Chapter 1219: Baelzareth Still Lives
Before Ethan could make any further sense of it, Catheryn turned into a streak of light and shot into the sky.
She was impossibly fast. Snow-white gemstones spun around her like a storm, and that sapphire-blue stone at her side released a heavy, sinking glow. Her aura surged to a violent peak, a flood of power rising behind her and slamming straight toward the spatial rift.
Catheryn raised her hand and pressed down.
That domineering force smashed into the rift’s edge.
The dimensional tear shuddered violently. The surrounding space fractured again and again—then was forced to compress back inward under the pressure of her core energy. The figure inside the rift finally stopped, eyes narrowing as it stared at Catheryn with cold focus.
"I didn’t expect you to break free from the seal," the voice came from deep within the rift, low and crushing. "You’re the core of this world. Under my seal, no one should have escaped. What method did you use?"
Catheryn didn’t answer.
She only turned her head and looked down—at Ethan on the ground.
The seal this thing had set was genuinely terrifying. Catheryn had once believed she would never leave that place for the rest of her life. But the moment Ethan arrived, the energy between heaven and earth had shifted in a way she’d never felt before.
That transparent lightning...
When it condensed and intertwined with the aura in the air, it produced an effect even she hadn’t seen.
That was what cracked the seal open.
Catheryn looked away and faced the rift again, her voice sharp enough to cut.
"The seal you left here is garbage. If I use even a little of my strength, I can crush it. Today, I’ll show you what this world’s true core energy looks like."
She snorted.
And her power detonated.
The snow-white gemstones and the sapphire-blue stone lit up together. In the next instant, a colossal golden projection formed between heaven and earth, standing behind Catheryn like a divine shadow. Light poured from its outline, spreading outward and forcing the surrounding corrosive haze to retreat at once.
Ethan’s eyes widened again.
When he’d felt Catheryn’s power earlier, he’d thought she was simply drawing on the canyon’s corrosive energy. But this wasn’t that.
What Catheryn was unleashing now wasn’t pure corrosion at all—it was a special, absolute Primordial Force, a core-level power that made everything else feel like scraps.
Once it fully surfaced, it produced an energy Ethan had never imagined.
Inside the rift, chaos erupted immediately. The spatial turbulence that had been pouring out was forced to shrink back under that golden pressure—then smothered flat. The tearing hiss along the rift’s edge weakened. Even the savage aura pushing through from the Infernal Abyss was shoved back inside, forcibly suppressed.
The figure inside the rift stared, eyes wide with disbelief.
It clearly hadn’t expected Catheryn to be able to release something like this.
Catheryn didn’t give it time to recover.
Boom—!
Boom—!
The golden force surged like a tide and poured straight into the dimensional space. It streamed through the rift along the inner channel and swallowed the figure in an instant. Then that core energy detonated inside the rift’s interior.
"Aaagh—!"
A shriek tore across the sky.
The thing inside the rift staggered backward, its defenses peeled open layer by layer by the golden tide. Its body shook violently in the depths of the tear, large portions of it crumbling as it hovered on the edge of collapse.
Catheryn didn’t let up.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Power kept erupting from her. In the air, she condensed one energy sphere after another, each wrapped in golden light. They slammed into the rift in rapid succession, and every impact produced a heavy, muffled explosion inside that dimensional corridor. Before long, the figure within was battered into a shredded, broken wreck.
Ethan watched, breath burning in his chest.
He could feel it—the world’s energy was converging toward Catheryn’s position. The abyss’s deepest core aura was being pulled completely into her grasp. Catheryn had seized the true Primordial Force of this world.
Ethan’s breathing turned faster.
He still couldn’t believe the Primordial Force here was this terrifying.
But he forced himself to move anyway.
Ethan pulled everyone back. This wasn’t a fight he could participate in anymore. Every collision up front cracked space itself, and even a stray aftershock could erase ordinary soldiers in an instant.
Catheryn had fully mobilized the world’s energy.
A giant projection gathered behind her, golden power pouring down like a waterfall—pinning the rift shut and crushing any attempt at retaliation from within.
Velyra, meanwhile, was locked in place by overwhelming suppression. She couldn’t move at all.
Catheryn continued bombarding the figure inside the rift, sphere after sphere. With every strike, the tear trembled violently. The figure inside stared in panic, retreating again and again, clearly unable to accept that Catheryn had become this strong.
And the dimensional rift itself began to close.
Slowly. Reluctantly.
No one could tell how long it took. The energy between heaven and earth swelled to its limit—golden light, abyssal force, and the rift’s remaining aura all grinding against each other—until, with a deep, crushing boom, everything began to settle.
The rift finally went quiet.
Catheryn still hovered in the sky, power surging around her in heavy waves. Snow-white gemstones and the sapphire-blue stone rotated slowly at her side, and the surrounding space stabilized little by little beneath her aura.
The instant the rift vanished—
Velyra’s body looked like it had been drained dry. She collapsed to the ground.
Beside her, the middle-aged man convulsed.
His entire body shook as corrosive power erupted out of control. Then—under the stunned eyes of everyone watching—his body exploded, shredded energy and flesh blasting outward before being swallowed by the lingering forces in the air.
Emerald Castle’s people were shaken.
No one had expected the enemy’s two leaders to fall apart like this. A moment ago, Velyra and that man had been crushing the canyon until it felt hard to breathe. Now one lay collapsed, and the other had simply... detonated.
The enemy troops froze in a dead, stunned silence.
Before anyone could even react, the energy between heaven and earth surged wild again.
A crack split open in the earth.
It tore outward from deep in the canyon, and dark aura spewed up from below, blasting loose stone into the air. Then a gigantic figure climbed out of the fissure, rising into the sky and hovering over everyone like a hanging judgment.
It looked down, and its voice came like it was dragged straight out of the deepest inferno—heavy enough to press against every ear.
"What a pair of useless siblings. I thought they’d handle everything."
Its tone turned colder, sharper.
"Didn’t expect you outsiders to kill them instead."
The moment that voice spoke, every soldier tensed.
Catheryn’s eyes widened.
As the huge figure emerged and hovered overhead, the power around her—just barely calmed—erupted again. Snow-white gemstones and the sapphire-blue stone trembled in unison. Harsh light rolled outward from her sides, twisting the nearby air into layered distortions.
She stared at the figure like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, shock and fury fighting in her voice.
"Baelzareth... I can’t believe you’re still alive!"
Baelzareth threw his head back and laughed.
The sound rolled across the canyon sky, shaking more debris loose from the walls. Then his energy surged out. A dark, heavy power boiled up from the earth fissure and streamed into the sky, condensing into a massive energy projection.
The projection formed and immediately raised an arm—
—and smashed it down at Catheryn.
"Catheryn," Baelzareth’s voice rode the descending shadow like an executioner’s blade. "We’ve fought for so long and never settled it."
The pressure increased.
"Today we’ll see which of us is truly stronger."
Catheryn’s pupils contracted.
She stared at the colossal projection crushing down from above... but she didn’t rush forward like before.
That brutal fight had drained her to the brink. First she’d battled Velyra. Then she’d forced out the world’s core Primordial Force to hammer the figure inside the rift. Her energy was still surging—but it wasn’t anything like the fullness she’d had a moment ago.
This strike—
She couldn’t meet it head-on.
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