novelraw Chapter 235 235: The Return
Chapter 235 235: The Return
Ignius surged upward, charging directly against the torrential rain of jagged
ice.
The first ice pillar slammed down. Without flinching, Ignius threw a punch, the
impact detonating the frozen mass into a billion crystalline shards mid-air.
Then came the second, and the third. Ignius didn't even bother with his fists
anymore; he simply used his body as a battering ram. His reinforced dragon
scales ground against the ice with a screeching, metallic friction that sent
sparks and frost flying in every direction.
High above, Lia looked down at the encroaching red silhouette. Her Mana was
hemorrhaging. To force her way back to the summit of Tier 5, she had absorbed an
atmospheric load that far exceeded her body's structural integrity. Her very
cells were beginning to reject the energy.
She had to end this now.
Lia pressed her palms together. The massive blue magical circle in the sky began
to contract, spiraling inward as every stray thread of Mana was sucked toward
the center. A single, colossal ice spire—over thirty meters in
length—materialized. Its volume was several times that of the previous
pillars, and visible bands of sapphire energy pulsed across its surface.
This was the absolute limit of her current output.
"[Jade Shatter: Frozen Sanctuary]!"
Lia's voice was a ragged command. The monolithic spire descended with the
momentum of a falling star, aimed directly at the heart of the dragon charging
toward her.
Ignius tilted his head back, his golden, slitted pupils reflecting the jagged
blue death as it neared. He slowed his ascent, hovering momentarily to stabilize
his posture.
Then, he opened his maw.
It wasn't Draconic Fire. It was a roar.
"ROAR—!"
A visible shockwave of sound erupted, rippling through the air in translucent,
kinetic rings. The massive ice spire, still ten meters away from Ignius, came to
a dead halt. A heartbeat later, a network of hairline fractures raced across the
ice.
To Lia's disbelief, the spire containing the entirety of her remaining Mana
shattered into dust. It dissolved into a cloud of drifting blue motes, scattered
to the winds of the night.
Lia's mind went blank for a micro-second. This dragon... he is also a Tier 6
powerhouse!
In that moment of realization, Ignius vanished.
Lia's combat instincts shrieked a warning. She didn't think; she acted,
desperately manifesting a Reflective Shield at her side.
Too slow.
A hand covered in crimson scales punched straight through the fragile barrier as
if it were parchment. Ignius reappeared behind her, a savage grin twisting his
draconic features. He seized her ankle, his muscles bulging, and with a grunt of
effort, he hurled her downward.
Lia lost all sense of orientation as she was slammed toward the earth by an
irresistible force.
BOOM!
She struck the rocky ground with enough force to carve a human-shaped crater
into the stone. Dust and grit filled the air. Lia lay at the bottom of the pit,
her internal map of bones a mess of dislocations and fractures. Her throat
tightened, and she coughed up a spray of crimson.
Before she could even draw a breath, a shadow fell over her.
Ignius descended like a meteor, his massive foot aimed to pulverize her into the
dirt. Lia used the last embers of her Od to roll sideways.
RUMBLE!
The impact shook the entire clearing, expanding the crater and sending a tremor
through the earth. Lia had barely cleared the impact zone when Ignius's arm
swept in a low, horizontal arc.
THWACK.
Lia was sent flying like a discarded rag doll, her body tumbling through the air
until she slammed into a massive boulder. The stone cracked under the impact.
She slid down the rock, collapsing into a heap, unable to move a single limb.
Her consciousness began to flicker. It is over, her mind registered with
clinical finality.
In the air, Skele-Pride watched the conclusion of the engagement with detached
interest. A mortal remains a mortal. Even with Ignius suppressing his output to
Tier 5 levels, the gap in combat logic is a total mismatch.
Ignius strode over to the broken girl. He reached down, grabbing her by the
head, and hoisted her up. Lia's body dangled limply, her limbs swaying with the
wind, her purple eyes glazed and unseeing.
"To think I actually had to tap into the peak of Tier 5 output to break you,"
Ignius rumbled, a flicker of genuine respect in his golden eyes. "Be proud,
human. Even among my kin, you would be considered a talented Tier 5."
