The Cornflower Witch

Book 2: Chapter 148: Night of Despair

Vol 2 Chapter 148: Night of Despair

Mysterious Valley

Charred flames encircled the hellhounds as they ran, devouring the corpses in their path. After each of their footsteps, a small burning ember remained on the ground.

The entire valley, as far as the eye could see, was engulfed in burning flames, punctuated by occasional howls and cries of struggle.

Large numbers of the Hundred-Eyes Sect’s lower-ranking members lay dead. The Anty side fared no better; many soldiers could not withdraw from the valley in time and were ignited by the flames, falling where they stood.

At the center of the valley, within the magic array, the strange meteorite emitted streaks of light. The trajectories of those light strands were clearly visible as they pierced through obstacles along their paths.

Some hellhounds were struck; their bodies were instantly torn with multiple small holes, which slowly closed only after a long while.

Then the rays began to roam. Like precise engraving blades, they drew ever more complex patterns on the ground. Those patterns possessed an exquisite geometric beauty, orderly as if they were design blueprints, layering one atop another.

Half an hour later, the layers of deep-blue lines rose into place, forming a seventeen-layered, gigantic, intricate magic array. Each layer carried a distinct pattern of its own.

Now the presence of the alien star aspect spread through the valley like a gale, dimming the hellhounds’ flames that hunted the cultists until they flickered like candles.Faced with the gradually rising, hundred-meter-tall majestic array, Carkis at the foot of the mountain could only look up, a nameless terror spreading through his chest.

He could not imagine what kind of might would manifest if this array and ritual achieved their full effect.

We absolutely must interrupt their ritual!

But at this moment, the hellhounds’ power could hardly break through the rising suppressive weight of the alien star aspect.

Seeing this, Carkis gritted his teeth and pulled a dark-red dagger from his chest. The dagger’s pommel bore a double-snake emblem, eerie and mysterious.

It was a sacred relic of the Twin-Snake Cult. Although potent, as an Anty general using it, if exposed, he would surely face attacks and ostracism from many.

There was no time to worry about that now.

Carkis lightly sliced his chest with the dagger. Thin trails of blood seeped out to be drawn into the blade, then he summoned the valley’s three most powerful hellhounds.

In this peculiar world, transcending one’s fate card and raising one’s tier was the goal of all life, but the paths to achieve it were varied.

In ancient times, when mysterious knowledge remained unexplored and many lives cruelly chased strength, many different advancement paths appeared. One such path was fusing lives of the same species, linking their fate cards to form a singular, vastly stronger being.

The most famous example was Black Quis, the two-headed serpent who once opposed the Primordial King. The Twin-Snake Cult, which later worshiped Black Quis, mastered the forbidden art of fusing lives.

After absorbing Carkis’s blood, the dagger glowed with an uncanny red. Carkis then ordered the three Third Tier Dead Embers hellhounds forward.

Suddenly, the dagger flashed. The three hounds’ heads were severed and flew off, and their bodies dissolved in the bloodlight.

Invisible charred flames ignited from their torsos and shifted. The three floating hound heads had their eyeballs ignite with an orange-red glow.

Then the three heads were plunged back into the charred flames consuming their bodies.

The fire twisted and exuded a burned, searing scent. A peculiar vital pulse kept spreading from the flames.

Wheezing, Carkis manipulated the macabre fusion rite, constantly adjusting the monstrous being being brewed within the inferno.

Ten minutes later, a black forepaw emerged from the flames, followed by a second, third, and fourth.

Above the paws of the black hound, three savage heads reared. Their eyes were crimson; thick black smoke seeped from between their teeth. When they opened their mouths, dark-red, terrifying streams of fire spewed out, burning the ground into a glassy glaze.

Three-Headed Hellhound (Fourth Tier·Dead Embers); the life formed by fusing three hellhounds of the same tier and species, its body burning with undying flames, ferocious and powerful.

Nearly six meters tall, the three-headed hellhound burst from the flames and charged toward the rising intricate ritual array in the distance. Its speed accelerated and accelerated, its form elongated into a streak of fire, leaving a long, crimson tail of flame through the night, strikingly conspicuous.

On the ground, ranks of hellhounds followed behind, forming a spearhead-like tide of fire. As they ran, they became twisted flames and fused into the three-headed beast, gradually increasing its mass and intensifying the heat of its blaze.

