Chapter 123: 2nd Attempt XXII

The raging storm of dust and debris suddenly paused, as if the very air itself had drawn a trembling breath. A powerful, chilling word sliced through the fifth floor like a blade through silk: “Anchor Vines!”

From the surviving structural pillars, those ancient, gothic midnight stones, thick violet roots erupted in a violent surge. They twisted and wove through the chaotic air like a living web of colossal serpents, their surfaces pulsing with inner veins of luminous amethyst energy. Each root was as thick as a warrior’s thigh, barbed with crystalline thorns that gleamed like frozen lightning. They lashed upward, clamping onto the plummeting ceiling tiles and fractured walls with unyielding strength. The buckling fifth floor groaned in protest, massive slabs of stone halting mid-collapse, suspended in a jagged, nightmarish grip. Chunks of debris hung frozen in the air, connected by the glowing lattice, turning the devastated hall into a surreal floor of suspended ruin.

As the choking clouds of black dust and smoke began to thin, Agatha levitated gracefully at the center of it all. Her violet eyes narrowed, scanning the wreckage she herself had nearly unleashed. He’s crazier than I thought, she mused internally, her perfect brows knitting together. I can’t blame him entirely, though. I got carried away myself. I almost brought down my own domain, the very place I was supposed to keep safe from him.

She pinched the bridge of her nose with two delicate fingers, letting out a heavy, irritated sigh that echoed softly through the anchored chaos. Seth is going to give me such an earful, that brat.

Down on the scorched, jagged remnants of the ground level, the smoke finally parted like a theater curtain revealing the tragic aftermath. Beaumont lay flat on his back at the edge of a blackened crater, his broken form a stark silhouette against the fractured stone. He was utterly helpless. His once-glorious Iron-Vein armour had been completely shattered by the point-blank Scarlet Light explosion, leaving only scorched tatters clinging to his charred skin. Layers of his defensive spells; Geo-Static Vault, Lithic Bastion, Tectonic Aegis had all shattered like brittle glass under the overwhelming violet fury.

His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged heaves. Each breath was a battle, accompanied by wet, gurgling sounds from punctured lungs. Dust caked his face, but his hazel eyes still burned with unyielding defiance, refusing to dim even as death loomed.

“How commendable,” Agatha’s voice drifted down from above, smooth and melodic like a silk ribbon laced with venom. “Earth-borns are quite sturdy, as usual. Your kind never ceases to amaze me from one generation to another.”

Beaumont’s hazel eyes shifted with painful effort. He refused to die lying down like some discarded pawn. Summoning the last dregs of his Core-Pulse Vitality, a ring of warm amber sigils materialized directly around his head, spinning with desperate intensity. From the fractured stone surrounding Agatha’s floating position, four reinforced, diamond-shaded javelin drills erupted upward with terrifying speed. Their tips screamed as they spun, laced with molten amber cores that left trails of glowing fury in the air.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The projectiles slammed squarely into her Ultimate Barrier. Violet ripples spread across the flawless amethyst sphere with each impact, but the barrier held perfectly, deflecting the drills into harmless arcs that vanished into the shadowed abyss below. 

He let out a bloody, bitter “Tch,” spitting a mouthful of crimson onto the stone.

“See? Even while bound to a broken stone floor, you still fight,” Agatha chuckled, entirely unbothered. Her laughter was light and crystalline, yet it carried an undercurrent of cold dismissal. “Such a beautiful fighting spirit. I’m almost tempted to take it for myself.”

With a casual flick of her finger, a sharp violet sigil flared to life above her. Pure telekinesis seized Beaumont’s broken body, hoisting him ten feet into the air as effortlessly as lifting a rag doll. He hung suspended just below her line of sight, his limbs dangling limply, blood dripping in steady rivulets from his wounds. The responsive stone below seemed to mock him, now silent and inert under Agatha’s dominant presence.

“So... you knew my ancestors?” Beaumont wheezed, his voice a hoarse rasp forced through the haze of agony. His mind clung to consciousness by sheer willpower, piecing together fragments of her earlier words.

