Chapter 215: The Illusion of the Requiem and the Trance of the Sovereign Dragon
"Hunt, shadows."
Dante's command fell upon the foliage like an execution sentence. In absolute silence—devoid of brilliance, atmospheric vibration, or even the slightest Qi pressure thanks to the absolute compression of the [Soot Veil]—the six black silhouettes of the Morningstar warriors plunged from the pine canopy like specters of death, descending with their invisible blades upon the hundred men screaming on the shore of the glacial lake.
The mercenaries, who barely a second earlier were buzzing with arrogant confidence, were abruptly transformed into an amphitheater of primitive panic. With no physical enemy to look at and no magical trajectories to dodge, the hundred mercenaries collapsed in an instant.
"Where are they?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS...?! AAAAGH!" a mercenary captain's scream was cut in half by a wet, chilling gurgle (GURG-GLE!).
The man dropped to his knees, desperately trying to hold back with armored hands the intestines spilling out of his belly—ripped open by one of Joren's invisible wind blades—before slumping with a soft thud onto the black frost.
"PLEASE, MERCY! I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING! THERE'S NOTHING THERE...!" wept a young soldier, swinging his blind sword at empty air.
The only answer to his plea was an imperceptible acoustic note projected by Lyra. The warrior's brain, seized by the illusory intent, believed with absolute biological certainty that his head was being crushed between two solid bronze mallets; his eyeballs burst outward and his cranial vault cracked (CRUNCH!), splattering black blood and bone fragments across the ice solely by the decree of his deceived mind.
"RUN! THE AIR IS BURNING! THE AIR IS CURSED!" the panic turned into a collective shriek, sharp and suffocating.
Men with severed jugulars and tendons from Rowan's imperceptible draw tried to vocalize words for help, emitting only guttural whistles through their open throats. Others, blinded by terror, tripped over the corpses of their own brothers-in-arms, who fell ceaselessly like wet sandbags (THUD, SPLASH!), staining the mud a frothy crimson that steamed beneath the northern cold.
The few Semi-Saint Realm mercenaries who managed to react and raise their defensive Qi domes suffered the cruelest fate. Upon activating their shields, Tamsin's [Absolute Poison Intent] and Mira's [Phantom Blood Intent] infected their martial matrices without ever touching flesh. The soldiers' golden barriers mutated in a second to a rancid, corrupted green, detonating upon their own creators; the acid and toxin dissolved their faces and breastplates with a corrosive hiss (SSSSS-PULL!), tearing agonizing shrieks from them that died away as their own scorched lungs dissolved into ash.
In under sixty seconds by the clock, the clamor of combat was extinguished, turning into a dying echo against the cliffs. One hundred elite bodies lay scattered along the shore of the frozen lake—dismembered, amputated, rotted, and rusted. There wasn't a single survivor among the infantry. The only sound ruling the landscape was the rhythmic dripping of blood running from the pine branches down to the ice (Drip... drop... drip!), accompanied by the scarlet steam rising from the open torsos of the victims.
In the center of the slaughterhouse, completely unharmed physically yet with their souls shattered by terror, only two men remained standing: Cassian Aurelia and the mercenary leader, Gorn.
Both were kneeling on the frozen earth, trembling convulsively with wide, bulging eyes. Their weapons had dropped from their hands; watching their private army be wiped from existence in one minute by invisible ghosts had caused their minds to suffer an irreversible fracture.
From the upper branch of the oak-pine, a gust of wind rose, carrying an acrid and utterly humiliating stench toward Dante's nose. He furrowed his brow in deep disgust and covered his face with his sleeve.
"Well, well... what do we have here?" Dante mocked, looking down with dull gray pupils laden with absolute contempt. "Our arrogant one-armed little prince and his muscular beast just pissed and shit themselves out of fear. Seriously, you couldn't even hold it together like warriors or run into the bushes? What pathetic disgust."
Dante waved his hand indifferently, wafting the stench away.
"Well, our little hunting gathering is over, so you can die now. But it would be a waste to kill you quickly for nothing. Lyra... put on a memorable show for these aristocrats' family album."
On a lower branch, Lyra raised a pale silver eyebrow. A cold, perverse smile formed on her lips as a macabre idea germinated in her mind.
"Oh, Dante... you really are a considerate and creative leader. Your wish is my command."
Taking advantage of the complete psychological collapse Cassian and Gorn were experiencing—their mental defenses at absolute zero after witnessing the slaughter of their men—Lyra unleashed the supreme power of her mystical arsenal: the [Dream Illusion Grimoire].
Unhooking her Middle Saint Grade relic from her belt, the [Phantom Requiem Bell]—forged from Spectral Silver and carved with reliefs of agonizing faces—Lyra gently shook it in the air. It had no physical clapper, but an unearthly, subatomic, indigo toll vibrated directly within the souls of the two survivors.
The acoustic frequency tore apart the cohesion of local reality; the colors of the lake shore instantly washed out in Cassian and Gorn's vision, turning gray, cold, and ethereal. Their spirits became "detached" from their physical bodies, completely exposed to the dominion of the lie.
Immediately following, Lyra forcefully planted the ferrule of her [Staff of the Eternal Mist] into the wood of the branch. The crystal orb at its tip flashed, and a wave of purple and violet vapor cascaded down the cliff, spilling over the clearing like a heavy waterfall.
By combining both supreme artifacts, Lyra activated her bloodline synergy: [Resonance of the Dream Truth].
