Chapter 440: Acceptance
BOOOOOM!
I shot forward.
The pain was still there—shattered ribs, burning wounds, breath rattling in my chest—but it no longer held weight. My body had adapted, pushed past the point of limitation, driven only by the relentless momentum of battle.
And in that motion, I felt it.
The Void.
It no longer flickered. No longer felt distant or elusive. It was there—part of me now, woven into my very movements, no longer a force I had to wield but something as natural as breathing.
SWOOSH!
The Kraken lashed out, a massive limb cutting through the air, aiming to crush me.
I didn't dodge.
I moved through it.
Like falling starlight slipping through cracks in the night sky.
CLANG.
My estoc met the abyssal flesh mid-motion, and this time—I felt it sink deeper.
My Void pierced.
I stepped again—another slash.
Then another.
Then—
A dance.
Not just a flurry of strikes. Not just instinctual movement.
But a form.
A sword dance.
One that I had performed once before—a long time ago.
My breath steadied. My focus sharpened.
I could see it.
The steps. The rhythm. The flow of it all.
"Void Starfall Blade—Dance of the Celestial."
SLASH.
SLASH.
SLASH.
SLASH.
Four clean strikes. Four seamless motions.
And then—
For the first time—
The Kraken's wounds didn't heal.
It shrieked, a hideous, ear-piercing cry, its body convulsing as it recoiled.
Because the Void had reached inside.
It had pierced its shell.
And now—
The Flame of Equinox could reach it.
Black flames flickered along the monster's wounds, not just burning the surface but igniting something within.
I grinned.
"Finally."
But—
I staggered.
For the first time, I felt it.
Not just pain. Not just exhaustion.
But the edge of my limits.
I could barely breathe. My body was drained, my vision flickering, the weight of my injuries pressing down on me like lead.
'Tsk… So it's like this, huh?'
I wasn't going to last.
The Kraken was still standing.
And me?
I was on the verge of falling.
I exhaled.
"Is this how it ends?"
My lips curled into something tired.
"Well, that was a nice fight."
It appeared I had bitten off more than I could chew.
…Whatever.
At least it had been fun.
The Kraken shuddered.
Its abyssal energy surged.
Its massive, grotesque eyes pulsed, preparing to unleash another beam—
A final, obliterating blast.
And then—
"AAAAAAAH!"
A scream tore through the air.
Not the Kraken's.
A girl's.
My head snapped to the side, my breath catching for a moment.
And there—
Aeliana.
Her body twisted violently against the stone, her cursed veins pulsing erratically, glowing in unstable, fractured patterns.
And I could see it.
Two different sides were fighting within her.
One of them—
Connected to the Kraken.
I narrowed my eyes.
'What is that…?'
A pulse.
A force.
Something vast.
Not just darkness. Not just abyssal power.
Something bigger.
Life? Cosmos?
It wasn't just energy. It wasn't just some magical tether between her and the monster.
It was something else entirely.
Something I didn't understand.
My fingers tightened around my estoc.
And then—
"Ah…"
It clicked.
The idea.
The spark.
******
Aeliana had witnessed everything.
The battle.
The blood.
Him.
Lucavion—changing, evolving, pushing past his limits, his blade and body no longer just fighting but devouring. The way he moved, the way he grinned, even when he was barely standing.
Even when he was dying.
But she—
She was nearing her own limit too.
Even if she hated it.
Even if her hatred was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality—
She couldn't hold on much longer.
The storm inside her—raging, wild, violent—was fighting against that black, writhing mass within her veins, but she felt it.
Her very being was being torn apart.
At this point, she couldn't even see properly.
Her vision was a blur—not darkness, not emptiness, but a crimson haze, thick and suffocating, drowning out the battlefield.
She was just that tired.
Her body no longer felt like her own, every limb shaking, every breath sharp and ragged.
And still—
Her lips trembled.
She forced the words out, barely more than a whisper, barely even conscious—
"Don't… don't… not without him…"
Her fingers twitched, her body screaming at her to stop, to let go, to give in.
