Dark Magus Returns

Chapter 1764  The Fear of Gods

The , defensive earth pillars that B had desperately created were utterly destroyed from the sheer kinetic impact of Raze’s descent. Absolutely all of the magnificent, floating buildings nearby were instantly pulverized into dust, and the heavy stone rubble was violently pushed outward by the shockwave.

As Raze’s exhausted allies slowly started to push themselves up from the ground, recovering from the blowback of power, they looked ahead through the settling dust. A giant, catastrophic crater had been carved directly into the center of the platform in front of them.

It truly did look exactly like a celestial comet of sorts had crashed down from the heavens, destroying a area—a devastating dark comet made of pure, unadulterated magic. As the Crimson Crane members looked ahead into the smoking abyss, they held their breath, waiting to see the final scene. Every single one of them was incredibly anxious; it had been an impossibly tough, bloody fight for them so far.

They were all extremely tired. Their battered bodies were agonizingly sore, pushed far beyond their biological limits, as even before meeting Idore, they had been continuously fighting a war. Yet, the deafening sounds of battle had suddenly stopped for a moment. With the dark comet of magic coming down, everyone’s eyes across the battlefield were glued to the epicenter of destruction. Both sides of the war were silently wondering exactly who had survived the blast.

“I can see them,” Alba said, her voice trembling slightly as she lifted up her hand to point ahead into the smoke.

As she did, she realized something terrible. She reached up and held onto her left eye; her vision in that eye had gone completely, permanently dark. There was absolutely no doubt that it was the cruel price exacted from one of the times she had forcefully activated her cursed weapon’s true power. But despite the sudden, shocking loss of her sight, when her remaining eye finally focused on the scene in front of her, she—along with everyone else standing beside her—couldn’t help but smile.

Raze was still there.

He was kneeling on one knee, his battered body positioned right beside Idore, who was lying completely flat on the scorched ground at the bottom of the crater. It looked as if absolutely all of the Grand Magus’s limbs had been violently destroyed by the impact, and his flawless skin was horribly peeling away in scorched, blackened patches.

More than anything, however, the allies noticed that Raze had his bare hand pressed firmly directly against the center of Idore’s ruined chest. They watched in quiet awe, wondering exactly what was going on.

“My… my body,” Idore choked out, his voice impossibly weak and rattling with blood. “It’s… it’s not healing. What are you doing to me?”

Raze looked down at the fallen tyrant and smiled coldly.

“Honestly, Idore, I’m genuinely surprised that you were physically strong enough to even survive a direct strike like that. It took absolutely everything I had in my arsenal, and yet, your stubborn body is still desperately trying to heal itself using your Light magic Breakthrough state.”

Raze pressed his palm harder against the Grand Magus’s chest.

“What I’m doing right now… is an ancient technique I learned from my time in Pagna,” Raze explained, his dark aura swirling around his hand. “It’s called the Extraction Technique. I’m actively taking and siphoning all of the ambient mana left in your core—the exact mana that’s desperately trying to be used to heal your flesh. I’m completely stopping the process. And I’m doing it at just the precise, agonizingly slow amount… so that I don’t accidentally kill you right this second.”

The terrified, desperate stare from Idore slowly shifted from looking at Raze’s cold face, drifting upward to stare blankly at the darkened sky.

“You know, coming all the way up to this exact point, spanning across lifetimes and dimensions… I honestly never thought I would care about your reasons,” Raze stated, his voice heavy with centuries of grief. “I just wanted you, and everyone associated with you, completely dead. And now… it looks like I’ve finally achieved exactly that. But as it all finally comes to the end…”

Raze leaned in closer.

“I can’t help but ask myself… why, Idore? You’re absolute scum. I know there are people in this world that do evil, terrible things strictly for their own personal gain. They believe they can do as they wish, but even those typical tyrants hide things in the shadows and keep their cruelty limited to their own borders.

“Maybe I was just incredibly unlucky in all of this,” Raze continued, his voice tightening. “Me and Sabrina… along with what horrifying things happened to me when I was just a child, and what happened with my father. But you didn’t just target me. You dragged the entirety of Alterian into all of your twisted, bloody wrongdoings for centuries. You built an empire of suffering. Just… why?”

Idore coughed, a splatter of dark blood staining his chin.

“The… The Divine Realm,” Idore answered, his golden eyes dulling as he stared at the sky. “Centuries ago… I had successfully reached the absolute top that any mortal mage could ever reach. I had become a legendary Nine-Star Mage. I was a god among men. And yet… I quickly learned that the immense power I wielded… it was absolutely nothing.”

Idore’s breath rattled in his chest. “I had originally created the Noble Guild, long before I ever took the title of the Grand Magus. We had boldly explored different dimensional portal outings together as a group. And in one of those uncharted dimensions… that’s exactly when we came across him. A person descending from the Divine Realm.”

Hearing this, Raze’s eyes narrowed as he vividly remembered a highly important detail about those terrifying entities from the Divine Realm. Their god-like powers were heavily, systematically restricted and limited while they were physically on the plane of Pagna. However, their powers in other dimensions—even if they managed to successfully make it through a portal to Alterian—wouldn’t be restricted in the slightest. They would be walking calamities.

In a way, it felt exactly like the existence of the Divine Realm was a cosmic mechanism to strictly stop these unfathomably powerful warriors from actively affecting Pagna and ruthlessly ruling the entire world.

“I lost everyone in the blink of an eye… and I lost the fight before it even began,” Idore confessed, genuine, unadulterated terror bleeding into his dying voice. “He completely and utterly annihilated us with a single gesture. But I… I managed to cowardly escape through a closing portal alive. When I came back to Alterian… I was so incredibly scared, Raze. I was absolutely terrified that he would eventually step through a portal, come back, and casually finish the job.”

Idore’s body shuddered. “And so… I ruthlessly built up everything. All of Alterian, all of the Noble Guild. I stole every single bit of information I could safely gather through the portal outings about the Pagna warriors and the Divine Realm. I hoarded artifacts. I sacrificed millions to build an impenetrable fortress… all to be ready to strike them, or just to survive the inevitable day they finally struck me.”

Raze’s expression hardened into pure disgust. He started to aggressively absorb even more energy from Idore’s core.

As the mana drained, Idore’s ruined body finally started to violently fade away. He didn’t just shrivel up like a corpse; instead, his flesh was actively turning into glowing particles of light, rapidly dissipating into the wind. It was because his physical body should have been completely, instantly destroyed in the initial comet attack. The absolute only thing that was artificially holding his flesh together was his Light magic Breakthrough, which Raze was now bleeding dry.

“You did all of this… you caused centuries of suffering, slaughtered millions of innocents, and ruined so many lives… all because you lost a damned fight?” Raze asked, his voice dripping with venom. “You dragged an entire world down into the mud for that? You were so incredibly terrified of the gods… that you ended up getting completely defeated by me instead.”

All of Idore’s body was rapidly disappearing into the wind, dissolving into light until only his severed head now remained resting in the crater.

“One day, Raze Cromwell…” Idore whispered, his golden eyes locking onto Raze for the final time. “One day, you will fear them… exactly like me.”

Raze slowly shook his head, completely unfazed by the dying curse.

“I’m tired of losing the things I care about,” Raze declared, his voice absolute. “If I ever have to face them… I will just get rid of them. Just like I finally got rid of you.”

With a final surge of Raze’s extraction, the last spark of mana was snuffed out. And Idore’s head dissolved into light, completely fading away until the Grand Magus was entirely gone from the world.

**