Chapter 249

The being inside the black fragment lost its form and crumbled into dark mist, its existence fading when the last place that sustained it finally shattered. That collapse triggered the breakdown of the entire World Devourer.

The creature had already stood at the edge of its limit, and the black fragment that had just broken had been the central core that first drew other shards together and held them in place. When that core vanished, the structure could no longer maintain itself. The destruction no longer stayed localized to a single section. Instead, the entire body began to come apart.

The process resembled a gigantic beast meeting its end, its remains decaying until nothing recognizable remained. The drifting island of lost fragments that had wandered across the Void now reached its final moment and slowly disintegrated.

[You have achieved an impossible feat!]

[You have prevented the mythical calamity that would have descended upon Lostania!]

Do-Jin forced out the last of his strength and then drifted helplessly through the Void as exhaustion flooded his body. He couldn’t even move a single finger.

[All functions are temporarily disabled due to excessive computational overload.]

The Grimoire of Truth pushed past its limits and lost its brilliant glow, and the light scattered into ash-like particles before fading away. His Magic Circuits had collapsed to the point where not a single thread of mana would respond.

The circuits are fucking dead too.

The power that Sion lent him began to withdraw, and each connection severed itself one after another as though invisible threads were being cut. The strength he borrowed returned to its original owner.

One connection snapped, then another, and then another. At the same time, Sion finally stirred inside his arms, the wax figure coming to life.

Right, he had been holding her this entire time. Do-Jin let out a bitter laugh as he only now realized it. The battle had dragged on without pause, and the urgency of the situation had pushed even simple awareness out of his head. A faint but steady breath brushed against his chest, and Do-Jin felt the small rise and fall of Sion’s body.

After some time and a brief moment of safety, Sion’s body was able to stabilize itself. The damage slowly began to mend, and her consciousness seemed to anchor itself again.

“Good. You’re alive. That’s a relief.”

Sion didn’t respond, and her silence told Do-Jin that she hadn’t recovered enough strength to speak yet. The wound she suffered had never been just physical damage, so a slow recovery made sense.

Do-Jin stayed quiet and waited while she regained strength. He didn’t have anything else he could do anyway, and he didn’t have enough energy left to ramble even if he wanted to.

She’s ridiculously pretty.

He shifted his gaze and looked around at the surroundings. White, glass-like fragments entered their final stage of dissolution, and each fragment scattered colors that shimmered like dying stars. The Void, which had once resembled a pitch-black sky, now glittered in strange and quiet light, and the sight stirred an odd feeling inside him.

Do-Jin remembered an old movie that he had once seen while drifting across the internet late at night. In that ancient film, the protagonist met his end alone in a star-filled cosmos.

Even our posture looks similar. Though, that guy floated alone, and this side has an extra load to carry.

Slowly, warmth returned to Sion’s body, and Do-Jin felt her head lift slightly as if she wanted to look at him.

In a tired voice, he asked, “Your friend’s okay, right? I aimed it off-center on purpose.”

Even with how massive the enemy had been, Aurora hadn’t reached the core. The strike shouldn’t have harmed the person Sion wanted to protect. If there had been any real danger, Sion would have stopped the spell long before it fired.

Though I’m at least gonna take a little credit after fighting that hard and being careful with my aim.

“The probability that the battle affected her is almost nonexistent,” Sion said quietly. “However... I cannot be certain. A great deal of time may have already passed.”

Sion’s gaze lingered on the remnants fading around them as she spoke. The dissolving fragments reflected in her eyes, and worry crept into her expression as she imagined the possibility that her long-lost friend might have ended up in the same state.

She had chased this reunion for ages, and now that it stood right in front of her, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of reunion awaited her.

“No matter how generously one considers the possibilities, a mage would still conclude that wandering a Void dimension for that long would naturally...”

Sion was an absurdly gifted sorcerer. Countless calculations must have run through her mind, and countless scenarios must have unfolded in her imagination. Her knowledge of the Void itself remained limited, yet she understood all too well what environments like this could do to a mortal mind and soul. Her anxiety carried real weight.

Do-Jin watched her hesitate with that final step left to take and spoke up. “She’ll be okay.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Didn’t you say it yourself when we first met? You heard her voice when you crossed between worlds.”

Do-Jin brought up their first meeting in this life. Back then, he had claimed that he heard Sion’s companion calling out during the crossing. The story had been a lie at the time, yet the words left his mouth without a hint of guilt now.

“The voice you let slip through reached her. She told me it helped her stay herself.”

The words sounded like another fabrication, yet Do-Jin didn’t feel uneasy. The truth behind it existed somewhere in the future he remembered.

“But... this place doesn’t follow ordinary time or space,” Sion said quietly. “You and I still carry the laws of Lostania because we have not been away long, but...”

Do-Jin cut her off before she could drift into a lecture.

