Lessing utilized the power of the Abyss to rapidly simulate a new ritual formation. He stood with several warlocks clad in black robes, encircling the Moon Essence to maintain the guidance of energy. Their fingers traced complex trajectories in the air, chanting incantations as gloom-blue and pitch-black light patterns floated and interwoven in the space before them.
Ikhtiyar stood guard with her sword, her sharp gaze sweeping over the entrance of the cavern hall and the shadows of the surrounding rock walls. naturally, she immediately spotted the four Moon Spirits appearing at the tunnel entrance, as well as Coppelia, who was crumbling yet still standing.
She was not surprised that Coppelia could still 'stand.' That body was abnormal to begin with. However, the pale blue light radiating from the longbow in Coppelia's hand instinctively raised a trace of alarm in her heart.
Ikhtiyar immediately shouted, "On guard!"
Before her voice even faded, her body had already reacted. With a clean turn, she drew her sword with her right hand. Red and black flames, like awakening venomous snakes, instantly wrapped around the blade and her arm. She exerted force through her legs, crushing the ground beneath her, and transformed into an afterimage wrapped in raging fire, charging straight toward Coppelia at the tunnel entrance!
At the entrance, Coppelia completed her aim almost simultaneously. Her line of sight pierced through the charging Ikhtiyar, locking onto Lessing at the core of the formation inside the cavern hall.
The fingers resting on the pale blue bowstring released.
Whoosh—!
An arrow of light, bright enough to be blinding, shot violently from Amos's Bow! Dragging a comet-like trail of light, it flew straight toward the depths of the cavern hall.
In the midst of her charge, Ikhtiyar's pupils contracted abruptly. She turned sideways and swung her sword. The red and black flames wrapped around the blade surged violently, transforming into a dark red cone of fire that slammed head-on toward the arrow of light, attempting to intercept it.
The moment the light arrow collided with the flame cone, the anticipated energy explosion or annihilation did not occur. The arrow of light easily penetrated the obstruction of the red and black flames, its speed hardly diminishing. The instant the arrow skimmed past Ikhtiyar's side, it brought not a wave of air, but a stream of extremely violent oscillation.
Splurt!
The tooth-aching sound of shattering bone and flesh rang out. Ikhtiyar's sword-wielding right arm, along with her right shoulder and a small half of her skull, instantly exploded into a mist of blood and bone fragments, like porcelain smashed by a giant hammer! Her entire body was carried by that force, spinning as she flew backward and to the side.
The arrow of light continued with undiminished momentum, carrying a shriek of death as it shot into the ground in the center of the cavern hall.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment. In the next second.
BOOM—!!!
A loud noise, impossible to describe in words, exploded violently underground. The sonic wave nearly shattered eardrums. The ground where the arrow of light had submerged acted like an ice surface struck by a boulder—first sinking inward, then violently bursting and flipping upward!
Lessing and the few warlocks who had just made gestures of defense or evasion didn't even have time to scream before they were lifted into the air in unison by this destructive energy erupting from below, tossed like fallen leaves in a gale.
At the core of the explosion, a massive, bottomless hollow with a diameter of dozens of meters was blasted open in the ground. Shockwaves and rock fissures spread like a madly growing spiderweb, centering on the hollow and extending in all directions, rapidly spreading toward the foundation of the entire experimental base!
Wherever the fissures passed, rock layers wailed and disintegrated. One of the thickest cracks extended into the distance, reaching into a lake with pitch-black water. The pitch-black water within was precisely the massive amount of Abyssal power introduced during the previous few experiments.
Crack... Crash... Boom!
The rock walls of the lakeshore shattered under the tearing of the fissures. The pitch-black water immediately found a channel for release, surging on a massive scale along the cracks and pouring into the newly born giant hollow!
The rock layers at the top of the hollow lost their support and began a large-scale collapse. Countless boulders weighing dozens or hundreds of tons fell like rain toward the pitch-black water surface surging up from the bottom.
Bang! Thud! The boulders smashed into the black water, kicking up black waves dozens of meters high. The waves crashed against the steep rock walls on all sides, making dull, thunderous sounds. The water surface churned violently as if boiling.
The rock fissures extended to a place extremely far away. Falling toward the bottom of the hollow along with those crashing boulders were Lessing and the others who had been blown away and were powerless to fall, Ikhtiyar who had only half a head left and whose life or death was unknown, and Coppelia, whose eyes had completely lost their luster and whose consciousness had sunk into boundless darkness.
In the chaos, the four Moon Spirits tried their best to dodge the free-falling rocks. They attempted to wrap their braids around Coppelia's limbs, wanting to pull her falling body. But the meager strength of the Moon Spirits was completely insufficient; instead, they were dragged down by Coppelia's heavy body, falling together.
The closer they got to the bottom, the more intense the cold and malice from the pitch-black water became. The Moon Spirits felt instinctive fear; that black water was highly toxic to them.
Just moments before being swallowed by the churning black waves, they had no choice but to let go of Coppelia. They only had time to wrap their braids around Amos's Bow, which was falling with her.
