultaneously. The needle tips bypassed the rib remains, precisely pinning down the three fixation points of the black fruit.
Tia closed her five fingers.
The three fine needles pulled outward at the same time. The fruit was pulled out by its roots from the chest, trailing dry fiber bundles as it drew an arc through the air.
The moment the fruit left the body, the anomaly’s movements froze.
Then its entire body began to shatter. From the head to the chest to the limbs, the bark layer collapsed and disintegrated as if it had lost its internal support. The fragments fell onto the ice, and this time they did not tremble, and they did not reconstruct.
It was completely dead.
Tia wrapped the fruit in Mithril, isolating its pulsing frequency.
“The source is inside the rift.”
Leon panted, putting his weight on one foot, and let out a cold laugh.
“Someone has to go up and plug that hole.”
Tia looked up.
The edges of the rift were squirming. With every squirming expansion, new withered husks fell from it. The withered yellow, foul aura continued to pour from the gap, the air filled with the scent of fermented and decomposing plant fibers.
Her sensory network captured a change at that moment.
Bell’s heart rate.
From forty-two beats per minute in his unconscious state, it suddenly jumped to seventy-eight.
He was awake.
...
Bell’s consciousness was dragged out of the darkness.
It wasn't a natural awakening. A wave of extremely strong soul vibration had penetrated the barrier of his coma, dragging his consciousness from the depths back to the surface. The frequency difference of his otherworldly soul had saved his life once again, as some kind of soul-level shockwave from the outside was bounced off by his frequency barrier.
The back of his neck burned with pain.
Remnant blood source mana injected by Valentine lingered on the blood vessel nodes on both sides, mostly dissipated, but the burning sensation on the inner walls of his meridians remained.
She had knocked him out.
Bell’s palms pressed against the cold stone floor, pushing himself into a sitting position. Every vertebra in his spine protested.
A continuous cracking sound came from above. The dome of the Library had already cracked open, purple moonlight and withered yellow stench pouring in simultaneously.
He crawled to the window.
The night sky of Moon Phase City had been torn in two. The pale rift between the twin purple moons had more than doubled in size again, its jagged edges squirming continuously. Countless withered figures poured down from the rift, so dense they covered half the sky.
Fire soared from all over the city.
Screams came from the East District, South District, and Market District simultaneously, occasionally mixed with the crisp clashing of metal and the muffled roar of collapsing buildings.
Bell leaned against the window frame to steady himself, forcibly suppressing the burning pain in the back of his neck, and turned toward the Library door.
In the corridor outside, the remains of a withered husk lay shattered on the floor. Bark fragments were scattered everywhere, and black juice flowed slowly through the stone tile joints, emitting small wisps of white smoke where it touched.
He crouched down.
His fingers brushed aside the shattered bark surface, revealing the interior of the husk’s chest. A cavity. Extremely small amounts of light spots, dried into powder, remained on the walls of the cavity.
Gold-green.
Bell’s fingers stopped above the powder, not touching it.
He had seen that color too many times. When Aunt Philan sat next to Tia, the blessing runes flowing from her fingertips were of this hue. A warm, gold-green light with a woody fragrance.
Now it had become dried powder inside a dead thing’s chest.
A surge of sour bitterness welled up in his stomach. It wasn't nausea. It was something deeper than nausea.
These withered husks were not weapons. They were not creations. They were not consumables mass-produced by someone using alchemy.
They had been alive.
Every withered husk had once been a Wood Elf. A living being with a name, with memories, with gold-green light flowing from their fingertips.
Then they had been pulled out by the roots from the history of this world.
Their Anchor of existence had vanished. Their bodies had lost the qualification to be recognized by the world, degrading from organic tissue into dry, empty husks.
And now someone had picked up these empty shells, poured driving force into them, and thrown them into Moon Phase City as weapons.
Cecilia.
Bell released his crouching posture and stood up. His knees were a bit weak, and the burning pain in the back of his neck intensified in pulses with every heartbeat.
Rapid footsteps came from the end of the corridor.
The subtle metallic friction sound unique to Mithril joints in motion.
Tia rushed out from the corner.
The moment she saw Bell standing in the corridor, her entire body’s movement trajectory experienced a very brief pause. Silver mana-conducting fluid seeped from the joints of her Mithril body, dripping onto the floor from her knuckles.
Bell extended his left hand, stopping her from rushing further.
“I’m fine. Give me intelligence.”
Tia took two seconds to push her emotions back down. The silver liquid stopped seeping.
