A vast curtain of fire burned through the forest.
Whether Gravity Sorcery, Glintstone Sorcery, or Night Magic, their essence was the same. They imitated the laws governing the movement of the universe and the stars.
When a star falls, what does it bring?
Besides meteorites from beyond the heavens, hard beyond measure, there is also heat fierce enough to melt stone. And so, naturally, the forest caught fire in the battle between the Night Sorcerers and the Insectoids.
The Night Sorcerers and the Insectoids fought to the death, and the forest became the sacrifice to their battle.
Flames rose like an unbreakable wall, shutting everything out, while threads sharp as spears charged forward with unstoppable force.
Grilan stood at the heart of the fierce battle and realized there was nowhere left for him to dodge.
Angelo's mycelium pierced through his body with ease, pinning his feet to a great tree and leaving them suspended in the air.
That massive hand covered in mushrooms clamped tightly around his throat, leaving him almost unable to breathe.
Grilan's black soft armor was already torn and ruined, covered in countless fine scratches.
Around him lay the corpses of Night Sorcerers, their blood staining the earth red.
His anger and pain erupted at the same time, blood spraying out along with his furious cries.
Yet the agony made his nerves spasm, and his body grew less and less responsive.
The instant he tried to raise his staff and counterattack, the Mushroom Man on his right suddenly struck.
Its mycelium pierced Grilan's palm in an instant, and the old Sage's staff fell to the ground.
Grilan had not been cautious enough in this operation, but even if he had been, it would not have mattered.
Under the siege of the three Corrupted Lords and their Kindreds of Rot, even if all the Sages had come together, destruction would have been hard to avoid.
"Will killing me here be enough? That Master will kill all of you too," Grilan roared in defiance. "You are truly mad, dragging him into this as well."
Angelo paid no attention to Grilan's roar.
He slowly reached out, grabbed Grilan's faceplate, and tore it off with a violent pull.
The moment the faceplate hit the ground, Grilan's gaunt, aged face was fully exposed.
Angelo stared at Grilan's face, his gaze cold and merciless.
He slowly increased the force in his hand, as if savoring the act of tormenting him.
Grilan desperately tried to pry open the hand clamped around his throat, but no matter how he struggled, he could not move Angelo in the slightest.
As time passed, the armor around Grilan's neck began to deform. The once-hard metal twisted gradually under the immense pressure.
The warped armor pressed into his throat, making it harder and harder for him to breathe.
His face turned deathly pale from lack of air, and his lips lost all color, taking on a terrifying bluish-gray hue.
Grilan's entire body trembled uncontrollably as suffocation robbed his muscles of control. His eyes bulged, as if they might fall from their sockets at any moment.
Blood surged wildly through his body, hammering against his fragile vessels and subjecting him to unspeakable pain, as though he were sinking into a bottomless abyss.
"We need his power. If we want to snatch the chestnuts from the fire under that Lord's hand, relying only on our own strength is obviously far from enough," Angelo said flatly.
Lusat, this Master of Magic once revered by countless Sorcerers, had gradually lost himself on the path of pursuing the Origin.
According to rumor, the Origin he glimpsed was the moment a vast star cluster was destroyed. That sight dealt him a tremendous shock.
Then everything about him collapsed along with it.
Not only was his mind driven to the brink of ruin, even his body underwent a mutation, turning into a half-inorganic existence like Glintstone.
Once, he had been so wise and learned, so admired and worshipped. Now he had fallen into a deranged monster that had lost all reason.
And so, in the end, he was sealed away in Sellia.
That had been the homeland of all the Sorcerers of the Olivenese School at the time, as well as Lusat's own home, the place he returned to after leaving Raya Lucaria Academy.
He should have remained in that cave, immersed in his beautiful dream of the Origin until the erosion of his mind turned him into a huge piece of inorganic Glintstone. Yet now, he had come to Limgrave.
"How are we supposed to make Lusat go after that Lord? We cannot control him." Gowry looked toward the dying Grilan.
"Why would we need to control him? We only need to bring him here, and he will naturally serve his purpose." Angelo looked unusually calm, his face expressionless as he replied.
"Every Sorcerer is a powerful war machine, let alone a Master of Magic. When he stands on the battlefield, who could ignore him? Not even a Lord."
Indeed, they had no way to control Lusat, whose mind had been shattered by the Power of Origin.
The only reason they had managed to unseal this rampaging monster of a Master from Sellia and lure him here was by paying with the lives of one kin after another.
When they looked up, they could see the Glintstone being floating in the sky through Gravity Sorcery. In truth, a creature like that should no longer need something like a wand.
But perhaps out of habit carried over from the distant past, Lusat still held that short, slender wand, waving it gently.
The Glintstone set at the wand's tip was now releasing a dazzling brilliance, as if displaying to the world the surging Magical Power contained within.
"What do we do? Think of something!" Moonrithyll roared, gripping the reins of the Flying Dragon. "Don't you Flying Dragons claim to be rulers of the sky? Can't you even stop meteors?"
"That was Bayle's claim, not ours! And meteors are powers from beyond the heavens, not soft clouds in the sky that can be bullied around!" The Flying Dragon beneath her was nearly frantic.
Moonrithyll could not understand dragon speech, but she knew Rellana could not block this strike, and she also knew that a knight ought to protect her sovereign.
So she yanked the reins without hesitation, driving the Flying Dragon to race toward Rellana.
Twelve dark meteors shot one after another from the Glintstone at the tip of the wand. These meteors were larger, faster, and far more brilliant than the ones that had fallen over Limgrave earlier.
They tore through the night. The sky seemed to split and shatter as they hurtled straight toward Rellana, carrying an aura of destruction.
This was the legendary magic, Stars of Ruin.
Moonrithyll was frantic with worry, desperately urging the Flying Dragon onward.
Yet the meteors were simply too fast. Before Moonrithyll could reach Rellana, they were already plunging down from the sky.
Like a lightly dancing Goddess, Rellana rose gracefully into the air, then spun once with the elegance of a dancer.
The Lunar Princess's movements were so graceful that it seemed the entire world had fallen beneath her beauty.
As she turned, the Magical Power within her surged out like a raging tide, condensing in the air into two overlapping moons.
The two moons gave off a gentle glow, nestled against each other as they flew forward to meet the falling meteors.
Leaning together, the twin moons smashed through one meteor after another, until the fifth struck and shattered them apart.
Moonlight scattered like silver rain, and Rellana's figure fell from the sky. Yet she did not feel the pain that should have come from crashing into the ground.
Just like those two moons nestled together, someone had caught her and was raising a war spear to face the stars.