Chapter 1383: The Nation’s Scream

Valric recalled his sword. The threads gathered again, forming a hollow drill. He drove it into the darkness beneath his feet and sent it spinning at high speed, attempting to escape the same way he had broken through Ethan’s Domain.

Time passed.

The drill continued downward, but there was still nothing beneath him except darkness. No cracks. No soil. Nothing to indicate how deep he had gone.

At last, Valric stopped.

A mirror appeared before him.

There was no light, yet his reflection was unnaturally clear. Valric raised his head and saw a body covered in tumors. Bloodred armor covered his skin, long since fused with his flesh. The mask clung tightly to his face, with no seam left to pry it off.

The tumors writhed, spewing threads.

Could the thing in the mirror still be called Valric?

Was this the transformation he had wanted?

What had he wanted in the first place?

Valric stared at his reflection, his grip slowly tightening around his sword.

More mirrors emerged from the darkness.

In front of him. Behind him. Above and below. Every surface reflected the same deformed body. The mirrors lingered for several seconds, then vanished together, leaving Valric alone in the endless dark.

Catheryn knew how a mind broke down.

There was no direction here. No sound. No other living thing. The longer someone remained in a place like this, the more their thoughts would repeat and grow until they consumed everything else.

Catheryn only had to do one thing.

Keep the space intact.

And wait until Valric could no longer summon the will to fight.

Outside, Ethan emerged from his black particle state and stared at the suddenly empty battlefield, unable to understand what had happened.

"Where did those two go?"

Eldran was still fighting Seraphine high above. That much made sense.

But where was Valric?

Ethan searched the area without finding a trace of him. Before long, Feylora came over on her own. Green energy poured from her palm and settled around Ethan, slowly replenishing the power he had lost.

In the sky, Eldran had already taken several hits from the Sword of Death.

The black blade passed through his body again and again, spreading Primordial Death Energy through him. Yet his consciousness never faded completely. Some force inside him continued to preserve one final shred of awareness.

Seraphine raised both hands.

The Sword of Death and Sword of Light she had thrown earlier changed direction at the same time, converging in front of Eldran. Their energies met, and the two blades fused into one.

The front of the blade was a light-devouring black, while the rear was pure white.

The boundary between them flowed like liquid. Instead of canceling each other out, the two opposing forces moved together through the sword.

The fused blade plunged into Eldran’s body.

Light and death erupted from the wound. Black energy broke down his armor and flesh, while white energy tore through the threads from the other side. The violent forces swept through his body, destroying everything in their path.

Eldran stopped struggling.

A hint of clarity returned to the vacant eyes beneath his armor. He looked at Seraphine through the plates falling from his body. For the first time, there was no hostility in his gaze.

Only a brief moment of gratitude.

Then his body gave out, and he fell.

Directly below him lay the Bingling Mine.

The battle inside the darkness was also nearing its end.

Valric no longer swung his sword or searched for an exit. His final roar echoed through the darkness for a long time before his legs gave way and he pitched forward.

The next moment, the darkness split open before everyone.

An Umbral Servitor emerged, dragging the helpless Valric behind it. Catheryn followed at an unhurried pace. She passed through the dissipating darkness and walked straight over to Feylora.

Everyone stared at her.

"What are you all looking at me for?"

Catheryn shook her head innocently.

"He’s the one who didn’t want to fight anymore."

The Umbral Servitor ignored their reactions. It dragged Valric to the edge of the mine and casually tossed him in.

His body sailed over the ice crystals and fell into the depths.

Everyone had just begun to think the battle was over when an image flashed through Ethan’s mind.

What had caused Valric’s transformation?

The crystal.

His armor, threads, and sword had only begun to mutate after the crystal entered his body. And now he had fallen into the Bingling Mine, a place filled with those exact crystals.

Ethan’s face changed sharply.

"No!"

He reached out to stop it, but he was already too late.

Eldran and Valric fell into the depths of the mine one after the other. After a brief silence, a shriek erupted from underground.

No normal living creature could have made that sound.