But she refused.
She pushed.
For one single thing.
For one final push.
She didn't even know what it was—what she was reaching for.
But she refused to collapse.
Not yet.
Aeliana lifted her gaze, her vision swimming, her body trembling from the sheer force of everything tearing her apart—inside and out.
And there he was.
Lucavion.
Still standing.
Still grinning like the reckless, arrogant bastard that he was, despite the blood dripping down his face, despite the way his body swayed just slightly, just enough for her to see—
He was at his limit.
She let out a breath, a weak, ragged exhale that barely even reached her own ears.
'If you can't do it even now,' she thought bitterly, her lips barely parting, her mind slipping.
'I guess that makes us even, you arrogant, manipulative son of a bitch.'
She wanted to hate him.
Wanted to curse his name, to let the sheer fury she had felt before fuel her one last time.
But—
For some reason…
The anger was fading.
Drifting away, like smoke carried off by a slow, passing wind.
She felt lighter.
Or maybe that was just death creeping closer.
'Whatever…'
She could barely feel anything now. The exhaustion, the pain—it was numbed, distant, like something happening to someone else.
And the bastard?
That idiot?
He was still there.
Bleeding. Smirking. Pushing himself past every limit like a complete fool.
'You angered me, or whatever the fuck it was…'
Her breathing slowed, her eyes threatening to close, her fingers twitching as she clung to the last remnants of consciousness.
And then—
A small, almost imperceptible twitch of her lips.
A tired, weak smirk.
'It was at least kinda fun.'
Chapter 441: Acceptance (2)
Aeliana exhaled.
Slow. Soft.
Her body was fading.
She could feel it—the end.
The storm inside her had raged, fought, burned with everything it had, but it wasn't enough. The black mass within her veins still pulsed, still consumed, still won.
It was over.
And she—
She accepted it.
Her lips barely moved as she forced out one last whisper, her voice fragile, weak—on the verge of vanishing entirely.
"If we meet in another life…"
A slow blink.
A small, tired breath.
"I will make sure to pay you back… for everything."
She let herself sink into the feeling.
The weightlessness.
The surrender.
And in those final moments, as the last threads of her awareness unraveled, she thought of him.
Lucavion.
The arrogant, manipulative, infuriating bastard.
How he had somehow intruded into her life, forced his way past her walls, shoved himself into her carefully built barriers without permission.
How he had looked right through her ugly, bitter, broken self—
And did not turn away.
Did not flinch. Did not recoil. Did not wear pity in his eyes.
How, instead—
He had grinned.
As if he had known what lay beneath all along.
As if it had never mattered.
She thought of the first time he had caught her interest.
That damned smirk. That casual arrogance. The way he made everything a joke—until it wasn't.
She thought of his cooking—gods, his horrible cooking—and how he had insisted on making tea, even though she had mocked him for it.
She thought of his blade.
The black starlight. The way he fought—not like a man, not like a knight, but like something other, something untamed, something free.
She thought of all their conversations.
All the moments between the battles, the endless walking, the quiet pauses by the fire.
How—without her even realizing—
He had become the final entertainment in her life.
A ridiculous, frustrating, unpredictable force of chaos.
And yet—
In this cursed place, in this cruel moment, on the edge of death—
She could only think of one thing.
How glad she was… that he had been there.
Even now.
Even at the very end.
Her breath hitched.
Her fingers twitched weakly against the stone.
And then—
She let go.
"LITTLE EMBER!"
The shout pierced through the void.
Aeliana's fading awareness snapped—not fully back, not yet, but enough to hear it.
That stupid nickname.
A name he had given her, thrown so casually, so mockingly, when he teased her about her hair, about her temper, about the fire in her eyes.
And yet—
It reached her.
It was his voice.
His voice—cutting through the nothingness.
She could barely see. Her vision was a shattered thing, flickering in and out, her mind slipping, drowning, dying.
But she forced herself to look.
And then—
Her breath caught.
