Chapter 210: The Collapse of the Last Hope

After failing to get help from her Shadow, Triss decided to leave the giant door in the sky alone for now, since it posed no immediate danger.

She and Bellatrix stayed at the Tower over the following days, guarding it and helping the other 3 Grand Witches however they could.

Unfortunately, things weren’t going well for Hecate and Melisandre.

They had encountered the Green Dragon on their way to the entrance of the Realm of Giants and failed to get past it. For 2 days, they fought the mighty creature without rest, trying everything they could to bring it down.

They fought using everything they had, spending their mana and resources, using their artifacts and their Shadows’ help. And when they were finally about to make it to submit, another creature came through the entrance.

This time, it was a Leviathan. Its body was so enormous that even the largest mountains looked like its siblings.

It started to wander aimlessly across the land, leaving huge footprints wherever it went. Villages and cities that had stood for centuries were crushed beneath its feet in seconds, along with their buildings and streets.

It didn’t even realize what it had destroyed along the way, simply taking a walk through an unfamiliar realm it was seeing for the first time.

And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Meanwhile, Galadriel Vigo, the Fate Witch, was dealing with a much more complicated problem, one that was almost impossible to solve.

After mobilizing every available Witch and Shadow at the Tower, she sent them across the world to find and close every entrance to the Fairy Hive.

Unfortunately, closing those entrances was a bloody and merciless task, since it usually meant killing the people who had fallen asleep.

Whenever someone fell asleep and started dreaming, there was a high chance that an entrance to the Fairy Hive would open inside their dreams.

Once that happened, they usually never woke up again.

Their existence became a doorway between the 2 realms, leaving the Witches with no choice but to kill them to close it.

Often, there wasn’t anyone left to kill.

By the time an entrance appeared, the person was usually already dead. In the better cases, their bodies twisted and turned into menacing creatures from the Fairy Hive.

In the worse cases, they became cracks in reality through which more creatures could enter the Witch World.

Within 2 days, the entire world was in chaos.

Sleeping was forbidden, and anyone caught asleep was treated as a criminal and punished, regardless of whether they had done anything else wrong.

But how could anyone stay awake forever?

Villages and cities began to fall, along with isolated settlements deep in forests or at the foot of distant mountains.

Creatures from the Fairy Hive appeared everywhere, killing people, taking over their bodies, and turning entire populations into members of their own races.

There was nowhere left that could be considered safe.

The entire Witch World had become a battlefield. All the Tower could do was send its Witches and Shadows to fight the invaders, desperately trying to stop them from spreading.

But despite their efforts, they could only hold them back for a week.

Things only grew worse from there.

During this time, Triss and Bellatrix still hadn’t found a way to completely close the enormous door above the Tower.

Eventually, it began to open again.

More and more strange creatures poured through the widening gap, falling onto the Tower and the surrounding lake without end.

Fortunately, the Tower was no ordinary building.

It had stood for thousands of years, through countless generations of Witches. Many Grand Witches had lived there, and each generation had added defenses and made improvements until it became the greatest fortress in the whole realm.

The Tower had always stood above everything else, and no enemy had ever managed to bring it down.

But it had never faced an attack on this scale.

Triss and Bellatrix used the seemingly indestructible Tower as their stronghold and continued fighting the creatures pouring through the door.

Days passed, then weeks, then months, but the creatures kept coming.

No matter how many they killed, more fell from the sky to replace them. The Tower’s defenses held, and the 2 Grand Witches kept fighting, determined to protect their last great fortress.

But as months turned into years, even their enormous resources began to run out.

Replenishing their mana reserves became more difficult, and increasingly powerful creatures passed through as the door opened wider.

The battles grew harder, and the Tower suffered more and more damage.

Still, they held on.

For 3 full years, Triss and Bellatrix defended the Tower against everything that came through the door, fighting while they watched their world slowly fall apart around them.

Then a single creature emerged from the entrance and destroyed everything they had worked so hard to protect.

The Tower had stood for thousands of years and survived 3 years of constant attacks, but against that creature, it lasted only 1 day.

By the end of that day, the greatest fortress in the Witch World had collapsed, damaged beyond repair.

Triss and Bellatrix had no choice but to retreat. Both had suffered not only physical injuries, but the defeat had also hurt their pride and weakened their will to keep fighting.

Everyone had believed that as long as the Tower stood, they would be safe. It was the symbol of their power and authority over the entire world.

Now it was gone.

Losing their last great fortress was a devastating blow to everyone still resisting the invaders. They began to back down, forced to accept the harsh reality that they had lost and could only watch their world fall apart.

By then, creatures from the Fairy Hive had conquered half the world, turning entire populations into members of their own races.

Meanwhile, powerful beings continued to emerge from the Realm of Giants.

Dragons, Leviathans, Behemoths, and many others claimed territories for themselves, dividing the Witch World into lands under their control.

Humans, once the strongest race in the world, had fallen so far down the food chain that they were now little more than refugees in their own homeland.

The cities they had built, the lands they had ruled, and the homes their families had lived in for generations no longer belonged to them.

Most had lost loved ones during the long war, and the survivors had little left to protect.

With each passing year, it became harder to stay hopeful.

Fortunately, they still had the 5 Grand Witches.

Using all the power they had left, the Grand Witches managed to keep most of the remaining survivors alive. They gathered the surviving Witches and Shadows in one place and established a final stronghold.

They could no longer fight to reclaim their world. For now, staying alive was all they could manage.

And so, 12 years passed, during which humanity lost most of its population, resources, and territories.

The people who had once ruled the Witch World were now struggling to keep what little they had left.

They could only hope that things would change one day, carrying their anger toward the invaders who had taken everything from them.

As for Magna, there had been no news of him since the day he disappeared in the Underworld.

Until...