“Knew them?” Agatha’s eyes grew distant for the briefest fraction of a second, a shadow of nostalgia? Crossing her flawless face. “I’ve adventured with several of them. They were nice, kindhearted fellows. Quite unlike the rude little brat right before me right now.” Her gaze sharpened suddenly, glacial and piercing.

A bloody, mocking grin tugged at Beaumont’s cracked lips despite the pain. “Brat, huh? So you must be ancient then, An old, dusty hag... and a crone!”

The atmosphere in the ruined hall froze instantly. The suspended debris seemed to quiver in the sudden drop of temperature. Agatha’s regal expression shattered like fine porcelain struck by a hammer. Her violet eyes widened, then narrowed into slits of pure, terrifying darkness. The ambient air grew frigid, frost forming on nearby anchored stones as her voice dropped into a low, menacing register that vibrated through the very bones of the dungeon.

“What... did you... just say?”

Beaumont coughed up another spray of crimson, his eyes wild with defiance even as his body screamed for mercy. “Were you deaf? I said you’re an old, ancient hag and a cronnnn...”

He couldn’t even finish the insult. Agatha’s hand snapped open with blinding speed. A massive violet magic sigil expanded above him like a eclipsing moon, its runes burning with malevolent power.

1000× Gravity.

The weight of an entire mountain range slammed onto Beaumont’s spine with merciless force. He rocketed downward out of the air, detonating into the ground like brittle wood snapping under a boot. The impact was cataclysmic. The stone floor compressed violently beneath him, sinking his body deep into a newly formed crater with a deafening 

CRUNCH. Jagged cracks spiderwebbed outward for dozens of meters. His remaining ribs shattered completely, a deep, jagged laceration splitting open across his face from temple to jaw. His left leg twisted and broke into splintered pieces with audible snaps, bone protruding through torn flesh. White-hot pain exploded behind his eyes, gripping his brain in a vise of agony as his vision tunneled rapidly into darkness.

Survival instinct took absolute, primal control. Before consciousness could slip away entirely, his Core-Pulse Vitality flared one final time on pure reflex. The midnight stone around him liquefied momentarily, swallowing his broken frame deep into the earth to escape the crushing pressure zone. He burrowed like a wounded animal seeking refuge in its burrow.

Up above, Agatha cut the gravity spell the instant his magical signature vanished from the surface. She hovered serenely, tracking his panicked wavelength as it dove desperately through the deep strata of the dungeon floor. A predatory smile slowly returned to her lips, elegant and terrifying.

She raised both hands with deliberate grace. “False World!”

A faint violet wave rippled outward in a wide, invisible arc, distorting reality itself within its influence.

Suddenly, in a spectacular explosion of dust and pulverized mud, Beaumont lunged back out of the stone floor with impossible, blinding speed. His body moved as if the earlier devastation had never happened, amber energy roaring through his veins, Iron-Vein armour partially reformed in glowing plates, his hazel eyes blazing with renewed fury. He tore through the air like a comet, smashing cleanly through Agatha’s supposedly impenetrable Ultimate Barrier with a shattering CRACK that echoed like breaking glass.

Agatha’s eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing shock. For the first time in the battle, genuine surprise painted her features as he breached her personal space. Before she could raise a hand to defend herself or reinforce her spells, Beaumont was upon her. He grabbed her slender arm in a vice-like grip, his fingers digging into her sleeve with earth-shattering strength, and slammed her downward.

Her body cratered into the stone floor with brutal force, sinking half into the responsive midnight rock. He ripped her back out violently, dragging her porcelain face brutally across the jagged, shattered floorboards. Sparks flew as her cheek scraped against razor-sharp debris, her perfect features grinding against the unforgiving surface. Beaumont pulled her upright with a roar, then unleashed a merciless barrage of heavy jabs, each one powered by Vanguard’s Kinetic Override and reinforced by diamond-hard earth crystals encasing his fists.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The blows hammered into her jaw with sickening cracks, her ribs, her torso, each impact sending shockwaves through the air and drawing sprays of ethereal violet ichor. He finished the combination with a roaring uppercut that lifted her off her feet and sent her flying backward, tumbling across the ruined stone in a heap of torn fabric and disheveled silver hair.

