Chapter 142: Chapter 142 – Traces Left Behind, Silence That Burns
The explosion of the holy spear split the gray sky. A golden light flared amidst the purple mist like a miniature sun born from the will of war. Its sound rolled violently, echoing off crumbling walls, shaking bone and heavens a like.
The flesh creature... was gone.
Not shattered into pieces.
No remains.
No blood.
No trace of that once-threatening bluish-purple heart.
Only a new crater larger, deeper, scorched completely as if the world itself had rejected its existence.
Sofia stood at the edge of the broken earth, her hair billowing, her face dusted with ash and the fading glow of magic. Her spear was gone. But her breath was steady. Her hands trembled slightly, yet her eyes were sharp.
Sylvia’s troops roared in triumph.
Soundless, yet resolute.
They raised their weapons high, driving the ends of spears and blades into the ground in rhythmic unison. A tallic cadence of respect. Of victory. Even zombies knew how to admire power.
But the mont didn’t last.
Zark raised his hand, signaling silence. His eyes narrowed, gazing toward the distant bone castle. He sensed sothing... wrong.
"What is that...?" he whispered.
From the direction of the castle, a denser darkness began to unfurl. A black fog rolled forth, thicker than any mist before, sweeping across the battlefield that had just fallen silent. This wasn’t ordinary fog this was magic. Not destructive magic, but sothing that cloaked. Obscured. Erased presence.
High above, Sylvia furrowed her brow. Her gaze sharpened, piercing through the layers of intelligent, living-like fog. Behind that veil, she saw him the Third Zombie King.
He now stood no longer behind his troops but before the ruins of his own throne. His head bowed... to soone.
The second figure was unclear. Only a silhouette. The fog obscured their identity, as though the world itself refused to reveal who they were. But one thing was certain: the Third Zombie King bowed to this being.
Then both vanished.
No incantation. No teleportation. No spatial distortion.
They... simply ceased to exist. As if they had never been there.
"...What just happened?" Sylvia murmured.
Her voice echoed through the air and before the king disappeared, another voice followed.
A man’s voice, soft yet brimming with mockery.
"We will et again, my Queen. Next ti, I will be the one to make you kneel."
Sylvia stiffened, her body tensing. Her eyes glowed a deep violet. She stomped on her dragon’s back and activated Void Steps her form blinking away in black flickers.
Zst! Zst! Zst!
She reappeared atop the ruins of the castle, then to the peak of the tower, then within the lingering fog itself. But... there was nothing. No trace of magic. No dinsional rift. Not even a hint of residual mana.
"...They didn’t use any conventional teleportation magic," she muttered. "It’s like... they were erased from reality."
With another Void Step, Sylvia dashed into the castle’s innermost ruins. Silent. Deserted.
No one.
No lingering orders.
Only coldness.
When she returned to the skies, the fog had begun to recede. Not dissipating with wind or magic, but retracting pulling itself downward into the earth, back to an unreachable core of darkness.
And when the sky finally cleared, the battlefield revealed an unexpected truth. There were no enemies left.
No remnants of the Third Zombie King’s forces.
No fallen.
No retreating soldiers.
They hadn’t been killed.
They had been... withdrawn? Erased?
Sylvia’s army stood in confused silence.
Sofia stepped down from the crater, her feet crunching on scorched earth. She gazed toward where the king had disappeared, her eyes narrowing.
"He didn’t dare fight directly..." she said flatly. "That makes him even more dangerous."
Zark nodded. "He was buying ti. Testing us. Hiding sothing."
Sylvia returned atop her dragon. Her face was calm... too calm. Yet with a single gesture, her entire army froze.
"Zark. Sofia. Hold the front lines. I’m going to investigate the residual magic tonight."
Zark looked like he wanted to object, but bowed his head. "As you command, Your Majesty."
Sofia said nothing. She rely looked at Sylvia for a mont, then turned and walked back onto the battlefield her body still wrapped in the fading glow of her vanished holy spear.
Evening fell. The sky remained gray, but the weight had lifted. The mist was gone, leaving behind ruins, craters, and unmoving dust.
Sylvia’s forces began their recovery. The wounded were treated. Corpses gathered for cremation—or resurrection. So undead were marked for regeneration.
But no one cheered. No one celebrated.
They knew... the battle wasn’t over.
This wasn’t victory.
This was only... an interlude.
Near a large stone at the battlefield’s edge, the dark elf archer sat silently, clutching her cracked bow. She looked up at the sky, and for so reason, a single black tear slid down her cheek. Not from grief.
But because she knew: the power she had unleashed. She might never summon it again.
And the enemy to co... would be far worse.
That night, Sylvia stood alone in the center of the crater.
Before her, the blackened earth refused to reflect any light As if life itself was denied here.
She knelt, pressing her hand to the ground. Her eyes closed. She drew in a slow breath.
Void energy began to hum faintly around her.
"He showed himself... only to flee." Her voice was soft. But it bit deep.
"You fear . But you want
to chase you. Why?"
Thin cracks ford in the soil, as if responding. But no ssage ca. Only emptiness.
And that made Sylvia angry.
She stood, lifting her gaze to the sky.
"I let you escape this ti. But the next ti we et... I’ll rip your soul out with my own hands."
The sky offered no reply.
But far beyond the battlefield, in a place cloaked in eternal shadow, Two pairs of eyes watched Sylvia. Witnessing a power that was never ant for this world.
The two pairs of eyes still glowed in the darkness. One of them a tall figure cloaked in shadow, his face hidden beneath veils of darkness did not move in the slightest. But his voice rang out clearly, cold and absolute.
"If she begins to go against the current..."
He turned to the figure beside him. The silhouette was smaller, slimr, but the aura radiating from it made the surrounding shadows throb like an unnatural heartbeat.
"...we will eradicate her."
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