Chapter 398: The Fall Of The Capital
BAM!
With a violent shove fueled by raw strength, Carl pushed the massive, crumbling stone wall pressing down on them to the side. The heavy debris crashed away, throwing up a thick cloud of dust. He walked forward, looking around nervously, staring at the apocalyptic destruction before him.
The once-glorious capital of the Sword Empire—a pinnacle of military architecture and martial pride—was now a smoking, leveled graveyard. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear the agonized screams of people, and desperate cries for help echoing from beneath the rubble. Carl slowly moved his gaze across the destroyed Capital, staring at the dead bodies strewn all over the place, his expression turning unspeakably grim.
Behind him stood Cupcake, her fur coated in gray ash, and the remaining members of the Ghost Guild, all staring at the catastrophic destruction in absolute disbelief and shock. Their safe, structured world had just been violently shattered.
"Don’t just stand there!! Help!!" Hayatobi snapped at them, his authoritative voice cutting through the trauma as the God General instantly shifted into crisis management mode, his aura flaring to lift fallen beams.
"Big... Big Sister."
Grace said in a low, trembling voice, completely ignoring the General. She pointed a shaking finger at the sky above the smoke clouds. There, Mirabella stood high in the sky, completely untouched by the blast. She was holding Bella’s severed head with so much devastating care and heartbreaking gentleness that it stunned all of them into absolute silence. The sheer contrast between her apocalyptic power and this fragile display of grief was paralyzing.
"Big Sister!!" Carl yelled into the sky, his voice cracking with desperation, hoping Mirabella would hear him through the atmospheric turbulence.
They all watched as Mirabella slowly turned her head, her glowing eyes staring down at them. For the very first time since they had met her, they saw tears. Mirabella—the undefeatable Captain, the ruthless strategist, and the reigning champion of the glory flag competition—was crying. The golden light surrounding her felt heavy, steeped in an unbearable sorrow.
They all stood completely paralyzed, watching helplessly as her physical body started glowing with a blinding, transcendent light.
"Big Sister!! Wait!!" Carl yelled in pure shock, his instincts screaming that something final was happening. His golden wings violently burst out from his back, and without a second of hesitation, he shot into the sky like a comet to reach her.
"I am sorry."
He couldn’t hear Mirabella’s words over the rushing wind, but his enhanced vision allowed him to clearly read her lips. Before he could close the distance, her physical body rapidly shattered into millions of radiant golden particles, flying away into the winds.
"Big Sister?" Carl muttered in profound disbelief, his momentum dying out as he hovered in the empty sky. His hand was still desperately stretched forward, watching numbly as the final golden particles completely vanished into the ether.
"No!! You can’t leave us! You can’t leave me!!" He yelled, his voice breaking as the agonizing reality of abandonment crashed into him.
"Carl!!!"
Grace’s terrified scream from below snapped him out of his daze. Carl turned around to look at Grace, and was utterly stunned. He saw Cupcake’s small body violently glowing with the same transcendent light. The next moment, Cupcake vanished into thin smoke, stunning the entire group present on the ruined streets.
"This? Did, Did Big Sister...?" Grace’s legs gave out, and she collapsed heavily on the scorched ground, as hot tears rolled uncontrollably down her ash-stained cheeks.
"Don’t, Grace!" Carl dropped from the sky, landing so heavily on the ground that his boots cracked the bedrock surface; his golden gaze was fixed fiercely on Grace, refusing to accept defeat.
"Big Sister can’t die! She is alive, somewhere!" Carl stated, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"Where? Why didn’t she take us with her? We promised to stay beside her through everything!" Grace cried out, the emotional anchor of their team completely ripped away.
"I believe Big Sister is alive! She wants to be alone... She will come back." He said, trying to project a certainty he desperately needed to believe himself.
A short distance away, Hayatobi stared at the grieving youths for some seconds. Recognizing that there was nothing he could say to comfort them, he quietly moved away into the settling dust.
Hayatobi tapped the sleek interface of his Galaxy bracelet, opening a direct, encrypted communication line. A holographic projection of Elder Gaga’s deeply troubled face appeared in the air.