The violet mist ceased to be smoke, turning into dense, solid matter. The battlefield transformed into a fractured mirror where the assassin's imagination rewrote the rules of the world. Within the brains of Cassian and Gorn, Lyra did not project monsters or swords; she injected a radical shift in perception laden with warmth, real mass, carnal scent, and a desperate, uncontrollable, animalistic lust.
Under the influence of the Physical Resonance, the demented panic both men felt underwent an unnatural twist. In their controlled minds, the slaughter of their soldiers was no longer the work of an enemy, but the backdrop of the end of the world—which the two of them, as sole surviving lovers, had managed to outlive through an agonizing miracle. Looking into each other's eyes, they no longer saw an arrogant noble and a brutish subordinate; they saw the supreme object of their devotion, the only refuge of pleasure and life in a wasteland of death.
"Cassian... by the gods, you're alive..." Gorn growled in a hoarse voice, his eyes bloodshot and pupils dilated by a feverish, wild desire.
"Gorn...!" Cassian panted, losing the last vestige of his dignity.
Without uttering another word, driven by the lie Lyra had solidified in their nerves, the two men threw themselves at each other with a brutal ferocity devoid of any control. Modesty, social hierarchy, and physical pain vanished entirely.
Gorn buried his massive, scar-covered hands into Cassian's fine embroidered robes, tearing with animalistic violence that ripped through the mystical silk and reinforced leather with a sharp snap (RIP!), exposing the young master's emaciated, sweaty chest. Cassian, burning in an induced carnal fever, responded with the same desperate urgency; with his remaining left hand, he yanked and tore at the straps and riveted plates of the giant's armor, casting them onto the frozen ground where they clattered among the puddles of blood.
In the middle of the mud, surrounded by the hundred mangled corpses of their own guard and enveloped by the violet vapor, the two warriors stripped each other bare with bites and savage tears. The freezing chill of the glacial lake did not touch them; the staff's illusion scorched their skin with artificial fire.
Gorn pushed Cassian onto his back against the cracked trunk of a millennial pine. The Aurelia heir's fingers tangled desperately in the barbarian's long, dirty hair, pulling him into a loud, wet, violent kiss, mixed with the alkaline taste of residual blood lingering in the air.
The act became explicit, raw, and laden with absolute degradation. Blinded by induced lust, Gorn forced Cassian to turn around against the tree bark, spreading his thighs with a heavy shove. With a guttural groan that bounced off the black rocks of the cliff, the colossus penetrated the aristocrat with a savage thrust completely devoid of martial finesse.
Cassian let out a sharp shriek, throwing his head back as his spine arched in a spasm of illusory pleasure and real physical pain; his remaining fingernails dug into the pine wood, dragging out splinters and bleeding from the force of the impact.
The completely naked bodies of both commanders began moving frantically—heavy and loud, getting smeared with the frozen mud and the drained blood of their men. Every brutal thrust from Gorn slammed Cassian's torso against the tree (SLAP, THUD!), tearing obscene pants and degrading pleas from him begging for more force. The noble turned his face, searching for the barbarian's neck and shoulders to bite him fiercely, while his hips pushed backward to receive the carnal punishment in a total loss of reason.
From the safety of the high branches, while the deplorable and degrading spectacle unfolded in the mud, Lyra slipped her free hand into the folds of her robe and pulled out a hexagonal crystal: a High-Fidelity Qi Recording Stone. Channelling an invisible thread of her cloaked energy, the internal runes of the crystal ignited with a dull amber pulse. Lyra aimed the artifact's lens directly toward the center of the scene, accurately absorbing the light waves and acoustic reflections of the act.
The stone recorded every detail of the abomination: the savage thrusts, the explicit moans, the faces deformed by sexual delirium, the muddy nudity, and above all, the Aurelia family coat of arms lying on the ground beside their entwined bodies in a frenzied fornication atop a mountain of their own corpses. Lyra meticulously captured the most devastating and irrefutable angles.
The exact instant the recording reached its climax and the stone sealed the final frame in its crystalline memory, Lyra lowered the staff and tucked the artifact away in her clothes with a freezing smile.
There was no need to dirty their swords beheading them. The Resonance of the Dream Truth had operated with such violent intensity that once the violet mist dissipated over the coming hours, the technique would force Cassian and Gorn's brains to send signals of massive trauma to their nervous systems, collapsing their internal organs from exhaustion and heart failure after such carnal and mental strain.
"Let's go," Dante ordered in an inaudible whisper.
Without emitting a single flash, in a total absence of sound and wind, the seven black silhouettes turned around and vanished among the pine canopies. Behind them, in the twilight of the glacial lake, only the loud panting, the slapping of flesh, and the screams of delirious pleasure remained from two men destroying each other in a simulation of lust, completely alone in the center of a military graveyard.
Several leagues away, moving at breakneck speed along a forest trail, Dante activated his Soul Nexus to contact the other half of the team.
"Hey, Aia... we just finished cleaning up the trash at the lake. And by the way, we have a highly entertaining little gift stored in a crystal for you guys. What are your exact coordinates?"
Through the telepathic connection, Aia's voice arrived accompanied by the sound of a dry, whistling wind:
"Excellent work, Dante. We are well south of Aethelgard's walls. Get over here immediately."
Dante, Lyra, Altair, Joren, Mira, Tamsin, and Rowan shifted their vector in mid-air, accelerating their march south to rendezvous with their siblings.