"WATCH THIS!"
There it was.
That smile.
Not a smirk. Not a half-lidded, knowing grin.
But something pure.
Something unfiltered.
Something real.
That genuine, excited expression—
Like a child eager to show off a masterpiece they had just created.
"I PREPARED THIS SOLELY FOR YOU!"
His voice roared across the battlefield.
And then—
Lucavion moved.
His long estoc shifted, its tip pointed to his right side, his right arm raised at a sharp 90-degree angle—
And then—
BOOM.
His left side ignited.
Real flames.
Actual fire.
A violent, raging inferno erupted from the left half of his body, flickering with deep pitch-black embers. The heat was unnatural, distorting the air around him, burning with something more than just fire.
And then—
His other side.
The right half of his body—his blade arm—
Began to swirl.
A vortex of pure void.
Not just darkness.
Not just absence.
Something deeper.
Something endless.
The two forces clashed, spiraling around him—fire and void, light and collapse, as if reality itself struggled to contain what he had become.
And Aeliana—
She felt it.
Something inside her clicked.
A realization, an enlightenment.
As if the world had cracked open before her eyes, revealing something more.
Something—
A lot more.
Everything clicked.
The light—blinding, obscuring—vanished.
And the memory shifted.
Not in words. Not in meaning.
But in what she saw.
She had thought his expression had been unreadable. Detached. Indifferent. She had thought his smirk had been cruel, his amusement nothing but mockery.
But now—
Now she saw the truth.
His eyes—
They weren't pitch black.
They were red.
And—
There was a tear.
A single, silent tear falling down his face.
Her breath caught.
Everything slotted into place.
She saw it clearly now.
The way his lips had trembled—not in amusement, but in strain. The way his smirk had twitched, as if forcing itself to stay in place. The way he had pushed himself to say those words, as if every syllable was agony.
The way—
He had needed her to hate him.
Right…
She let out a slow, shaky breath.
'You bastard…'
Her fingers clenched.
'You're not good at lying at all…'
Because in the end, he wasn't indifferent.
He had never been indifferent.
He had felt every single moment of it.
The silence between them stretched, the realization settling over her like a weight she wasn't prepared to carry.
And then—
Her voice, soft, hoarse, but steady.
"Did you know all of this beforehand?"
She lifted her gaze, locking onto him.
Onto his expression.
Onto his truth.
Because now—
"What is this?"
Aeliana's thoughts collapsed into chaos.
This was supposed to be her end. Her last moment. The moment she finally let go.
So why?
Why did she feel this lump in her chest—this ache that wasn't pain, that wasn't rage, that wasn't hatred?
"Why?"
Why did it feel like—
Butterflies.
Why, even as her body was breaking, as her cursed veins screamed, as she should have been consumed by agony—
Why was she feeling this instead?
What the hell was happening?
Everything—everything looked different.
The light. The air. The very world itself.
Her fingers trembled, curling against the cracked stone beneath her.
"Don't—"
She barely managed to whisper the word.
Because she knew.
She knew what this feeling meant.
It was something she had never wanted. Something she had never believed in.
And yet—
She wanted to live now.
Her eyes widened, breath catching in her throat—
And then—
He moved.
「Annihilation Sword. Reverence of Severity.」
BOOOOOOOM.
The entire world shattered.
Space itself—cut.
The battlefield collapsed into an abyss of distortion, the very air torn apart as an unfathomable force surged from Lucavion's blade. The void spiraled outward in a merciless tide, swallowing everything—time, space, light, existence itself—devouring the Kraken's form in an instant.
Aeliana couldn't breathe.
She couldn't think.
She could only witness.
And in that moment—
Something else surfaced in her mind.
A voice.
A memory.
"My daughter..."
It was faint, distant, like a whisper carried by the wind.
"One day, you will meet someone who will be the sole reason for you to live..."
Aeliana's breath hitched.
"Never let go of that person."
The words of her mother.
Words she had buried. Words she had never believed.
