novelraw Chapter 486: Calm and Overwhelm
Chapter 486: Calm and Overwhelm
Hum…
A low, bone-deep vibration that seemed to shake the entire world suddenly rang out without warning.
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s movements froze abruptly.
He looked up in shock, scanning his surroundings.
Centered on the lava basin, within a ten-kilometer radius, the light itself began to twist strangely.
The sky grew hazy, the ground turned illusory, and even the energy he had been condensing in his palm started to fluctuate uncontrollably, leaking away.
It felt as though an invisible giant hand had gently lifted this entire region out of “reality”… and was now casually kneading it.
“What?!”
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s pupils contracted sharply. For the first time, the smile vanished from his face.
In its place appeared an indescribable horror. Because he sensed an aura.
An aura that was cold, calm, yet carried an absolute sense of “domination,” slowly descending from some extremely distant direction.
The aura was not particularly powerful—at least judging by raw energy intensity, it was no more than fifth-ring, definitely not sixth-ring.
Yet for some inexplicable reason, the instant that aura locked onto him, every hair on his body stood on end. Deep in his soul, alarms screamed frantically:
Danger! Danger! Danger!!!
“Who?!!”
He whipped his head around toward the direction the aura came from and roared hoarsely.
At the same time, his body instinctively began to distort—he was preparing to activate his life-saving spatial jump witchcraft and flee this area at once!
But it was too late.
In the exact moment he turned, roared, and began casting—
A light appeared.
A dark-golden radiance.
Blazing hot, yet utterly cold.
It emerged silently from the distant horizon, at first just a faint glimmer, like the first morning star in the darkest hour before dawn.
Then, like ordinary light.
It crossed at least a hundred kilometers in an instant and appeared before the Chaos Secret Cult wizard.
It lightly “touched” the twisting body of the Chaos Secret Cult wizard.
Sizzle.
A soft, understated sound.
Like a hot knife sliding through butter.
Every protective witchcraft he had just activated, every curse ritual still running, every spatial ripple he was twisting—
All of them “stopped” the moment they came into contact with the dark-golden beam.
As though those spells, rituals, and ripples had been nothing more than false illusions from the very beginning—now gently brushed by true “reality,” they simply dissolved into nothing.
Then the beam continued forward.
It pierced through defenses, through flesh, through soul.
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s expression froze on his face.
A mixture of shock, bewilderment, and—in that final instant—the dawning realization of utter despair.
He wanted to say something, but his vocal cords were already gone.
He wanted to do something, but his body no longer existed.
Wherever the dark-golden beam passed through his form, flesh, bone, organs, energy, soul… every element that constituted his “existence” simply “vanished” without a sound.
Like someone taking an eraser and gently wiping away a single line from a pencil sketch.
Simple. Clean. Complete.
When the dark-golden beam faded, the spot where the Chaos Secret Cult wizard had stood was empty.
No blood. No remains. No lingering energy.
Only dead silence.
Above the lava basin, only the gurgling of rolling magma and heavy breathing remained.
The Tower of Annihilation wizard slowly, stiffly turned his head, his neck creaking like rusted gears.
He looked toward the direction from which the dark-golden beam had come.
In the extreme distance, a human figure was slowly flying closer.
Then it stopped about one kilometer away from the Tower of Annihilation wizard.
It was a seemingly young male wizard.
Gray combat robe, completely unadorned. Black hair, black eyes. His features were ordinary by wizard standards—the kind of face that would disappear into a crowd.
But at this moment, no one would consider him “ordinary.”
The Tower of Annihilation wizard instinctively looked into the other’s eyes.
Because those eyes… were far too calm.
Calm like an unfathomably deep ancient well, reflecting no emotion, no ripple whatsoever.
He looked at the Tower of Annihilation wizard without hostility, without killing intent, without even the sense of truly “watching.”
As though what he saw was not a peak fifth-ring enemy, but an irrelevant object simply sitting there.
That absolute, almost indifferent calm sent an icy chill straight into the depths of the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s soul.
Monster…
He screamed inwardly.
This was absolutely not an ordinary fifth-ring wizard!
Absolutely not!
But before he could react—
The gray-robed wizard raised his hand again.
His index finger extended, pointing toward the Noren Workshop wizard below in the lava basin, who had already transformed into a mass of tentacles.
“Wait… no!”
Amid the female wizard’s startled cry, a dark-golden orb of light once again gathered at the young wizard’s fingertip.
But this time the beam veered slightly off course—not aimed at the tentacle mass itself, but at a small, inconspicuous patch of dark-red flesh quietly seeping into the ground nearby.