— South of Aethelgard —
At the same time, having separated from Dante's division two hours earlier, the group pressed forward relentlessly.
"Lia, how much further until we reach those two beasts' nest?" Aia asked, adjusting her black hood as they ran in an arrow formation.
"We're almost there, just a little further ahead," Lia replied, checking the holographic map projected from her ring. "The terrain is about to change. Let's pick up the pace so we don't lose the midday sun."
In unison, the five fighters—Aia, Varian, Ciro, Lia, and Ren—injected a pulse of Qi into their legs. Their bodies became blurry flashes slicing through the canyon wind, leaving behind trails of dust and shattered leaves as they devoured kilometers of distance in seconds.
After cresting a steep rocky ridge, the green vegetation abruptly vanished. The five halted their advance with a smooth, synchronized slide, stopping at the edge of a precipice to behold the scene opening up at their feet.
Sprawling before them was an immense, endless plain of pure white salt: The Salt Flat of Scorched Trees.
The terrain in this southern region was so flat, immaculate, and crystalline that it acted as a perfect natural mirror, reflecting the deep blue of the sky and clouds with overwhelming clarity. Walking across it produced the eerie illusion of floating in a void between two identical heavens.
Dotting that dazzling landscape, imposing and mute, stood ancient forests of petrified, scorched trees of an absolute bone-white color. They possessed no leaves, no bark, not even the slightest trace of plant life; they were massive mineral structures with branches sharp as spears and swords pointing fiercely toward the sky, breaking the monotony of the white mirror.
An atmosphere of blinding, sepulchral, and deeply deceptive silence enveloped them. The sunlight struck the salt plain and bounced upward with a brutal intensity that threatened to burn their retinas. Reacting by martial instinct, Aia and her companions immediately channeled a thin layer of transparent Qi over their eyes, acting as an optical filter to prevent blindness from the glare.
Scanning the horizon, the tactical danger of the salt flat became evident: normal shadows did not exist on the reflective ground, and the overhead light eliminated any physical reference points, turning the exact calculation of distances and depths into a visual nightmare. However, for a squad seeking to hide the brutality of their true power from the eyes of the guild, that solitary white desert was an unbeatable execution ground.
Lia swept the white horizon and pointed toward a cluster of bone trees a kilometer away.
"We're in the contract zone now."
They descended the slope and began walking onto the salt mirror, controlling the weight of their steps to avoid making the slightest crunch on the crystalline crust.
Suddenly, Ren raised his right hand in a sharp cutting motion, stopping the group dead in their tracks. His eyes blinked rapidly as he expanded his spiritual perception.
"They're here... right in front of us," Ren whispered into the Soul Nexus, pointing toward the center of the petrified forest. "My divine sense just collided with two truly colossal, heavy Qi signatures. One is extremely scorching and violent, like a volcano about to erupt; the other is dense, deep, and crushing, like the bottom of a frozen ocean. They are together in the same clearing."
Moving with ghostly lightness, the squad slithered among the scorched trunks. With feline agility, they climbed the highest, sharpest branches of a massive petrified tree dominating the perimeter, suppressing their auras to the level of dead stones to observe the nest from above.
There lay the two targets of their Gold Rank contract, resting in the center of a reflective clearing, oblivious to the arrival of the hunters.
To the left snored the Fire Lion. This beast was no simple magical creature; it was a disaster-level monster cataloged at Grade 5 (Equivalent to Stage 8 of the Saint Realm), infamous for incinerating entire mountain ranges.
Its physical appearance inspired reverential dread: it measured over eight meters long, covered in a coat of dark scarlet scales that clashed violently against the white ground. Around its massive head billowed an imposing mane of pure fire and liquid lava that crackled ceaselessly even in sleep. Though its eyes were closed, the orange glow of a terrestrial core seeped through its eyelids, and protruding from its half-open jaws were two colossal fangs forged from solidified magma. Around it, the crystalline salt crust had melted from its body's passive heat, forming a pool of boiling slag and black ash.
Right beside it, coiled with predatory elegance and protecting its companion's flank, rested its mate: the Water Lion, another beast at Stage 8 of the Saint Realm. It was the undisputed sovereign, capable of manipulating the weight of water to crush entire armies. Its body was even more imposing and elongated than the male's; its form was completely covered in iridescent sapphire-blue and silver scales that caught the salt flat's sunlight, flashing like a sea of diamonds. From its spinal column emerged long, crystalline dorsal fins that looked like curtains of living water in perpetual flow, releasing a dense mystical mist that cooled its companion's burning air.
The constant clash between the male's heat and the female's freezing mist generated a vortex of distortion right above their heads, creating steam storms that warned of their overwhelming elemental synergy.
Aia pulled the holographic scroll the blonde Yue had given her at the Wandering Star Alliance from her ring, comparing the data against the two beasts sleeping below.
"Yue's records are accurate," Aia whispered through the Nexus, putting the scroll away. "They are a fire lion and a water lioness, both firmly settled at Stage 8 of the Saint Realm. For any normal Gold Rank group, this would be a surefire suicide mission."
Far from feeling fear, a smile laden with adrenaline and martial enthusiasm formed on all four of their faces. Their meridians throbbed with impatience, eager to unleash battle.
"Alright, we'll split up to break their elemental formation," Aia ordered in a tactical voice. "Lia, Varian... you two are our best long-range eyes. Stay up in the heights of these petrified trees and give us cover and field control."
Lia and Varian nodded without hesitation, unhooking their runic combat bows from their backs and silently drawing the strings.
