novelbin Chapter 181 : Chapter 181
Chapter 181 : Chapter 181
Chapter 181. The Brooch
Time seemed to freeze for a second.
Then Ifreles’s body split neatly apart down the middle.
No blood spilled from the wound, because the moment matter touched that black line, it was banished into another dimension.
“Haha… hahahaha…”
With only half his body left, Ifreles looked at the remains of himself rapidly collapsing into nothingness. There was no fear on his face. Instead, a sick, satisfied cackle spread across it.
“Space… absolute… dominion…”
“I’ll be waiting… for you… in hell…”
His voice grew fainter and fainter, until at last, like the final spark going out, it completely vanished into Winter City’s freezing wind.
Logaris drew back his hand. The terrifying black demonic silhouette around him swayed in the air, and the wings of light behind his back shattered inch by inch.
The battle was over.
Crack.
The ruined pair of Aether Wings behind Logaris’s back broke apart piece by piece, turning into motes of light and dispersing. The savage black keratin covering his body receded at once. His full head of white hair visibly darkened back to black, and the crimson in his eyes ebbed away like a receding tide, revealing their original pale blue.
Thud.
It was as if the bones had been ripped from his body. All strength left him, and he dropped to one knee.
“Hah… hah…”
Great gulps of icy air rushed into his lungs, and with them, the sanity that had been swallowed by power finally began to return.
In the very first second his reason returned, a violent wave of dizziness nearly sent Logaris face-first to the ground. But he bit through the tip of his tongue, forcing himself awake with that coppery, stabbing pain. Then he lifted his head and locked his gaze on the silver figure lying in a pool of blood in the distance.
“Sylvia!”
The hoarse shout tore out of his throat as he struggled to his feet and staggered toward her.
A few steps away, rubble shifted aside.
Aurora crawled out with difficulty. The Holy Church’s Saintess was in a miserable state. The spotless cleric’s robe that symbolized purity was now smeared with dirt and charred bloodstains. Her left arm was twisted at a grotesque angle, obviously broken, hanging limply at her side.
But she did not spare herself a glance. Stumbling forward, she rushed to Sylvia’s side, and a faint Holy Light rose in her palm.
“Don’t touch her!”
Logaris practically lunged at her and slapped Aurora’s outstretched hand away.
The motion was rough, utterly devoid of any gentlemanly grace.
Aurora was shoved to the ground, yet she did not get angry. She only stared blankly at Sylvia’s wound, her face as white as paper.
The situation was horrific.
That ghastly penetrating wound slashed diagonally from Sylvia’s left shoulder to her right abdomen. The edges of the wound were charred black, and dark red hellfire clung to it like rot on the bone, still eroding what flesh remained with a sickening sizzling sound.
Her internal organs were almost completely destroyed.
By all rights, a wound of that magnitude, on top of the corrosion from hellfire, should have extinguished the frail flame of a human life in an instant.
But she was still alive.
Within Logaris’s spiritual perception, Sylvia was still alive. That flame of life was so weak it seemed like a candle in the wind, but it was still burning.
“How is this possible…” Logaris froze for a moment. His eyes traveled down along the blackened wound, until they finally fixed on the blood-soaked front of Sylvia’s clothes.
There, hanging against her chest, was the broken wreckage of an ornament.
Its silver-white base had already twisted out of shape, and the once clear, translucent blue crystal at its center had been reduced to a few dim grains of dust, still giving off the last traces of a soft blue glow.
That glow was incredibly faint, yet it stubbornly wove itself into a fine net, protecting Sylvia’s vital core with all its strength, sealing the tyrannical hellfire outside and forcibly preserving her final breath.
It was the brooch he had stuffed into her hands on the night before leaving the Royal Capital.
At the time, driven purely by the “paranoia” brought on by the Book of Prophecy, he had crammed every instant emergency spellwork he could think of into that seemingly ordinary ornament—【Life Chain】, 【Instant Hemostasis】, 【Organ Stabilization Field】, 【Soul Anchoring】…
A full thirty-six miniature magic formations had been engraved into that crystal through operations precise down to the microscopic level.
The instant it detected the wearer’s vital signs dropping to the danger line, all of those spells would erupt at once.
He had never expected that the “little trinket” she had disliked so much and nearly thrown away would, in this moment of utter despair, truly snatch back this sliver of life from Death’s hands.
“Hah… good thing you listened and didn’t throw it away…”
Looking at the utterly ruined brooch, Logaris let out a long breath. Yet the smile he pulled at the corner of his mouth looked uglier than a cry.
He drew in a deep breath and forcefully suppressed the trembling in his hands. A faint gleam flashed from the Spatial Ring, and an exquisite crystal vial appeared in his palm.
Inside the vial floated a shimmering cyan liquid, as if it contained the vitality of an entire spring.
Fleeting Youth.
This was the divine medicine that had caused a sensation at the Northern Territory auction house, the ultimate luxury used to harvest the nobles’ gold.
In the eyes of the world, it was a beautiful dream that could restore youth.
But in Logaris’s eyes, its essence was only one thing—the highest-grade healing potion.
“Open your mouth… Sylvia, be good, open your mouth…”
Carefully prying open Sylvia’s clenched teeth, he poured down the entire bottle of that priceless medicine without the slightest hesitation.
…
Elsewhere.
The fierce wind and snow slashed across the face like knives.
Alectos carried the unconscious Alice on his back, stumbling one step deep and one step shallow through snow that rose past his knees.
Almost there.
Ahead was the entrance to the Dragon Mountain Range. Old lion Leonard should be somewhere nearby.
“Huff… huff…”
Alectos felt as though his lungs were burning with fire, but he did not dare stop.
Yet just as he was about to reach the only path out of the storm-covered area, his steps suddenly locked in place.
The dragon blood boiling through his entire body seemed to freeze solid in that instant, as if plunged into liquid nitrogen.
Ten meters away.
Beside a jutting rock stood a figure in a long black coat.
He had his back to Alectos and wore no hat, letting the wind and snow settle on his black hair. In his hand, he casually flipped a gold coin.
Clink.
The coin spun through the air and landed back on his fingertip.
That figure slowly turned around, revealing a handsome face identical to the man from the tavern before. Even the careless curve at the corner of his mouth looked as though it had been cast from the same mold.
Ifreles.
Smiling, he looked at the dumbstruck Alectos, who felt as though he had fallen into an ice pit. His crimson eyes drifted lightly over the unconscious girl on Alectos’s back.
“What? Surprised to see me?”
His voice was elegant, his tone easygoing, as though two old friends had met again by chance.
All the blood in Alectos’s body nearly froze in that instant.
A double? The true body? Or a puppet?