Chapter 248: The Tower Melted (1)
At first, Kestrel could understand the bad words the creature was saying. But then the weird sounds got muffled, and she couldn’t understand them anymore.
Kestrel felt like she wasn’t the one who took down the Queen.
A bunch of times, when her psychic version was attacking super hard, the Queen would suddenly pause for a sec. Like, a kid’s hand would reach out and grab her, or some alpha’s face would show up and mess up what she was doing.
Everyone knew that the Queen had crazy strong psychic powers. She used to be a big deal in this world. Kestrel even felt like she was no match for her; even the Mantis Queen would only be even with her were she here.
The Queen, who had lived at the top of the Tower for hundreds of years, was basically beaten by herself. Her hunger for power turned her into its slave. She had sucked the life out of so many people to get super strong, and all the leftover feelings of hate and anger inside her finally ripped her apart.
At the very end, when Kestrel was almost out of energy, a golden branch of the Erdtree just showed up at her feet. Kestrel found a new place to stand, stepping on her friend’s golden arm. In that moment, when she was totally wiped out, she reached down and grabbed the blood-red necklace.
Trying to get up from a pile of cut-off tendrils, Kestrel saw the Queen on the smoke-covered altar finally break apart. Her pale body cracked little by little, falling apart into a bunch of white bones.
The bones crashed down, tumbling from the tall stage.
Using her shaky arms, Kestrel managed to sit up among the chopped-up tendrils that were soaked in blood. She put the red gem into the Verity Vault. When she looked up, what was left of the Queen was just half a face that looked like a broken mask with red lips.
The half-face laid on the altar, with a pair of lifeless eyes peeked out of the broken veil.
Neither of the two said a word. They just stared. One was in pieces, her psychic incarnation destroyed and spread out on the altar; the other was bloodied and cut up, sitting in a puddle of her own blood.
Then, Kestrel heard a deep sigh.
Eerie cries filled the air, coming from the dark mist around them. The mist, which looked like sludge, stopped trying to pull itself together. It just flowed aimlessly, sinking into the white bricks below.
Everything seemed like it was melting.
The ground started to shake, the tower wobbled, and the stones on the ground started to break and sink. At some point, sunlight had broken through from above. When she looked up, Kestrel saw that the top of the Tower had melted away.
The walls at the top of the tower looked like they were melting like candle wax, slowly dripping down. A part of the wall was gone, letting the sunlight through.
Kids near the academy seemed to be running out. Kestrel knew she had to leave fast because everything was about to fall apart. But she was so weak; she had cut off so many of her own tendrils just to avoid being taken over during the fight.
Now, she couldn’t even stand up. Her body ached, and her psychic self felt even worse.
Shifting her body a bit, Kestrel managed to lean against a somewhat stable section of the stone wall. Everything around her was breaking and melting. She just hoped she would go down slowly.
"Just hang in there, please wait for me. Will you wait?" Ren’s voice sounded from the virtual screen. At the end, his voice seemed really sad, almost begging, as if he was scared she wouldn’t wait for him.
He was an exceptionally perceptive beta, aware of everything that was happening around him.
"Alright, I’ll be waiting for you." Kestrel looked at Ren’s face on the screen. He appeared dashing as he ran and climbed; she wished she could watch him longer.
Kestrel recalled she had once promised to make him happy, to give him a joyful life—even if she never said it out loud.
Yet, Kestrel felt guilty; it seemed she had not done well enough to make him happy very often.
Suddenly, all the screens went black, obscured by clouds of smoke.
Kestrel looked up through a small gap in the ceiling at the sky. Today, the sky was exceptionally clear, resembling a washed sapphire. Strangely, the clouds were white. And the white clouds looked truly beautiful.
Kestrel felt cold and wished she could eat something sweet at this moment.
On the ground level of the Tower, a frontline soldier was suddenly grabbed by a white arm extending from the wall. Hundreds of bizarre arms simultaneously emerged from the walls, seizing his ankles and waist, pulling him into the wall.
"It’s a mutant!" someone shouted.
His comrades behind him saw the strange scene unfold and immediately opened fire to sever the weird arms. They were too late. The creepy tendrils enveloped their prey into a white cocoon.
Soon, red blood started to ooze from the writhing white crevices.
A ’Holy Brick’ from the Tower’s wall fell down. The bone-white brick wriggled for a moment on the ground, transforming into an eyeless mutant. The creature twisted its body and bared its sharp teeth, sprinting toward the crowd.
On the wall of the Tower, where the brick had fallen, a hole appeared. Sunlight shone through the hole, illuminating the interior of the Tower.
One by one, more bricks fell, leaving holes in the Tower, a place that had never seen daylight before.
Sunlight flooded into the Tower. Those fallen bricks turned into mutants that rampaged inside.
The rebels faced their most horrifying blockade since entering the Tower.
Mutants were everywhere—different types, different appearances, all created from the Tower’s bricks, each crawling down the walls.
Higher up, a retreating royal alpha had his head torn off by a monster’s claw.
The guards defending the Tower had no choice but to hastily turn their guns toward the Tower’s walls.
They finally realized that everything was real, that what they had seen in the videos just now was actually happening.
By now, no one could deny it anymore. The Tower, riddled with holes and teeming with strange creatures, which had guarded humanity for centuries, was actually built from the bones of monsters.
A cannon roared.
The shell exploded against a massive creature.
A soldier rolled out from the smoky haze, unable to rise due to the shockwave. The next moment, an arm reached out from behind the cover, pulling him into a safe spot with a quick snatch and drag.
Two grimy soldiers locked eyes. One wore a bandana as a rebel, the other had the insignia of the Royal Guard on his arm.
The Royal Guard’s alpha felt awkward for a moment. But regardless of how much their aristocratic superiors might rage, at this time, he had no desire to aim his weapon at his own kind anymore.
"Over here. There’s a hideout below, and some ammo."
The rebel wearing the black bandana quickly ran over, following behind the royal guard into the hideout.
Outside the hideout, the ugly faces of mutants appeared.
At that moment, gun barrels were turned, and cannons were repositioned; they no longer aimed at each other.
Outside the Tower, a journalist’s eyes widened. Braving artillery fire and carrying his camera, he secretly filmed from a nearby spot. Normally a daring photographer, he was rendered speechless by the sight before him.
In his lens, the towering monument started to slowly melt from the top. The once immaculate outer wall of the sacred Tower developed one hole after another, resembling termite damage. Ugly mutants slowly crawled out of those gaps.
The once pristine Tower became riddled with holes.
"The Tower is melting!" muttered the journalist carrying the camera.
Looking up, even the sky of the Empire seemed to lose its color, bit by bit. It was as if a curtain call was slowly descending from the sky, revealing the true backdrop of a bright sun and fluffy white clouds in a blue sky.