They hovered helplessly in mid-air, watching Coppelia's broken figure wrapped in black robes, like a puppet with cut strings, plunge into the surging pitch-black lake below. She was swallowed by a rolling wave and vanished completely without a trace.
*
In the circular hall, Columbina had remained lying on the cold mat. Although fear wrapped around her heart like vines, she had never relaxed her perception of any subtle changes in the outside world, always waiting for a possible turning point.
Suddenly, vibrations came from the ground. At first, they were slight, but they immediately became violent, and the entire hall began to shake. Immediately after, the crack-crack sound of shattering came from all directions. Countless crisscrossing fissures instantly crawled all over the walls and ceiling of the hall, and dust drifted down.
The white-haired man guarding Columbina immediately sensed the anomaly. With almost no thought, the longsword in his hand, which had been burning with red and black flames, stabbed downward without hesitation, the target being precisely Columbina's back!
Columbina's heart sank sharply. The instinct to survive overwhelmed everything; her body lying on the ground rolled to the side with all its might.
Shlick! The tip of the sword grazed her ribs and stabbed into the mat, piercing through the mat and the stone slab beneath it.
At the same time she dodged this sword strike by a hair's breadth, Columbina clearly felt that the 'fog' which had been shrouding her surroundings and hindering her spatial perception was completely dispelled, as if blown away by a strong wind!
The Authority that had been stolen had fully returned! That familiar sensation of blending with space instantly filled her whole body.
In the instant the white-haired man swung his second strike, Columbina ignored the stinging pain from the sword energy cutting her ribs, concentrated all her mind, and activated teleportation!
Her figure instantly vanished from the center of the hall.
The next moment, she appeared in a small underground cavern with no traces of human activity. As soon as her feet touched the ground, a wave of intense collapse washed over her like a tide. Dozens of hours of high tension, threatening confrontations, and the struggle for Authority had long since drained her energy to the limit. The explosive teleportation just now had drained the very last bit of her strength.
Her knees went soft, and she collapsed weakly forward onto the ground, her head spinning in waves.
An unsettling wriggling sensation came from her abdomen, and her throat felt tight. She braced herself against the cold, rough ground and couldn't help but dry heave a few times, yet she couldn't vomit anything up.
Right now... I urgently need energy replenishment. She forced herself to calm down and extended her faint perception outward. Through the resonance of Lunar Force, she quickly captured the unique 'signal' of the Eternal Moon Essence.
Mobilizing the newly returned Spatial Authority again, she locked onto the target and teleported.
A sharp stinging pain came from her head, like needles pricking. But as the light flashed, the Eternal Moon Essence, emitting a soft, bright glow, had appeared on the open ground in front of her.
She almost threw herself onto it, hugging the Moon Essence tightly in her arms. Immediately, she began to frantically draw moonlight from the Moon Essence.
Cool and majestic power poured into her dried-up core like sweet spring water, repairing the fine cracks caused by the forceful impact and nourishing her nearly exhausted spirit.
The stinging pain gradually faded with the influx of energy. But before her condition could fully recover, a strong sense of unease and urgency seized her.
Coppelia... She activated teleportation once again. This time, the target was the area where she had 'seen' Coppelia fighting through the Ley Lines.
The scene before her eyes changed.
The anticipated battle wreckage and sandy cavern were all gone.
Replacing them was an underground space so vast it was difficult to describe in words. At the bottom of the space, a pitch-black, lightless lake was churning madly. Countless boulders continued to fall from extreme heights, smashing into the lake and stirring up monstrous black waves. The booming sounds echoed endlessly in the empty giant hollow, deafening to the ear.
Columbina hovered in mid-air, staring blankly at this apocalyptic scene.
The four Moon Spirits sensed her aura and flew over from the shadows of the distant rock walls. Carrying the old bronze storage mirror and Amos's Bow, which emitted a faint purple shimmer, they gathered around her.
One by one, they lowered their round heads. The pair of small wings atop their heads drooped limply, and the faint light emitted by their bodies was incomparably dim, revealing a deep sense of dejection and powerlessness.
Columbina's gaze moved from the churning black lake to the Moon Spirits, and then to that solitary bow... A purely ominous premonition made her heart tighten.
Her hands holding the Moon Essence unconsciously gripped tighter, and even the action of absorbing moonlight stalled.
She trembled, her voice so dry it hardly sounded like her own: "Where is... Coppelia?"
The four Moon Spirits remained silent, then, in unison, looked toward the surging, bottomless pitch-black lake below.
Columbina abruptly cast her perception toward that lake.
What returned was only a chaotic spatial structure and waves of noisy ravings coming from the depths of the lake water. That pitch-black water itself was like a curtain that swallowed everything, completely blocking her further investigation, let alone sensing any trace of life or energy belonging to Coppelia within it.
A bone-piercing chill instantly shot from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, sweeping through her entire body. She nearly failed to maintain her floating posture, her body swaying in the air.
...
Columbina stared blankly at the churning black lake below for a long, long time; time seemed to solidify around her. It wasn't until a Moon Spirit gently touched her arm with its braid that she snapped back to reality.
