Chapter 132: A Splash of Pink Purification

“Your Majesty!” Baroque’s voice was tight with anxiety.

“Hold the line,” Elaniel commanded. Her voice remained as serene as a frozen lake, yet it carried the oppressive weight of a gathering storm.

“However…” Girousse’s tone shifted, and the smile on his face twisted into something far more sinister. “Overwhelming you with sheer numbers is far too inelegant. It hardly befits my status as an artist. Allow me to offer my future Queen a more… spectacular welcoming ceremony!”

He snapped his fingers.

In that instant, a blinding, psychic light erupted from within his small, darting eyes.

“Come, my most loyal guards,” he crooned, his voice imbued with a strange, compelling magic that seemed to connect directly within their souls. “Say hello… to your new Queen!”

The mutation was instantaneous.

At the very front of the elven army, forming a shield wall against the monstrous tide, an entire squad of Royal Guard knights suddenly went rigid.

“Ryan?” A nearby knight frowned, glancing at his comrade. “Your shield is crooked…”

Before he could finish his sentence, he watched in confusion as the knight named Ryan, whose bright eyes once held the luster of a sapient being, were snuffed out by an invisible hand. The light within them dimmed, fading into a terrifying emptiness.

Immediately after, a strange, sickening green glow ignited in the depths of his pupils, as if a malevolent soul had just been injected into a lifeless marionette.

With an inhuman, grinding creak, Ryan’s head swiveled on his neck. Those hollow, green eyes locked onto his former companion.

“Ryan! Your… your eyes!” The knight’s voice cracked, his tone pitching high with dawning terror.

He could only watch, paralyzed with shock, as Ryan—the brother-in-arms with whom he had trained and fought for over a century—slowly raised the sharp, gleaming sword that had faced countless enemies.

The tip of the blade was now aimed directly at his own heart.

And it wasn’t just him.

The entire squad—twelve Royal Guard knights renowned for their iron wills—all moved as one, their souls seemingly ripped from their bodies. They turned with mechanical, synchronized movements, pointing their cold, gleaming weapons at their own defenseless kin standing behind them.

“They’ve been controlled!”

The elven line erupted into chaos. This sudden, intimate betrayal from within was more chilling than the charge of any monster army.

For the first time, an irrepressible rage cracked through the mask of frost on Elaniel’s face. The fury was so potent that the pure silver domain of ice and snow shimmering around her began to boil and churn.

This was no longer a mere provocation. This was the most vicious desecration imaginable, an insult to her and the entire elven race.

“Hahahaha!”

Girousse watched the scene unfold and let out a morbid, frenzied laugh.

“Do you see, my dear Queen? This is true art! What is the point of conquering the flesh? To conquer the will—that is the highest form of taste!” he shrieked with delight. “Soon, all your subjects will be just like them, becoming my most perfect collectibles! And you… you shall be the most dazzling jewel in my entire collection!”

The spark of excitement in Celeste’s eyes was instantly doused, as if a basin of ice water had been poured over her head, leaving behind only cold, dead ashes.

‘Mental control…’Her fingers, gripping the pink staff, turned white from the force of her clench, emitting a faint, cracking sound.’So that’s how it is. His perverted psychic power isn’t for defense, it’s a weapon.”Collectibles?”Turning living people—their wills, their very souls—into toys to satisfy his own twisted desires…’Celeste’s gaze shifted. It was the look one reserved for inanimate objects—cold, devoid of all emotion, filled with nothing but pure, detached scrutiny.’This guy… he’s not just a clown.”He’s a madman who gets off on toying with people’s minds.”And me? I fucking hate trash like this. Even as entertainment, he’s just dirtying my eyes.’

She looked at the controlled elves, former comrades now pointing weapons at each other in a horrifying tableau. This had crossed her personal line. The fun and games were over.

“Heh. Cleansing Spell,” Celeste whispered, her grip on the staff tightening. “Time for you to show them what you’re really for.”

The psychic power within her surged like a tidal wave. This was no longer the casual, almost lazy casting she usually employed. This time, it carried a will so resolute it was glacial.

There was no chanting, no complicated gestures.

Just a flick of her wrist, twelve times in a row, at an unbelievable speed.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Twelve cherry-blossom-pink orbs of light, trailing playful, spiraling tails, shot out like streamers. They arced through the air and splattered accurately, unerringly, onto the faces of the twelve controlled elven knights.

The light was as soft and fluffy as cotton candy, yet it carried an incredible power of purification.

The moment the pink orbs made contact, the knights’ green-lit eyes trembled violently. The evil, viridian glow sizzled, like heavy makeup being scrubbed away by a potent remover, and rapidly receded until it dissipated completely.

The knights’ stiff bodies shuddered. They blinked, a dazed and blank expression on their faces, before clarity quickly returned to their eyes, as if they were waking from a long, terrible nightmare.

“I… what happened to me?”

“My sword… why is it pointing at you?”

After a brief moment of confusion, the twelve knights’ gazes refocused, their faces flooding with the shock and lingering fear of a disaster narrowly averted.

However, in the next second, the entire battlefield fell into a bizarre, stunned silence.