"Ciro, Ren, and I will head down to the salt ground for close-quarters combat," Aia continued, gripping her silver spear. "You two focus on keeping the Fire Lion distracted and overwhelmed. I will personally handle breaking the water lioness's defense. Ready? Attack!"
Without leaving time for a single breath, three blurry flashes shot from the highest branches, falling like meteorites toward the center of the white mirror.
The first to touch the ground and charge was Ren. Skidding across the crystalline salt at breakneck speed, he aimed straight for the exposed flank of the water lioness, drawing his supreme relic: the [Fang of the Ethereal Gale].
His blade—forged from Feather Steel, an exotic pale green, near-translucent metal—bore an organic curvature identical to a bird of prey's talon, featuring grooves that eliminated atmospheric friction. Gripping the Storm Hawk Bone hilt wrapped in frozen spider silk, Ren unleashed a downward slash designed to decapitate the beast in a single silent blow.
However, the exact second the green edge was half a meter from her neck, the lioness snapped her massive sapphire eyes open. Grade 5 beasts never fully sleep; their territorial instincts always remain operating at peak capacity.
Without even bothering to dodge, the water lioness activated her technique: [Inverting Water Mirror].
The white, crystalline salt surface beneath Ren's boots flashed with a bluish glow. Ren's own reflection on the ground sprang to physical life; an exact copy of the young assassin, made of water and salt mirrors, erupted from the floor with lightning speed, executing the exact same slash with a water fang to stab Ren in the back in his blind spot.
CLANGGG!
Ren contorted his spinal column in mid-air thanks to his superhuman reflexes, spinning his body to clash his own dagger against his mirror clone's blade. The force of their mutual impact generated a shockwave that cracked the salt crust in a ten-meter radius, pushing Ren backward in a backflip.
The thunderous clash broke the Fire Lion's slumber. Opening its magma eyes and seeing three humans daring to attack its mate within its territory, a primordial fury exploded in its chest.
"ROOOAAAR!" a volcanic, deafening, apocalyptic roar shook the foundations of the southern canyon.
The expanding soundwave traveled accompanied by a spherical explosion of scarlet flames and scorching gusts of wind that instantly evaporated nearby saltpeter pools and cracked the surrounding petrified trees.
Ciro, advancing from the left in support, had to dig his boots into the ground and skid backward twelve meters, using his short swords to deflect a blast of liquid lava the lion spat straight at his face.
"Well... our surprise attack failed. I expected nothing less from two Grade 5 beasts," Aia said, walking with astonishing calm through the center of the blast zone, her cloak fluttering in the hot wind.
In front of her, the water lioness rose to her full height, shaking her crystalline fins as she let out an intimidating bellow: WUUUUOOOOH! The humidity of the salt flat condensed into thousands of ice spears suspended over her back.
"Wow, you guys are really mad, huh?" Aia laughed, rolling her neck until her vertebrae popped. "Alright, since ambushes don't work, let's fight face to face like we're supposed to."
Aia reached her right hand out into the void and summoned her primary relic: an imposing, beautiful combat spear. Its shaft, forged from an alloy of chromed metal and primordial silver, seemed to constantly flow beneath the light as if made of liquid mercury. The tip dazzled with an immaculate white glow; moving it slowly through the air, the weapon left no normal motion trail, but rather flickered through space, giving the optical illusion of being in several places at once while emitting a harmonious crystalline chime identical to the clashing of thousands of fine mirrors.
Ren tightly gripped his two green daggers and Ciro shifted into his combat stance with the [Short Swords: Twins of the Silent Shadow] in hand, surrounded by his weapon's acoustic void.
"Okay, boys. You two handle containing that Fire Lion," Aia ordered, pointing the tip of her spear toward the Water Leviathan. "This beautiful blue kitty is all mine."
"Understood!" Ciro and Ren replied in unison, launching themselves in a riot of speed and invisible slashes toward the colossus's flank, generating a chain of explosions as steel clashed against lava scales (BOOM! CLANG! BOOM!).
In the center of the clearing, Aia stood ten paces away facing the Celestial Leviathan. The lioness lowered her head, growling with a threatening hiss (Grrrrrr!), deeply offended that a human with such an apparently low Qi level dared challenge her in a one-on-one without assistance.
"There, there, take it easy... don't get so worked up your scales fall off, hahaha," Aia mocked.
With a push that cracked the salt mirror (BOOM!), Aia shot forward in a perfect straight line, raising her spear to deliver a direct frontal thrust straight at the center of the monster's chest.
Reacting with disdain, the lioness stomped the ground with her front paw, once again activating her [Inverting Water Mirror]. Not just one copy emerged from the reflective salt tiles; three liquid, perfect reflections of Aia erupted from the ground, armed with mirror spears, lunging from three different angles to stab the original in mid-flight!
But Aia didn't even slow her speed. She didn't need to look back.
At that exact second, from the canopy of the highest petrified tree, a bowstring boomed like thunder in the sky. Lia had stepped into action with her sovereign bow, the [Zenith of Storms], releasing her martial skill: [Shattered Firmament Thunder Arrow].
Without using a single physical arrow, Lia had compressed her own Qi in the bow's chamber until stabilizing a solid projectile of pure lightning. Releasing the string, the cyan arrow of light broke the sound barrier in the air, applying its supreme variation: [Triple Lightning Flash].
Halfway through its downward trajectory, the sonic arrow split cleanly into three independent lightning beams that fell from the sky with godlike sniper precision.
