Chapter 1233: Goats in the Fog
Ethan gave a faint smile.
Recruit me?
Yeah... you picked the wrong guy.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he forced the energy sphere in his hand to compress further, squeezing it down until it became a small, gray-white bead. Then his hand slipped quietly into the ground. The bead followed, drilling into the earth and gliding soundlessly through soil, along underground water, and through cracks in the stone—until it surfaced right beside Orun.
Through that tiny sphere, Ethan glanced at the crushing pressure radiating off the anvil.
Then the gray-white bead split into two.
One slipped into Orun’s body.
The other sank into the weapon he was forging.
"Got it."
The words had barely left his mouth when the shield suddenly shuddered like it had been hit by a battering ram.
Cracks flared across the golden barrier. The outermost layer of protection shattered on the spot. If Andona hadn’t reinforced the shield before she left, the black fog would’ve poured in already.
Ethan’s eyes widened as he locked onto the roiling darkness outside.
That black fog wasn’t ordinary mist. It churned and rolled along the outside of the barrier, clinging to the golden screen. Every time it pressed close, the holy light Andona had left behind seared it with a harsh sssss—but it still didn’t truly disperse. Instead, it rose again from the ground, from tangled roots, from between those corrupted fruits, gathering thicker and thicker.
Ethan saw the problem almost immediately.
This fog was Corrupted Miasma, constantly leaking out of the corrupted fruits. As long as the fruits existed, it didn’t matter how many times Andona burned it away with holy light—the miasma would just surge back up from underground. It wasn’t a single cloud you could blow apart. It was a whole, ever-breeding source of contamination.
Then a dull impact rumbled from deep within the fog.
The next second, a massive goat head formed from black mist burst out and slammed into the shield. Two gigantic horns dug into the golden barrier. Black vapor exploded outward along the horns, and the entire shield rocked violently.
BOOM!
Ripples rolled across the shield’s surface.
And then the impacts came from every direction—heavy thuds and muffled explosions. The black fog kept condensing into ghostly goat shapes, ramming the barrier from different angles. Each one shattered the moment it hit, dissolving into even more Corrupted Miasma that wrapped around the outer layer—only to condense again a heartbeat later into a new goat silhouette and charge once more.
The whole thing looked like it was trying to trap everyone inside and suffocate them to death.
Andona’s expression darkened as she rose into the air again.
The golden wings on her back spread wide. Divine Power streamed down along the edges of her feathers, layering into the shield again and again. The barrier that had been buckling steadied. Golden patterns spread across its surface, forcing the clinging fog to tumble back outward.
Ataneya, meanwhile, was visibly losing patience.
She stood inside the shield as all twenty-four tails unfurled behind her. Darkness and blue light flowed along the tips. Fine threads of energy dripped from every tail, gathering between her hands. She brought her palms slightly closer together, and an orb—like a pearl glowing in the night—snapped into existence.
It wasn’t blinding.
It was heavy.
Those twenty-four massive fox tails coiled around it in rings, feeding it more and more power. Dark force pressed down on the outside while blue radiance rotated slowly within. Every time the orb swelled by even a fraction, the air inside the shield seemed to sink another inch.
Even Ethan found himself looking twice.
Seraphina reverted to her dragon form as well.
She couldn’t find the black fog’s true weakness, so she went with the simplest option. She opened her jaws and unleashed dragon breath—searing crimson energy pouring from her mouth and smashing into the miasma outside the shield. At the same time, she swung her claws and casually formed scorching energy spheres, hurling them into the deeper fog.
The spheres hit the Corrupted Miasma and detonated in sheets of flame.
But the fog just crawled back up from the ground again.
Namyanna’s eyes lit slightly.
The instant Seraphina exhaled again, Namyanna raised her trident. Icy-blue light surged from the tip and condensed into a frigid frost orb. With a sharp dip of her wrist, she sent it slicing through the air—straight into Seraphina’s dragon breath.
Extreme cold and extreme heat braided together midair.
