Chapter 271: Emis’s Declaration of Sovereignty
Western Continent, Imperial Capital, outskirts of the Inner District.
As the Coronation Ceremony drew ever closer, the once-bustling streets gradually quieted down.
“Is it because the coronation is about to begin, that the citizens of the Imperial Capital are now all waiting at the plaza?”
“What a pity. These ignorant fools will probably never know… That Empress they so eagerly await, has likely already perished at the hands of the Gravekeeper’s Angelic Crown.”
“But this just makes our operation that much easier.”
A hoarse hiss echoed from within the shadows.
They were all cultists secretly colluding with the Gravekeepers. Using covert channels provided by Tark, they had silently infiltrated the capital and gone into hiding.
All they were waiting for was the right moment to initiate a Descent of the Evil God within the Imperial Capital—
After all, what the cult and the Gravekeepers sought was far more than just the death of Shiltina… They aimed to completely overthrow the Empire and thus interfere with the progress of human civilization in the Seventh Era.
Aside from the Holy Sword Wielder of the Stars, the new Empress Shiltina, their targets also included the previous ruler Allen, and the powerful figures within Starfall University, located adjacent to the capital.
It was then that the cultist’s voice suddenly faltered.
Buzz—
An intangible and formless fluctuation suddenly pulsed from afar.
Right after, in the hands of the black-robed leader nearby, a token abruptly began to resonate with a buzz, emitting a glowing azure hue.
“Mechanist High Priest, just now—was that?”
A cultist looked to the black-robed leader and asked with a hint of anticipation.
To ensure secrecy and avoid being taken down in one sweep by the Empire, the cultists who infiltrated the capital had been split into multiple cells, each stationed in different districts.
This particular group was led by none other than the leader of a newly risen cult on the Western Continent—the Sect of Mechanical Flesh.
Though his tone was questioning, every cultist already understood perfectly well what that signal meant—
The Gravekeepers had made their move against the Holy Sword Wielder, Shiltina.
“…Yes.”
“This hunt for Shiltina has already begun.”
The Patriarch of the Mechanical Flesh Cult glanced down at the token in her hand glowing with blue light and gave a slight nod.
She tilted her head slightly, her mechanically-constructed eyes gazing into the distant sky, as if observing another dimensional plane—where the Gravekeeper Angels battled the Empress of the Empire, Shiltina.
And yet, strangely, a trace of worry was evident in those mechanical prosthetic eyes of hers.
“Since the Gravekeepers have already started, we can begin as well, can’t we?”
“The arrival of our lord—the Progenitor of Blood—requires the lives of all living beings as sacrifice…”
“I’ve suppressed my bloodlust for days to maintain cover. Now, at last, I can unleash it upon this capital.”
“I shall turn this prosperous human city into a sea of blood and mountains of corpses, stained red with carnage.”
As the cultist who clearly followed the Evil God Progenitor of Blood spoke in feverish madness—
The black-robed leader of the Mechanical Cult merely nodded lightly.
“Yes, it’s time for us to act as well.”
“But before that…”
She slowly turned around, facing the group of cultists behind her, all wearing crazed expressions, clearly ready to unleash slaughter, despair, chaos, and madness in the capital. Her gaze grew a few degrees colder.
“I still need to take out the trash.”
Her calm words fell like a sudden frost.
Almost simultaneously, the frenzied expression on the Progenitor cultist froze.
He stared at his own chest in disbelief—
From his chest, several barbed iron vines pierced through his flesh, bursting out from his heart.
And at the gaping, bloody hole, a flower of steel bloomed.
He wasn’t the only one.
Behind him, from the chests of every cultist, a flower forged of iron and blood had bloomed—each one piercing through their hearts.
Thud—
The sound of heavy bodies hitting the ground followed one after another.
Within just a few breaths, the cultists had all fallen—leaving only the Mechanical Cult’s leader standing, coldly gazing at their corpses.
“These micro-robots, crafted using nanotechnology… quietly entered your bodies through your food, your breathing—completely undetected. Once inside, they traveled through your bloodstream to your hearts.”
“With just a single thought, I could trigger them into a rampage, grinding your hearts and all your organs into paste.”
“For outdated fools like you, the methods of a Mechanist will forever remain beyond comprehension.”
“But since you dared to disrupt my elder sister’s Coronation Ceremony… this is the fate you deserve.”
This mechanical puppet, secretly controlled and acted through by Ophelia, slowly turned its head back to gaze once more at the distant sky, a deep and indescribable worry gleaming in its eyes.
Ophelia knew well that her Royal Elder Sister Shiltina was currently fighting against the Gravekeeper Angels in another dimension.
Without the Holy Sword, without the Scabbard’s Immortality, and even stripped of her Sovereign Domain’s home-field advantage within the capital… from any angle, Shiltina now stood in a situation of certain death.
But Ophelia also knew—this was a choice her sister had made for herself.
Her sister’s pursuit was not the slow, conventional path to angelhood… but rather, to cast herself into certain death, then rise from the ashes, break through the cocoon, and be reborn—a supreme being who would reign above all.