CRACK-BOOM!
The three lightning bolts struck straight into the chests of the lioness's three water mirror clones, vaporizing them into a shower of steam and salt before they could even get close to Aia's body.
"Just focus on attacking the beast, Aia! I've got your flanks covered!" Lia shouted from above, nocking a fresh arrow onto her vibrating string.
"That's what I like to hear!" Aia shouted back in mid-air.
The water lioness roared in rage seeing her best territorial technique nullified by the archer in the tree. Giving her no time to reset her stance, Aia arrived right in front of her jaws.
With a subtle, refined flick of her wrist, Aia launched a frontal thrust so fast the air whistled with a metallic echo, concentrating her body's entire kinematic weight into a single invisible point at the white tip of her spear. The lioness tried to retreat, dodging to the left, but the speed of the thrust was superior; the mercury blade sliced through space, inflicting a deep gash on her right hind leg, sending a spurt of bluish blood spraying across the salt.
"Tsk... you really are slippery, kitty," Aia grunted, seeing she hadn't managed to impale her heart.
As Aia bent her knees to chain a second thrust, the lioness counterattacked with lethal violence. Spinning her massive scaled body, she unleashed the [Tide Slash].
Her heavy three-meter tail swept through the air at supersonic speed, projecting a razor-sharp blade of water that traveled horizontally across the clearing. This attack was a high-pressure slash capable of parting physical space and decapitating a cultivator five hundred meters away regardless of shield thickness.
Seeing the blue water line advancing toward her neck, Aia didn't retreat a single millimeter.
Gripping the mercury shaft with both hands in an iron hold, she executed a swift lateral deflection in the final millisecond. Instead of making the mistake of clashing head-on against the attack's immense hydraulic force, the white tip of her spear grazed the upper edge of the tide blade at an oblique forty-five-degree angle.
The spinning motion Aia imparted to the shaft completely dissipated the water's linear inertia, deflecting the lethal slash to the side with a dull snap (SHHH-KLANG!). The blue blade brushed past her shoulder and vanished into the distance, where it ended up cleanly slicing in half two gigantic petrified trees that collapsed with a deafening roar.
"Nice! This is getting fun, let's keep dancing!" Aia shouted, leaping into the air as she raised the spear over her head.
Gripping the chromed weapon with all the power in her arms, she brought down a devastating downward lash—the classic Lanceman's Slash—that struck the ground right where the lioness tried to hide, kicking up a ten-meter-high curtain of white salt that shook the terrain (BOOM!).
The beast, wounded and desperate, tried to summon her Inverting Water Mirror again from within the saline fog, but from the trees, an incessant rain of arrows from Varian and Lia fell like a hail of lightning (BAM-BAM-BAM!), shattering every reflection the second it tried to form.
Seeing her magic completely nullified, the lioness resorted to brute force: she lunged forward and swung a swipe with her front paw, trying to crush the girl's skull with her sapphire claws.
The massive claw descended, blotting out the sun, but Aia, moving with an instinctive fluidity that defied her own experience, shifted the axis of her spear sideways. She drove the chromed shaft straight into the beast's elbow joint, deflecting the colossal impact with a sharp crack (CRACK!) and completely breaking the anatomical balance of the ten-ton monster.
Taking advantage of the lioness's stumble, Aia stepped forward and initiated a frantic close-range technical exchange. For several uninterrupted minutes, the salt flat clearing became a symphony of metallic clashes, aquatic roars, white sparks, and blue blood scattering in the wind. Aia stabbed, deflected, blocked, and slashed with an ever-increasing tempo.
Wow... I think I'm getting the hang of wielding a spear. This is fascinating! Aia thought, marveling at the versatility of the mystical weapon.
What Aia did not know was that at that exact instant, in the deepest, most unfathomable reaches of her own spiritual space, something had just opened its eyes.
In the center of her sea of consciousness, floating peacefully within a dome of silver light very close to her sovereign soul, resided the mystical projection of a small silver dragon with absolute gray pupils. The ancestral entity had been silently observing Aia's martial performance and physical exertion over the last few minutes on the salt flat.
The small dragon exhaled a breath of pure light and murmured in a voice that made the laws of time resonate:
"Mmm... her understanding of rhythm and fluidity has reached the exact point. It is time to awaken the true inheritance."
Outside, in the mortal world, Aia was mid-defensive rotation, pushing away a water lash from the lioness. Suddenly, without warning, she felt a pull. Her peripheral vision blurred, the thunder of Ciro and Ren's explosions abruptly faded to silence, and the physical gravity of the salt flat vanished from her body.
When Aia blinked, the canyon, the beasts, and her companions were gone.
She stood in the middle of an infinite spiritual plane—an immaculate, white, silent void with no floor or ceiling. Her mind raced: What the hell happened? Where am I? Was it an illusion attack from the beast? Is there another enemy hidden here?
Before she could summon her defensive Qi, her gaze was drawn toward the center of that white void.
There, standing with a perfectly straight back, was a female figure dressed in immaculate white silk robes, holding in her right hand a spear emitting an ancestral, golden glow. The mysterious woman did not speak to her or look at her; she simply turned around in silence and began executing a series of basic spearmanship movements in the void:
The woman aligned her shoulders, slid her rear hand, and pushed the shaft forward in an imperceptible flash. The weapon's tip didn't just advance in a straight line; it spun like a high-speed drill, demonstrating how to focus the body's entire power to pierce any spiritual defense with a whistling severing wind.
