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{Chapter: 254: After the Firestorm}
The small timeliness Larte had maintained imploded under the entropy, shattered by a force that had transcended structure, law, and logic.
All of it—runes, energy grids, spacetime tethers—melted, like wax before the apocalypse.
The archmage, despite his immense strength, was instantly incinerated.
His body turned to ash in a heartbeat. His defensive layers, his divine-tier equipment, his temporal shields—obliterated. Not even his soul escaped.
He ceased to exist.
All around the library, professionals, soldiers, mages, commanders—everyone within a thousand-meter radius—died without understanding what hit them.
No one screamed.
No one ran.
No one survived.
They died faster than thought, reduced to shadow stains, charred handprints on collapsed walls, or nothing at all.
Some were blown apart by shockwaves, others cooked inside their own armor. Bones turned to dust. Eyes evaporated in sockets.
The other demons fighting downstairs were all stunned when they sensed this sudden power!
But faced with such absolute violence, they were powerless to resist, dying in shock and terror, utterly without any chance of resistance. While the Abyss Contract prohibits killing teammates, 'collateral damage' caused by large-scale attacks is tacitly permitted in 'unavoidable' situations.
Even demons, normally resistant to elemental forces, were caught in the radius and ripped apart by fire, turning into clouds of scorched ichor.
And those lucky enough not to be directly hit—weren't lucky at all.
The blast wave didn't stop there.
Dex, even in his wrath, still had control as he reappeared anew.
Just before the tide reached the city edge, his will power halted the expansion of the raw heat, pulling the explosion back into a superdense inferno sphere—a black sun, pulsing with eldritch fire.
But while he contained the thermal and kinetic energy…
The light—the unbound light created from so much heat—was unstoppable.
Light that sliced through shadow.
Light that ignored walls.
Light that blinded the world.
It surged through Augustus like a celestial scream.
No matter how deep underground you were.
No matter how many veils you wore.
No matter if you were blind, or asleep, or a beast…
If your visual nerves existed—you saw it.
And you were blinded.
The blood-red light burned retinas into ash, seared through vision spells, and exploded in the minds of seers and clairvoyants like bombs.
From the nobility atop ivory towers to slaves in underground mines…
Countless humans, elves, demons, and even wild beasts.
Tens of millions of voices screamed in agony.
The entire city was filled with a unified wail of agony, rage, and despair.
Their eyes were stolen. Their sight erased.
No one knew who caused it.
But in their pain, every race, every voice, cursed the monster who had done this.
And yet… it could have been so much worse.
Had Dex not shown restraint—had he unleashed the full extent of the firestorm, without consideration for the rules of the Abyssal Contracts that governed his kind's behavior in neutral territories—Augustus would have become a crater.
A scar on the planet.
An erased city, reduced to glass and soot, with no survivors left to scream.
This was not a spell.
It was the wrath of a dying fire Demon that even burned huge chunks of their souls, housed inside a demon's soul.
A power bought by death, pain, and infinite rage.
This was an effect achieved at the cost of his lives, arguably Dex's most destructive attack!
All the searing heat, the hellish inferno unleashed by [Burning Body Explosion], flowed into the void like a dragon's breath returning to slumber.
Without its violent interference, the space around began to slowly stitch itself back together—the scorched seams of the world mending with groans and cracks like an injured beast licking its wounds.
Reality, after having been chewed apart and spit out by infernal wrath, finally settled again.
And from the center of the smoking crater, where even light had once died, Dex reappeared.
Bones crackled into shape.
Flesh squirmed back into existence.
Sinews lashed across a fresh spine like a blacksmith forging wire into steel.
His skin—like molten obsidian—cooled and hardened.
Fully healed, standing in midair like a reborn god of war, Dex surveyed the apocalyptic devastation beneath his feet. A shadow passed across his smile.
"Tsk… bit of a waste."
Below him, where once stood the proud Kafira Library—a sanctuary of knowledge, one of Augustus' oldest cultural vaults—was now a bottomless pit, a charred void stretching thousands of meters deep and radiating enough residual heat to boil steel at the surface.
He hovered alone, his batlike wings flapping slowly in the scorched air, rising and falling like the breath of a sleeping volcano.
For a moment, regret flickered across his usually amused features.
