"People of my fallen homeland, I will avenge you with my own hands!"
For Jax, the weapon burning with the Eternal Flame in his hands struck again and again at the culprit that had destroyed his nation long ago.
Caleb remained silent. All of this was good, but between his brows, there was only a faint sense of unease.
It was going too smoothly.
His side had rushed over immediately. Under an emergency muster, the combat power he could mobilize was actually extremely limited.
If they could fight on home ground, they could use Heimerdinger's turrets, along with Ixtal's elemental magic.
Then, by using portals, they could directly send some of the Void creatures to the Freljord.
With home-field advantage on their side, the battle would only go much more smoothly.
Once they reached that point, with experience slaughtering Void creatures, Caleb would have far greater confidence in handling the Void constructs transported over there.
Right now, although he had received unexpected reinforcements, and quite a lot of them at that, everything had still happened far too smoothly.
So smoothly that Caleb felt uneasy.
As the overall planner for this operation, Caleb had naturally imagined this kind of battle situation before.
Seeing that there were more Aspects than expected, and with two teleportation skills available, his thought at the time had been that, at worst, they could kill one or two Watchers. If they truly could not hold out, the high-end fighters could cover the retreat while everyone withdrew in batches.
But looking at the current situation, Caleb's heart kept muttering with doubt.
If it was really this smooth, then at Shurima's peak, forget sealing the Void inside Icathia.
They should have blown up the entire Void plane instead.
One had to know that back when the boundaries between the planes were not yet so clear, Avarosa had once gone to the Void beneath the earth.
But after that, she lost her voice. One had to know, she was one of the Three Sisters.
Even if Lissandra had not yet accepted the Void's power on their behalf back then, she was still an extremely powerful existence.
After all, at that time, Lissandra had survived against Volibear, only losing both her eyes.
Even if the armor Ornn gave her at the time had been powerful, Caleb did not believe Volibear had escaped without a single wound on his body.
So Avarosa, as one of humanity's top combatants of that era, in Caleb's current view, had not encountered anything that should have been capable of making her lose her voice.
Until that huge manta-like body danced before him, and from that beautiful face, Caleb saw a truth that would make the entire world yield.
It seemed to be another ordinary day. Jinx was enjoying ice cream imported from the upper city.
Vi was practicing her boxing, while tiny Ekko followed behind her step by step, copying her every move.
Claggor and Mylo were both still there, and Mylo's mouth was still running nonstop.
One of Silco's eyes had not turned hellish crimson. He was running The Last Drop together with Vander.
Caleb himself was an abandoned Ionian infant who had been picked up, and under Silco's care, he had managed to grow up with difficulty.
Recently, a new family had moved in next door. Supposedly, they came from Icathia.
The first time Caleb saw that slightly shy girl, he felt an overwhelming urge to marry her and bring her home.
The sun passed over the top of Zaun, and the sunlight did not linger for long.
Yet on such an ordinary day, Caleb felt it was incomparably beautiful.
It seemed like it had been far too long since he had rested properly like this.
However, when Caleb opened his eyes again, everything before him shattered like a mirror.
"I'm not a child who grew up with them. I am Caleb."
"The first place I reached in this world was Stillwater Hold."
The Empress before him did not seem satisfied with Caleb's performance.
Becoming part of the Void while dreaming was the proper path.
Even helping the Void open portals to every corner of the world while still inside the dream was what she wanted to see.
She was very dissatisfied with a situation like Caleb's, where he had broken free from the dream in the span of a blink.
Caleb looked around. Everyone nearby had fallen into a long slumber.
Of course, this was the enemy's home ground. With such nearly absurd advantages in play, Caleb did not lose his reason.
All the Void creatures around them were frozen still, silently waiting for the dream woven by their Empress to end.
But the Empress did not seem to know Caleb's origins. The future she had woven for him had only been a vague scene from the Twin Cities' old days.
Or perhaps it was because Caleb and the people here had an extremely tiny, but genuinely fundamental physical difference.
One had to know that for Ascended and Aspects who had reached tiers like T2 or T1, let alone killing intent directed at themselves, even killing intent aimed at everyone around them would trigger their bodies' reactions and wake them from sleep.
So almost every Void construct present obeyed the Empress's command and stopped.
Even after Caleb woke up, they still did not dare show him any hostility.
Once a single Ascended woke, almost every human would awaken under that Ascended's powerful spiritual field.
The Void had paid such a price to numb them until now, and it certainly was not to fail at the last step.
Caleb instinctively wanted to draw his sword and fight, but his vision spun violently. In a blur, he saw that drifting face, carrying a faintly mocking smile.
It was as if, within the dream, he had made a mistake and kept resisting, so in the end, the infamous Gray Lady had come for him.
Her leg blades were extremely sharp. Cutting open someone's throat only took an instant.
Caleb's gaze lost focus.
Right. No matter how powerful this body of his was, it still could not compare to the true ruler of the Void plane.
In the end, was the Void Empress's dream still affecting him, or was this the final fantasy of a nameless soldier before his death in the Twin Cities War?
At this point, Caleb no longer wanted to tell the difference.
His body felt as if it had been released, free of all restraints. Death in an instant carried almost no pain.
A violent gale swept across the entire battlefield. Everyone who had been about to die without realizing it suddenly felt life energy continuously rising within their bodies.
Kai'Sa's chest suddenly ached. When she opened her eyes, she saw the figure that had once advanced with her through wind and snow.
Only that smiling head was gone, the head that had made it feel as though the sky would never fall, and that there would always be a way to solve everything.
Icathian Rain erupted from Kai'Sa's body. Kai'Sa did not speak. Only the projectiles, far greater in number than before, revealed her mood.
The Empress let out a shriek and, while her opponents had yet to fully awaken, directly ordered the Watchers around her to attack.
And in a place she had not noticed, a small hourglass on Caleb's body quietly shattered.
Before Caleb's consciousness could fully break free, it was dragged back onto the battlefield.
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