Dragon blood seeped from the rift.
It was pitch black.
It fell onto the ruins.
No blood splashed.
The moment it touched the stone slabs, their physical structure simply vanished. An absolute void, half a meter in diameter, appeared on the ground. The edges were smooth. There were no traces of high-temperature melting or corrosion.
Leon’s left arm hung at a twisted angle by his side.
The broken bone had pierced the skin. The scraps of cloth tied around it were completely soaked in blood.
Droplets of blood trickled down the ends of the cloth strips.
He turned around. His right hand grabbed Bell’s collar.
He yanked him up.
“Get on.”
Two words. Strained and breathy.
Bell didn't waste any time. He clamped his left arm tightly around Cecilia’s waist and lunged forward.
The weight of two people slammed onto Leon’s back.
Leon’s knees buckled five centimeters.
His thigh muscles tightened instantly beneath his uniform trousers. The muscle fibers let out a faint, agonizing tearing sound.
He grit his teeth, his lumbar spine straining as he forced his body upright.
The hard soles of his military boots crunched against the rubble of the passage.
He pushed off.
He sprinted.
Lilian led the way.
Dark red blood source mana enveloped her legs. With every step she took, a faint, bloody footprint was left on the ground.
Tia was slung over her right shoulder.
Tia’s left side was still mangled. Strands of liquid Mithril swayed in the air.
Her only remaining right hand rested on Lilian’s back. Her five Mithril fingers trembled slightly, the metal joints clicking and grinding.
The entrance to the passage collapsed completely behind them.
Massive stones crashed down, sealing their retreat.
But the darkness still pressed in.
It wasn't the kind of blackness caused by a lack of light.
It was the calamitous black mist radiating from Salomos.
The black mist surged through the cracks between the stones and into the passage.
The moment light touched the black mist, it simply vanished.
Refraction, reflection, diffuse reflection—all laws of optical physics failed before the black mist.
Leovet Victor’s figure hovered in front of the collapsing rift.
A cyan Wind Domain was fully deployed.
This wasn't ordinary wind.
It was a layer of materialized airflow. Every layer of air was vibrating at an extremely high frequency.
Wind blades slaughtered their way through the black mist.
Wind elements collided with the black mist.
There was no explosion.
Only ear-piercing sonic booms. The air was being forcibly torn apart.
Salomos coiled in the sky.
Its massive head dipped slightly.
Its jaws opened.
A pitch-black dragon breath surged out.
It wasn't fire. It carried no temperature.
The dragon breath washed over the remains of the Night Rose Palace.
The stone walls, the soil, the support pillars along the way—
They didn't burn. They didn't shatter.
They turned directly into nothingness.
Matter was erased from its very source. A hundred-meter-long section of architectural ruins vanished into thin air within zero point one seconds.
The aftershocks of the dragon breath spread through the ground toward the passage.
Lilian skidded to a halt.
She kicked off the ground, her body twisting forcefully.
Her free left hand swung forward.
A dark red blood shield formed instantly within the narrow passage.
It was over half a meter thick, with blood flowing at high speeds within it.
This was the strongest defense the Vampire Queen could currently muster.
The blood shield touched the edge of the spreading black mist.
Zero point one seconds.
The blood shield shattered.
Not even a trace of mana residue was left. The mana particles that composed the blood shield were directly erased.
Lilian’s body recoiled.
A large mouthful of blood surged from her throat, spraying into the air before her.
Before the droplets could hit the ground, they were swallowed by the surging black mist.
Leon’s right hand let go of Bell’s leg.
He formed a seal with a single hand before his chest.
Extreme glacial air erupted from his palm.
A layer of ice spread along the four walls of the passage.
It forcibly froze the crumbling stone structure around them.
The ice was a meter thick, radiating a chilling white mist.
The black mist touched the ice.
A dense thicket of tooth-aching cracking sounds rang out.
The surface of the ice didn't melt; instead, large-scale voids appeared within it.
Leon grabbed Bell’s leg again.
He continued to charge forward.
His speed had slowed.
Under the absolute suppression of a higher dimension, the limit speed of the Wolfgang family heir seemed incredibly sluggish within this collapsing passage.
Bell lay on Leon’s back.
His left arm held Cecilia, while his right arm hung by his side.
Cecilia’s body temperature was very high.
The healing power of the World Tree Heart was still circulating wildly within her. Green light flickered beneath her skin.
Ahead, Tia’s right eye flickered with a faint blue light.
The etheric conduction lines were intermittent.
Bell bit his lower lip.
