Raven’s wings spread wide as she tore across the distance with explosive speed.
Ul’s expression strained as she lunged with even greater velocity.
The spiraling pillars of green wind twirled down with immense force to crush her beneath their weight. But Ul spun away to the side. Another pillar surged from the flank, rolling with the mighty force of a tornado.
In the same breath, Ul ceased to exist in its path. She simply vanished from space and was already ahead again.
She frowned with irritation, then sighed.
"Vile mortals."
Raven and Thalen gave chase—Thalen rolling forward with his pillars of wind while Raven flew. However, the next moment, both of them were trapped in space.
Raven exploded with incredible speed. She felt herself moving, but when she looked down, she wasn’t leaving that area of space. It was still the same patch of ground beneath her.
She glanced forward to Thalen’s great winds and realized after some moments that it was the same. The winds rolled with potent fury but weren’t visibly moving forward.
It was just like last time—when she’d suddenly found herself somewhere else while trying to stop the Paragon.
Raven narrowed her eyes.
’Ul’s authority... is over space...’
Knowing was one thing. But how that knowledge could help their situation—Raven wasn’t sure anything she did would work.
An Origin’s authority was no fishcake. They were basically writing the laws of that reality. It was as stalwart as trying to break through the laws of any reality. For a Paragon, that was impossible.
Raven gritted her teeth and refused to give up.
Meanwhile, Ul drew ever closer to Northern, Chaos Prince, and Kryos, who were caught up in a ferocious battle.
***
On Luinngard’s seaport, a strange ship carved of concrete lay at the water’s edge. And on its towering structure stood a man in flowing garb, white hair dancing along the current of the wind.
His radiant blue eyes were forlorn, and it seemed tears had dried on his face.
He looked at the towering grotesque structure that spanned over the Empire, wreaking devastating havoc, and at the white-haired man who flew around it with fire in his legs alongside two others, trying to defeat the thing.
He didn’t look willing to help. His eyes were too sad to think about something like that.
Bairan looked at his hands as a gush of memory that had flooded into his head a while ago refused to leave and continued to haunt him.
He was reminded of his failures, and every bit of his body—joints, muscles—ached from it.
He just stood on the top floor of the tower, looking at the dark skies, the flames alight across different areas of the empire. The screams and cries of people were distant to his ears.
A moment later, he looked down at the tower. He could feel the smashing on its door. Not that the smashing was powerful—it was that of fragile hands. It was just that Bairan’s senses were extraordinary, and he paid extra attention to the owner of those fragile hands.
In barely a second, the scenery around him changed. He was at the first floor of the tower, right behind the white-haired woman who was desperately smacking her hands on the large door.
"Young lady, you’ll break your hands."
The lady whirled her head back.
"You! What is this?! You abducted me and placed me in this place without any information. Who are you? Did Regal send you?!"
Bairan looked at her with a delightful smile.
"You are a spitting image of him."
The woman frowned.
"Him, who?"
"My lord."
The lady’s frown darkened viciously.
"Who is your lord?"
Bairan answered blankly, his hands behind his back.
"Your son."
At that moment, Henai froze, looking at Bairan. Her voice trembled.
"H–He... he’s back?"
Bairan smiled subtly and nodded.
"Indeed he is. He has come to put an end to the calamity that threatens to destroy his home. And I have committed myself and commanded the others to protect the ones most precious to him."
Henai’s shoulders trembled slightly. She was so greatly relieved that she bent to her knee and sighed.
"Ah... why didn’t you say anything earlier?! You can’t just kidnap a person and expect them to understand your intentions, you know?!"
Bairan looked at her.
"I needed to act swiftly because I didn’t want to kill anyone without my lord’s consent."
Lady Henai looked at Bairan with a slightly withdrawn expression, then sighed again.
"About this calamity that my son is fighting... do you mind telling more? Isn’t it dangerous for Art?"
Bairan looked at the woman and suddenly laughed.
"Dangerous? My Lord? Hahaha, you are a great jester."
He calmed, smiling handsomely.
"Well, everything should be coming to an end soon. Come sit—I shall entertain you with a great story!"
Henai looked at Bairan strangely. How could he be so laid back when he claimed there was a calamity outside? Was it a lie? Or was he just that faithful in her son?
Anyways, she decided to do the same—place mountainous faith in her son, though not so much as to burden him—and she followed Bairan.
"Hey! Mister, kindly tell me your name."
***
Northern was in a tight lock within Kryos’s grip, with the Origin restructuring his face with brutal blows. He punched his face several times—blood exploded out. He punched with his fist, his elbow, and even smashed his head against Northern’s.
But the direct hits weren’t the only thing he was suffering from. Every one of Kryos’s attacks was imbued with a vast amount of madness that slithered into his blood and continued to rage in him.
Because it couldn’t drive him mad, it slowed his movement, his perception, and even dulled his sight terribly so that all Northern could see was a blur.
It was as though the Origin was controlling every flow of his blood to destroy him from within. It made him remember that Kryos was also an Origin of Blood. But against the internal turmoil he was fighting, and against the external devastation, he was also holding his ground—his vessel refusing to shatter.
Kryos groaned in anger as he clenched Northern’s face and drove it into the ground. They landed in the center of the vast desert between the Luinngard Empire and the devastated forest.
Enormous webbed cracks spread in an instant, exploding a powerful shockwave that rattled through several distances.
He continued to smash Northern’s head into the ground with his feet, hammering him down with a loud and aggravating groan.
"Die! Die! Die! Worthless human! Die!"
The speed of his legs increased and the shockwaves exploded more frequently. The cracks on the ground deepened, breaking lower and lower into a crater. The speed increased so much that the sound was like that of a thunderous drum beating a hundred times in one second.
Dust exploded across the whole desert and everything was covered in a fog of it.
Kryos looked down. His calm countenance was also shattered. Even though handsome, he now looked like a demented patient, grinning with a glow of insanity in his thinned eyeballs.
He finally stopped smashing his leg after he felt no response beneath. His grin widened.
"Finally, rot in misery. That is what a worthless human gets for daring to make me bleed."
As he removed his leg and stepped back, he suddenly heard an eerie chuckle.
Then he stopped in his tracks and slowly turned back, his face frozen in wide-eyed disbelief.
"Where do you think you’re heading to? You clod of wayward marl."