"What happened?" Hayatobi asked, staring sharply at her worn expression.
"The soul orb, the one marked with Mirabella’s soul, it just shattered." The Elder’s voice trembled with a mixture of awe and terror.
"....?!"
Hayatobi was temporarily stunned speechless, his mind failing to compute the variables. "How is that possible?" He asked, stepping further back into the ruins, deliberately creating more distance between himself and Carl’s mourning Ghost Guild.
"We don’t know. The whole Academy shook violently for a moment, and instantly, the orb shattered. Out of every single orb present; only hers shattered."
Hayatobi raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Okay." He nodded briskly, disconnecting the Call. He immediately accessed the mainframe of his Galaxy bracelet, bypassing standard protocols:
"Use my God General rank chance and locate Mirabella, Nickname; Spectral."
[System Alert: You are not qualified to search the target.]
".....?!"
Hayatobi was completely dumbfounded, staring blankly at the glowing blue holographic screen in pure shock.
"How is that possible?! I am a God General! And this is my absolute military privilege, I can use my privilege and locate anyone, although it’s only three times a day! But still... Tell me, why can’t I locate her?!" He asked Galaxy Fall, his voice rising in frustration and growing dread.
[For being a God General, I Will reveal it to you.]
[Your Target Is a stage-five celestial General.]
[All Empires must bow before a Celestial General.]
[You truly don’t have the right.]
"Cel... Celestial General?!!" Hayatobi was so profoundly horrified by the system prompt, he almost physically fell to the ground, his knees buckling under the weight of the revelation.
"A celestial general is a rank even higher than an Emperor... In short, she now has the exact same supreme standing as the four Guardians. And whenever a Celestial General formally appears, Galaxy Fall tends to bless them with so much localized Buffs that it’s terrifyingly absolute... But. How the hell did she become a Five-star Celestial General?!" He asked himself, the geopolitical landscape of the Second World entirely rewriting itself in his mind.
"Did you get the news?!"
Hayatobi snapped his head around, turning to Keegan, who rushed towards him through the rubble, his armor covered in soot and his face pale.
"What news?" Hayatobi asked in utter confusion, wondering what could possibly top the birth of a Celestial General.
"The Abyss, and Demon Emperor Vassago... They’re all gone. The whole eternal Abyss and millions of demons are all completely wiped out from existence. The Guardians just reported that Mirabella was the one who did it." Keegan explained, his voice hollow, unable to process the scale of the massacre.
"But I don’t believe it." Keegan shook his head in denial.
"Check the military ranks." Hayatobi said flatly, his eyes staring blankly at the ruined city, watching as surviving soldiers, exhausted mages, and blood-soaked healers frantically moved about, busy helping the trapped people.
Keegan stared at Hayatobi in surprise, but tapped his own Galaxy bracelet to pull up the Military leaderboard. The next moment, he froze completely in shock.
"Impossible."
On that fateful day, the established powers and unyielding rules in the Second World changed dramatically, forever marked by the wrath of the Sun Heir.
The Ghost Guild, refusing to succumb to their despair, tirelessly assisted the vanguard in the rescue operations. After seven grueling days of moving around the leveled infrastructure and pulling bodies from the rubble, they finally got the official total number of casualties. It was a dark, sobering statistic: 106,718 people were severely injured, and 23,183 were confirmed killed by the blast.
The Sword Empire had effectively lost their entire royal family to Nadia’s infiltration and the subsequent explosion. After a long, tense while of political discussing and scrambling for stability among the surviving nobles, a new king was hastily crowned to prevent civil collapse.
Through it all, the citizens, the soldiers, and the Ghost Guild looked to the sky. Everyone naively thought Mirabella would quietly return after the repairs were done and her anger had cooled.
But they were so, so wrong.
*
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[WOW! This is the end of Volume Three: Rise of a Goddess.]
[Let move to Volume four: The Unshakable Legend.]
[Thank you all for your endless support so far. Much appreciated.]
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