Chapter 108: Ash

Meira had not felt this angry in a very long time.

Not because the spider silk was wrapped tightly around her waist and legs, nor because she had missed her strike in front of more than twenty Succubi in such an embarrassing way that Erik would definitely tease her about it later. If it had only been those things, at most, she would have killed the spider, then lain in Erik’s arms for several hours, made him pat her head, and forbidden him from ever mentioning tonight again.

But that monster had just attacked Erik.

Meira looked through the layers of white silk, quickly finding him standing behind the line of Succubi. Erik’s clothes were covered in dirt, both sleeves partly torn. The muscles in his arms were still taut from directly blocking the spider’s enormous leg, and several red marks had appeared on his skin from enduring too much force.

Those injuries were not serious. They could not even truly be called injuries.

But the moment she thought about that leg pressing down just a little farther, or Erik being a second slower—

Something in Meira’s mind seemed to snap completely.

Behind the line, Erik was still looking at her with worry in his eyes. He took half a step forward and called out, "Meira!"

Those two ordinary syllables made her green eyes waver slightly.

He was truly worried about her.

Meira lowered her gaze to the silk binding her body. Then a small flame appeared at her fingertip. At first, it was no larger than a bean, but the moment it touched the silk, it immediately spread. White-red heat raced across the entire layer of silk, burning it to smoke in only a few seconds.

Flames rose and covered Meira’s whole body, making the captain nearby immediately pale as she instinctively called out, "Lady Meira!"

Erik, however, did not step forward.

He recognized that aura.

It was Meira’s fire.

In less than two seconds, every strand of silk had been burned away. Meira slowly stepped out of the flames, hovering nearly a meter above the ground. Her white dress remained completely intact. Only the fabric around her waist was slightly wrinkled from being tightly bound, unintentionally making her slender waist and the mature curves beneath it even more pronounced.

Her long golden hair streamed behind her, and every trace of amusement had vanished from her beautiful face.

Most terrifying of all was the aura around her.

The temperature in the air rose little by little, yet the Succubi standing nearby instinctively felt a chill run down their spines. Meira did not shout or rage violently. She merely looked at the spider with a calmness that made everyone feel as though the thing before her was no longer considered a living creature.

The spider seemed to sense the danger as well.

All eight legs plunged deep into the ground at once. Its translucent abdomen glowed fiercely, and the three blue energy cores inside pulsed faster than before. A piercing shriek rang out, and dozens of streams of white silk shot toward Meira from different directions.

Meira merely raised one hand.

Wind elemental energy immediately appeared around her body, but it did not form a violent tornado. It was only a thin, almost transparent layer of air. The moment the silk entered within a radius of roughly ten meters, every strand was instantly bent off course, as though an invisible current around Meira was forcing everything to veer away from her.

The silk continuously struck the trees and ground around her, but not a single strand touched her.

The spider immediately charged.

A sharp leg plunged down from above, yet Meira remained where she was. Fire appeared in her left hand. Blue-white lightning gathered in her right. Meanwhile, the wind elemental energy surrounding her body began to contract, spinning around her slim waist and long legs.

Three completely different elements slowly moved closer to one another.

The captain instinctively held her breath.

She had heard of Meira’s title as the Elemental Lord. She knew that the woman before her could control multiple attributes at once. But what she was seeing now was completely different from simply using three types of magic separately.

Meira was forcibly fusing them.

The wind continuously compressed the fire, causing the mass of flame, once nearly as large as her body, to rapidly shrink until it was only the size of a sphere. Yet the temperature within it rose so high that the red color gradually disappeared, replaced by a white light that was almost impossible to look at directly.

Then the lightning element pierced inside.

The blue-white arcs did not explode. They were locked within the flame tightly compressed by the wind, running through each layer of heat like glowing veins.

The air around Meira began to emit faint hissing sounds.

Everyone nearby felt their scalps tingle.

Erik saw everything as well.

He had watched Meira use lightning, wind, fire, and even several elements at the same time. But even during the battle earlier that day, she had never used anything like what stood before him now.

Meira slowly lifted her head. Her green eyes reflected the white light in her hand as she spoke in a very soft voice.

"Ash Art."

The moment those two words rang out, there was no explosion. Nor did a sea of flames spread outward.

The first things to appear were four lines of white light.

They formed in four directions around the spider. Each line was dozens of meters long, yet so thin that they looked like cuts of light hanging in the air. Immediately afterward, four more appeared above and below, all of them quickly connecting into an enormous geometric structure.

Within only a few seconds, a translucent cube completely enclosed the spider, which stood more than twenty-five meters tall.

Its surfaces were almost invisible. Only the edges emitted a cold white glow, making the huge creature inside look like a specimen trapped in an enormous glass box.

The captain stared at it and asked quietly, "Is that... a barrier?"

No one answered.

Because the sensation created by the cube was completely different from an ordinary barrier.

There was no defensive fluctuation. No mana membrane keeping what was inside from escaping. The instant the cube was completed, even the sounds around the spider seemed to be cut off. The wind, the impact of legs against the ground, and even the monster’s shrieks all became strangely muted, as though the area inside had been separated from the rest of the forest.

The spider clearly realized it had been trapped.

It frantically raised its two front legs and slammed them against the transparent surface.

An impact powerful enough to destroy ancient trees only caused a faint white ripple to run across the surface of the cube.

The entire structure did not tremble at all.

The spider struck again, then a third time. The three cores in its abdomen glowed fiercely at once, as though it intended to release all its energy.

It was still useless.

Meira merely raised her hand slowly.

Her pale fingers gradually closed.

At that moment, a change began inside the cube that silenced every Succubus outside it.

There was no visible flame. Only an almost transparent layer of white gradually spread through the air, so faint it resembled a thin mist.

One of the spider’s legs touched that mist.

The blackish-gray armor instantly lost its color.

Starting from the sharpest tip, the metal, crystals, and even the flesh within all turned ash-gray at the same time. The process did not stop at the surface. It spread directly inward, as though the entire material structure was being burned away from its very foundation.

The spider violently pulled its leg back.

But it was already too late.

The leg rapidly turned gray from bottom to top. Then it did not explode or break apart. It simply crumbled into fine dust, layer after layer of ash separating from its body and floating within the cube.

The captain instinctively took half a step back.

"What..."

She could not finish the sentence.

The second leg began to turn to ash, followed by the third.

The spider let out a crazed shriek, but the sound could not pass through the cube at all. From the outside, everyone could only see its enormous mouth open, its body thrashing violently, while pieces of it continued to disappear in silence.

It was that silence that made Ash Art terrifying.