“The reconstruction speed of the withered husks is synchronized with the pulse frequency of the rift. Every time the rift expands, the reconstruction speed doubles. Ice magic can inhibit reconstruction. Anomalies have a black fruit in their chest; destroying the fruit can permanently kill the individual. Leon’s right knee is injured, but he can still fight. Margaret is in the bell tower maintaining illusions to guide civilian evacuation; plant magic is countered by the corrosive juice.”
She said it all in one breath. It was organized and clear, without a single extra word.
Bell digested it for three seconds.
“The pulsing frequency of those black fruits is consistent with the rift.”
He crouched back down, taking another look at the cavity in the husk’s chest. The patterns on the cavity walls were not random; they were regular spiral structures that perfectly matched the mana circuit patterns of a Wood Elf.
These fruits were not inserted later.
They were the product of the Wood Elf’s own mana core after it had withered.
“The source is deep within the rift.” Bell stood up. “Those withered husks are not being manufactured; they are being driven. The driving force is poured down from the rift, with the fruits acting as receiving terminals.”
He paused.
“These withered husks are Wood Elves.”
Tia’s fingers stopped in mid-air.
“A race that has already been erased from the world. No one remembers they existed, except for me.”
Tia’s Mithril throat produced a very light air vibration. It wasn't language. It was a more primitive noise produced when a circuit was overloaded.
She looked down at her left palm.
The blessing runes on her palm were still there. The gold-green patterns were embedded in the Mithril surface, the curve of every stroke carrying the unique organic lines of the Wood Elves.
This rune was carved on her palm.
The person who carved it no longer existed in the memories of anyone in this world.
Only Bell still remembered.
Only this pattern still proved that race had once lived.
And now, the evidence of those who “once lived” was pouring down from the sky in the form of withered husks, tearing the flesh and blood of every living thing in Moon Phase City.
Tia withdrew her hand.
“What do we do.”
Three words. No hesitation, no extra emotion.
Bell turned to look at the window at the end of the corridor, smashed by a withered husk. In the sky outside the window, the rift was undergoing a new round of pulsing expansion.
“Plugging the rift is meaningless. That’s just the exit, not the source.”
His fingers felt a hard cylinder at his waist. The portable core cylinder of the Soul Vibration Cannon. It was a piece of equipment he was in the habit of hanging on his belt before leaving for Moon Phase City, and Valentine hadn't taken it when she knocked him out.
His fingers rubbed the cold Mithril casing of the core cylinder.
This thing could produce resonance interference with souls. Withered husks had no soul fluctuations, so the vibration cannon was useless against them.
But that black fruit had a pulse.
Anything with a frequency could be interfered with.
“Tia.”
“I’m here.”
“Go to the bell tower for me. Tell Headmaster Margaret to stop the plant magic and focus entirely on maintaining the illusions to guide the evacuation. Then find Leon and tell him to concentrate his ice field within a three-hundred-meter radius around the palace; don’t spread it too thin, or his mana won't hold out.”
Tia nodded and was about to leave.
“One more thing.”
Bell picked up the black fruit wrapped in Mithril—the trophy Tia had just brought back.
“Take this to Leon. Have him freeze it through and test whether the pulse completely stops in the frozen state. If it stops, give me a signal.”
Tia took the fruit, and the moment her Mithril fingertips touched the wrapping layer, her sensory circuits returned a piece of data.
The pulsing frequency inside the fruit had a seventy-three percent overlap with the mana resonance band of the blessing runes on her palm.
She did not say it.
She turned and disappeared around the corner of the corridor.
Bell stood alone before the shattered window.
The city was burning. Withered husks were falling from the sky. From afar came the muffled impact of Grant smashing husks, occasionally mixed with Elizabeth’s cursing and the crisp sound of snapping threads.
He looked up toward the depths of the rift.
In the deepest part of the rift, behind the withered yellow mist, a silhouette was slowly taking shape.
Larger than all the withered husks.
Larger even than that three-meter-tall anomaly.
It hadn't fully manifested yet. But judging from the parts already exposed—it was a tree.
An inverted, withered, giant tree with its roots facing the sky, slowly pressing down toward this world from the other side of the rift.
The trunk surface was covered with the same dark brown bark as the withered husks.
Countless withered figures, not yet fallen, hung from the tips of the roots.
Bell’s fingers gripped the stone edges of the window frame, the flesh under his fingernails turning white.
The World Tree.
A withered World Tree.
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