Chapter : 935
Inside the carriage, Lloyd felt it as a physical, tearing sensation. His profound, soul-deep connection to Iffrit and Fang Fairy was violently, brutally severed. The two Transcended spirits, who had been waiting for his command, were not just blocked; they were ripped from his control, their very presence sealed away in a higher dimension, leaving him with a hollow, aching void where their power had been.
Outside, the effect was even more dramatic. Ken’s magnificent, crimson-armored Demon Lord form flickered and dissolved, the immense power torn from him, leaving him standing in the tattered remains of his butler’s uniform, his body trembling from the spiritual shock. Habiba’s connection to the earth was severed, and the massive stone hand holding Kael crumbled into dust, releasing him. Their merged and summoned spirits were gone, violently ripped away, leaving them in their base human forms, their spiritual cores wounded and reeling.
The power dynamic of the entire battlefield had been, in a single, catastrophic moment, brutally and absolutely inverted.
The dome of the Soul Catcher solidified, its sickly purple light casting the rain-soaked clearing in an alien, nauseating glow. The air within the 500-meter barrier felt thick, dead, and spiritually sterile. It was a vacuum where the higher laws of magic, specifically the bond between a master and their spirit, had been temporarily revoked. All summoned entities were gone, sealed away behind a wall of forbidden power.
Ken and Habiba stood in the center of the kill-box, their greatest weapons torn from them. The immense, god-like power that had defined them was gone, replaced by a profound, spiritual exhaustion and the dull, throbbing ache of their fractured connection. They were still formidable warriors, their bodies honed to the peak of human perfection, their minds sharp, and their own personal Void abilities still accessible. But they were now fundamentally diminished, lions who had been stripped of their claws and teeth.
Their opponents, however, were not.
Jager, still on his knees but with a look of savage, triumphant agony on his face, began to laugh. It was a wet, gurgling sound, mixed with the blood he was still coughing up. "A cage for gods," he rasped, his eyes gleaming with a mad, fanatical light. "A beautiful, perfect cage."
He and Kael had been unaffected by the initial purge. By unsummoning their spirits a microsecond before Jager activated the artifact, they had bypassed the seal. They were now free to act within the confines of their own trap.
With a shared, cruel smile, the two assassins re-summoned their partners.
The air, which had been so spiritually void, now twisted and warped. To Jager’s side, the black, corrupted smoke coalesced once more, reforming into the twenty-foot-long, iron-scaled form of the alligator, Kroth. Its red eyes burned with a renewed hunger, its spiritual pressure a suffocating weight in the dead air. To Kael’s side, the buzzing, chitinous form of the Hornet warrior materialized, his stinger-lance dripping with a fresh coat of shimmering, black venom.
The hunt had become a slaughter.
Ken and Habiba were now forced to fight for their very lives, armed only with their raw physical skill and their personal Void abilities, against two fully-powered, uninjured spirit users. One King-Rank, one Crown-Rank. In a perfect, inescapable kill-box.
The situation was not just desperate. It was, by any rational calculation, utterly, completely, and hopelessly unwinnable.
Inside the carriage, Lloyd felt the profound, aching emptiness where the warm, living presences of Fang Fairy and Iffrit had been. The Soul Catcher was a perfect conceptual counter to his greatest strength. He was cut off from his gods. But he was not powerless. The Steel Blood still hummed in his veins. The Black Ring Eyes still held their terrifying, reality-warping potential.
He looked at Amina. Her face, for the first time since he had met her, was pale. The absolute, serene confidence of the princess had been replaced by the cold, hard understanding of a commander facing a catastrophic reversal. She knew, as he did, the terrible significance of the purple dome.
"Spirit sealing magic," she whispered, her voice tight. "Forbidden-class. I did not think it was anything more than a myth."
"Myths have a way of becoming very real when you are on the wrong end of them," Lloyd replied, his own voice a low, dangerous calm. He was not afraid. The emotion was a luxury he had discarded long ago. He was angry. He was a general whose primary army had just been wiped from the board. But the war was not over. It simply required a change in tactics.