Because those twelve knights, whose elegant long hair had been either silver-white or golden-brown, were now undergoing a startling transformation. Starting from the roots, at a speed visible to the naked eye, the baptism of pink light was dyeing their hair…

Into an extremely bright, extremely flashy, extremely mentally-polluting shade of cherry blossom pink.

Twelve tough-looking elves, all over six feet tall and clad in elite, gleaming armor, now stood blankly at the front of the line, each sporting a magnificent mane of hot pink hair.

The epic war movie had just taken a sharp, jarring turn into a Saturday morning cartoon.

[Ding! Friendly unit Eldara’s spirit has received a massive shock, triggering memories of a dark past. Elation Coins +666!]

[Ding! Friendly unit Elaniel is surprised. Elation Coins +888!]

[Ding! True joy must come from free will. The Void Observer, Aha, thinks this is great! Elation Coins +648!]

‘Nice!’Celeste thought.’Very on-brand for Aha!’

“This… how is this possible?!”

On his throne, the greasy, self-satisfied smile on Girousse’s face froze solid. His pride and joy, his ultimate mental control, had been broken just like that.

But what he found even more unacceptable was the aftermath.

“You! You lowly dowry maid! What have you done to my artwork?!” he screeched, his voice as harsh and grating as nails on a chalkboard. “Such a vulgar! Inferior! Aesthetically bankrupt color! You have defiled them! You dare to offend the great Captain Girousse’s sensibilities!”

His feigned gentlemanly posture shattered completely, leaving behind a petulant beast whose tail had just been stomped on.

“Me? Lowly?”

Celeste raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth curling into a dangerous arc. ‘Oops,’she thought.’Forgot the Cleansing Spell has a “forced hair dyeing” side effect. Still, you can’t argue with the results.’

Before she could offer a verbal retort, two sharp, deadly attacks had already launched, streaking straight for Girousse.

“Noisy.”

Su Wan’s voice was as cold as ice. The frost crystals condensing at her fingertips coalesced in an instant, forming a razor-sharp ice cone that tore through the air with a piercing whistle.

At the same exact moment, Xia Lian’s figure flashed like a ghost, the shortbow, Night Star Whisper, already fully drawn in her hand. A silent arrow, wreathed in the “Star Stealth” effect, shot forth like a midnight meteor, aimed precisely at the center of Girousse’s brow.

The ice cone and the arrow—one from the left, one from the right; one overt and brutal, one silent and subtle—carried two completely different killing intents as they locked onto the arrogant goblin.

Girousse’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. He hadn’t expected these two women to strike so decisively, nor had he anticipated their attacks would be so terrifyingly swift.

But just as the ice cone was about to pierce his chest and the arrow was about to punch through his skull—

A massive black shadow slammed down in front of him.

The Yeti, Noinam, let out a deafening roar. It thrust a huge palm forward, and a thick shield of ice instantly condensed from the frigid air.

CRACK!

The ice cone slammed into the ice shield with a dull, heavy thud. Violent frost energy exploded outwards, but it failed to even scratch the shield’s surface. Immediately after, the silent arrow arrived, striking the shield with a faint tink. The arrowhead, blocked by the impossible hardness of the ice, bounced off harmlessly.

Noinam’s colossal figure was as steady as a mountain. Its scarlet eyes stared fixedly at Su Wan and Xia Lian, burning with a fierce light that promised to devour them whole.

“Not bad, my warriors.” Girousse peeked his head out from behind Noinam’s bulk, that greasy, “everything-is-under-control” smile plastered back on his face. Deep in his eyes, however, a trace of lingering fear remained.

“Is this your so-called resistance? So rude. Not elegant at all! However,” he licked his lips, his gaze sweeping greedily over Celeste and her teammates, a morbid hunger in his eyes, “I do love this kind of wild challenge!”

“Since you all love to play so much, then allow me to join you in… a little game of death!”

Girousse suddenly raised his hand, pointing a trembling, furious finger at Celeste and the others. His voice dripped with a chilling cold. “Noinam! Noth! Korlak! Tear these unappreciative ‘dowry items’ to pieces for me! Then, turn their souls into my most perfect collection!”

Following his command, the three terrifying bosses moved as one.

The Yeti Noinam’s massive body made the cave floor tremble with every step as it charged, spitting frigid air, straight toward the shield wall where Selene stood.

The lantern in the hand of the Plague Messenger, Noth, glowed with a sickly light. A thick, ink-green miasma of plague, like a living venomous snake, coiled and spread toward the elven mage phalanx.

The Frost Troll Warlord, Korlak, raised its crudely crafted metal mace. The head of the weapon began to condense with violent frost energy as it took aim at the elven ranger line.

The tide-like monster army let out a deafening, unified roar and launched an all-out assault on the elven line.

The final battle was about to erupt.

“All troops, on my command!” Elaniel’s voice rang out, as crisp as cracking ice, yet carrying an unquestionable majesty. “Knights, stabilize the defense line! Mages, concentrate fire, purify the plague, and support the front! Rangers, fire at will! focus on enemy command units!”

Amidst the rising chaos, Celeste’s voice cut through.

“Leave the Plague Messenger, Noth, to me,” she declared. “I’m good at dealing with the undead!”

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]