But now—
Now, as she watched him, as she watched the very world break apart around him, as the weight of the past, the present, and the future crushed into a single moment—
"Ah…"
Her lips parted, her eyes wide in realization.
"I met him."
And then—
The world went dark.
Chapter 442: The Storm
RUMBLE!
The sky trembled.
A deep, resonant growl rolled through the heavens, shaking the very air itself. The overcast sky darkened in an instant, clouds surging forth like ink bleeding into water. The golden light of the sun, already weak behind the gloom, vanished.
The sea, once eerily silent, began to roar.
Waves that had remained unsettlingly calm swelled in an instant, rolling higher, crashing harder against the hull of the ship. The deck beneath their feet groaned as the winds picked up, sharp and biting, carrying with them the electric charge of an oncoming storm.
And at the center of it all—
Duke Thaddeus.
His breath hitched, his body tensing as something shifted within him.
Something deep.
Something ancient.
Something forgotten.
A slow, throbbing pain coiled within his chest—no, his core. The mana wellspring buried deep inside him, the one he had long since tempered through decades of mastery and restraint, twisted.
A crackle of unseen force rippled through his veins.
He knew this feeling.
He had known it since his youth—since the first time he had been forced to push beyond his limits in battle, since the first time he had tasted the raw, unrelenting fury of the sea.
The storm gathered with a force beyond nature, beyond mere weather. The sky convulsed, the very air charged with raw, untamed energy. The waves surged, colliding into the ship's hull with bone-rattling intensity, and yet, beneath it all, beneath the fury of the sea—
There was something else.
Duke Thaddeus' breath hitched.
A pulse.
Not from the ocean. Not from the storm.
From him.
Deep within his core, something roused—something ancient, something primal. A force long held in check, tempered through decades of control. But now, it stirred, restless and undeniable.
RUMBLE!
Another peal of thunder split the sky. His mana surged. The pressure around him thickened, expanding outward like the tides before a great tempest.
No.
Not just his mana.
His cultivation method.
⚡ [Storm Sovereign's Dominion] ⚡
A quasi-legendary cultivation method passed through generations of the Thaddeus bloodline. It was not merely a technique—it was a bond, a command over the ocean itself. The sea bent to its practitioners, the storms yielded to them. It was what had allowed the Thaddeus family to dominate the empire's naval forces, to rule the waters as if they were an extension of their own bodies.
And now—
It was reacting.
Duke Thaddeus inhaled sharply as his vision blurred for a fraction of a second. He could feel it. The raw, unshackled power coursing through his veins, the ocean itself responding to him—no, not just to him.
To something else.
His grip on the fractured railing tightened.
The air crackled around him.
The sky shuddered.
His mana spiraled wildly, barely restrained, as if something deep beneath the sea was calling to him.
Or—
Someone.
A realization, sharp as lightning, struck him.
"…Aeliana."
He barely breathed her name.
But the moment he did, another shift in the storm occurred.
CRACK!
A bolt of lightning split the sky, its blinding arc crashing into the sea with a force that sent waves towering over the ship. The ocean churned, twisting, the currents responding to his own surging mana.
Edran stumbled back, his eyes wide.
The knights, hardened as they were, staggered under the suffocating weight of their Duke's power.
Even Reinhardt, resolute and immovable, felt it.
This was not just Thaddeus' mana.
This was Storm Sovereign's Dominion in its true form.
And it was reaching out.
Not for destruction.
Not for war.
But for blood.
For kin.
For Aeliana.
Thaddeus' pupils constricted as the realization settled deeper.
His cultivation method should not have responded like this. It had never acted on its own. It had never called to something beyond his own command.
Unless—
His fingers curled tighter against the railing, his breath slow, measured, struggling against the surge of power clawing to be released.
Unless someone else was using it.
Or…
Unless another Thaddeus bloodline had awakened.
And there was only one possibility.
Only one person who could have triggered this reaction.
Aeliana.
She was alive.
She was somewhere.
And the ocean itself knew it.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The storm did not abate. If anything—it worsened.
