"Liumi, get ready," Bruno said tersely, and Liumi pulled the spear from her back without hesitation.
Coming from the opposite direction, through the skies, a group of nearly thirty flying beasts cut through the air toward Yanson and Lirelia. Both were severely wounded, but Alm and Bruno sensed that most of the wounds were not recent.
’They’ve been fighting in this place for quite some time... damn, everything was going so well,’ Alm spat out, retrieving Vorion and assuming control of the body.
This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.
Yanson and Lirelia turned their gazes to the sky, eyes burning with fury. They prepared to fight to their last breath. They had fought long, survived countless times, and escaped, but now their wounds were too grave; they could no longer run.
"And this is our end... I’m sorry... for being so weak and staying in a coma for so long," Lirelia murmured painfully, in her true form.
Yanson stared at the dark phoenix beside him, fists clenched and dripping blood. "I was weak... I failed to protect everyone... our lord granted me another miracle and I survived. But now, I will fail again... forgive me for losing our child."
"He taught us to fight together... if only I were with you... we have disappointed everyone, but at least we will die together..." Lirelia murmured, watching the figures in the sky approaching swiftly.
The dark phoenix rose up, its eyes radiating its last strength. The small black elf took a deep breath and drew his bow and arrow. He had been taught to fight to the end, never falling without taking as much as possible with him. His eyes gleamed, knowing there was nothing more to lose, his life would create the last black flame.
"I taught you to fight, but also to always have an escape plan if you couldn’t win, idiot," a cold voice cut through the air in their direction.
Both froze, frightened; were they imagining things? Until they felt warmth coursing through their bodies, their deepest internal wounds closing automatically.
When they turned, they saw only a black saber capable of cleaving sky and earth. Time and space seemed to split with the movement of that blade. It pointed upward and leaped.
"DISAPPEAR!"
SLASH! BOOM!!!
The black saber slashed, a brutal and bloody explosion ensued. All thirty beasts attacking together exploded before that blade. A rain of blood fell upon those lands.
"Quick!"
A succubus flapping her wings rushed toward Yanson and Lirelia. She grabbed them and drew a sword from its sheath. Quickly, spatial laws flowed, and a distortion in space appeared before them.
Alm and Bruno took a deep breath, feeling the energy of the mind and life from this body suddenly draining by 90%. They used the only thing possible without cultivation and QI, the Eternal Bond. They had been saving it for an emergency and now used it; there would be no second strike of this level.
Their bodies withered and aged suddenly. They didn’t mind and leaped toward the distortion. In the next second, they passed through and were several kilometers away.
Liumi waved her sword and the spatial distortion dissipated. In the same instant, the sword lost all its shine. All the accumulated spatial energy was dissipated at once. There were barely any laws in that place; it would take millennia to recover even a fraction of the burnt spatial power. In other words, they had also lost this card.
They were in a region they had passed through before, hidden behind several rocks, a relatively safe spot.
"S... Sir!" Yanson murmured, trembling and in tears.
He had no doubts. The physical form was different, but the way of speaking, the cold aura, that power could only belong to him.
"Idiot, pull yourself together first," Alm replied tersely, while Bruno focused his Faith power.
It took a few minutes. They were his followers, but within this place, Bruno couldn’t sense them with his Faith power; all laws were severely suppressed and Qi didn’t naturally exist. The power of Faith, once out of inventory, would lose almost 80% of its effect due to dissipation. Bruno had to burn nearly half of what he had accumulated, but managed to fully recover them.
Both knelt before him. Lirelia was in her true form and couldn’t use metamorphosis in this place. Both touched their foreheads to the ground, shedding tears.
"Stop this, it hasn’t been that long since we parted," Bruno said softly. "What happened? Why are you here?"
Neither of them raised their heads. Yanson spoke with a tremor in his voice. "I have failed him... we have failed everyone..."
He explained calmly. Alm and Bruno already suspected that something serious had happened in the Dark Phoenix clan. After all, the only way for the hero who invaded the Pristine planet to connect that demon whale that appeared in the underworld was through the weapons left in the clan.
But the next words deeply shocked Alm and Bruno. They had a child, but this child, even though he was still an egg, was like a natural disaster. He was terrifying enough to almost destroy a city of powerful cultivators just with his bloodline. He was sealed by the clan, nurtured with the intention of being born quickly.
’Heaven’s Will manipulated things again. Since we had a connection with him, he must have embodied a powerful soul; then he rolled the dice of fate so that his bloodline was as powerful as possible,’ Alm said seriously.
Next, Yanson recounted how the hero emerged in the clan and sadistically killed Veria to obtain information about him. Throughout this time, Lirelia remained in a coma after having the egg.
Shortly after the storm in the clan, the apocalypse came. All the hero’s companions appeared on the planet where the clan was and sealed the place with a terrifying formation.
According to them, the hero who killed the clan leader as if he were an insect was killed, and they were conducting a thorough investigation. Alm and Bruno imagined what this "investigation" meant.
Since it was precisely a companion of the hero who discovered the sale of weapons by the Dark Phoenixes. They knew the hero would go to the planet and then acted alone to get all the credits, resulting in his death. In short, all members of the Dark Phoenix clan were massacred, with the hero’s companions slowly consuming their souls for information.
Lirelia was still in a coma, seeming semi-dead. They just took a quick look and didn’t care. Yanson was just a dark elf and didn’t care to read his memories. But in turn, he tried to fight to prevent the destruction of the clan, but obviously lost.
He was pronounced dead by one of the companions, but survived by a thread, managing to merge with Yin to disappear from the enemies’ senses. For some reason, he believed that Alm and Bruno saved him from death.
"When they were gone, I... I found out they took our son. He was still just an egg..." Yanson said, clenching his fists as tears streamed down.
At that moment, Alm and Bruno swallowed hard. ’Damn...’ Bruno murmured. They saw that egg and immediately felt a karmic connection, but they couldn’t have predicted this.
Yanson continued, revealing that the entire planet was dead. They killed even the dark elves who lived in the forest for no reason. He took Lirelia and fled, using Veria’s space ring he recovered from her dead body shortly before.
There were communication crystals with people she knew owed favors to the Dark Phoenixes. The clan was destroyed, but Lirelia was still alive and the bloodline was not completely extinct. Not surprisingly, everyone ignored them. However, the Cerberus clan, where Shuki and Muphs were practically leaders, took them in.
Fortunately, the dead hero’s companions were not discreet. It wasn’t difficult for Shuki to get information about where they had gone. So, they knew they came to the Devil’s Mountain shortly after leaving the Dark Phoenix clan. When Lirelia woke up, they ran there and had been there for almost a year.
"Forgive me, sir, I am a useless mother and woman. I would have stopped my mother from selling the weapons; and I wasn’t there to protect our son, I left everything on Yanson’s back," Lirelia said painfully. "When I woke up, I could only follow your advice and fight to the end by your side."
"Fight? You jumped into the abyss to die, not to fight," Alm said dryly, making them both tremble and not retort. Bruno took over, speaking more gently, "Well, if you hadn’t come, we would never have met, and your son would really never be recovered."
They both looked up at him, completely in tears. Alm and Bruno sighed; they would get involved in unnecessary danger, and there was no way to avoid it.
Both of them sighed heavily. They would lose a lot, a lot with this... but there was no way to save that egg and take them both out at the same time. If they tried, the chances of escape were practically zero. But they had one last move they could use.
Alm was radiating fury, but said nothing; it was up to Bruno to take over.
"I saw your egg, I know where it is. But it will be very dangerous... well, there’s only one way, with acceptable chances for me to save him. Do you trust me, right?"