Chapter : 1005
It was in this single, frozen moment of the predator’s confusion that the fortress of Rosa’s soul did not just crack; it was utterly, completely, and cataclysmically obliterated.
The cold, logical, and perfectly constructed walls she had built around her heart for a decade, the fortress of ice that had protected her from the grief of her mother’s slow decay, from the pain of her own lonely existence, was consumed by a tidal wave, a tsunami of two new, and utterly terrifying, emotions.
The first was a rage so pure, so absolute, so incandescent, that it was a physical, burning thing in her veins. A rage at the beautiful, terrible monster before her. A rage at the cruel, indifferent mountain. A rage at the gods, at the universe, at the very fabric of a reality that would allow a man like him to die for a woman like her.
And the second, which was a thousand times more terrifying, was a sorrow so profound, so soul-crushing, so agonizingly absolute, that it was a black hole, a void that threatened to consume her very being. It was the sorrow of a queen who has just watched her last, and only, loyal knight fall. It was the sorrow of a woman who has just realized, in the single, most terrible moment of her life, that she has, against all odds, against all logic, against her own iron will, fallen in love.
The emotional cataclysm was so violent, so profound, that it created a psychic shockwave, a silent, internal scream that was felt rather than heard. It was a scream of pure, desperate, and absolute will. It was the scream of a soul that had been pushed beyond its breaking point, a soul that was now demanding, not asking, that the very laws of the universe bend to its own agonizing, grief-stricken command.
She reached for a power she could not touch. She reached for a spirit she could not summon. She reached, with the raw, bleeding fingers of her soul, into the dead, sterile, spirit-sealed void of the mountain.
And with a final, desperate, and world-altering act of pure, unadulterated will, she pulled.
Reality itself screamed in protest.
The fundamental, unalterable law of Mount Monu, the ancient, primordial seal that had held for millennia, did not just bend; it shattered.
A blizzard of pure, white, and incandescently brilliant energy erupted from Rosa’s body. It was not the pale, blue light of her Void power. It was something else. Something purer. Something older. Something… divine.
The air around her dropped to a temperature that was not just cold, but was a state of absolute, perfect, and terrifying zero. The very atoms seemed to slow, to freeze in place.
And from the heart of that blizzard, from the core of her silent, screaming soul, they emerged.
They were not summoned; they were unleashed. Eighteen ethereal, beautiful, and terrifyingly cold figures materialized from the swirling, white energy. They were perfect, crystalline replicas of her one, true spirit, the White Fairy. Each one was a goddess of winter, their bodies forged from pure, solidified frost, their eyes the color of a winter sky, their expressions a mask of cold, serene, and absolute wrath.
They were not just spirits. They were avatars of her own grief, her own rage, her own broken heart, given form.
The Lamia, her momentary confusion turning to a new and utterly alien emotion—fear—could only stare as the eighteen silent, beautiful, and absolutely terrifying goddesses of winter materialized around her, forming a perfect, inescapable circle.
They did not speak. They did not move. They simply… looked at her. Their collective gaze, a force of eighteen synchronized, divine wills, was a physical weight, a pressure so immense, so absolute, that it made the Lamia’s own King-Rank aura feel like a gentle summer breeze.
And then, without a word, without a gesture, in a single, perfect, and coordinated act of will, they raised their hands.
A storm of absolute zero descended upon the Lamia.
The storm that descended upon the Lamia was not a physical blizzard of snow and ice. It was a negation. A silent, beautiful, and absolutely terrifying erasure of reality itself. It was a wave of pure, absolute zero, a conceptual attack born from a grief so profound it had torn a hole in the fabric of the world.
The Lamia, the ancient, primordial queen of the mountain, a being whose power bordered on the divine, finally, truly, knew fear. She tried to move, to summon her own impossible speed, to unleash her own world-breaking power. But she could not. The collective, synchronized will of the eighteen White Fairies was a cage of absolute, perfect stasis. The very air around her, the very atoms of her own being, had been commanded to be still. And they obeyed.
Chapter : 1006
She did not have time to scream. She did not have time to react. She simply… froze.