So even if Ophelia worried, all she could do now was wait in silence—
—and, while Shiltina was isolated in another dimension, suppress the chaos and protect the people of the Imperial Capital.
“The cultists here are dealt with… but there are others still hiding across the city.”
Ophelia controlled the puppet to rise and looked toward the other side of the capital.
Because the cultists had been divided into separate cells, entirely independent and unconnected, even Ophelia couldn’t precisely determine the whereabouts of the others.
Though she had already deployed suppression forces and contingencies across the capital—unforeseen variables could always arise in the blink of an eye.
And sure enough.
Before long, from the northeast of the capital, an incredibly intense surge of energy burst forth.
Legend.
And not just any ordinary Legend—it carried an ancient aura born of long-forgotten ages.
“An Ancient One among Legends…”
“The Gravekeepers… besides the Angels encircling my sister, they sent out another Legend?”
Ophelia’s expression changed.
“I wonder if Dean Silver and Akxia can handle it…”
Both Dean Silver and Akxia were part of the contingencies Ophelia had arranged, prepared to deal with unexpected events.
But although Akxia held the Death-God Star Cup, she had only recently ascended to the Legendary Realm… and Dean Silver always seemed rather unreliable.
Ophelia couldn’t say with confidence whether they could successfully suppress this Ancient Legend from the Gravekeepers.
Even if they did win, if the aftermath of the battle impacted the citizens of the capital… it would be an unacceptable loss for the Empire.
Unless—should she resort to the weapons in the Forbidden Catalogue?
As the Second Imperial Princess and a top-tier Mechanist, Ophelia had control over several forbidden myth-tier weapons.
For instance, the “Forbidden Catalogue 0-13: Zenith Sword Prototype”, which Last had once used during the Battle of the Fractured Coastline to annihilate Noah’s Incarnation of Bounty, had been supplied by Ophelia.
Thanks to that test run in the Nightworld, the current Zenith Sword had improved greatly in precision and operational control—able to confine its impact zone to a minimal area.
Even so, using a forbidden weapon in the capital… still made Ophelia hesitate.
And just as she rapidly calculated whether to unleash myth-tier armaments from the Forbidden Catalogue—
The next moment—
The world froze.
Not just the Ancient Legend rising in the northeast, not just the cultists hidden across the city, not even the mechanical puppet Ophelia controlled—
Everything froze in that solidified twilight.
Then—
Crack.
On the dusk-dyed blood-red sky, glimmering cracks suddenly appeared.
And then—
The dome shattered.
Within the dim canopy, a dark rift silently tore open.
Through that black gash, an enormous head slowly emerged—like something out of legend, a demon-wolf of myth.
As if a wolf devouring the sun, it loomed at the edge of the sky, casting a towering gaze upon all of humanity.
“This is… a near-complete Mythic Being form…”
“Quasi-Angel!”
Ophelia’s heart trembled in alarm.
“Besides dispatching at least three Quasi-Angels to hunt my sister, the Gravekeepers even hid another true Quasi-Angel in the present world?!”
This unexpected turn left Ophelia no choice but to abandon her earlier hesitation, and she immediately initiated the Zenith Sword activation sequence.
But then—
As the black rift widened—
Ophelia finally saw what truly lay above the shattered dome—
That towering, star-devouring head of a mythical demon wolf—
Was only a head.
A decapitated, severed Mythic Being’s skull—nothing more.
And at that very moment, the one descending upon the present world through the rift in the world’s boundary—dragging with her the severed head of the demon-wolf—was a maiden-like figure.
She stood upon the dim yellow sky, her figure clearly slender and delicate, and yet the posture with which she gazed down at the world from the edge of the heavens was one of overwhelming majesty and nobility.
Fragments of disintegrating metallic particles gathered around her form, transforming into colossal silver-white wings.
And at the heart of those sky-covering steel wings stood the silhouette of the girl—both ghastly like a specter and grand like a monarch, a mechanical empress reigning supreme.
Her entire body, aside from her face, bore clear signs of mechanization. Her swan-like slender neck was now encased in pale silver armor.
Those massive steel wings stirred up gales as they moved, and her pale golden hair fluttered in the wind.
Yet unlike the overwhelming presence of her wings, the girl’s eyes were a gentle sky blue.
“An angel…”
Ophelia murmured under her breath.
Though the girl’s form was slender, in the instant she manifested in the sky, every transcendent being who witnessed her presence felt the staggering gulf between lifeforms.
This was not just a Quasi-Angel who had brushed against the threshold without fully crossing it—
This was a true Angel, reigning above time itself.
And for Ophelia—who had once, out of curiosity, sought out Dean Silver to learn detailed intel about this being—
Compared to other transcendent beings who knew nothing, she understood far more… including the identity and true name of that girl standing at the end of the twilight sky.
Emis Justia.
Over two centuries ago, she was Last’s childhood friend in Canaan.
And now, she was the true Judgment Angel.
“The Gravekeepers really went all in this time… sending a Quasi-Angel to kill a comatose vegetable lying on a hospital bed.”