The figure demonstrated the basic defense. She didn't take the enemy's force head-on; she used the flexible body of the shaft to strike an illusory claw from the side, deflecting the rival attack's trajectory into the void and leaving the opponent's chest wide open for a counterattack.
A sweeping, authoritative motion. Turning the tip toward the earth with a sharp downward snap of her lead hand, the woman slammed an illusory weapon against the floor of light, pinning it completely to seal the enemy's movements in a fraction of a second.
Proving that the spear is also a heavy whip, the warrior raised the weapon over her head and brought it down with the full weight of her spinal column, generating an impact wave that shook the very structure of that white plane.
Over and over again, with a hypnotic, flawless, terrifying tempo, the female figure repeated those four basic movements thousands of times.
Aia stood completely paralyzed, fascinated by the absolute beauty of that martial execution. Despite being the most elementary fundamentals of spear combat, in that woman's hands they felt like divine, immutable truths. Aia lost all track of time, completely forgetting what was happening in the battle of the outside world.
While Aia's consciousness was submerged in that sacred learning trance within the white plane, outside in the physical world, things had taken a terrifying turn.
From the canopy of the petrified tree, Lia, who held her bow drawn to fire a covering arrow, froze her fingers on the string noticing a radical change in Aia's posture.
Down on the salt, Aia's physical body had gone still for a second, her eyes half-closed and vacant. When the water lioness charged again, Aia's body began moving on its own, executing a series of evasions, deflections, and thrusts with an entirely erratic, yet terrifyingly and curiously perfect rhythm.
Lia, who knew Aia like her own sister, stared with wide eyes in mute shock: as much of a martial genius as Aia was, everyone in the clan knew full well she had never formally trained with a spear in her life! Yet her body's movements in that second were those of a supreme master who had wielded the weapon for ten thousand years.
"Aia! Can you hear me?! What's happening to you?!" Lia screamed hysterically through the Soul Nexus, but received no telepathic response. Aia's mind was offline.
Suddenly, a flash of martial comprehension illuminated Lia's mind and her jaw dropped: Good heavens... she just entered a state of Martial Enlightenment mid-combat! Her body is fighting purely on instinct.
In the soul's white plane, the female figure finally ceased her basic dance. The atmosphere around her became crushing, sovereign, and devoid of compassion. For the first time, an ancient, majestic voice resonated directly within Aia's being:
"Now... observe with the eyes of your soul, little warrior. This supreme art is titled: The Spear Art of the Sovereign Dragon of the Nine Heavens. It is an orthodox, primordial martial discipline focused exclusively on absolute domination, unshakeable righteousness, and linear destruction. Whoever wields this spear does not fight like a mortal; they move like a celestial dragon descending from the firmament to punish the earth."
Aia felt a violent tremor in her spirit, a shiver of pure reverence upon hearing that archaic name. Not daring to blink, she fixed her attention on the woman.
"First Stance," announced the voice.
"First Stance: The Dragon Emerges from the Abyss."
The woman sank her hips into a flawless bow stance, anchored her rear foot to the floor, and pushed the shaft's pommel with her ribs while her lead hand sharply twisted her wrist. As she stepped forward, the shaft spun on its axis. Before Aia's eyes, the Qi gathered at the base shot toward the tip, expanding into a golden spiral that bloomed to materialize the solid projection of a colossal celestial dragon's head with open jaws. The physical tip of the weapon vanished within the fangs of light, ejecting forward in a linear piercing impact so overwhelming it opened an infinite rift in the white void, demonstrating devastating destructive power.
Giving her no time to process it, the figure leaped into the sky of the white plane.
"Second Stance: Flight of the Celestial Dragon."
Gaining height in a massive vertical leap, the woman spun the weapon over her head in a dizzying helix that created a vortex of golden light. Reaching the apex and beginning her dive, she gripped the shaft with both hands and unleashed a high-speed barrage of downward thrusts. The blasts of Qi shedding from the tip transformed into massive, translucent golden dragon claws plummeting like a meteor shower, saturating the entire ground before her in a piercing bombardment designed to shred the armor of multiple giant monsters simultaneously.
Landing lightly and in perfect balance, the woman pivoted on her heel, pulling one leg back.
"Third Stance: Scales of the Guardian Dragon."
Gripping the spear in the center with both hands, she moved her wrists in an alternating rotation so fast the spear became completely invisible to the human eye, tracing a pattern of infinities before her chest. The weapon's friction against the spiritual air ignited a glowing, translucent circular shield. The layers of Qi overlapped perfectly, emulating the golden, impregnable scales of a divine dragon, displaying an absolute defense capable of deflecting and dispersing to the flanks any elemental blast or physical attack without the wielder suffering the slightest impact.
The figure halted her defensive rotation, planted her feet in the earth of light, arched her back bringing her chest toward the sky, and raised her voice with a majesty that made infinity tremble:
"And the supreme technique... Fourth Stance: Final Judgment of the Dragon of the Nine Heavens!"
Dropping into a deep horse stance, the woman tensed her entire body like a colossal bow, aimed the first third of the shaft straight at the firmament, and channeled the entirety of her soul into the weapon. With an explosive lash originating from her heels and traveling up her spine, she hurled the physical spear into the clouds of the white void with all her might.
