novelraw Chapter 536: Victory
Chapter 536: Victory
Chapter 536: Victory
High in the sky, both sides exchanged a few more moves.
Suddenly, Annihilation withdrew his hand without warning.
He retreated several hundred kilometers. The dangerous aura around him slowly receded, leaving only calm.
“No more fighting,” his voice was flat, as if simply stating a fact. “This time, you have won.”
Upon hearing this, a flash of unwillingness crossed the Cult Leader’s face.
“Annihilation!” His voice carried suppressed anger. “We’ve only just…”
“Just?” Annihilation interrupted him and turned to look at him. “Have you still not sensed it?”
The Cult Leader was stunned.
“Carefully perceive it,” Annihilation said. “How much elemental energy is left around us?”
The Cult Leader released his perception as instructed. In the next second, his expression grew even uglier.
Thin.
Extremely thin.
This plane had never possessed much elemental energy to begin with. At this moment, the already scarce elements were draining away at a shocking speed… No, it was not draining—it was being extracted.
Extracted by the living plane.
“Right now,” Annihilation’s voice was calm to the point of coldness, “we are fighting inside the opponent’s body.”
“This plane now has an owner. Its owner is actively extracting the surrounding elements and restricting our sources of power. Continuing the fight will only make us more and more passive.”
The Cult Leader fell silent.
He knew Annihilation was speaking the truth.
Although battles between eighth-ring wizards had already transcended reliance on conventional elemental energy, it was impossible to be completely unrestricted.
In this plane now fully controlled by Clark, they were essentially fighting on the enemy’s “home ground.”
And this “home ground” was alive and would actively suppress them.
But he was still unwilling.
“That kid’s state,” he gritted his teeth, “definitely cannot last long!”
Annihilation looked at him, his gaze frighteningly calm:
“Then how long do you think he can sustain it?”
The Cult Leader opened his mouth but said nothing.
“One minute? Five minutes? One hour?” Annihilation’s voice showed no fluctuation. “Are you willing to bet your life on that timeframe?”
The Cult Leader fell silent.
Annihilation did not stop speaking. His gaze turned toward the two figures watching them intently from afar:
“Moreover, are you certain we can hold out until his state ends?”
In the distance, the power of the two eighth-ring wizards from the Noren Workshop was surging madly.
And on the living plane’s side, Clark had clearly begun preparing the next wave of attacks.
With the eyesight of eighth-ring wizards, they could easily see that at the edge of this plane, land was crumbling and dissipating into nothingness as if turning into the intangible. Everyone present knew this was not the plane collapsing, but Clark mobilizing power.
The matter of the entire plane was being decomposed, converted, and condensed into new energy, preparing for the next wave of attacks.
Looking at the scene, the unwillingness on the Cult Leader’s face finally faded slowly.
In its place was a deep exhaustion and helplessness.
He let out a long sigh. The law fluctuations around him gradually subsided.
“We concede.”
The moment the words fell…
An invisible fluctuation suddenly swept across the entire plane.
The fluctuation did not belong to any of the wizards present. It came from a higher-level existence.
A phantom slowly materialized in the void between the four eighth-ring wizards.
It was an existence with a calm face and indeterminate age. There were no energy fluctuations around it, yet it gave the strange feeling that “it was the rules themselves.”
Felix.
The artificial intelligence core of the Star Ring Federation’s magic network, and the highest supervisor of this “coordinated battle.”
It looked at the Cult Leader and Annihilation, its voice steady with no fluctuation:
“Confirmation received that one side has conceded. The contract is now in effect. According to the contract terms, the search regions originally belonging to the Chaos Secret Cult and the Tower of Annihilation now belong to the Noren Workshop from this moment onward. All units belonging to the Chaos Secret Cult and the Tower of Annihilation must complete the withdrawal of all personnel and assets within one year.”
The Cult Leader nodded expressionlessly, showing no visible joy or anger.
