Chapter 234: The Lost City Returns

While the fetus transformed, Evangeline gathered her strength and prepared her next attack. The moment it finished, she unleashed it without hesitation.

The space around her seemed to warp as the attack shot forward, reaching the creature in an instant. But unlike what one might expect, no explosion followed. Nothing happened at all.

The attack arrived and struck the being, but instead of tearing it apart or being repelled, it simply vanished into the creature.

Evangeline's eyes narrowed at the sight as she realized what had happened to her attack.

'It absorbed it?'

But soon enough, the being answered, not with words, but with an attack of its own.

The enormous mass of flesh around it trembled and twisted as the same attack formed before the creature, this time containing a trace of Void Energy far purer than Evangeline's own.

Without a moment's hesitation, the fetus hurled it back, far faster than her own attack had traveled, so fast that it struck her before she could fully react.

BOOM!

Her massive body was sent flying backward, crashing into the nearby forest and carving a long trail of destruction that stretched for over a kilometer, reaching almost the opposite end of the woods.

The attack had been so powerful that her towering black draconic form seemed to waver, growing thinner, as though struggling to hold itself together. It was clear the attack had wounded her far more than she wanted to admit.

For the first time since the battle began, Evangeline was forced to retreat.

With effort, she pulled herself back together and rose into the sky once more, staring at the fetus's distant figure, which hadn't moved an inch from its spot.

She knew she could not defeat an Abyss God.

Not while she had yet to reach divinity.

She was the strongest among the Demigods, almost at the point of becoming a true deity, but that final step created an enormous difference in power, one that could not be overcome through talent or brute force alone.

She understood all of this, and yet she had no intention of backing down. It wasn't in her nature. If it was an Abyss God she had to face, she'd face it head on, and if death was what awaited her, then she'd drag her enemy down with her.

Unfortunately for her, this already one sided battle was about to become even more unfavorable.

Because the fetus's arrival marked an escalation in the Abyss's assault, it was no longer limiting itself to sending Paragon and DemiGod ranked beings. Now it was deploying its primary forces.

More portals began to open. Three of them, to be precise. The sheer proximity of such massive fractures, all converging on a single point, seemed to make the very sky above Ashwick buckle under the strain, terrifying the surviving inhabitants, who, after witnessing the fetus's arrival moments ago, already felt what little hope they had left slipping away.

Even Luna, watching all of this from a distance, felt a growing unease as she sensed the situation deteriorating further and further.

She was frustrated, because she knew that Evangeline would never flee from this battle. She would fight, even if it meant dying.

And as admirable as that was, it also irritated her, because in her mind, only the living had the right to fight and seek vengeance. The dead could do nothing but resign themselves to the fate they had already earned.

Running might look like cowardice, but staying alive one more day, to grow stronger, to return even more powerful and win the battles that truly mattered, that was, in her view, the far more important path.

It was a mentality that had been forged back when she still lived in Lirath, when she was helpless against this cruel world that seemed determined to erase her and her little sister.

Yet she had survived, head bowed but alive, until the very end. She had eliminated her enemies, taken her revenge, and grown strong enough that no one could ever again try to take away what was hers.

Now, watching Evangeline fight something clearly far stronger than herself, refusing to retreat even a step, filled her with the same irritation, because, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had already come to see her as someone close to her. The second person she'd ever allowed herself to let get close.

Watching her die in battle wasn't something she wanted to witness. And yet it seemed, at this point, to be exactly where things were heading.

Her fists clenched as that old feeling of helplessness, one she thought she'd left behind, began creeping back in.

She had reached the rank of Overlord within a single year, an extraordinary feat for someone her age. And yet, no matter how strong she became, it always seemed to come back to the same point, a place where all she could do was watch things unfold, without the power to change any of it.

Amid Luna's turmoil, Evangeline looked toward the three new rifts in the sky.

The fractures continued widening until a massive section of the sky itself collapsed, forming an enormous vortex above them.

Three figures began descending from within.

Three very different figures, one humanoid, one resembling a serpentine beast, and another that looked like some fusion of a dark violet crystal and a spider.

All three radiated a presence as powerful as the fetus's, and all three fixed their attention on her, watching her with eyes devoid of compassion or any emotion at all, only a sense of absolute superiority, the same look one might give something too insignificant to deserve real attention.

Seeing them join the fetus, Evangeline, who had already given up any hope of victory, realized that even the small amount of damage she'd hoped to deal was no longer within reach.

She had thrown herself into this battle against the Abyss hoping to minimize the damage and investigate the strange phenomenon that had occurred weeks earlier. That was when she'd first sensed the opening of that portal, the same one that, a year ago, had swallowed countless lives across the entire continent.

She knew what it was connected to. She knew what it could mean.

She'd hoped to learn more, hoping to finally uncover something about her Master. But the situation had turned dire faster than anyone could have predicted, and now she found herself facing Paragons, DemiGods, and true Abyss Gods.

'It seems I'm not destined to see him again in this life' the thought crossed her mind for the first time since she'd been separated from him.

She had never given up hope. She knew that, sooner or later, he would return. It was something she never doubted, which was exactly why she had waited, stationed in a corner of the continent, for the day he would come back and rebuild his ancient empire once more.

She had waited patiently for that day, and in recent times she'd felt that day drawing closer. But now it seemed she might not live long enough to witness it after all.

The four Abyss Gods paid no mind to the dragon woman's condition. They simply looked at her, and then one of them stepped forward, the humanoid Abyss God.

"Why are you wasting time with this creature? Just finish her off. We don't have time for this. We need to prepare the ground, because he is about to arrive," it said. It wasn't clear who it meant, but there seemed to be no need for clarification, the fetus appeared to understand immediately.

The humanoid Abyss God looked at the dragon woman, who met its gaze with the same ferocity as before. It wasted no more time on words and simply raised a finger, pointing it at her.

A small dot of light formed at its tip, one that shot forward the instant it formed, reaching Evangeline in the same breath.

Evangeline sensed the presence of the attack, but she couldn't see it.

She could tell it would be fatal, and she understood, with total certainty, that there was no way to block it.

'Is this how it ends?' she wondered, feeling the attack close in on her.

But right at that instant, something happened.

Time itself seemed to stop.

The attack, which had been moments away from piercing her enormous dragon body, seemed to cease existing.

And reality itself began to tremble around them.

"What... is happening?"

The humanoid Abyss God spoke as he felt the sudden change.

Then he understood.

Because in the following moment, a powerful sound echoed across the distance, one that made every head across the continent turn. All eyes lifted, drawn toward the far southern sky of the continent.

The sky that hung over the Fallen Lands, normally shrouded beneath a thick curtain of dark clouds, now bore an enormous dark vortex, from which a pillar of dark violet light seemed to pour out, striking down at that very point, joining sky and earth as one.

To ordinary people, it looked like nothing more than an enormous column of energy. But to the eyes of the strongest beings on the continent, something else could be seen within that column of light.

Evangeline's eyes, which had already caught the direction of the pillar, narrowed as they settled on a small, barely perceptible shadow at that distance, buried within the violet column of energy, the shadow of a vast landmass, its surface marked by numerous structures. Structures she recognized instantly.

It was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Death.

The Lost City of the Dead.