Chapter 705 — After the Behemoth Falls

When a colossal beast falls, death does not mean the end of everything.

The lingering vitality often survives in the warmth of the corpse, living on in another form—or rather, continuing.

Deep within the old Gondor Empire, a chaotic, dry wind swept across the plains, laden with dust and mist. In the churning sky, filthy clouds twisted and spiraled like an inverted funnel, hanging darkly over the whole world. Glittering pulses of energy leaped and darted among the vortex clouds, ceaselessly releasing arcs of lightning kilometers long and rolling, low thunder. And beneath this terrifying sky lay the wasteland of the imperial capital—molten, then torn apart.

The capital of old had long since been reduced to dust in the magical explosion. Now only sparse, twisted wreckage remained to prove that human civilization had once existed here. At the center of the vast plain, a gigantic impact crater crouched silently upon the earth; within it, crystal-textured inner walls sank in tier upon tier toward the center, and masses of molten matter, no longer recognizable in their original form, were "inlaid" into those walls, jutting straight up at the sky like jagged, hideous branches—desolate and dreadful to behold.

Yet even deep in ruins so utterly destroyed, there were still things that were "alive."

At the bottom of the giant crater, the scorched earth swelled upward, and the crystalline molten matter had solidified into a cone-like structure that seemed pieced together from countless prisms. From the top of this cone, a plume of blue flame nearly a kilometer in scale burst forth, lighting the entire pit. This plume of magical flame shot kilometers into the sky, answering from afar the swirling charged clouds above; and around the "crystal cone" from which the flame erupted, great numbers of wandering mana phantoms could be seen drifting about.

This dreadful eruption had continued for seven hundred years, and to this day showed not the slightest sign of ceasing.

At the base of the crystal cone, a conduit extending from the bottom of the crystalline prisms followed the contour of the crater's inner wall, gradually merging into the molten, solidified crystalline matter on the wall. Streams of light surfaced ceaselessly within the conduit, as if some material were being transported without pause. Several dazed mana phantoms prowled around this conduit; driven by instinct they drew near the pure, clean energy, yet because of the conduit's shielding they could not draw out the power within, and they grew visibly restless.

Suddenly, a bolt of light streaked among these wandering mana phantoms. The formidable force contained in the bolt blew one phantom apart outright and detonated a chaotic cloud of electrical arcs against the distant crater wall.

In the next instant, all the mana phantoms fled the place at speed.

At the spot from which the bolt had come, a narrow opening had somehow yawned open in the outer wall of the "crystal cone." There stood quietly a tall, upright female figure dressed in an outdated imperial magister's uniform, her face expressionless as she watched the arc cloud in the distance slowly disperse, her hand still raised in the posture of spellcasting.

The chaotic wind of the wasteland swept across the bottom of the pit and stirred the silver-gray hair at this tall woman's brow. Her features were all but flawless, her skin without the slightest blemish, yet those silver-gray eyes seemed to lack the necessary emotion, cold as a machine's.

She gazed toward the energy conduit for several seconds before slowly lowering her hand; deep in her eyes, a faint glimmer flickered past.

"Cleansing complete. Harmful organisms expelled.

"External scan of energy conduit normal. Environmental readings normal.

"Imperial calendar year 2488, Firemonth 2. Sentinel No. 4 commencing patrol duty."

With these somewhat mechanical words, the tall female imperial magister with the long silver-gray hair raised her head and looked into the distance. A pale blue halo of runes spread outward from her waist; she left the ground at once and flew toward the outer rim of the crater.

"Conditions within the警戒 zone normal... External appearance of all energy conduits normal... Other sentinels observed, visual normal... Now crossing the outer ring of the ruin zone..."

Reporting the situation mechanically, the female magister swept swiftly over the crater and finally landed smoothly on the corrupted, torn wasteland beyond its rim.

"Reached the outer patrol zone of the ruins. Calibrating monitors..." As she spoke, she raised her head and looked around at the desolate, ruined soil of the old capital. The same bleak scenery, unchanged for centuries, entered her polymer eyes, projecting clear images within her optical sensing crystals.

Her sweeping gaze stopped abruptly. A monster—tall, deformed, bloated all over, as though congealed from flowing red mud—had suddenly entered her sight.

"Threat organism sighted. High arcane resistance unit. Commencing elimination."

Before the cold, mechanical voice had faded, the female magister had already launched a ferocious assault. A complex halo of runes flared abruptly behind her, and at the same time she drove both legs hard against the ground; accelerated by this double force, her tall figure became a blur and charged at the distant aberrant at a speed near a knight's charge.

The aberrant noticed its swiftly approaching attacker as well. The monster gave a chaotic roar, corrupting mana surging over its body; it raised its arm high, and already a mass of black-red corrupted energy had swiftly taken shape. But before it could loose this destructive energy, the female magister in the outdated uniform had already rushed in. She raised her arm; an alloy blade sprang straight from her palm and swiftly severed one of the arms the aberrant used for casting. Then her figure flickered, the blade whirled, and she cleanly cut off the monster's other arm—two flashes of blade-light, and her strength and speed were a match for any excellent swordsman!

The aberrant gave a chaotic, unnameable roar and struggled to turn its body to catch the "magister's" movements, but its attempt was only half complete when an alloy blade had already cut through the weak point at its back.

The giant blood-red monster howled and fell; its filthy blood and mud swiftly disintegrated. The female magister raised her arm and the alloy blade retracted into her body, while the great cloud of dust released by the aberrant's death enveloped her.

Suddenly, the dust that should have dispersed naturally froze in place. Another threatening energy reaction appeared in her senses. She raised her arm in an instant, trying to lock onto the threat's position, but the dust hanging in the air briefly interfered with her judgment—and in that instant of interference, a vine like a withered branch suddenly pierced up from the nearby ground and thrust straight at her back!

With a harsh sound of rending metal, the dry-skinned vine pierced the alloy shell on the "magister's" back. Her body shuddered violently; then, with a crackle and a series of strange mechanical noises, the tall female "magister" finally fell still.

On the ground, the spot where the vine had emerged gave a rustling sound, and a great mass of plant structures squirmed up out of the fragile corrupted soil, tearing open a wide stretch of the nearby surface along with them. The plant structures that broke through the ground squirmed and reorganized in a way that made the skin crawl, and soon coalesced into the form of monstrous, grotesque giant trees.

One of the giant trees swayed its branches, and the twisted, wrinkled features in its bark squirmed: "It feels good to move freely... We spent seven hundred years laying down the root network, and now at last it can be put to use."