It was not the slow, creeping frost of a normal winter. It was an instantaneous, absolute, and perfect crystallization. Her beautiful, terrible, and utterly surprised expression was preserved with a flawless, artistic precision. Her iridescent scales, which had shimmered with a hundred colors, became a solid, single, and magnificent diamond of pure, clear ice. Her upraised harpoon, a weapon of black, light-absorbing coral, was now a beautiful, fragile sculpture of frozen shadow.
The Lamia, the guardian of the Serpent’s Garden, the grieving mother, the avenging queen, was now a magnificent, flawless, and absolutely beautiful statue of pure, crystalline ice.
The statue stood for a single, perfect, and eternal moment, a breathtaking monument to a grief so powerful it had broken the laws of the world. It was a work of art, a masterpiece of sorrow and rage.
Then, with a low, deep, and resonant groan that seemed to come from the very heart of the ice itself, it began to crack.
A network of fine, silver lines, like a spiderweb of frozen lightning, spread across its surface. The groan became a high-pitched, screaming shriek of tortured, shattering crystal.
And the Lamia, the beautiful, terrible, and absolute god of this place, exploded.
The explosion was a silent, beautiful, and utterly final thing. She did not erupt into a shower of gore and viscera. She simply came apart, dissolving into a billion glittering, beautiful, and utterly harmless shards of frost. The shards were caught by the cold mountain wind and scattered, like a snowfall of diamond dust, across the barren, black rock of the clearing.
The monster was gone. Erased. Unmade. The silence that followed was a profound, absolute, and sacred thing. The winter had come. And the winter had won.
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The silent, beautiful, and utterly apocalyptic act of annihilation was a moment suspended outside of time. The billion glittering shards of the shattered Lamia, which had once been a demigod of terrifying, absolute power, drifted on the cold mountain wind like a snowfall of diamonds, a final, poignant tribute to the grief that had unmade her. The eighteen White Fairies, the avatars of Rosa’s broken heart, stood for a single, perfect, and eternal moment, their collective gaze of cold, serene wrath fixed on the empty space where their enemy had been. They were a circle of silent, beautiful, and utterly terrifying goddesses of winter, their duty done, their vengeance enacted.
Then, the world, which had been held in a state of suspended, frozen animation by the sheer, overwhelming force of Rosa’s will, came crashing back into reality.
The moment the Lamia was obliterated, the impossible, world-breaking power that Rosa had unleashed, the power that had been focused on a single, external target, lost its anchor. The backlash, the recoil from an act of magic so profound it had shattered the fundamental laws of the mountain, hit her with the force of a physical, cataclysmic blow.
The eighteen fairies, their purpose served, dissolved. They did not fade; they shattered, like their victim, into a swirling, chaotic blizzard of pure, white, and untamed spiritual energy. This energy, with no enemy to direct it at, turned inward. It crashed back into its source, into the fragile, mortal body of the woman who had dared to unleash it.
Rosa screamed, a raw, agonized sound that was not a cry of triumph, but of pure, unadulterated agony. Her body was seized by a series of violent, uncontrollable tremors. The brilliant, divine light that had been emanating from her was now a chaotic, flickering, and self-destructive storm. Forcefully breaking the mountain’s ancient, primordial seal had not just been a feat of impossible power; it had been an act of profound, spiritual self-immolation. She had not just opened a door; she had blown the door, the frame, and the entire wall off its hinges, and now the very structure of her soul was collapsing in on itself.
Her spiritual pathways, the delicate, intricate web of meridians that channeled her immense power, were not just strained; they were shattered, torn apart by the raw, untamed force of her own unleashed spirit. She collapsed to the ground, no longer a goddess of winter, but a broken, mortal woman, her body a battlefield where her own power was now her greatest enemy.
Across the clearing, a different, quieter, but no less desperate, battle was being waged. Lloyd, bleeding profusely from the grievous, gaping wound in his neck and shoulder, was fighting a war against the encroaching darkness of his own mortality. The pain was a roaring, all-consuming fire. His vision was a blurring, fading tunnel. The world was a distant, muffled echo.