Ignius prepared to toss her aside like trash.
Just then, a pillar of pure, white light descended from the heavens without
warning, enveloping Lia entirely. Within the radiance, thousands of microscopic
runes swirled in a frantic dance. An alien, spatial energy began to hum.
Ignius blinked, startled.
"Release her," Pride's voice commanded. He had manifested behind the dragon-man.
Ignius obeyed instantly, opening his hand. Lia's body began to drift downward
within the light, but before she could touch the ground, her form turned
translucent. A second later, she vanished completely.
The light column dissipated, leaving the clearing in silence. Only the ruined
earth and the bottomless craters remained as proof of her existence.
"Pride, what was that?" Ignius asked, shifting back to his human form.
Pride's soulfire pulsed with the satisfaction of a successful gamble. "She has
returned."
"It seems the pressure worked exactly as intended."
He assumed that Lia, pushed to the brink of death, had activated her own plane's
emergency extraction tool. It was the perfect outcome.
"Let's move, Ignius," Pride said, turning away. "Our directive is accomplished."
Meanwhile, within the Necrotic Realm.
In the deepest sanctum of the Skeleton King's palace, inside a laboratory forged
from the bones of ancient titans, a High Lich stood before a massive stasis
tank. The vat was filled with a grey, viscous nutrient solution, and a web of
conduits pulsed with dark energy as they fed into the glass.
The tank was currently empty.
The Lich's gaze was vacant, his mind wandering back across centuries of
memories. He remembered the day his Sovereign, Thanatos, had returned from a
minor planar excursion. He hadn't brought back spoils of war or shards of a
Plane Core.
He had brought back an infant. A human child from an alien world.
The child's life-force had been a guttering flame, ready to be extinguished at
any moment. Thanatos's command had been absolute: "Ensure she survives."
To fulfill that decree, the Lich had exhausted his life's knowledge. He had
woven Necromantic magic, alchemy, and soul-engineering with biological
modification techniques plundered from a dozen worlds. He had reinforced her
skeleton, amplified her musculature, and rebuilt her circulatory system. He had
even grafted a fragment of his own Od into her core to stabilize her soulfire.
She had survived. The Sovereign had designated her: Unit One.
The Lich had personally overseen her training—combat, infiltration, intelligence
analysis. He had forged her into the perfect instrument of the Sovereign's will.
She was his masterpiece.
But...
The Lich turned his focus to the console beside him. A complex,
three-dimensional magical array hovered there. At its heart, a tiny, flickering
violet spark pulsed.
It was Unit One's life signature.
Ever since she departed for the target Plane, the Lich had kept a vigil here,
day and night. He was unsettled. A growing Tier 7 Plane, a world with a new,
active Will—the variables were too high. The Sovereign saw only the profit of
the harvest; he didn't weigh the risk to the tool. To Thanatos, Unit One's
sacrifice was a line item in a ledger.
The Lich, however, could not accept it.
Before her departure, he had committed an act of quiet treason. He had hidden a
"Fail-Safe" within her soul. It was a mechanism that would trigger only under
one condition: if her vitals dropped below the terminal threshold. It would
forcibly activate, burning every drop of the Lich's stored Mana to tear open a
temporary gate and drag her back to this tank.
It was the final protection he could grant her.
The alarm on the console began to shriek.
The violet spark representing Unit One dimmed violently, turning into a dull,
grey ember. The Lich's soulfire contracted. He lunged for the controls, his
hands trembling.
Has it failed?
Just as the spark was about to vanish, the Fail-Safe engaged. A surge of Od that
the Lich knew as his own exploded from the array. The shrieking alarm died.
In the center of the circle, the "Return Instruction" flared with a blinding,
white light.
The Lich froze. It worked. The backdoor had been triggered.
She's alive.
But the joy was short-lived. The activation of the Fail-Safe meant that Unit One
had sustained a lethal trauma on that world.
What in the name of the Void did you encounter out there?
☆☆☆
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