The Moon Spirits seemed to have noticed something. They gathered together and pointed their braids in unison toward a spot at the edge of the pitch-black water below. There, piled gravel that had just fallen formed a narrow 'shore.'
Columbina immediately focused her gaze there.
On the pile of gravel, there was shockingly a living creature crawling slowly. Its color was almost integrated with the surrounding black water; if it weren't moving, it would have been extremely hard to spot.
Hope flared up like a sudden spark. Her figure flashed, instantly teleporting to the air above that gravel shore, and she looked down.
But that living thing was not Coppelia. It was an exceptionally huge rat, over a meter in length, its fur dyed an ominous pitch-black, as if just fished out of that black lake.
Even more bizarrely, its neck and back were covered with lumps of deep purple mineral crystals. Its claws and the tip of its tail were unusually sharp, glistening with a cold, metallic light.
Columbina guessed that this was no ordinary rat, but a monster formed after being eroded and mutated by the power of the Abyss.
As if confirming her judgment, the rat-shaped monster immediately stopped crawling the moment it sensed someone overhead and jerked its head up. Its entire head was covered by twisted black substance; it had no eyes, revealing only a giant maw filled with fine, sharp teeth that opened and closed continuously. It let out a shriek as ear-piercing as scraping metal, kicked its hind legs against the gravel, and actually shot straight up toward Columbina in the air with agility and madness that defied common sense, opening its mouth to bite!
Columbina frowned slightly. Her hovering figure did not move; she simply raised her right hand and pointed casually downward.
A fist-sized, milky-white light bullet condensed from pure Lunar Force formed at her fingertip and shot out, precisely vanishing into the rat monster's gaping mouth.
The light bullet erupted inside the monster's body.
There was no violent noise. The rat-shaped monster's body stiffened abruptly in mid-air. Immediately after, a hole the size of a bowl with smooth edges appeared from its chest to its back, as if wiped away by an eraser. The flesh and crystals around the hole rapidly turned grayish-white and withered.
The monster went limp, fell onto the gravel, twitched twice, and its entire body turned into wisps of dissipating black smoke, disappearing until only a small scorch mark remained on the ground.
Columbina floated in the air, her gaze resting on that mark, falling into deep thought.
This seems to be formed from ordinary creatures falling into the pitch-black water and combining with the power of the Abyss. That power of pitch-black darkness... doesn't seem to kill things that fall into it directly, but rather transforms them.
This deduction made her heart skip a beat.
This means... Coppelia might still be alive! At least, she wouldn't be killed instantly by that power.
Fighting spirit reignited. She immediately flew higher into the air, searching every corner of this huge hollow, every crevice in the rock walls, and every patch of surging water.
The pitch-black water was still permeating into the farther depths of the underground along the rock fissures.
I can't let Coppelia be carried by the current to a place even harder to find! Columbina mobilized her Spatial Authority to sense the structure of the nearby rock layers. She locked onto several massive, hard boulders weighing dozens of tons from the distant rock walls and activated teleportation.
The boulders vanished from thin air and crashed down at the openings of several major fissures, acting like corks to block the channels where the pitch-black water was leaking out.
As for the black water that had already leaked to the periphery, she went to investigate each spot one by one. Wherever she went, she held the Eternal Moon Essence, guiding its moonlight to shroud the filth and completely purify it.
During this process, monsters of various shapes continued to crawl out from those smaller puddles of black water.
There was not just that kind of giant rat. She also saw flying giant lizards with pitch-black scales spitting acid; she saw strange 'flowers' with countless writhing tentacles and flower disks covered in metal shells that could climb walls and burrow into the ground; she even saw a humanoid figure, two or three meters tall with only half a head left, its upper body mutated with four sharp bone claws, dragging a long bony tail...
Anything that touched the Abyss seemed capable of being transformed into a monster.
The more she investigated, the more uncertain Columbina felt.
Coppelia... could she have also turned into a monster like this? Or even... could she have been 'purified' by me without my knowledge?
Her hands and feet turned cold, and she hardly dared to think further. She cut off the terrible thoughts, still holding onto a sliver of luck in her heart: Coppelia is very special; she can utilize my Lunar Force... perhaps, she can also utilize the Abyss to survive...
She searched carefully around the periphery of the hollow but found no figure resembling Coppelia. Neither in human form nor as any monster bearing her characteristics.
Finally, she returned to the center of that massive, empty hollow that looked like the entrance to hell.
Together with the four silent Moon Spirits, she floated quietly above the endlessly churning pitch-black water. Below was the darkness and madness that swallowed everything; above was the cold, silent dome of rock layers. They hung between the two, like duckweed without roots.
She was waiting. Although hope was slim, she refused to give up.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Reincarnated as Mahito, Watch Me Manipulate Everyone
✅ Jump 40 chapters ahead of the public release!
✅ Get access to special perks and news!
Help smash these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter (for everyone)
🚀 140 MEMBERS = +5 extra chapters (for all stories)!
👻 P - Walnut-chan