The once-charred flames now burned like a red-hot sun racing through the valley. The warped air and the scent of its passage set the entire gorge ablaze; any Eye Tyrants blocking the way were ignited into fireballs and scorched into charcoal and ash.

Although the Dead Embers aspect did not inherently mean extreme flame temperatures, as a scion of Proud Sun, when its aspect reached its apex, it still reproduced some of Proud Sun’s terrifying might.

Within the valley, black-red embers drifted and unsettled the alien star’s descent. The once-magnificent azure magic array now shivered and warped.

Outside the rising silver-blue luminous mist beacon, the colossal three-headed hellhound—by now nearly forty meters across—gnawed relentlessly at the barrier. Black flames spat between its teeth, scorching and melting the blue membrane until small holes began to form.

If they could not hold it here and the three-headed hellhound broke into the inner realm of the array to destroy it, the Hundred-Eyes Sect’s centuries of work would be undone.

“Your Highness, it’s your turn to act.”

Inside the array, Prince Jabers looked up. Outside the azure barrier the forty-meter beast loomed like a mountain, a terrifying oppression that seemed capable of burning the whole night sky. Jabers could not move his feet; his legs trembled.

“Are we sure we will confront this terrifying beast?” His face was pale, his voice trembling.

“Yes, Your Highness, there is little time left.” The cultist’s expression was urgent. He grabbed Jabers’ hand and roughly yanked him into one of the array’s star positions.

“Please stand here. Read the prayer written on this.” Two cultists handed him a wooden board already inscribed with what he needed to do.

“This—” Jabers hesitated.

“Hurry! Or we will all die here.” The cultists’ voices hardened into command.

The knights behind Jabers watched the scene and faltered. They wanted to step forward to protect Prince Jabers, but they feared that if the ritual could not proceed, both they and Jabers would die within those suffocating, terrifying flames.

With trembling fingers, Prince Jabers gripped the board and read the words on it, his voice quavering.

“I, Jabers, the forty-seventh heir of the Regas royal line, the lord to be of the unfallen kingdom, descendant of the pioneer Raygard, hereby declare:

I willingly pledge by the oath and honor of my ancestors, by the foundation of the kingdom and its people as surety, to legitimize this ritual. I offer the entirety of the kingdom as payment, to accept and carry this rite, to raise the beacon, and to guide the lost life. It shall use this land as its foundation, descending from the myriad stars of all generations.”

With each line of the prayer recited, Prince Jabers’ complexion grew paler. When he finished the last sentence, the beacon’s pillar of light suddenly swelled and threw out several rings that spread toward the distant horizon.

Across the nocturnal lands, over the skies of Regas’ former cities and towns, these beautiful rings of light traced across the heavens. One by one, castle silhouettes representing foundation stones and territory appeared.

Although the Kingdom of Anty now ruled this land, one or two years was not enough to completely erase the marks of Regas. Many still believed that only a descendant of Knight King Raygard had the right to be their sovereign.

Every ritual has its cost; like a balance, only when one side’s price is sufficient can an equivalent return be drawn.

By speaking the prayer, Jabers gambled the Regas royal family’s last prestige and legitimacy on the table, offering it as part of the ritual’s sacrifice.

With that sacrificial anchor, the Demon Contractor could keep an alien star lifeform of the same tier in the world, preventing the world from rejecting it.

If a higher-tier, stronger interstellar being were to descend, what kind of anchoring point and price would be required? Only a nation could bear and maintain such a cost.

The castle phantoms coalescing over those towns melted into quicksand and slowly flowed into the expanding rings of light; the central beacon grew ever brighter.

The suspended seventeen-layer array began to rotate, like ancient, mysterious cogs unlocking as they slowly opened the sealed Gate.

The lowest, first layer’s pattern shifted into sixteen pillars that supported palaces and domes; each pillar bore engravings of floating Eye Tyrants and emergent tentacles.

The second-to-last layer morphed into an arched dome covering the array, studded with starlight and outlining unknown lifeforms.

The third-to-last layer became hovering tomes of apocalypse, inscribed with truth-breaking glyphs.

The fourth-to-last layer formed eleven statues of knights clad in swan armor, their spears converging to ignite a blinding light.

The fifth-to-last layer sprouted row upon row of ancient dynasty banners, behind which countless lives seemed to scream throughout the river of history.

…

As layer after layer transformed, majestic rings of light shot down along the beacon and poured into the earth. Shockwaves washed through, shattering and leveling the valley. Splintered rocks hurled through gale and force, scattering fleeing Anty soldiers who scrambled to dodge. People were struck, reduced to powdered blood and gore.