Shooting upward, the weapon vanished inside a blinding vertical column of golden light ascending to the very heights. A second later, the spiritual sky split into concentric circles, and judgment descended from the heavens: a conceptual spear of pure energy over fifty meters long, wreathed by the roaring body of an ancestral golden dragon, plummeted at lightning speed. Impacting in the distance, it triggered a linear explosion and a shockwave so devastating it wiped out the horizon of the white plane in a tempest of absolute annihilation.
Aia watched the descent of that fifty-meter spear dripping with sweat, terrified by the art's obscene level of destruction, yet simultaneously with her soul euphoric—burning with desire to wield such power. She tried to open her mouth to ask a technical question, but her voice would not come out in that spiritual space.
The golden female figure turned toward her, tilted her head slightly, and said softly:
"Our time in this session has expired, little heir. I hope you absorb this knowledge into your blood and never allow the glory of my spear to be lost to the dust of the ages."
And with those words, the woman dissolved into a torrent of golden light.
At that exact second, Aia's mind suffered a violent, tearing pull, as if an invisible hand had ripped her soul out of the white plane to slam it back into her mortal body. She felt a stabbing pain and a burning sensation in her spirit; the contents of the [Spear Art of the Sovereign Dragon of the Nine Heavens] were being branded directly into her soul.
However, due to the current limitations of her bodily cultivation, the mystical seal only allowed her to retain complete access and fluidity over the First Stance, leaving the remaining three sealed beneath a heavy barrier of fog she could not unlock.
When Aia managed to open her eyes in the physical world and steady her ragged breathing, she blinked in confusion. The southern sunlight hit her face.
Looking up, she was met with the faces of Lia, Varian, Ciro, and Ren kneeling around her, staring at her with expressions mixing absolute terror, relief, and extreme concern. Aia tried to speak, but before she could articulate a word, her gaze drifted over their shoulders... and her jaw hit the floor.
The immaculate mirror of the Salt Flat of Scorched Trees no longer existed.
Where the salt pools and petrified forest had once rested, there now gaped an apocalyptic crater over one hundred meters wide and thirty meters deep, from whose black, scorched earth rose plumes of sulfur smoke and residual plasma. All the surrounding giant petrified trees had been uprooted, splintered, and pulverized by an atomic shockwave.
And most shocking of all: at the bottom of the smoking crater, there wasn't a single physical trace of the bodies of the Flame Lion or the Water Lioness! Their flesh, their bones, their magma fangs, and their sapphire scales had evaporated completely into nothingness; resting atop the scorched slag, the only things shining intact were two gleaming Grade 5 spiritual cores, floating peacefully amidst the smoke of destruction.
"HUH?! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE...?!" Aia screamed in a shrill voice, completely lost.
Hearing her scream and regain lucidity, Lia let out a choked gasp and threw herself onto her in a tight hug, frantically checking her arms, neck, and pulse to ensure she had no internal fractures. Confirming she was only extremely exhausted, Lia adopted a stern expression and, in a trembling voice, recounted the martial nightmare they had just witnessed.
— Minutes Earlier, During Aia's Trance in the Outside World —
While Aia's mind watched the theoretical explanations in the white void, down in the salt flat clearing, her physical body had entered the purest state of martial sleepwalking.
Aia's aura mutated radically. The lightness and warmth that always characterized the young Morningstar maiden vanished, replaced by an oppressive, ancient spiritual pressure that dropped the temperature of the canyon.
An erratic, majestic, layered voice—sounding like an echo of her own voice merged with the white plane figure's—escaped the lips of her sleeping body:
"Spear Art of the Sovereign Dragon of the Nine Heavens... First Stance: The Dragon Emerges from the Abyss."
Without her eyes focusing on her target, Aia's body sank its hips into a flawless bow stance and pushed the mercury spear's pommel with a violent rotation of her wrists. The spear became a spinning drill absorbing environmental Qi; a dragon's roar erupted across the salt flat, and a colossal golden dragon head of solid light materialized around her weapon.
The Grade 5 water lioness felt an oppressive sense of death that left her completely paralyzed by primitive terror, unable to shift a single scale or summon her ice shields.
BOOOOOOM!
Aia charged in a straight line. The golden dragon thrust pierced the lioness's chest as if it were wet paper, shattering her heart and spinal column, sending out a linear shockwave that gouged a fifty-meter trench into the salt mirror behind the monster's body.
Seeing his mate impaled with such absurd ease, the Flame Lion lost his mind. Bellowing in pain and rage, he ignited his supreme defensive and offensive technique: the [Divine Sun Body].
His scarlet coat burned with a blinding white light, and his mass turned into pure, concentrated fire, generating a solar-temperature barrier around him capable of melting any weapon or limb daring to enter its radius.
From a distance, Varian, Ciro, Ren, and Lia stepped back breaking out in cold sweat at the monster's solar heat, unable to approach.
But the face of Aia's sleeping body showed only an expression of annoyance and divine contempt. Her layered voice boomed through the canyon again:
"Second Stance: Flight of the Celestial Dragon."
With a vertical leap that shattered the salt floor, Aia ascended fifty meters into the sky of the salt flat, spinning her spear over her head in a golden vortex. Initiating her dive straight down toward the sun-like burning lion, her arms became optical pistons, unleashing an uninterrupted barrage of telescopic thrusts.
The Qi blasts shedding from her spear's white tip plummeted like meteorites. They transformed into massive, translucent golden dragon claws bombarding the Divine Sun Body from the air (BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!).
The rain of piercing impacts was so relentless it ruptured the lion's plasma barrier, shattering his scaled armor and making him scream in agony as his own lava scattered across the ground.
