### Chapter 124: The Shocking Explosion
“What did you say…?”
bl**d dripped—drip, drip—with the burning infernal fire, spreading beneath my feet.
The man, his brain pierced by an ice scythe and nailed to the wall, had flames flickering weakly on him, barely hot enough to melt stone. I stood before him, feeling almost no warmth at all.
Yet, the grin on his face and his intermittent words left me frozen in disbelief.
The Jester…
Not here?!
…No, he’s just messing with me.
Bang!
I threw a punch, landing squarely on the man’s grotesque face. The blow wasn’t heavy, but it was enough to send bl**d spraying, shattering his nose and reopening his recently healed eye socket.
“I’ll give you one more chance. Where’s the Jester?”
“Ugh… Ugh… Hehehe…”
The man wept and laughed simultaneously, the pain from his broken nose causing tears to stream down from his torn eye socket. His disfigured face was both terrifying and ridiculous—totally irking me.
“Tell your dad to laugh at that.”
Bang—
“Ugh!”
This punch smashed his laughter into bits along with his facial bones. In a moment, flesh seemed to twitch like a bunch of disgusting worms.
“Hehehe… Hahaha…” The man laughed hoarsely, looking straight into my eyes, his swollen, bloodshot sockets recovering as his pupils turned a deeper red. “Little… girl… in the end… is still a little girl…”
“What did you say?”
“I asked… have you ever seen the most beautiful infernal fire… What does it look like…?”
?
I frowned slightly.
Did I knock him silly?
“It’s like… at the grandest banquet… in the most beautiful garden… an unseen flower blooming… and then boom! The whole world lights up… magnificent… do you want to see it…?”
“Are you—”
“I’ll give it to you as a gift.”
WHOOSH—!!
As the man’s words trailed off, a furious wind and scorching wave surged within a radius of several dozen meters.
The flames, which had been losing their heat, suddenly surged from him—madly sweeping in all directions. Ruins, giant cracks, grass, trees, flying mud, and dust—everything was swept skyward by the hot flow in a terrifying shockwave!
The man known as the Fog Hidden twisted in the infernal fire.
“Ugh…”
The violent airflow pushed me back; my feet scratched shallow marks against the ground as I shielded my eyes. The sound of flames roaring whisked past my ears. Then, with a bang, my back smashed against a giant boulder that had been launched upward, barely stopping. As I raised my head, an ominous feeling bubbled up inside me.
“Silvya…”
The man’s figure was now several meters away, wrapped in a sun-like ball of fire, rapidly becoming a blur. Yet, his words cut through the howling wind and reached my ears clearly.
“This blooming spark… I gift it to you… hope… you’ll fall in love with it…”
“Hehehe… Ah hahahaha—”
That laughter felt like an overzealous performer going wild one last time before the curtain fell.
Then, that reckless cackling was gradually swallowed up by the hurricane and flame, vanishing. The entire area within a hundred meters was ablaze with scarlet fire, debris and dirt swirling violently like a raging sea, a formidable power accumulating towards a ten-meter, twenty-meter radius at the core.
The few houses in the central area had been flattened by the initial impact, with others on the brink of collapse, as if being swallowed into the whirlpool, disintegrating into countless dust particles; the destructive force continued to spread, and rubble flew through the air like bullets!
This is bad…
I was caught in the vortex of energy, struggling to maintain my footing.
Really bad, really bad, really bad…
It’s about to explode!!!
If a heretic at the ‘bl**d sacrifice’ stage were to self-destruct, how powerful would it be?
I had no idea.
But I couldn’t gamble.
I couldn’t risk if I could hold it back, nor could I gamble if he could flatten Alectine City.
The flames were still gathering, the place where Fog Hidden had stood now shrouded in a sun-like ball of fire, the intense red light reflecting off my face. In a flash, I made a decision: braving the scorching winds, I activated Moon Step and leapt forward!
Whoosh whoosh whoosh—
In less than twenty meters, I needed to use Moon Step three times just to reach my destination. I steadied myself before the fireball, feeling the energy gathering at the center. The fierce wind cut into my face and body like knives; my hair whipped around as the roar of flames engulfed me.
“Ugh…”
I couldn’t breathe…
My face turned red, my eyes narrowing—I held my breath, raised my left hand, and quickly reached for the fireball—
Boom!
The explosion echoed in my ears as my slender arm plunged into the flames, gnashing my teeth as I rummaged inside, the scorching sensation radiating through my arm. My sleeve was turning to ashes, yet the interior of the fireball seemed hollow… perhaps that body had entirely condensed into the burning infernal fire.
