690 The End of Hightower - Second Half
Envy examined the magic ritual etched on the ground and sensed the residual mana lingering in the air; she knew they were too late. The ritual had been completed less than a minute ago. She guessed Golden Scale must have initiated it the mont he realized they had arrived.
Judging by the intricate design of the ritual, she deduced it was a one-way transportation spell. But it wasn't a simple teleportation spell—it was far more complex. She detected nurous protective runes and glyphs designed to activate alongside the transportation.
These protections were of the kind necessary for surviving in an extrely volatile environnt.
"Where do you think you're going?" Envy asked, her voice sharp as she sought more information.
"To a place where you cannot follow , Envy," Golden Scale replied, his voice calm.
As he spoke, his body began to distort, and cracks ford in the fabric of reality. Monts later, he disappeared into the small tunnel that had materialized to shield him.
Tian Xingyun gritted her teeth in frustration. The rat had escaped, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. The only solace she found was the knowledge that Daniel was still alive and that she had unleashed her pent-up anger on the Hightower enforcers.
Standing nearby, Envy sighed. This was all they could manage under the circumstances. They had already dealt with the Hightower loyalists and those bound by contracts to serve it.
Now, the Hightower was nothing more than an empty relic—an old building stripped of its purpose. Once Albert finished his sweep and the Order of Ember's staff arrived to relocate the remaining knowledge and resources, the Hightower would truly be finished.
At that mont, Albert descended the stairs toward Envy, carrying a stack of papers in his arms. He handed them to her.
"Looks like our friend Golden Scale had been planning this for a long ti," Albert said, his tone somber. "Both the war and all those sacrifices in the Qing Empire were just stepping stones. This was his endga."
Envy focused on the papers and read them carefully.
From that event, Golden Scale seed to have gained so insights, allowing his personal research to advance significantly.
The research indicated that traveling to a parallel universe required an imnse amount of mana, and at least millions of human sacrifices were needed to activate the protective asures needed for such a dangerous journey.
The paper also noted that, in order to avoid Envy's scrutiny, the plan had to be carried out under the guise of a war... A costly war with significant casualties. Several million deaths would provide enough energy for Golden Scale's sche.
From the beginning, Golden Scale didn't believe this war would pose much of a threat to New Atlantis. His true plan involved two key steps.
First, he needs to neutralize Daniel by sending him to the future. This would buy Golden Scale and his allies enough ti to develop counterasures for Daniel's eventual return and also open the way for them to maneuver since they would no longer be afraid of Daniel.
Second, he intended to harness the excess energy from the souls lost during the world war, transforming them into mana to fuel his grand project. This energy would then be used to transport Golden Scale to a parallel universe.
Golden Scale believed that the parallel universe would allow him to anchor his existence there. In contrast, this universe constantly rejected him, creating the persistent threat of his existence.
After finishing the papers, Envy frowned. What kind of reason or condition could cause the universe to reject soone so completely? She had initially assud that Golden Scale was a mage who had suffered from a dinsional gap experint gone wrong.
But even such experints, while dangerous, didn't typically result in total rejection by the universe. Victims of dinsional accidents usually suffer from the destabilization of their physical form, permanent injuries, or the disappearance of certain body parts from reality. However, none of these scenarios would lead to outright existential erasure or the kind of universal rejection Golden Scale was experiencing.
It was like comparing a person falling while running… at most, they might suffer scrapes, fresh wounds, or even a broken bone in severe cases. But such accidents would never result in the complete obliteration of their entire body, as if caught in a massive explosion.
From what Envy knew, there were only two main reasons soone might be rejected by the universe itself.
The first scenario had docunted case studies, but the second remained theoretical. So research had been conducted on it, but that research was abandoned because it lacked imdiate practical value. Cyrus Ashborn, who was still the Hightower Grand Councilor at that ti, ultimately axed the project.
Afterward, Envy led the Order of Ember employees to various parts of the Hightower that housed secret research docunts and the library, which contained a wealth of magical knowledge.
The employees began relocating all the magical and valuable books from the library onto the VTOL, preparing to transport them to the Ivory Tower for safekeeping or to serve as research materials for the mages who would later work under the Order of Ember's managent.
The transition went smoothly, and the relocation of knowledge and resources was completed within the ti fra allotted by the queen to Envy.
The Hightower, once an imposing organization that commanded respect and awe from all mages, was now officially dismantled. All that remained were rubble and the foundations of its towers and buildings, demolished entirely by Tian Xingyu in a fit of pent-up anger.
Envy could only look on with lancholy as this was the last remnant rlin had left for her. Yet, this ti, she no longer felt the sharp pain of loss or the hollow emptiness she had experienced when rlin's legacy was destroyed or consud. Instead, the only loss she felt now was from Daniel, who had vanished from this ti period.
After that, Envy returned to her personal room in Elpis at Emberweave's residence.
Alone, she collapsed onto her bed as tears stread from her eyes. The sense of loss and the emotions she had been holding back finally burst forth like a dam breaking under pressure.
She restrained herself from crying aloud, allowing only silent sobs to escape. This was the second ti she had experienced such a loss—the kind of loss filled with uncertainty, as she didn't know when she would et her beloved again. It was the sa ache all over again.
Then, as if sothing deep within her had been unlocked, a mory long buried in her sea of thoughts surfaced. It was just a fragnt, a small and seemingly insignificant piece of her past.
"rlin!?" Envy whispered before a sharp pain struck her head, causing her to lose consciousness.
Within the dinsional gap, where streams of ti and the chaotic environnt between dinsions converge, Daniel was swept through what appeared to be a massive tunnel.
Daniel's indestructible enchantnts were put to the ultimate test inside the tunnel. Myriad explosions and torrential flows of unknown forces relentlessly battered him. Despite the nurous defensive enchantnts protecting him, he still felt pain.
He knew that he would have already perished without the various enchantnts on his body.
Carried by the intense waves of the chaotic stream, Daniel was eventually deposited in a calr region where the chaotic forces subsided. He felt as though he were floating in mid-air within a zero-gravity environnt. He didn't know how to move through this strange space, and now he was at a loss.
The equipnt that allowed him to breathe in this environnt was malfunctioning and would soon fail entirely, requiring imdiate replacent.
After being sent to the Abyssal Realm, Daniel had prepared himself for environnts without oxygen or toxic conditions, but he had never expected that the equipnt he had painstakingly prepared would be used this fast.
Daniel quickly began brainstorming ways to survive. The first idea that ca to him was the door to the card shop.
He focused his thoughts on the shop, and suddenly, the familiar door appeared before him. Reaching out, he touched the doorknob, and it felt as though he had grabbed onto a lifeline.
Without hesitation, he opened the door and imdiately pulled himself inside.
"Hello, Mr. Emberweave. How may I assist you today?" ca the warm and gentlemanly greeting of the Keeper the mont Daniel's body entered the shop.
Strangely, the turbulent environnt outside the shop didn't affect its interior in the slightest.
Daniel stared at the shop's entrance in wonder. Then again, this shop wasn't supposed to exist on the material plane… or perhaps the shop itself was sothing so extraordinary that even the chaotic forces within the dinsional gap couldn't influence it.
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