The sky churned like a living beast, black clouds rolling over one another in a frenzied, unnatural dance. Lightning slashed through the heavens, illuminating the deck in stark flashes of white and violet. The wind howled, shrieking like a thousand tortured souls—but it was not the wind alone.
Screams.
Not human. Not beast.
Something else.
The cries came from all across the sky, reverberating through the air in distorted echoes. It was as if the very fabric of the world was wailing. As if something unseen, something wrong, was watching them.
Duke Thaddeus' eyes narrowed.
His body remained still, rigid as a steel blade drawn in anticipation. He had fought countless wars, faced foes of both men and monsters—but this…
This was different.
This was something else.
The wind carried no body, no shape, nothing tangible. The screams clawed at the edges of reality, whispering, calling, taunting. And beneath them, beneath the echoes and the unnatural howling, a new sound rose.
The ocean.
But it was not just the waves.
It was something rising from beneath.
SPLASH.
One.
SPLASH. SPLASH.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Hundreds.
The first monstrous shape surged from the depths, water cascading off its twisted, armored form. Then another. And another.
Then—an unending tide.
They came like a horde, bursting from the sea in violent, frenzied chaos. Countless creatures, their bodies writhing, their malformed limbs thrashing.
No, this was not like before.
This was worse.
Far, far worse.
The sheer number of them dwarfed what the expedition had faced before. If the previous battle had been a war—this was an onslaught.
But this time—
The Duke was here.
Thaddeus did not hesitate. His voice rang across the storm-laden deck, cutting through the wind, through the rising chaos, through the unnatural screams that clawed at the air.
"Mages, knights! Get into position!"
His command was absolute.
The deck came alive.
Swords were drawn, shields raised. The mages began their incantations, hands crackling with arcane power as sigils ignited in the air. Archers moved swiftly, their bows already drawn, waiting for the signal.
The sea churned, boiled with the sheer mass of creatures forcing their way to the surface. The water itself seemed to pulse, as if it was no longer the ocean—but something else.
Something corrupted.
Something unnatural.
Thaddeus clenched his jaw, his fingers itching to draw his sword. But he did not move yet.
He felt it.
This whole ordeal—this monstrous resurgence—
It was coming to an end.
One way or another.
******
The battle raged on.
The ocean churned with unrelenting fury, countless monstrous forms surging forward in an unending tide of chaos. The knights and mages fought fiercely, their weapons cleaving through scaled flesh, their spells igniting the darkened waters in brilliant bursts of power.
But the enemy's numbers were infinite.
For every beast slain, another took its place. The sea itself vomited forth new horrors, relentless and unyielding.
And above it all—
The screams continued.
A twisted, wretched cacophony of wailing voices from the sky, their cries formless, bodiless, an unnatural presence that clawed at the very fabric of reality.
Duke Thaddeus cut through a monstrous beast himself, his blade glowing with crackling energy as he severed a tentacled creature in one smooth, practiced motion. But as he turned for the next strike—
He felt it.
A pulse.
Something deep in his chest, in his very core, twitched.
And then—
The sky split.
SHHHHK.
A single, unimaginable slash.
There was no build-up, no warning.
One moment, the storm raged.
The next—
A cut ran across the entire sky.
It did not flicker. It did not flash.
It simply was.
An abyssal, void-like line, slicing from horizon to horizon, cleaving through the heavens as though the very fabric of existence had been severed.
Duke Thaddeus froze.
A shiver ran down his spine.
The battlefield itself fell into eerie silence.
For a fraction of a moment, even the monsters stopped.
Even the sea held its breath.
The cut was impossibly vast, incomprehensible. Its presence was not just seen—but felt. As if the very sky, the world itself, had been wounded.
Thaddeus had never seen anything like it.
This was not magic.
This was not power.
This was beyond.
His fingers twitched against the hilt of his sword, his own Storm Sovereign's Dominion reacting violently to what had just occurred.
And yet—
It lasted only for a heartbeat.
