Chapter 625.2: A Choice That Can’t Be Chosen (2)
Light Devourer was a terrifying existence with the power to bypass any defenses to obliterate its target, no matter how powerful the target was. Even the powerful Savior couldn’t fully neutralize Light Devourer’s ability and lost His body to it.
These terrifying light rays were now targeted at Roel.
His sense of danger screamed from the moment he saw the light rushing toward him, but his expression didn’t change in the least. Instead, his golden eyes hardened with conviction.
In the blink of an eye, the powers of five Calamities surged from Roel’s body.
A drifting white fog, a chilling frost aura, a cloud of deathly curses, and a pale yellow tempest manifested in front of him. Searing lava plunged into the ground and fused with the earth to form a barrier around him.
It was futile to attempt to escape from Light Devourer’s attack. The only hope of surviving its aggression was to face it head-on. With four different powers neutralizing its prowess, the light ray that eventually struck the solidified earth barrier was greatly thinned.
“Peytra.”
“Understood.”
The Primordial Earth Goddess cast a blessing on the earth. Thanks to that and Magma Core’s relentless reinforcement of the earth barrier, the light was finally vanquished, allowing Roel to see the scenery before him.
It was yet another nighttime plain, but he deduced that he was somewhere in Tark Prairie.
The screeching black sphere plummeting from the sky was the best proof of that—an Egg of the Beast God.
The black sphere before him was an immature body; it was much smaller than the complete one that had appeared during his battle with Banjol. Beneath it were a white fog and a shimmering aurora.
Standing atop the aurora, bathed in the moonlight, a silver-haired woman looked at Roel with impassive crimson eyes. Her faintly glowing figure looked ethereal, but she commanded a cold and authoritative disposition.
Alicia.
Roel’s heart skipped a beat. The light in his golden eyes wavered for the first time.
He had already mentally prepared himself for this moment, but it was hard for him to maintain his composure when she looked at him with such foreign and wary eyes. This was the first time he was seeing such a side to her.
Not even with her frightened behavior in their first meeting, or her awkward cooldown phase after throwing a tantrum, had Alicia ever given off such a distant and unapproachable aura to him before.
Is this how she appears to others?
Roel forced himself to calm down as he stowed away the meritorious spirit guide. He then looked to the sky, and he narrowed his eyes upon seeing the full moon behind Alicia.
It’s a full moon today?
.
That gave him an ominous feeling, knowing that the Mother Goddess’ powers were the most active during the full moon. This meant that the Black Moon part of Alicia would be strengthened as well.
The current Alicia is the farthest away from how she was in the past.
Roel’s heart sank upon the realization, but he knew that he had to give it a try no matter what. Thus, he turned to the silver-haired woman in the sky and said, “It’s been a long time, Alicia. Do you still remember me?”
“…”
The silver-haired woman continued eyeing him with vigilance, not bothering to respond to him. Roel’s heart slowly grew heavy, but he didn’t know that Alicia’s heart was hardly as calm as she appeared to be.
…
That man… What’s going on?
A bizarre emotion suffused Alicia’s heart, prompting her to put aside her initial intent to continue her bombardment on the intruder.
She had pre-emptively sensed Roel’s arrival through Shrouding Fog’s feedback, and this provoked her to launch an attack the moment he appeared.
She had been feeling an inexplicable sense of danger in the past few days, as if she had caught the eye of a troublesome existence, and it made her extremely uncomfortable. For that reason, she had been specially keeping an eye out for external interference while dealing with the Eggs of the Beast God secretly growing around the place.
And the person who eventually appeared before her was the black-haired, golden-eyed man on the ground.
Is it him? The one who has been keeping an eye on me? Alicia wondered.
For some reason, she felt no hostility toward the man. Instead, she felt an irrepressible rush of complicated emotions. Her heart began beating so fast that her chest hurt. It was a struggle to maintain her hostility and vigilance, which made her hesitate in her attacks too. Those feelings only crescendoed when she heard his words.
“It’s been a long time, Alicia. Do you still remember me?”
Those words had Alicia widening her eyes, for the voice left too deep of an impression on her.
This was the voice that had been resonating in her mind ever since the time she appeared before the united army and defeated the Egg of the Beast God. That gave her a rough idea as to who the black-haired, golden-eyed man was.
He must have been a close kin in the past.
Alicia instinctively thought that was the case, but she didn’t let go of her vigilance despite this. Instead, the mana around her only grew more concentrated, for she could tell from Roel’s ability to control the Calamities that he was the Kingmaker.
She knew about the Kingmaker from the memories she had inherited from the Mother Goddess. That was the traitor who had turned his blade against the Mother Goddess in the ancient era, a target who had to be eliminated at all costs.
A battle between them was inevitable from the moment she learned his identity.
“Alicia, I am Roel Ascart. I am your foster brother. Do you have any impression of me?”
Faced with her prolonged silence, Roel tried to stir her memories through reporting his name, but what he received was her increasingly cold stare.
“Foster brother? I see… That’s the ploy you’re playing in this generation.”
“Ploy?” Roel was flabbergasted.
The air around Alicia turned colder as she replied, “You have forged a relationship with me before my awakening so that you can exploit me. Is that your clan’s plan for this generation?”
“Definitely not! Alicia, this is a misunderstanding! We didn’t…”
“Misunderstanding? Foster brother—that’s what you said, right? I, the incarnation of the Black Moon, became the Kingmaker’s foster sister? Could there be such a coincidence in the world?”
“I know it’s too much of a coincidence, but it’s the truth! I have guessed that there might be secrets to your ability, but neither I nor the Ascart House knew about the Mother Goddess when you were adopted into the family…”
“Enough!” Alicia sharply cut Roel’s words short. “What happened in the past is in the past now. There is nothing between you and me now. You traitors must have been the ones holding back my awakening, but it’s over now.”
“Even if it’s just a bit, won’t you try to recall our past? You’ll understand if you could just remember the time we spent together…”
“I said it’s over.” Alicia’s face slowly turned cold. “It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. You, the Kingmaker, are now my enemy. That’s a fact that can’t be changed, so why complicate it with past memories?”
“…” Roel was rendered speechless, and his face slowly paled.
Alicia felt weirdly uncomfortable seeing such an expression on him.
“Still, I don’t think you’re lying about our past relationship, so I’ll make a special exception by offering you a choice,” she said with narrowed eyes. “You may either leave this place right now, or remain here forever.”
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