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The next moment, invisible forces clashed.
Herpo was drawn and "welcomed" by Ian into his subconscious world. The volcano was gone, the apocalypse had vanished, the thunderous roar had disappeared, replaced by an unprecedented peace that filled this strange space.
Towering skyscrapers reached into the clouds. Cars streamed endlessly down the streets. Pedestrians hurried past, no one knowing what they were busy with, perhaps not even they themselves knew.
"Hm?" To Herpo, all this was alien and bizarre. He had never seen such sights before, colossal beasts of steel and glass, the roar of mechanical carriages, and people dressed in strange garb. A flicker of shock passed through his eyes, quickly replaced by astonishment and delight.
Standing in the middle of the street, Herpo's face was twisted with both shock and ecstasy.
"This is… your mindscape?" He threw back his head in wild laughter. "What a foolish act! You actually dared to drag my soul into your consciousness!"
"You think just because you've reached the pinnacle of mortal wizardry, your soul is fit to contend with mine? How laughable! You have no idea what torments and trials I endured in the Underworld!"
"My soul is a thousand, ten thousand times stronger than yours. You… are simply seeking death!" His manic laughter echoed down the streets, but the boy wizard's reply soon followed.
Ian's voice came from everywhere at once: "I don't think so. Real-world evidence has already proven it to me. Here, in my domain, I am stronger than ever before."
The calm, level voice carried no hint of its source. Herpo searched through the teeming crowds around him but could not spot Ian hidden among them.
"Playing hide-and-seek, are we?"
Herpo sneered, utterly dismissive of Ian's response. He struck out directly, seeking to shatter this mindscape with his soul force, then seize Ian's body to complete the final step of his apotheosis, the forging of the last Angel. The power he unleashed bore the weight of centuries of malice.
"Begone!" His voice brimmed with arrogance.
And yet, his expression froze and the reason for that was simple: in the instant his terrifying soul force exploded outward, he discovered to his horror that it could not damage this world in the slightest.
Neither skyscrapers nor the dust on the street stirred. The place was immutable, its order unshaken by any foreign power.
"This… this is impossible!" Herpo's voice trembled. "My soul has accumulated for millennia, how can I not move you?"
His face twisted in shock and rage. His roar was laced with unwillingness, fury, and, thinly veiled beneath it all, fear. For the second time, this legendary dark wizard felt an impossible strangeness pressing upon him.
"What did you do to me?! Where is this place?! You can't possibly have a soul stronger than mine! Impossible! My soul surpasses all legends!"
Herpo's eyes were bloodshot as he bellowed the questions.
To his hysteria came only a simple reply, "Who knows?"
Ian's voice sounded again, omnipresent. Herpo tried to chase the sound, to find Ian's soul, when suddenly, he heard the heavy beating of wings.
It was a deep, resonant sound, like the current of fate itself.
"You!! How can you be a bird!?" Herpo lifted his gaze in shock. There, perched on a telephone pole, was a raven, its eyes glowing crimson, cold and merciless.
The incomprehensible doubts in his mind never found an answer.
Because, Before Ian could even open his mouth, Herpo's soul began to change. He gazed straight into Ian's soul as if he were a Sun God, but clearly, he did not possess the Sun God's resilience.
At first, Only Herpo's eyes began to fracture silently. Soon, the cracking spread across his whole body, as though his very soul was being torn apart by some invisible force.
"I…" Herpo felt an unbearable impact. His mind went blank as he raised a hand in confusion to touch his face. The nose of that serpent-like visage was the first to fall into his palm.
Perhaps the first thing all who undergo this kind of magical transformation lose… is their nose.
"Impossible to comprehend…"
Herpo only had time to mutter in a daze.
The next instant, His entire soul collapsed completely, reduced to nothing more than nourishment.
In the waking world, Ian slowly opened his eyes, and beside him, he saw the Goddess, her expression filled with worry, as if she had been attempting to enter his subconscious.
"I think it would be better if you didn't do that," He said with a faint chuckle. \
"You really are hiding great secrets!"
The Goddess, seeing Herpo's so-called "divine form" consumed entirely by molten lava in the distance, now understood Ian had won the battle of souls. Relief crossed her face, though it was tinged with complexity.
"I hope this third miracle didn't disappoint you." Ian, supported to his feet, spoke calmly. By now, Vesuvius's eruption was nearing its end.
The entire city had been buried beneath volcanic ash and magma. All the former splendor was completely swallowed and gone. Cassandra walked up and tugged gently at Ian's robes.
"My lord, thank you."
She still did not place the blame for the disaster upon Ian. Now, the few hundred surviving priests also offered him their thanks. The little girl seemed to have matured overnight, while the priests wept in grief and despair, their homes, their kin, their dreams, all annihilated in that moment.
"The living must go on, telling the stories of those who are gone." The Reckless Goddess spoke words of comfort to the grieving priests, though her own sorrow was steeped in helplessness.
"This story… isn't very complete."
Ian too felt a pang of regret.
Hearing this, the Reckless Goddess's eyes grew heavy with age.
"No story is ever complete. There will always be regrets and pain within them. What matters is that you truly saved these people. Perhaps, years from now, what happened today will be remembered in song."
"It may even become… a kind of fairy tale." She glanced at Ian's nearby, her tone wistful and meaningful. By then, the priests were slowly calming their emotions.
A song rose.
As though offering prayer and release for the souls lost in this calamity.
"You should go too…" Ian nodded toward Cassandra.
The little girl quickly joined the line of surviving priests. Her clear, ethereal voice rang out, a ray of light piercing the darkness of grief.
"The ones you were searching for, and that friend of yours, it seems they've been buried along with Herpo's ambition…" The Reckless Goddess noticed Ian staring at the devastation down the mountainside.
She tried to comfort him.
But before she could finish, she realized something was beginning to stir abnormally within Ian's body.
"What's going on?"
Ian himself felt a little stunned. His eyes suddenly began to glow, and then, magic texts lit up across his entire body. His consciousness seemed to be pulled back into the world of thought once more.
"This is…"
Ian saw it.
The once vague and blurry silhouette was now becoming clear. Some kind of ancient and mighty power was sprouting within him, not from nothing, but as though it were flowing from somewhere else.
It was… the Authority of Paradox.
Ian could hardly believe the harvest he had gained. Meanwhile, in the real world, golden magic texts had already spread across his body, radiating a faint glow.
On this land baptized by disaster, a new, unprecedented legendary wizard was about to be born. The fluctuations of that power were so overwhelming that even the Reckless Goddess felt her heart tremble.
"This legendary trait… how can it be so powerful!?"
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
Up in the sky, the thick volcanic ash stirred up by the eruption suddenly dispersed. The ashes of the real world began to settle. The Sun God's chariot rolled across the heavens as he silently descended beside his daughter.
"You foolish girl, do you not even know who you've chosen?" The Sun God's arrival went unnoticed by the priests, but his voice startled the Reckless Goddess out of her wits.
"What… what's happening?" She swallowed nervously, looking blankly at her father.
"A disaster that comes ahead of its time, have you still not realized the problem? My child, this very moment is the true junction of history, the hidden current beneath the fall of Pompeii."
The Sun God glanced first at the little girl Cassandra in the distance, then at Ian. A profound gleam flickered in his eyes.
"This is… the hymn's guidance. The ancient gods are about to awaken."
Amidst the ruins of the apocalypse, The radiant Sun God began to restrain his own brilliance.
His deep, resonant voice lingered softly in the air.
(End of Chapter)