The icy-blue chill didn’t get steamed away. The crimson breath didn’t fully melt the frost orb either. Two opposite forces bit into each other, interlocking in the collision—until a red-and-blue energy sphere formed, half flowing with scorching firelight, half crusted with bone-deep frost. Along the boundary where they met, tiny crackling pops kept bursting out.
BOOM!
The shockwave outside the shield exploded outward on impact.
Even Andona, in the middle of reinforcing the barrier, jerked—her wings twitching as she reflexively glanced back. A section of the golden screen she’d just repaired rippled again from the aftershock, and the holy patterns were forced to rearrange.
Perfect.
Now she had to patch it again.
But Seraphina and Namyanna looked like they’d just found something.
Those two opposite powers didn’t cancel each other out. They fused—slowly—into a more violent, unstable pulse. That pulse chewed through the black fog far better than dragon breath or ice alone. Wherever the red-and-blue pressure washed over, the Corrupted Miasma regenerated noticeably slower.
Seraphina immediately started gathering more breath energy.
Namyanna kept forcing more cold into it.
Red for blazing heat. Blue for absolute frost. The two forces spun and tangled in the air. Seraphina fed in from the left, Namyanna pressed down from the right, and at the point where they met, the sphere grew larger and larger—until it became a massive red-and-blue orb. A low, heavy rumble pulsed from inside it, like two powers were trying to tear each other apart... and getting crushed into the same core anyway.
Andona spread ten wings.
With a flick of her blade, she cleaved a streak of holy light upward, ripping a temporary opening through the black fog above the shield. The moment the gap appeared, Corrupted Miasma tried to flood it shut—only for Andona’s second strike to fall.
She used the edge of her sword to support the red-and-blue orb. With a push of holy light, she launched it straight into the sky.
At the same time, Ataneya finished her own buildup.
Her twenty-four tails drew in slightly, all the tips pointing down. Three deep-blue waves of energy spread slowly from beneath her feet—first flowing along the inside of the shield, then slipping past its edge and expanding outward.
They didn’t attack anyone inside.
They moved like three heavy, silent tides, advancing layer by layer. Anything the deep-blue wave touched—black fog, corrupted roots, twisted vines—was forcibly shoved back. Black liquid peeled off the vines’ surfaces, and the polluted stench was crushed outward like it was being wrung from the world.
Up above, the red-and-blue sphere reached its peak.
Then it dropped.
As it fell, it dragged a streak of intertwined red and blue behind it. Heat and frost kept detonating along its surface, making it look like a burning star under immense pressure—slamming into the ground with brutal weight.
BOOM!
The red-and-blue energy merged completely with Ataneya’s deep-blue waves.
Strangely, this time there wasn’t an immediate, ear-splitting blast.
The deep-blue ripples pushed outward in silence. They swept the ground, and the black fog was compressed and scattered inch by inch. They skimmed the roots, and the corrupted vines began to crack and dry out. They brushed the giant trees grown from black water, and the sticky black sludge on their bark seemed to get pulled loose, streaming outward in thick drips.
The sky gradually cleared.
But as the miasma retreated, the ruined land became even more obvious. Corrupted roots stabbed across the ground in chaotic tangles. Mud soaked in black water reeked of rot. What should’ve been lush had been reduced to a shredded wasteland.
This didn’t feel like the end.
It felt like the last silence before a storm breaks.
Soon, the energy wave reached the edge of the fog—
the place where the corrupted fruits were.
They were still venting black mist. Pitch-dark liquid crawled down their swollen skin, dripping to the ground and instantly breeding new pollution. But when the deep-blue wave touched them, a thread of blue slipped straight inside.
Around the outer ring of the circular arena, every corrupted giant tree began to tremble.
One fruit after another started to swell.
BANG!
The first fruit exploded.
But this time, what burst out wasn’t black fog—it was a ring of deep-blue ripples. The ripple spread from the torn fruit and instantly pinned down the surrounding Corrupted Miasma.
Then the second. The third. The fourth...
All the corrupted fruits detonated one after another, shattering into pieces.
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