Volume 6, Chapter 73 – What on Earth Happened Here?

There, at the heart of the ice lotus, a breathtakingly beautiful elf girl lay in perfect stillness. Her eyes were closed, long lashes casting faint shadows against her eyelids. Her complexion was still pale — but the pain and dishevelment from before were gone. In their place was something almost serene.

Her clothes were still stained with blood, yet a thin veil of icy mist wrapped around her, sealing out the dust and grime of the world.

The lily-of-the-valley mark on her forehead had dimmed to near-nothingness, almost completely faded away……

Looking at Bai Lianyue like this, something lurched hard inside Ailiya’s chest.

“Lianyue!!”

The next instant——

Ailiya dove, her silver light-wings kicking up a storm as she hit the ground. She practically stumbled her way to the ice lotus, cherry-colored eyes flooded with panic. Trembling fingers pushed through the thin veil of icy mist and made contact with Bai Lianyue’s skin — cool to the touch, but impossibly smooth. Her heart plummeted——

Then immediately flooded with warmth.

A faint but steady thread of life force traveled through her fingertips, confirming that Bai Lianyue was still alive.

“Hah…… thank goodness…… thank goodness you’re alright…… If anything had happened…… Ai’er wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have known what to do…… uwuwuwu……”

Her legs gave way. Her Augury Force dissolved. Ailiya collapsed bonelessly to a seat at the edge of the lotus, both hands braced on the ground as she gulped down ragged breaths. The cold sweat on her forehead dripped from her jaw. The nerves that had been wound to snapping point finally loosened, and her eyes reddened against her will. She reached up and gently brushed the stray hair from Bai Lianyue’s forehead — touch so careful it seemed she was afraid of disturbing a sleeping fairy.

“You scared me half to death, you reckless Lianyue, you awful Lianyue, you dense blockhead Bai!! If you ever do something like this again, I am absolutely going to give you a proper lecture.”

The silver-haired girl muttered with feigned fierceness, grumbling as she went, even pinching the other girl’s cheek in petty revenge.

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Once she had confirmed that Bai Lianyue was safe, Ailiya stood and swept a cautious gaze around the battlefield. Still utterly silent. The wreckage of black mud and thorns was strewn across the ground. Valerdis’s presence had vanished without a trace. All that remained in the air was a bone-deep chill.

Here……

What on earth just happened?

Lianyue being alive was undeniably a good thing — but the situation just a moment ago? The situation where Valerdis held such an overwhelming advantage? How had it turned into this ?

How had the tables turned?

Ailiya’s brow furrowed deeply as she turned it over and over, unable to arrive at any answer.

While she was thinking, the silver-haired girl also channeled her Augury Force outward in a careful sweep of the surroundings, staying alert to any threat that might still be lurking nearby. Then, a heartbeat later——

Ailiya’s cherry-colored eyes contracted sharply. Her sword hand tightened on the hilt until her knuckles went white.

Two familiar yet impossibly faint presences were seeping from a heap of black mud at the battlefield’s edge……

In an instant, Ailiya’s expression shifted. Every trace of the relief she’d felt a moment ago was shuttered away, replaced by something cold and severe.

The next moment, the silver-haired girl moved forward without hesitation, sword raised, golden light-wings spreading open behind her as a lethal killing intent rolled outward. She advanced on the black mud pile step by deliberate step, blade leveled directly ahead — pointed squarely at the two wretched figures collapsed within it.

“You two…… are actually still alive?”

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There — two forms that were barely more than half-dead lay crumpled across what remained of the black mud.

Ulutiel, white-haired and utterly spent, lay face-down on the ground. Her small body was riddled with gaping wounds where the black thorns had punched through her. One of her dragon wings had been torn half away. Her tail and one leg had been wrenched off entirely, blood seeping steadily from the stumps.

Polana’s condition was even worse — she was down to half a body. Thick ice had solidified across the severed wound. The dark-purple blood had long since frozen solid. Her remaining right hand lay limp against the ground, her presence so faint it seemed liable to dissipate at any moment.

“No need to be so tense~”

Ulutiel’s voice carried that diseased, fragile quality, and the old obsessive fixation was gone from her pale-blue eyes — nothing remained there but exhaustion. “We don’t have the strength to fight you right now.”

Ailiya’s brow stayed firmly knotted. She kept the sword raised. She was not about to lower her guard on an evil god’s word alone.

“Hmph. What happened here? Where is Valerdis?”

“Valerdis?”

At the question, Polana laboriously lifted what remained of her head. Her dark-purple pupils were glazed with confusion, her voice as hoarse and scraped-out as a broken bellows:

“You mean…… the consciousness that was hiding in the canyon before? Valerdis…… what an unpleasant name. Heh, heheh — I’d like to know that myself……”

“You were both swallowed by that thing. How are you out here?”

“We were, yes…… swallowed.”

The Siren girl slowly closed her eyes and answered without energy.

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She turned the scene over in her mind, and a deep and genuine puzzlement settled across her features.

Polana wasn’t lying. After being skewered by countless black thorns and devoured by Valerdis’s black mud, she had already braced herself for complete annihilation. Because this time was nothing like the times Bai Lianyue had struck her down before.

Both their bodies and the evil god power embedded deep within their very souls had been stripped away. In other words, their power as evil gods had been taken — or rather, forcibly returned to its original owner. Under those circumstances, had they died, there would have been no coming back.

In that bottomless agony — flesh being shredded, souls being sliced apart — Polana had let her mind go blank with despair.

But then, at that moment……

“Suddenly…… it felt extremely cold…… so cold even the nerves that feel pain were frozen over.”

“Extremely cold?”

Repeating the words under her breath, Ailiya’s brow drew together slightly. Instinctively, her gaze drifted toward the ice lotus in the distance.

Toward the elf girl sleeping within it.

“That’s right, extremely cold.” Polana gave a small nod — even just in recollection, her body couldn’t suppress a faint shudder.

“What exactly happened during that time…… I couldn’t tell you…… All I know is that when I came back to myself, Valerdis was gone, the black mud had collapsed, and the thorns skewering my body had been frozen dead. In short — when my mind cleared, everything around me looked the way it does now. If it’s all the same, I’d also quite like to know what actually happened……”

Polana swept her gaze around the scene, her expression equally full of bewildered disbelief.

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After a moment, Polana brought her attention back to the silver-haired girl in front of her. Something rare surfaced in those dark-purple pupils — something almost like quiet reflection.

“You were at the Divine Departure Realm before…… and now you’re already at the Divine Graced Realm? That was fast…… You were the one causing trouble in the canyon earlier, weren’t you……”

“If I had known, I would have killed you then…… Maybe today’s mess wouldn’t have happened.”

Polana’s eyes narrowed slightly as she said it, and a creeping, bone-cold intent slipped quietly through her gaze.

The instant Ailiya felt that look, her brow locked down.

Her Augury Force surged back to full force around her. The longsword was engulfed in pale golden holy light, the blade aimed directly at the space between Polana’s brows.

Ailiya shifted into full combat readiness without hesitation.

“No need for that level of caution.”

Polana seemed to read the silver-haired girl’s mind. Her tone was flat — bordering on indifferent — and her gaze had already drifted to the side.

“I don’t have the ability to threaten you anymore……”

Before the words had fully left her lips, the half-body that remained of Polana gave a faint tremor. The dark-purple curse power ebbed away like a retreating tide. Her body began to grow transparent at a visible rate — the edges already dissolving into tiny shards of ice crystal that scattered on the wind.

“After all…… I’m dying, aren’t I……”