“You rushed all the way here without thinking twice, and now you’re hesitating? That doesn’t sound like you, Master. You’re not the type to avoid the answer just because you’re scared of what you might see. How long are you gonna leave her alone? I’m sure your friend probably wants to see you just as badly.”

Sion turned her head toward the direction where she felt Anne’s presence. Do-Jin’s words were only a few simple lines, and they didn’t change reality in any tangible way. Yet something inside her shifted. When had someone else’s words moved her this deeply before? Aside from Anne, there had never been anyone.

“Yeah. I shouldn’t drag this out and leave her alone any longer. No matter what shape she’s in... I can’t leave Anne by herself anymore.”

Sion gathered mana and formed propulsion beneath them. From a distance, Do-Jin looked like a drifting board cutting through the Void, and Sion lay across him like a small girl clinging to a raft. Together, they pushed forward, slipping past fragments of a dying world that burned themselves out in fleeting bursts of beauty as they approached the World Devourer’s core.

“Uh... if this takes much longer, you might wanna put that spell back on me,” Do-Jin muttered as the trip dragged on and the timer creeping toward zero made his chest tighten.

“You truly are a high-maintenance disciple,” Sion said, letting out a quiet laugh as she cast a protective spell over him.

“Then why’d we stop moving?”

“Wait a moment. I used the mana I had gathered for travel to rebuild the protection around you, so I need a quick break.”

“If it’s that rough, shouldn’t you recover first?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” she quickly replied.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Oh? And someone dressed like a rag thinks he gets to comment on my condition?”

“Rag? Any other mage would’ve evaporated halfway through that Aurora chant. You’re still standing because I’m built like a damn fortress.”

Sion fell silent at his retort. Do-Jin noticed the shift just by watching her eyes, and he knew that they had arrived. With a dull thud, he pushed himself away from her. Sion drifted forward alone, moving toward something painfully familiar.

“Anne...”

It was Anne’s spear. She had always complained that every weapon she owned looked too dark and dull, and she had nagged endlessly until Sion finally forged her a new one. Anne had been ridiculously happy when she received it.

Sion wrapped her arms around the spear. “I’m here, Anne.”

Anne’s physical body had withered like a flower shedding its last petals. Rather than cling to a body that would inevitably decay, she sealed her soul inside a weapon that could outlast flesh for ages. She must have known better than anyone that a mortal form could never survive in a place like this for long.

“Sion...?” The sleeping spear that was Anne stirred at the familiar presence. A faint pause followed, and then her voice softened with quiet disappointment. “No... that must just be a hallucination, or a dream. There’s no way Sion would be standing right in front of me. Still... it’s nice hearing your voice and seeing your face again.”

A gentle warmth colored her whisper, and tears slipped down Sion’s cheeks.

“You idiot... it’s really me. I’m the Sion you left behind.”

Anne’s consciousness sharpened at once. The sensation felt nothing like the faint echoes that had brushed against her mind from time to time. More than the voice itself, the mana told the truth. The presence she had known for countless years pressed close, unmistakable and real.

“That can’t be... Sion, is it really you?”

Perhaps the long sleep had stolen her words. Anne hesitated, unsure what she should say first. In the end, she chose silence. She refused to waste this moment repeating the same questions. If this was a dream, or some fragile illusion, she wanted to stay inside it for as long as she could without breaking it herself.

Sion and Anne stayed silent for a long while as they confirmed each other’s souls without needing words. Neither of them rushed the moment, and the quiet between them carried more weight than anything they could have said aloud.

Time passed, and Do-Jin eventually drifted into that space too. The propulsion magic Sion had given him kept pushing him forward whether he liked it or not. He tried to slip by quietly because he didn’t want to interrupt their reunion, but the situation refused to cooperate.

The world reflected in Silent Night began to twist violently. As the fragments dissolved, the mana they released tangled together and started forming a raging vortex of power.

“Master!” Do-Jin’s shout sounded closer to a scream.

“W-wait, who are you?” Anne reacted before Sion did.

Meanwhile, Sion blinked away her tears at the sudden interruption and finally opened her eyes. “Seriously... you’re a high-maintenance disciple.”

She scanned the chaos around them and then introduced Do-Jin to her friend without hesitation. He felt a spike of irritation because Sion kept calling him high-maintenance, but he didn’t have the luxury to argue about it now.

“It doesn’t matter! We need to get the hell out of here, now. You two might survive that mana storm, but I sure as hell won’t.”

“A disciple? What are you talking about... No, forget that. Just grab on!”

Anne’s mind spun from the chaos, yet one instinct stayed clear. She had to save the people in front of her first. Power surged from the spear as light burst outward and her soul manifested beside it. Anne seized the weapon, bent into a throwing stance, then launched herself forward with explosive force.

The spear tore through the Void with a sharp crack. Anne melted into the weapon mid-flight, wrapped Sion and Do-Jin in its wake, and blasted them out of the danger zone at terrifying speed.