Rings of light spread across the ground. Within a radius of roughly ten kilometers, eerie blue runic patterns appeared. From above, those patterns traced the image of an eye slowly opening.

At the center of the array, Prince Jabers fell to his knees. His aura twisted violently; countless stray alien star aspects converged, causing him to float and then fuse into his body.

The previously solidified castle tier quickly dissolved, and a new alien star tier gradually coalesced. But the process came with distortions and aberrations. His eyes turned an uncanny purple; his hair seemed to gain life, drifting like tentacles. Beneath his skin something wriggled, his body swelling as grotesque, discordant muscle formed.

Such crude force filled him, and he could not control it. He did not know how to control it. He could only let it roam and fill him, finally turning into raw power.

Now standing seven meters tall like a giant, Jabers slowly landed. His purple, blazing eyes fixed on the three-headed hellhound outside the barrier. Dazzling rays burst forth and pierced the forty-meter beast, ripping two huge holes through it.

The black hound howled. Its flames twisted and covered the wounds until they were filled, then it spewed charred fire that poured through the barrier holes Jabers had shot into.

Those roaming flames burned the cultists near Jabers, melting them into rolling fireballs.

Within the death-stinking sea of fire, Jabers swept his arms. The cold star-wind he raised drove away surrounding black flames. He inhaled deeply, his body swelling further. Eyes opened across his shoulders, chest, arms, and palms.

Those blue-violet, uncanny pupils locked onto the black hounds biting and spewing flames outside the barrier. Brilliant beams struck the three-headed hellhound and impaled it like a porcupine.

When the light faded, the great beast lay full of wounds, slowly collapsing into flowing fire and then reconstituting into a snarling, three-headed hellhound.

The inferno still raged, submerging the outer edges of the intricate array. During the valley’s collapse and shattering, many Anty soldiers had perished; their corpses were once again absorbed into the beast’s body, making it even more formidable.

Despair and terror hung thick over the wilderness, feeding the beast. At the sight of its crimson pupils, the cultists within the array were shaken to the core, some collapsing dead from mental breakdown.

The ritual pressed on, and Jabers and the three-headed hellhound remained at a stalemate.

A squad cloaked in black burst from rubble and ruins. Their leader carried a beautiful, fragile figure in their arms and shouted toward the array where Jabers stood.

“Open the barrier! Abandon the ritual, or we will kill your sister, Princess Mursa.”

On the darkened warhorse, the Mist Blade squad member held the bound Princess Mursa by the neck with one hand, and in the other a dull dagger pressed against her, threatening Prince Jabers inside the array.

Princess Mursa’s eyes were brimming with tears. She stared at her brother who was no longer human and at the scene of utter destruction—a nightmare she could not wake from.

Everything had changed. Even if Regas were restored in the future, would they still be family? Is this what the Regas royal family truly wanted?

A boundless sorrow rose within Princess Mursa. She pitied her brother and her own helplessness, forced to watch everything unfold.

But the Jabers within the array could no longer hear her pleas. Or rather, he was no longer Jabers in any meaningful sense—he had become another life.

Facing the Mist Blade squad’s threat, the brilliance in his eyes flickered. A radiant beam struck the spot where the assailant stood. Had the Mist Blade member not been on guard, that strike would have melted and pierced him completely.

“You—”

They had risked everything to infiltrate the valley and seize Princess Mursa, thinking her a valuable trump card, but it proved useless now.

Seeing Jabers continue his attacks, the squad abandoned the princess and scattered, slipping away like mist. Ordinary people would not notice their movements, but the eyes on Jabers’ shoulders could still trace their trajectories. Several deep-purple beams flashed and incinerated those Anty elite scouts to ash.

“Damn!”

Realizing he could not escape the beams, one Mist Blade member hurled his dagger toward the fallen Princess Mursa.

The dagger was about to strike and kill the last normal bloodline of the Regas royal family when a faint deep-purple beam shot from a distance and struck the thrown blade, sending it tumbling through the air. It finally clattered to the scorched ground beside Princess Mursa.

That unexpected strike drew both sides’ attention to a hill on the wasteland.

A previously unseen mounted troop appeared. At their head stood a figure holding a long spear. Her face was lit by the inferno; delicate strands of hair swept across her ear and fluttered gently among the drifting embers.