Realizing this instantly, I abandoned Captain Gray and thrust my right hand into the fireball. Then, with a resounding bang, a robust ice pillar burst forth from the ground, soaring up to ten, twenty, thirty meters amidst the flying dirt!
“Yaaaaah—!”
The furious wind and scorching waves roared on, with the massive ice pillar releasing billowing white mist, pushing against the churning scarlet flames. A girl, with both hands locked tight around the fireball, soared up into the higher night sky amidst the overwhelming, chaotic energy.
Beside the ruins in the north of the city, Isaac, covered in golden light and bl**d, looked up, watching the ice pillar rapidly ascend with a thunderous roar. As he saw the radiant glow at its peak, he paused for a moment before suddenly shouting, “Everyone! Get down—!!”
In the city burning with infernal flames, countless knights looked up, their expressions shocked yet somewhat puzzled, gazing at the ever-rising ice pillar. Then, a tiny figure atop it leaped off, dragging a dazzling tail of intertwined ice and fire, soaring toward the higher sky.
In a dark alley hundreds of meters away, a knight named Barry tensed up, his eyes wide.
Up high, that glowing, soaring meteor reached a height difficult for the eye to follow in the blink of an eye, like a brilliant star in the night sky. However, the young knight still lingered on the terrifying racket from earlier—the explosive wave from where his sister fought with someone obliterated houses and massive boulders like a grinding wheel, some fragments even flying this way.
The earth shook like thunder, and his heart raced in fear as he protected a trembling Lilith who huddled in the corner, too afraid to stand up. But once the commotion began to fade, the young knight held Lilith’s hand and they cautiously looked up, only to realize… something was flying into the sky.
“What is… happening…?”
The girl beside him was so frightened that her tongue stumbled over itself as she curled up, clutching Barry’s hand tightly, her pale lips trembling. But Barry seemed not to hear her; his eyes were glued to the sky. After a while, he opened his mouth as if to speak.
Buzz—
In the night sky, flames suddenly erupted.
The dazzling light spread from that star-like point, the strong glare cutting through the night, illuminating the entire city as bright as day for a moment. The brilliance reached them, blinding them despite their tightly shut eyes; even with their eyes closed, they could feel the light piercing through their eyelids, turning their vision white, then burning red, with a stinging sensation in their eyes.
“Ah!”
Barry heard Lilith scream, at which point he felt the hand gripping his tighten even more, the terrified woman lost and shouting his name: “Barry! Barry!!”
“Lilith, we need to hide…”
Boom boom boom boom boom!!!
Before the young knight could finish his sentence, it was drowned out by an unprecedentedly enormous sound, like the heavens cracking and the earth splitting.
At that moment, every sound in Alectine City—the sounds of battle, shouting, hoofbeats—was overwhelmed, buried beneath the thunderous clap. Everyone’s ears instantly filled with a buzzing sound, as if swarms of insects were buzzing, momentarily deafened by the massive explosion.
Time seemed to freeze for an instant.
Boom boom boom boom boom…
The thunderous rumble echoed on, shaking the massive city in its wake, sending everyone into a panic. After what felt like a century, the astounding explosion in the far-off sky gradually weakened and faded, the dazzling flames dimming as the night reclaimed the skies over Alectine City.
The young knight finally dared to open his eyes.
He looked up, seeing black smoke filling the air like clouds, nearly obscuring the entire sky over Alectine City. Barry’s mind was still processing what had just happened when, suddenly, a wild gust of energy swept down from above!
Whoosh whoosh whoosh—
The rush of air carried a hint of the explosion’s residual heat, as if a typhoon descended upon the massive city, stirring up mud and stones, raising a dust storm, collapsing damaged towers and houses. The towering waves pressed heavily down on Barry and Lilith, who had just steadied themselves.
“Hold on to me… hold on to me!”
The young knight shouted as his face pressed against the ground. He caught sight of Lilith, nearly driven mad with fear, now lying flat with a bloodied forehead, her eyes tightly shut, unable to do anything except scream hysterically.
Barry’s expression darkened; he ground his teeth and rolled over toward the frightened woman, wrapping her delicate frame tightly in his arms.
After a brief moment, the winds began to calm.
A small figure plummeted from the sky.
In the dark alley, the young knight struggled to rise, pulling the woman up from the ground, just catching a glimpse of the small figure descending—somewhat familiar—before he froze for a moment.
Then, as if finally realizing what was happening.
“Little Shay!”
Barry grabbed Lilith’s hand, throwing caution to the wind, and rushed toward the direction of the falling figure.