At the edge of the dusky sky, as her steel wings stirred, the golden-haired girl glanced at the head of the Quasi-Angel—its eyes still open in death—then smiled faintly.
“Too bad someone insisted on keeping up the ‘element of surprise’ and didn’t want to act too early…”
“So, it fell on me to take care of this.”
With a gentle wave of her hand, the demon-wolf’s head and the massive headless corpse behind it both dissolved.
Within a few breaths, they silently disintegrated into the spatial rift.
Having finished, Emis finally turned her gaze down toward the capital shrouded in dusk.
“This… is the real world more than two centuries after the fall of Canaan.”
“It is also the continent where he rediscovered himself, blessed by the dawn and starlight.”
A flicker of emotion passed through the girl’s sky-blue eyes.
There was curiosity, lament, and fleeting traces of reflection and uncertainty.
But ultimately, it all transformed into deep anticipation—and hope.
“That little town called Canaan has long vanished, becoming but scenery in memories…”
“And this is the place, from now on—”
“Where Last and I will live together once again.”
Emis’s voice paused slightly.
“Although, according to him…”
“Before that, I still have to clean up a few who don’t know their place.”
High above, her gaze swept across the entire capital below.
Though it seemed like nothing more than a casual glance, at that moment, Ophelia suddenly realized—
Including the mechanical puppet disguised as a cult leader she had been controlling…
Every cultist hidden within the Imperial Capital had now been completely locked on—there was no longer any chance to escape.
Even those cultists who hadn’t yet had a chance to act since arriving in the capital—made no difference.
This was the exclusive authority of the Judgment Angel.
In an instant, Emis had traversed the entire River of Time, using the Imprint of Time to anchor each of those cultists—their identities, their pasts, and all their histories.
And then—
A single, identical syllable resounded clearly in the ears of every cultist hiding in the capital.
Though they had never studied this ancient language, each one instinctively understood what the syllable meant—
“Judgment.”
A ten-thousandth of a breath later—
The commands for “Annihilation” and “Verdict” were issued to every cultist in the capital.
In an instant, their bodies disintegrated—flesh and blood reduced to their most fundamental micro-particles, never again able to form a complete body.
To the ordinary citizens of the capital, it was nothing more than a moment of disorientation—then everything returned to normal.
But in that fleeting moment, every cultist who had infiltrated the capital was judged by Fate itself—and utterly erased.
Not just their bodies—but even every trace that they had ever existed was wiped clean from the entire River of Time… leaving not the slightest remnant to be found.
Boom—
Inside the palace, in an inconspicuous courtyard—
Ophelia slammed the remote-sensing helmet in her hands heavily onto the table.
Just now… those erased by the Judgment command weren’t just the hidden cultists.
Included among them was also the mechanical puppet spy she had disguised as the leader of the Sect of Mechanical Flesh.
Given the Angel’s authority, Ophelia did not believe for a second that Emis would fail to distinguish her puppet from the cultists after reading their Imprints in the River of Time.
And so, for the Judgment Angel Emis to destroy her puppet along with the others—the meaning was crystal clear.
Without question, Emis had sensed her presence through the River of Time… and even perceived those little hidden thoughts Ophelia had tried to bury deep in her heart.
Thus, Emis’s actions—
Were unmistakably a warning, or rather, a declaration of dominance.
As Last’s childhood friend, she had declared her sovereignty to every other girl with eyes on that young man.
Before Ophelia’s eyes, the clear projection solidified once again—revealing the image of the angelic girl high in the sky.
Though her spy puppet was destroyed, Ophelia’s various mechanical creations and familiars were still scattered throughout the capital, continuously feeding her information.
And yet—
At this moment.
Looking at that girl angel in the sky, with sky-blue eyes and golden hair fluttering—
Ophelia could only press her hand to her chest, feeling that unnameable emotion rise again.
The last time she had felt this—
Was in that hospital corridor… when her elder sister was inside pouring out her heart to that boy, and she had stood helplessly outside, watching.
Now, gazing upon the girl in the sky whose eyes brimmed with quiet anticipation—
Ophelia could only feel that ache slowly ferment in her soul, until it hurt too much to breathe.
“Every opponent is such a cheater.”
“How am I supposed to…”
“…win?”
Her voice echoed faintly in the room, heard by no one.
And at that moment—
In the light-screen projection, the golden-haired girl suddenly looked up sharply, as if sensing something, her gaze cast far into the distance.
Then, her eyes lit up with an intense, unrestrained joy.
Ophelia watched Emis’s sudden reaction, her heart stirred.
She knew—with Emis Justia’s status, very few things in this world could trigger such an emotional response.
That Judgment Angel had been cut off from the world for far too long—no person or thing here could truly move her.
And right now, for Emis to show such a look—
It could only be about that person.
And so…
Ophelia heard her own heartbeat growing stronger and clearer.
An answer long awaited slowly surfaced in her heart, shining bright.
In another dimension, something had happened.
Or rather—
Last…
Was about to return.