In the end, he was still an eighth-ring wizard. Once he had made up his mind, he quickly adjusted his mentality.
Annihilation also gave a slight nod.
Felix’s phantom said nothing more. It simply swept its gaze calmly over the four present before slowly dissipating.
The outcome of the war was thus decided.
At the same moment, on the ground, every participating wizard’s magic network terminal lit up simultaneously.
A short message appeared on everyone’s devices at the same time:
【War concluded. Noren Workshop victorious.】
The Noren Workshop camp erupted with deafening cheers!
Countless wizards rushed out of the fortresses, embracing and crying, laughing loudly!
Those dust-covered reconnaissance wizards, those battle-worn combatants, those support personnel who had desperately maintained the arrays in the rear… everyone released the emotions they had suppressed for months in this moment!
On the opposing alliance camp, however, there was only dead silence.
A heavy atmosphere pressed down on everyone’s hearts like lead.
Some silently put away their weapons, some collapsed to the ground, and some stared blankly toward the Noren Workshop in the distance, their eyes hollow and dazed.
Thus, the victor of this battle had been decided.
But deep underground, at the edge of the giant array spanning over a thousand kilometers, Jie Ming and Viola had no mood for celebration.
The two continued staring fixedly at the light screen and every node of the array, not daring to relax in the slightest.
Until…
On the light screen, Clark slowly opened his eyes.
He floated within the sphere of spiritual light, remaining still for several seconds as if savoring something one last time.
Then, his figure flickered slightly and vanished from the plane’s core.
In the next second, the teleportation array lit up.
The gray-white figure reappeared before Jie Ming and Viola.
The instant he left the plane’s core, the spirituality of the Shadow Plane Lord at the center of the array could no longer hold and completely collapsed.
The plane spirituality and soul that had only been able to coalesce because of it also lost their support at the same moment and disintegrated like a sandcastle meeting a wave.
The soft white light gradually dimmed, and the array returned to calm.
Clark stood in place with his eyes slightly closed, seemingly reflecting on something.
Viola was the first to approach.
She circled Clark twice like a curious cat and poked him with her finger:
“Mentor, Mentor, why haven’t you advanced yet?”
She blinked her silver-gray eyes, full of confusion:
“We consumed so many resources… practically the entire plane’s matter and energy! Even if you didn’t advance straight to the eighth ring, you should at least have reached the seventh ring, right? How are you still at the sixth ring?”
Clark opened his eyes and, with an expressionless face, reached out and grabbed the back of her collar, lifting her into the air like a kitten.
“You think,” his voice was flat with no discernible emotion, “everyone is as stupid as you?”
Viola dangled in mid-air, limbs flailing, looking unconvinced, but ultimately did not dare to retort.
Jie Ming watched their interaction from the side and couldn’t help but smile.
However, he also keenly noticed that his mentor seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood—under normal circumstances, if Viola asked something like that, their mentor would most likely have chopped her on the head with a hand strike.
“Mentor…” Jie Ming spoke up. “The gains were good?”
Clark released Viola and turned to look at him.
This time, the corners of his mouth lifted, revealing a genuine smile:
“Very good.”
He paused, as if organizing his words, but ultimately said simply:
“After this round, I have seen clearly. The path for my future advancement to the seventh and eighth rings has been opened.”
Jie Ming and Viola were both stunned.
“Then…” Jie Ming asked tentatively, “Mentor, will you be advancing soon?”
Clark shook his head.
“No rush.”
His gaze turned into the distance—toward the now-dimmed array, toward the thick rock layers above the array, toward the battlefield beyond those rock layers where the war had just ended:
“It is precisely because of this experience that I realized there are still many areas in my system worth supplementing.”
Jie Ming and Viola exchanged a glance.
They both saw the surprise in each other’s eyes.
This meant…
Even if their mentor remained at the sixth ring for now, his combat power could still continue to improve?
The two fell silent.
The same thought surfaced in both their minds at the same time:
Monster!