The taste of rust spread through his mouth.
Salomos, The Denier of the World.
This had already surpassed the scope of magic and physics.
Leovet couldn't hold out for much longer.
The strongest human mage was facing an existence capable of tampering with the underlying logic of the world.
Salomos’s target was Cecilia.
It wanted the blood source essence of the nine ancestors within her. It wanted the World Tree Heart.
Throw Cecilia out.
The thought flashed through his mind.
A sandbox simulation began.
Throw Cecilia out.
Salomos stops its pursuit. It recovers the energy.
Then.
Tia will disappear. Leon will disappear. Margaret will disappear.
Everyone’s existence will be erased.
Just like the Wood Elves. Just like Aunt Philan. Just like the entire history of the vampire race.
I can't throw her.
I have to take her with me.
She has the intelligence from hundreds of loops in her head.
This is the only way to break the situation.
In the sky, Salomos moved.
Its massive head continued to press downward.
The crimson vertical pupils pierced through the ground, through the obstruction of the ruins.
They pinned themselves directly onto Bell’s back.
He was locked on.
A chill exploded within his spine.
It surged from his tailbone all the way to the back of his head.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
The slits of Salomos’s vertical pupils widened.
A beam of pitch-black light shot out from the pupils.
It wasn't a wide-range dragon breath. It was a highly concentrated Light of Denial.
The beam pierced through the ruins of the Night Rose Palace.
It headed straight for the underground passage.
It headed straight for Bell’s back.
A cyan light cut in.
Leovet vanished from the entrance of the passage.
He appeared in the direct path of the beam.
He pressed his palms together and pushed outward.
A cyan wind wall, compressed to the extreme, blocked the way.
The density of the wind wall was so high it was visible to the naked eye. The airflow formed countless tiny vortices within it.
The beam slammed into the wind wall.
There was no loud noise.
A black dot appeared in the center of the wind wall.
The black dot expanded rapidly.
Cyan wind elements were draining away frantically.
Being erased. Being denied.
Leovet’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
A mouthful of blood sprayed from his mouth.
The blood splashed onto the remaining wind wall and was instantly swallowed by the black dot.
The wind wall collapsed completely.
Leovet’s body was caught by the aftershock of the beam.
He was sent flying.
He smashed through three layers of underground bedrock.
Rubble buried his body. He vanished from perception.
The passage reached its end.
A heavy cast-iron door blocked the way.
Lilian raised her right leg.
She kicked the center of the iron door.
A loud bang.
The iron door flew out along with its frame, crashing onto the open ground outside.
Blinding red light poured in.
The four of them rushed out onto the surface.
Leon’s stamina was pushed to its absolute limit. His knees buckled, and he collapsed forward.
Before Leon fell, Bell’s feet hit the ground.
His knees bent as he forced his body to maintain balance.
He held Cecilia tightly in his arms.
The surrounding scene unfolded.
Moon Phase City was gone.
More than half the city had been turned to scorched earth.
The buildings, the streets, the fountains, the statues.
Everything had disappeared.
Only bottomless ravines and smooth cuts remained on the ground.
The calamitous black mist drifted over the ruins.
Wherever the black mist touched, the soil lost its color and the rubble turned to powder.
The remains of the withered husk tide had originally been piled high like mountains.
Now, not even a trace of them remained within the black mist.
This was a one-sided slaughter.
It was a physical purging of the entire world.
The sky was obscured by black mist.
There was no moon.
Only that pitch-black dragon coiled amidst the clouds.
There was nowhere to run.
The teleportation arrays were destroyed. The ley line array had been drained dry.
Leon leaned against a section of broken wall.
He gasped for air.
The blood from his left arm had reached his fingertips, dripping onto the scorched earth.
He watched as the ice magic he was so proud of proved utterly useless against the black mist.
His understanding of the magical system was collapsing.
Lilian placed Tia on the ground.
She gripped her daggers tightly.
Her knuckles broke through the surface of her skin, and wisps of blood seeped out.
The feeling of powerlessness as her blood source mana was instantly pulverized filled her nerves.
Bell looked down.
He looked at Cecilia in his arms.
Her golden hair was disheveled, her breathing steady.
The green light of the World Tree Heart roamed beneath her skin.
The black mist in the sky began to contract.
It converged toward Salomos’s massive jaws.
A second dragon breath was charging.
This time, the range would cover the entire site of Moon Phase City.
Bell’s right hand gripped Cecilia’s shoulder.
His fingers tightened.
His nails dug into her flesh.
“Wake up.”
Rate on N.U.
