Chapter 547: The Reversal

Chapter 547: Chapter 547: The Reversal

The end of the Demonic Apocalypse didn’t mean an end to the suffering.

The world had been too thoroughly destroyed.

Cities had turned to ruins, farmland to wasteland, and the water sources had been polluted countless times over.

People were free from the terror of Demonization, only to find they still had to face hunger, disease, cold, and thirst.

There were those who had lost everything during the Demonization, those who had been left with nothing amidst the chaos, and those with hearts filled with only hatred and despair.

The Demonization of their world was gone, but the darkness in their hearts remained.

The chaos continued to unfold.

It had merely taken a new form.

Leaning on her cane, Rosa stood on the high platform of the settlement, watching the black smoke rising in the distance.

It could be someone burning down ruins, but it could just as easily be someone burning down another’s home.

She could no longer tell the difference.

The world’s order had been shattered for too long. Rebuilding it required not one person’s Power, but the efforts of everyone.

But she was coming to feel that for some people, the word "rebuilding" simply wasn’t in their vocabulary.

"Ma’am!" A young man ran up, panting, his face fraught with anxiety. "We have a situation!"

Rosa turned, looking at the young yet weary face. "What is it?"

"Those Awakeners—the ones who gained Power from the Demonization Blood granted by the Ancestral Witch—the Demonization is gone, but their Power hasn’t disappeared!"

The man’s voice trembled. "They’re gathering together now, roaming everywhere, and no one can control them.

Our people tried to negotiate with them, but they..."

"What do they want?" Rosa cut him off.

The man hesitated, his voice dropping. "They want to know... how to become a God."

Rosa fell silent.

She had long known this day would come.

The moment Sean Chandler became a God, the system announcement broadcast across the entire world, and everyone heard it.

They also understood that someone in this world had become a God once more.

The greedy, the power-hungry, those unwilling to remain ordinary people—they would go mad, they would grow jealous, they would want the same thing for themselves.

She just hadn’t expected the day to come so soon.

"What’s coming will come."

she said softly, walking down from the high platform with her cane. "I’ll go talk to them."

The young man opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but as he watched Rosa’s stooped yet determined back, he ultimately swallowed his words.

「...」

Seraphina Sullivan’s figure appeared in an unfamiliar land.

She steadied herself and quickly scanned her surroundings.

This wasn’t the place she had last left.

There was no blood pool, no Demonic Forest—only a desolate plain and the faint outline of mountains in the distance.

The sky was blue, a true blue, not the dark red shrouded by a bloody mist.

The sunlight was warm but not scorching, and the breeze carried the Aura of earth and grass.

’The Demonization really is over.’

Seraphina Sullivan looked down at the Three Realms Compass in her hand. The golden anchor point was still blinking, but she hadn’t appeared near it.

’Did the anchor point shift, or did Sean Chandler’s location change?’

She had no time to dwell on it.

She had only one hour.

After that hour, whether she found Sean Chandler or not, she would be forcibly teleported back.

She had to hurry.

Seraphina Sullivan raised her hand, and the Universal Sniper Rifle materialized in her palm.

She had no map, no guide—only a vague direction.

The sky.

’Sean Chandler. He should be in the sky.’

She looked up at the vast blue expanse but saw no trace of any stars.

’But he must be there.’

She had a gut feeling, pointing her in that direction.

Seraphina Sullivan took a deep breath and ran.

The plains flew by under her feet, and the mountains grew closer.

Time ticked away, second by second.

Seraphina Sullivan picked up her pace.

Seraphina Sullivan didn’t act rashly. Crouching behind a jutting rock on high ground, she scanned the battlefield below.

Her summoned pigeons circled in the sky, transmitting a clear picture of the situation on the ground back to her mind.

Rosa’s settlement, the place she had stayed once before, was under siege.

The attackers weren’t Demonic Creatures, but humans.

A group of people in mismatched clothes, wielding various weapons, was attacking the settlement’s main gate.

Their movements were vicious and practiced. They didn’t look like ordinary survivors, but more like veterans of countless battles.

And their opponents, the ordinary people of the settlement, could only rely on crude fortifications to desperately hold on. The situation was already precarious.

Seraphina Sullivan’s Eye of Resume swept over the attackers, and information panels appeared.

[Name: Harrison Lowe]

[Name: Titus Dawson]

One, two, three... more than a dozen Awakeners.

They weren’t overwhelmingly strong, but to the ordinary people in the settlement who weren’t even Players, these individuals were invincible monsters.

The Demonic Apocalypse was over, but the Awakeners who had gained their Abilities from the Ancestral Witch hadn’t lost them.

They remained one of the most dangerous groups in the world.

Seraphina Sullivan didn’t rush to intervene.

She was waiting—for the right moment, and for more information.

In front of the settlement gate, the bald man slapped Rosa across the face.

It was a heavy blow. The elderly Rosa staggered back a few steps, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of her mouth.

She didn’t cry out, nor did she beg for mercy. She simply lifted her head, staring at the bald man before her with cloudy yet still defiant eyes.

"Old hag." The bald man, Harrison Lowe, was the leader of this group of Awakeners. He was currently staring down at Rosa, his eyes filled with greed and impatience. "Are you going to talk or not? How do you become a God?"

Rosa wiped the blood from her mouth, her voice hoarse but calm. "Someone in this world has already become a God. If you want to become one, you can follow the old path: god-slaying. But can you do it?"

A mocking smile twisted her lips, looking particularly jarring on her wrinkled face.

Harrison Lowe’s expression soured.

He knew Rosa was mocking him. ’God-slaying?’

’That new Demon God is suspended high in the heavens, you can’t even see his shadow. How am I supposed to slay him? Even if I found him, what could a common Awakener like me use to slay a God?’

"You—"

He raised his hand, about to slap her again.

"Lowe."

A scrawny man beside him grabbed his arm and said in a low voice, "Don’t hit her. This old woman is tough. Killing her would be more trouble. We still need her to find out how to become a God."

Harrison Lowe’s hand froze mid-air. He shot Rosa a vicious glare before lowering his arm.

But he didn’t leave. Instead, he slowly circled Rosa, his eyes sinister.

"You think your Rhodes Family is full of saints?"

His voice suddenly rose, laced with a long-suppressed fury. "Your brother, Rod, he only managed to become a God back then because all those Players carried him!

How many dungeons, how many life-and-death situations did they carry him through?!

Without them, he would have died in some dungeon long ago, let alone become a God!"