"Maybe I should've saved more souls. Or maybe some of those spellbooks. Yeah... especially the soul ones."
He thought about the knowledge incinerated in the blast.
Gone.
But then again—
"If I can't have it, nobody can. And if nobody can have it, then technically no one got robbed. That's balance, isn't it?"
He shrugged. In the abyss, this counted as mercy.
"Besides, I'll get some mission credit out of this. Maybe even an extra soul or two."
Dex let out a whimsical sigh and hovered quietly for a few seconds.
Then, with a smirk, he pressed his palm outward.
A ripple passed through the surrounding air like a stone dropped in a still lake.
The invisible lattice of magic runes—previously hidden and undetectable—shattered under the force.
They had survived unnoticed only because of how well-hidden they were. Dex himself hadn't seen them earlier. But now, weakened and exposed after the overwhelming heat surge, they crumbled like fragile crystal.
A faint red shimmer pulsed across his fingertips, and then—like pulling back the curtain on reality itself—a hidden pocket dimension blinked into view.
Floating ahead was a spatial bubble roughly the size of a basketball court, flickering with instability like a burning lantern in the middle of a hurricane.
The boundary around it—once ironclad and masterfully anchored—was now teetering on collapse.
The [Burning Body Explosion] hadn't just destroyed space; it had rattled time itself.
The once-stable subdimensional vault swayed like a drunken tower. Cracks ran down its side. Its form twisted like a building caught in an earthquake.
Inside?
Treasure.
The turbulence of space-time around the contents caused the items within to pulse, glow, and ripple with all shades of arcane brilliance—defensive mechanisms automatically activating, trying to stabilize their essence.
No ordinary item could do that.
These were Legendary-tier artifacts—things of ancient power and historical weight.
Hundreds of magical objects floated inside like stars orbiting a dying sun.
Over three-quarters of them were spellbooks—grimoire after grimoire—each one soaked in ancient wisdom, spells lost to time, and forbidden rituals. The rest? Scepters, robes, enchanted rings, sigils, rare elemental gems, even jars of dragon blood and crystallized divine essence.
A true mage's hoard.
Dex whistled softly.
"Well, well… I guess Lady Luck still wears red lingerie and loves to show it off to me"
His crimson eyes lit up as he casually dragged the whole treasure vault into his personal space like a man sweeping coins into his wallet.
He looked genuinely pleased, practically glowing with joy.
"Not bad for a day's rampage."
He chuckled again—a light, echoing sound full of chaos and satisfaction.
"Hahahahaha—ah, alright, alright. Keep it cool, Dex. Don't get too cocky."
With the haul secured and his mood improved, he flapped his wings lazily and turned to leave.
He didn't bother sparing a glance at the nearby buildings still crumbling in silence, filled with blinded civilians, stumbling and screaming.
Their hollow cries rose like smoke into the blackened sky.
Tens of millions had lost their sight from the light of his explosion. Men, women, children, nobles, slaves, elves, demons—it didn't matter.
Every soul who had a functioning visual cortex had felt it: the light of death, brighter than a thousand suns, red as hellfire.
Had it not been for the Abyssal Agreement, Dex would've gone back to reap their souls like wheat. He would've feasted on their fear, whispered lies into their ears, and made art from their pain.
But agreements were agreements. And Augustus' civilians were now off-limits.
"Their fate's sealed anyway," Dex murmured.
"Once Gewa finishes cleaning up the native warriors… these people won't have even bones left to cry over."
The city would fall. It was only a matter of time. Civilians were just spare fuel.
Suddenly, his smile faded.
In the distance, the ground rumbled, and a surge of power exploded into the sky like a volcano erupting.
Dex's wings froze mid-flap.
Something was happening.
Even amidst the chaos, even in a city drowning in death and fire, one particular battle—far away yet incredibly loud in spiritual energy—drew his attention.
He felt a pulse. A soul he recognized.
A flicker of old connection.
Someone very familiar was fighting.
"Interesting…"
He narrowed his eyes toward the eastern quadrant of the city, where the sky churned with blue fire and arcane storms.
A memory itched at the back of his mind.
With a single pivot, Dex shifted course.
The wind howled around him, smoke trailing from his body like a cape as he rocketed through the skies.
"Looks like I've got one more mess to enjoy before this city dies."