Chapter : 936
He looked out through the reinforced window at the tableau of impending doom. He saw his two magnificent guardians, wounded but unbowed, standing back-to-back, preparing to sell their lives dearly. He saw the two triumphant assassins, their spirits radiating an aura of absolute dominance. He saw the perfect, inescapable trap.
And a slow, cold, predatory smile touched his lips.
Jager thought he had created a cage for gods. He was wrong. He had created a cage for himself. A cage where he was trapped inside with something far, far worse than a god.
He had trapped himself inside with the architect of his own damnation.
Lloyd turned to Amina. "The part of the performance where the humble doctor makes a final, heroic stand is about to begin," he said, his voice laced with a dark, chilling amusement. "I do recommend you stay seated. It is likely to get… messy."
With that, he slid the carriage door open for the second time and stepped out into the purple, alien light of his enemy's perfect trap.
The world inside the Soul Catcher was a nauseating symphony of sickly purple light and dead, sterile air. The vibrant, life-filled sounds of the forest—the drumming rain, the rustle of leaves, the distant cry of a bird—had been snuffed out, replaced by a low, oppressive hum, the sound of a cage forged from forbidden magic. For Ken Park and Habiba Al-Farsi, the sudden, violent severing of their spiritual bonds was a physical agony, a tearing sensation in the very core of their beings. One moment, they were titans, their power an extension of their will. The next, they were mortals, trapped in a bubble of anti-reality with two gleeful executioners.
Ken stood amidst the wreckage of the driver’s box, the magnificent crimson armor of his Demon Lord form having dissolved into the tattered remains of his butler’s uniform. He felt a profound, hollow ache where the roaring inferno of Redborn’s spirit had been. His body, once a vessel of King-Level power, was now just flesh and bone, trembling with the aftershock of the spiritual amputation. He was still a peerless warrior, his muscles like coiled steel, his mind a cold engine of combat calculus. But he was a swordsman who had just had his legendary blade shattered in his hands.
Across the clearing, Habiba swayed on her feet, a hand pressed to her temple. The serene, earthy strength that had radiated from her was gone, replaced by a pale, strained focus. Her connection to the Sandworm, a bond as deep and ancient as the desert itself, had been cut. The very ground beneath her feet, once her greatest ally, now felt alien and unresponsive. She was a queen dethroned, her kingdom rendered silent and inert by the suffocating purple light.
Lloyd hadn't even joined the fight, yet his Fang Fairy and Iffrit dissolved anyway. He tried to re-summon them right away, but was unable to.
Their opponents, in stark contrast, radiated an aura of triumphant, predatory power. Jager, though still nursing a shattered wrist and bleeding from the psychic backlash of his own spirit’s temporary defeat, stood with a renewed, almost manic confidence. The iron alligator, Kroth, materialized beside him, its twenty-foot form a solid, terrifying promise of violence, its red eyes burning with a hunger that was now completely unchecked. Kael, the Hornet warrior, hovered in the air, his wings a deafening buzz, his venom-tipped lance gleaming. He looked down at the two grounded, spirit-less guardians with the contemptuous glee of a hawk eyeing a pair of wing-clipped sparrows.
“A beautiful, perfect cage,” Jager rasped, his voice a wet, ragged sound that was no less arrogant for its pain. “No exits. No interruptions. And no gods to save you.”
He gave a sharp, almost imperceptible nod to his partner. The pincer attack was instantaneous and brutally efficient.
Kael descended like a thunderbolt, his target the more obviously tactical threat: Habiba. He was a blur of black chitin and buzzing wings, his lance aimed not for a killing blow, but a disabling one at her leg. He intended to cripple the tactician first, to remove the brain before crushing the muscle.
Habiba reacted with the instincts of a true grandmaster. With no spirit to command, she dropped to one knee, her palms slamming flat against the muddy earth. She could no longer command the land, but she could still beseech it. A wave of her own personal Void energy, the power that was uniquely hers, pulsed into the ground. It was not the overwhelming force of the Sandworm, but a subtle, desperate plea. The ground before her did not erupt into a wall; it turned into a grasping, sucking pit of quicksand.