Then—
It vanished.
As though it had never been.
The sky remained dark, the storm clouds still roiling, the ocean still seething.
But it was different.
The very air felt hollow, as if something had been removed from reality itself.
And Duke Thaddeus, for the first time in decades, felt something foreign creep into his chest.
Dread.
He exhaled, slowly, deliberately. His grip on his sword tightened.
And he whispered, almost to himself—
"…What in the name of the gods was that?"
Chapter 443: The Storm (2)
Something was wrong.
I had pushed myself to the limit. No, beyond the limit. I had thrown everything I had at this fight—Void, Starlight, Equinox, every ounce of power I could grasp.
And yet, it wasn't enough.
Even with Aeliana as the medium, even with her weakening the Kraken's influence, even though its power had been dragged to something closer to a peak 5-star entity, I still couldn't overpower it.
I was too strong for it to defeat me outright.
But it was too deeply entrenched in this space for me to kill it.
And that's when it clicked.
This place—this entire battlefield—was the Kraken's own creation.
I had been trying to fight it using Void, using Starlight, using the same forces that it was manipulating.
But how could I override its authority?
How could I win when I was fighting on its stage?
I exhaled, blood still dripping from my lips, my one good eye narrowing as my vision blurred and refocused.
Tch. Of course.
I had been too caught up in refining my Void techniques, too obsessed with pushing the boundaries of my [Devourer of Stars] core.
When I had another weapon entirely.
A weapon I had forgotten.
[Sword of Annihilation.]
Why did I not think of that?
I had been cutting.
I needed to erase.
I gritted my teeth, forcing my broken body to move.
I had one chance.
One final moment.
I glanced at Aeliana—her body convulsing, her breath fading, her existence on the verge of collapsing.
This was it.
If I waited any longer—if I hesitated—
She would die.
I exhaled slowly, my vision tunneling on the Kraken as I lifted my blade one last time.
And then—
I did something insane.
I merged them.
The Flame of Equinox.
The Devourer of Stars.
Two forces that shouldn't have been able to exist together.
One was pure destruction, an all-consuming wildfire that burned anything it touched to absolute nothingness.
The other was Void, a force that devoured, bent, collapsed everything into itself.
And now—
I forced them into one.
BOOOOOOOOM!
My body ripped apart.
Every nerve in my being screamed, my insides fuming, tearing, disintegrating.
This wasn't a fusion.
It was a collision.
A paradox.
Fire that consumed.
Abyss that devoured.
I couldn't control it.
I couldn't refine it.
But I didn't need to.
Because all I needed was a single instant.
I clenched my jaw, forcing down the agony, my breath sharp as I locked my gaze onto the Kraken.
It was happening.
Aeliana's body was collapsing.
The Kraken's connection to her was reaching its limit.
This was the moment.
I grinned, blood dripping from my lips.
"LITTLE EMBER!"
Aeliana's body twitched.
She was still there. Somewhere, she was still fighting.
"WATCH THIS!"
The power in my core spiraled—a clash of annihilation and abyss, a storm of pure contradiction raging through my veins.
"I PREPARED THIS SOLELY FOR YOU!"
I moved.
BOOOOOOOM!
The world shattered.
The Kraken shrieked, its massive, grotesque form writhing, twisting, distorting.
And then—
I slashed.
One single, absolute cut.
A cut that didn't just slice through flesh.
A cut that erased.
That devoured.
That burned away existence itself.
「Annihilation Sword. Reverence of Severity.」
And in that exact moment—
When Aeliana was about to die—
When the Kraken was at its weakest—
My blade tore through its core.
And then—
The world collapsed.
The world collapsed.
The battlefield shattered around me, the very space that the Kraken had created unraveling in a spiraling maelstrom of light and void. The cavern faded, the broken stone and debris dissolving into a vast, cosmic expanse.
And there—
The stars.
Swirling, shifting, moving in intricate patterns beyond mortal comprehension. Not the stars of the night sky, not celestial bodies shining in the heavens—but something deeper.