Agatha scrambled to her feet, desperately tracing defensive sigils in the air, her movements frantic for the first time. But Beaumont was already upon her again, a relentless force of nature. He fired a diamond-tipped javelin that ripped her left arm completely from the shoulder in a fountain of violet energy. Another javelin drove deep into her ribs with a wet SCHLICK, and a third blew a clean, hollow hole straight through her right thigh. Agatha collapsed into the dust, screaming in raw, agonizing, human pain, her voice no longer elegant but broken and desperate.

Beaumont rushed forward, pinning her to the ground with his full weight. Encasing both fists in heavy, razor-sharp earth crystals that gleamed like amber-forged gauntlets, he rained down a brutal, frantic storm of punches. Each strike demolished her porcelain face further cracks spreading across her flawless skin, violet blood splattering in arcs. The ground trembled with every blow.

“That’s right! It is I, Beaumont...!” he roared in triumphant ecstasy, his voice echoing through the hall like thunder.

Meanwhile, in cold, unforgiving reality...

Beaumont was completely alone in his deep crater, frantically punching through the jagged, ground with his crystal-encased fists. His knuckles had long since split open. His eyes were wide and vacant, pupils dilated in a trance, completely lost in the vivid hallucination woven by Agatha’s False World. Sweat and tears mixed with blood on his face as he swung wildly at nothing, his broken body jerking with each phantom strike.

High above, the real Agatha hovered safely in the sky, untouched within her pristine Ultimate Barrier. She watched his pathetic display with a cold, stoic, and thoroughly bored gaze. She hadn’t moved an inch since casting the illusion. The suspended debris from her Anchor Vines continued to hold the collapsing floor in its violet web, indifferent to the farce below.

Leaning forward slightly with elegant poise, she traced her left hand downward toward his exposed, vulnerable back. A sharp violet sigil circle formed around her wrist, condensing into a singular, massive energy lance that crackled with destructive potential, longer and denser than any before, its tip humming with lethal violet arcs.

With a dismissive flick of her fingers, the lance dropped like a divine guillotine.

BOOM!

The explosive impact struck Beaumont directly in his left lower back with apocalyptic force. It blew his remaining crystal armor to pieces in a shower of shattered amber and rock fragments, embedding him even deeper into the crater. The shockwave tore him instantly out of the illusion. Reality crashed back in with merciless clarity. He coughed up a violent wave of blood, his chest burning as excessive internal bleeding pooled around his mangled frame. His vision swam, the false victory dissolving into horrifying truth.

Agatha drifted down calmly, landing gracefully right at the edge of his crater. Her boots made no sound against the stone. She looked every bit the untouchable sovereign porcelain skin, violet eyes gleaming with amusement once more.

Beaumont stared up at her with wide, terrified eyes that were rapidly clearing from the hallucinatory haze. His mind was in absolute tatters, desperately trying to comprehend the physical reality crashing down around him. How is this happening? his thoughts screamed in panicked chaos. I was winning. I was dominant. I felt her bones break under my fists. Where did she just come from? Was that... an illusion all along? When did it happen? How?!

Agatha’s smirk returned, sharper now, laced with venomous satisfaction. “Tell me, Earth-brat. How does it feel to completely overwhelm your opponent? Did you enjoy your brief little brawl with your imagination?”

She raised her right hand, a complex violet sigil rotating slowly around her palm like a predatory vortex. The magical pressure built, telekinetically lifting Beaumont’s mangled body into the air once more. Bones ground against each other as the force began to compress him, intending to crush his form into a ball of meat and shattered armor right there in the sky.

Beaumont’s eyes bled a horrific, dark red from ruptured vessels. His head bent violently backward under the mounting gravity, spine screaming in protest. In absolute, raw agony, every nerve on fire, his soul fraying at the edges, he cried out with the last shred of his fading will, screaming into the vaulted ceiling above:

“Oh God, Ploy! The One of Plot!

Your humble servant seeks ye...!”,