Landing gracefully before the shattered, bleeding beast, Aia's body showed no mercy. She arched her chest toward the clouds, dropped into a deep horse stance, and channeled the entirety of her physical Qi reserves into the lower third of the spear.
"Fourth Stance... Ultimate Technique: Final Judgment of the Dragon of the Nine Heavens."
Sensing the energy gathering in the weapon, Varian, Ciro, Ren, and Lia's biological instincts screamed of imminent annihilation. That technique did not discriminate between friend and foe; it was a total erasure zone!
"RETREAT! EVERYONE BACK! GET OUT OF THIS CLEARING RIGHT NOW!" Varian roared with all his might, grabbing Ren by the collar of his robe while boosting his boots with wind Qi to fly backward in retreat.
Lia and Ciro didn't hesitate for a second; they abandoned their positions and fled at top speed toward the outer ridges of the salt flat, putting over three hundred meters of distance behind them just in time.
In the center of the clearing, with an explosive full-body lash, Aia's physical sleepwalker hurled the mercury spear toward the firmament with all her strength.
The spear vanished from sight, swallowed by a blinding vertical column of golden light ascending to pierce the southern blue sky. A second of thunderous, suffocating silence ruled the salt flat. The clouds over their heads parted in vast concentric circles... and from the sky fell judgment.
A conceptual spear of pure golden energy—over fifty meters long and five meters thick, wreathed by the roaring body of a celestial dragon of light—descended in free fall at lightning speed onto the exact spot where the two Grade 5 beasts lay.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The golden meteorite's impact against the salt flat earth unleashed a literal cataclysm. A sphere of scorching light swallowed the entire petrified forest, followed by a linear, kinematic shockwave that ripped away the salt crust, pulverized the underlying basalt rock, and completely vaporized the flesh, bones, and blood of the beasts. Everything was erased by heat and force in a fraction of a second.
When the blast subsided and the mushroom cloud of saline dust began to settle, Aia collapsed from mid-air, completely unconscious and her Qi drained, having spent every last drop of her vital energy to fuel the Fourth Stance.
Lia, Varian, Ciro, and Ren sprinted desperately across the destroyed wasteland, leaped into the smoking crater, and caught Aia's body before she hit the scorched rocks, dragging her toward a less affected corner of the crater's edge to let her breathe and guard her while the dust settled.
— Present Time —
Aia listened to Lia's account with wide eyes, feeling a chill run down her entire spine.
"Good heavens..." Aia whispered, paralyzed, staring down at her pale hands. "Those four movements... they weren't just a simple theoretical lesson inside a dream in my soul. My actual physical body executed the Sovereign Dragon stances in the real world... How is that possible? What on earth did I unleash without realizing it?"
"How long was I asleep and unconscious after the explosion?" Aia asked, swallowing hard.
"Mmm... I think only about five or ten minutes at most," Lia replied, wiping sweat from her friend's forehead with her sleeve.
Taking a deep breath, Aia planted her hands on the scorched earth and tried to stand up to regain her dignity as squad leader. However, the moment she bent her knees, her muscles failed; she wobbled with a sharp groan and dropped to her knees on the ground again.
An excruciating, searing, generalized physical pain—as if every muscle fiber and ligament in her body had been chewed up and stretched beyond their limits—erupted across her limbs. Her Dantian was bone dry, empty as a desert.
"Ouch, damn it!" Aia cursed through gritted teeth, clutching her aching shoulder. "What beastly pain... These are the consequences of forcing a mortal body to execute supreme techniques it isn't ready for yet. I won't be able to make basic movements for a good while."
Just as Lia opened her supply bag to pull out a high-grade healing pill to stabilize her friend's channels, the sound of swift footsteps and crunching salt echoed from the top of the canyon ridge.
It was Dante, Lyra, Altair, Joren, Mira, Tamsin, and Rowan, who had just arrived after receiving the coordinates.
The stealth squad crested the ridge with a relaxed demeanor, ready to see the results of a typical monster hunt.
"Hey everyone! How did the hun—?" Lyra began greeting them with a bright smile on her face.
But the words abruptly froze in her throat.
Peering over the ridge and looking down into the valley, the seven members of Dante's team choked on their own spit. Their steps halted dead, and their jaws dropped in unison in a paralysis of absolute disbelief.
Before their eyes, the beautiful, famous white salt desert marked on Aethelgard's maps no longer existed. In its place was a titanic hole of destruction—a black, smoking crater littered with scorched tree debris that looked like it had been caused by the descending wrath of a god on a bad day.
Dante slowly pulled back his black hood, his dull gray eyes wide with shock, and pointed a trembling finger toward the smoking crater:
"Who... who the hell did you guys fight down here?! Wasn't this supposed to be just hunting two run-of-the-mill Saint Realm magical beasts?! What the fuck did you do to the geography of this place?!"
The gazes of Varian, Ciro, Ren, and Lia—who were still standing at the bottom of the crater—slowly, synchronously, and accusingly shifted straight toward Aia sitting on the ground. Noticing the reaction of the four, Dante, Lyra, and the other five assassins also turned their heads, fixing their twelve eyes directly on the silver-haired girl.
Aia felt the weight of the entire squad's gazes falling upon her. Her pale face quickly flushed a deep crimson red with embarrassment; she awkwardly raised a hand and scratched her cheek with a timid, nervous, and entirely innocent smile:
"Mmm... well... how do I explain this without sounding crazy? Hahaha..."
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