A force.
A connection.
The same feeling as when we were first sucked into this place, when reality itself had bent, twisted, devoured us.
I exhaled, blood still thick in my mouth, my breath shallow but steady.
"How beautiful."
But—
Something fell.
From where I had severed the Kraken's core, from the wound my blade had carved through existence itself—
A lump.
A mass of black liquid.
It landed with a sickening, wet splatter, writhing upon the shattered remnants of the battlefield. It was shapeless, formless, shifting in ways that defied understanding.
And yet—
I could feel it.
Something vast.
Something wrong.
Something foreign.
Something that should not exist.
I stared at it, my pulse steady despite the unshakable weight pressing against my senses.
"Outsider."
That single word left my lips, quiet, yet absolute.
This was it.
This was the thing that caused everything.
The core of it all.
The reason for the Kraken's existence.
The reason for this entire mess.
The liquid twitched, convulsing, its shapeless form pulling, reaching—
Not toward me.
Toward Aeliana.
Tch.
At the same time, I heard it—another sound.
A wet, grotesque squelch.
My gaze snapped to her.
To Aeliana.
Something—the same thing—was pouring out of her as well.
Another writhing mass of black liquid, seeping from her veins, from her cursed marks, escaping her body.
Two identical entities.
One fallen from the Kraken.
One purged from her.
And now—
They were trying to rejoin.
To merge.
This is how they operated.
One part of the entity would leech onto a body, slowly embedding itself deeper and deeper, smearing its existence across the host like an ink stain that could never be fully erased.
And the other?
The other half would take that stolen energy, that corrupted vitality, and nurture something else.
Like the Kraken.
This thing had been feeding off Aeliana.
Just as it had fed off her mother.
I exhaled slowly, watching as the two separate masses twitched, convulsed, and reached for one another.
Trying to merge. Trying to survive.
How desperate.
My fingers tapped against my estoc's hilt, my breath slow, steady.
"Parasitic indeed."
I reached out, not for my blade this time, but for something else.
A faint shimmer of mana flickered at my wrist, the subtle pulse of a spatial enchantment activating as I reached into my storage.
And then—
A small, ornate blackwood box appeared in my hand.
Golden runes shimmered along its surface, pulsing faintly, the preservation magic still intact.
"Eternal Skyroot Herb."
A prize won long ago.
A reward I had claimed from the Marquis himself.
A faint memory surfaced.
—
"The Eternal Skyroot Herb," I murmured, my smirk replaced with a thoughtful smile as I leaned back in my chair. "That's quite the prize, Marquis. And you're just… giving it away?"
The Marquis chuckled, shaking his head. "I came into possession of it by sheer luck. It was part of a shipment intercepted from raiders near the northern border of my territory. At the time, I didn't realize its value. But over the years, I've come to understand just how extraordinary it is."
He gestured toward the ornate blackwood box set on the table between us. "This artifact serves as a preservation vessel. It keeps the herb in a state of suspended vitality, ensuring its potency remains untouched until it is ready to be used."
Valeria's composed expression had cracked ever so slightly at the sight of the artifact. Even without opening the box, the sheer potency of the herb could be felt.
I had smirked, brushing my fingers over the golden runes before flicking my wrist. The enchantment on my spatial bracelet activated, and the box shimmered before disappearing into storage.
Tucked away.
Reserved.
For this exact moment.
—
I knew it then.
If I removed the entity from Aeliana's body, she wouldn't survive.
The parasite had been feeding off her for years, hollowing her out, replacing pieces of her with itself. If I tore it away completely, her body—which had long since adapted to its presence—would collapse.
Just like her mother.
She would die.
Unless—
I had this.
I exhaled, running a thumb over the runes on the box.
In the novel, this herb had saved the male lead.
And now—
It would save her.
I smirked.
"Guess it's finally time to use you."
My gaze flicked toward Aeliana.
"Let's see if we can bring you back, Little Ember."
But just then I felt the world spinning.
"Cough…"