That was the Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s final “contingency”—a high-tier flesh-regeneration witchcraft. As long as even a tiny fragment of flesh escaped, he could reconstruct his body elsewhere.
But now the dark-golden beam appeared once more.
It lightly “touched” that clump of flesh.
Puff.
The flesh turned into a wisp of green smoke and was completely annihilated.
“No…”
A final, despairing shriek flashed and then fell utterly silent.
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard had been… completely erased.
From body to soul, not a trace remained.
Having finished this, the gray-robed wizard slowly turned his head.
Those terrifyingly calm eyes glanced faintly at the Tower of Annihilation wizard.
Just that one glance.
It drove the Tower of Annihilation wizard completely… mad.
“Arghhhhh!!!”
He let out a beast-like roar, the face beneath his mask contorting to its limit.
Fear? Rage? Despair?
No—it was a fusion of all those emotions, plus one final ingredient… insanity.
“No matter who you are!!! No matter what kind of monster you are!!!”
Roaring, he slammed both hands against his own chest:
“You’re still just a fifth-ring wizard!!!”
“Die… for me!!!”
BOOM!!!
A violent surge of energy exploded from within him.
Left hand—blazing light.
Right hand—profound darkness.
Two completely opposing, mutually conflicting energies were forcibly compressed and fused together… then poured entirely into his own body.
His body began to glow. The two energies clashed wildly inside him, annihilating each other and releasing terrifying torrents of chaotic power.
Skin split. Muscles swelled. Bones warped.
In just two seconds his body expanded several times over, transforming into an eight-meter-tall “energy giant” half light, half shadow.
Frenzied energy currents raged across his surface, forming destructive energy storms that blasted the surrounding lava in all directions.
A terrifying aura soared skyward, even triggering small-scale spatial tremors accompanied by piercing sonic booms.
“See that?!!”
From the “head” of the energy giant—where the face was no longer recognizably human—a crack split open, unleashing a deafening roar:
“This is my power!!!”
“Do you see it now?!!”
“Be afraid!!!”
“Tremble!!!”
With every shout, the energy fluctuations around him grew more violent, distorting the surrounding space even further.
“That’s right!!! A power like this—even I myself have to fear it!!”
He raised his now energy-formed giant hand and pointed it at the gray-robed wizard:
“This is the true…”
The words cut off abruptly.
Because the gray-robed wizard had interrupted him.
Not with an attack—but with a single sentence.
A very soft, very calm murmur:
“Just raising raw energy intensity, huh…”
Jie Ming tilted his head slightly. Looking at the towering, heaven-shaking energy giant before him that seemed capable of destroying everything, a trace of disappointment flickered in his eyes.
“Boring.”
He softly uttered two words.
Then he raised his right hand.
Index finger extended.
Pointing at the energy giant.
At the fingertip, a speck of dark-golden light quietly ignited.
The energy giant froze.
He stared blankly at Jie Ming—at the gray-robed figure standing utterly unmoved amid the raging energy storm, at those terrifyingly calm eyes, at that single finger… which seemed capable of erasing anything at any moment.
An absurd sense of unreality surged through him.
This guy… said what?
Boring?
He said… boring?!
“You!!!”
The energy giant wanted to roar, to howl, to unleash every last drop of energy inside him in one cataclysmic blast and reduce this arrogant trash to ashes.
But the dark-golden light had already arrived.
This time, Jie Ming had adjusted the Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light into area-of-effect mode.
Thus, a vast expanse of dark-golden radiance poured down from the sky like an inverted ocean, completely submerging the energy giant.
The energy giant roared and struggled desperately, but it made no difference whatsoever.
Wherever the light touched, energy was extinguished.
The colossal energy body melted silently like ice under sunlight.
From the fingertips, to the arms, to the torso, to the head.
Bit by bit, it dissolved into the most fundamental particles of light and scattered into the air.
The entire process was terrifyingly quiet.
The last thing the energy giant saw was that boundless sea of dark-golden radiance—and deep within it… those calm eyes.
Then his consciousness went dark.
When the light finally dissipated,
The sky above the lava basin returned to calm.
Where the Tower of Annihilation wizard had stood, nothing remained.
Jie Ming slowly lowered his hand.
The dark-golden light at his fingertip quietly faded.
He turned around and looked toward the other side.
The female wizard was staring at him in a daze, her face filled with utter disbelief, shock, and… fear.
The male wizard—who still retained his tentacle form, though a massive hollow gaped in his chest—was also staring fixedly at him with unfocused eyes.
Jie Ming met their gazes for a moment.
Then he gave a slight nod.
“Mission accomplished.”
He said calmly.
“The enemy has been eliminated. You may retreat now.”