The piercing cry tore through the mine and slammed into the earth and sky. Pain stabbed through everyone’s ears, forcing them to raise shields immediately. Dense ripples spread across the energy barriers while the crystals beneath their feet trembled under the scream.

The sound didn’t stop at the mine.

It swept across the plains, passed through the villages, and continued toward the farthest reaches of the Immortal Kingdom.

One by one, the citizens who heard it stopped what they were doing.

Their armor began to writhe. Their eyes gradually changed color. No matter where they were, none of them could escape the sound drilling into their minds.

The scream reached every citizen of the Immortal Kingdom.

The entire nation had fallen.

Heavy footsteps soon thundered around the Bingling Mine.

Figures approached from every direction and surrounded it. They wore identical armor and carried the same standard-issue weapons, standing in disciplined ranks with bloodred eyes fixed on Ethan’s group.

Among them was the old man who had warned Ethan to leave.

He, too, wore armor and carried a weapon as he stood within the encirclement. None of his earlier concern remained on his aged face. His expression was as rigid as everyone else’s.

Two rapidly growing sources of energy emerged from the center of the mine.

Valric and Eldran slowly rose into the air, hovering side by side before the group. Their armor writhed violently. Plates scraped against one another while tumors swelled through the gaps.

Another deafening cry shook the Bingling Mine.

The sound came from neither Valric nor Eldran.

It came from their armor.

The armor’s cries echoed over the mine. Crystals along the mine shafts flashed in response, brightening and dimming in time with the sound.

Ethan looked at Valric and Eldran hovering side by side, then at the maddened citizens of the Immortal Kingdom surrounding the mine. At last, all the scattered clues fell into place.

The mine.

The crystals.

The armor growing out of their flesh.

And the war that had never ended in this nation.

The so-called Armor War had always been an internal conflict within the Immortal Kingdom. The power that allowed its people to resurrect endlessly came from the Bingling Mine.

So did the force driving them mad.

The mine had granted this nation immortality.

The price was an endless struggle between immortality and insanity.

Ethan remembered Eldran’s battle with Seraphine. When Primordial Death Energy appeared, the emotion that had briefly entered Eldran’s eyes hadn’t been fear.

It had been hope.

Later, he had dropped his defenses and allowed the death energy into his body, not because he could no longer fight.

He had simply found someone capable of truly killing him.

The same was true of Valric.

Catheryn’s endless darkness hadn’t destroyed his body, but isolation and silence had tormented what remained of his conscious mind until it finally broke.

Neither of them wanted to live anymore.

But the Bingling Mine refused to let them die.

They had no choice but to keep living.

The army surrounding the mine raised their heads as one beneath the armor’s cries. Countless red eyes locked onto the center, and then the entire force charged from every direction.

Each footfall sent yellow sand spraying into the air.

Seraphine immediately rose higher and spread her arms. Dense Light Force poured from her palms, forming an enormous hemispherical shield around the group.

The white barrier expanded rapidly, enclosing her companions and Emerald Castle’s army. The Immortal Kingdom soldiers already engaged with them were forced back by its expansion, their bodies sliding along the wall of light toward the outside.

A barrage of attacks struck almost immediately.

Bladed hands, spears, and threads slammed into the shield, sending waves rippling across its white surface. Seraphine hovered above the barrier, her arms trembling slightly under the unrelenting impacts.

If she sealed the shield completely, the army outside would keep attacking while those inside had no way to fight back.

To conserve her strength, Seraphine opened a narrow passage on one side.

The moment it appeared, the Immortal Kingdom’s soldiers surged toward it. Its limited width prevented them from entering all at once, leaving those at the front exposed to concentrated fire from Emerald Castle’s army.

The passage became the battle’s only entrance.

Emerald Castle’s most important task was to hold it and bring down every Immortal Kingdom soldier who tried to force their way inside.

Ethan looked up at Valric and Eldran.

If everyone went after them, there wouldn’t be enough defenders left inside the shield.

Queen Elowen was already stepping onto a block of ice, preparing to cross the barrier, when Ethan reached out and stopped her.

"Don’t. None of you go."