Chapter 379 - 364: Timeline Corrected, Boundaries Reforged

Chapter 379: Chapter 364: Timeline Corrected, Boundaries Reforged

Morne walked slowly, each step abnormally heavy. He supported his body almost entirely with the seemingly ordinary Longsword in his hand.

His already simple clothes were now tattered beyond recognition, the edges of a deep claw mark on his chest crusted with dark red blood.

His gray-white hair, withered and messy from the Curse’s influence, clung to his sweat-soaked forehead.

His face was drained of all color. Each breath was short and strained, as if it took all his strength just to inhale.

His left arm hung limply at his side, a grisly wound stretching from his shoulder to his elbow.

Though hastily bandaged, blood still seeped out, soaking the cloth and dripping from his fingertips to stain the scorched ground with dark patches.

But the most startling thing was what he dragged behind him...

Balot’s massive body was being dragged along, carving a wide, deep trench in the scorched earth like a tattered sack.

The Fire of Life of this Abyssal Demon had been completely extinguished.

Its enormous, toad-like head was twisted at an unnatural angle. Its lower jaw was completely shattered, and its cloudy yellow eyes had lost all their light.

Its dark, warty skin was covered with dozens of precise and deep sword wounds, each one cutting straight to the bone.

In the center of its chest, a bowl-sized hole pierced through its thick torso.

The edges were charred black, as if seared by extreme heat. Shattered bone fragments and dried demon blood were faintly visible inside.

As it was dragged, Balot’s corpulent body twitched intermittently—the final spasms before its Abyssal Power dissipated completely.

A thick stench of sulfur emanated from the corpse, mixing with the smell of blood and hanging heavy in the air.

"It seems..."

The old King stopped a few paces in front of Roland. He let go of the corpse, allowing the massive body to thud heavily to the ground.

Then, he raised his weary but still sharp eyes to Roland, the corner of his mouth twisting into an almost ferocious grin.

"These old bones of mine... aren’t ready to fall apart just yet."

"His Majesty Morne..."

Seeing this, Roland’s brow furrowed slightly. Just as he was about to step forward to check on Morne’s condition, the ball of light coalescing into Anno’s face suddenly shot past him, lunging straight for Morne.

Compared to when it had faced Roland, the malice radiating from this Soul Fragment suddenly soared to new heights.

The hatred was so thick it was almost tangible. Even the heavily injured Morne could feel it clearly.

It caused the old King’s clouded eyes to sharpen abruptly, and he instinctively tightened his grip on his sword’s hilt.

Perhaps due to the sheer intensity of its resentment, the ball of light, which had been radiating malice silently, began to emit a strange, crackling static, like a warped radio signal.

At the same time, the once-blurry face gradually solidified, and its lips began to move violently, as if silently screaming something.

Roland’s brows knitted tightly. With a shift of his will, his Animal Companion Trait quietly activated.

The next moment, the distorted sound waves coalesced in Roland’s Perception, transforming into clear, venomous human words.

Every word seemed to be forced out from between clenched teeth, dripping with an icy hatred directed squarely at Morne.

"Morne... you mutt of unknown origin... You think you’re worthy of the throne?"

Anno’s light-form flickered violently, his distorted face filled with bone-deep hatred.

"The blood in your veins is nothing but the unacknowledged, illegitimate issue of some former king’s indulgence... You can’t even say for sure which king was your father! You grew up scrambling to survive in the Shadow, and the Royal Family never gave you a shred of care!"

The voice from the ball of light grew increasingly shrill and piercing, as if it were screaming with all the Power of its soul.

"It wasn’t until you were an adult that you suddenly appeared before everyone, as if you’d popped out of a rock... If it weren’t for ’that calamity’... if it hadn’t devoured nearly the entire royal bloodline and pushed Golden Valley to the brink... how could the throne, this Authority, have fallen into the hands of a mutt like you, with your questionable bloodline!"

This venomous accusation, like a flurry of invisible blades, reached Roland’s ears clearly, causing his expression to falter.

’An illegitimate son... unacknowledged and not raised by the Royal Family... only appeared as an adult... and inherited the throne because of a calamity...’

After quickly piecing these fragments of information together in his mind, Roland’s gaze involuntarily turned to Morne, who was on guard due to the appearance of Anno’s soul.

He had originally thought that a powerful Monarch like Morne must have been carefully groomed by the Golden Valley Royal Family to inherit the throne as a matter of course.

He never expected... that such a convoluted past was hidden behind it all.

While Roland was lost in thought, Morne’s clouded eyes finally recognized the nature of the twisted ball of light.

A complex expression flickered across his wrinkled face. He looked away from Anno’s face, contorted with venomous hatred, and turned to Roland, sighing heavily.

"This is... Anno’s soul, isn’t it..."

The old King’s voice was hoarse and weary.

"I once promised his grandfather that I would look after this child... I never imagined it would come to this."

Before he could finish his sentence, the ball of light erupted with a piercing shriek.

In Roland’s ears, that shriek transformed into clear words.

"Hypocrisy! You sanctimonious hypocrite!"

This cry, filled with despair and hatred, seemed to exhaust its last bit of strength.

As the echo trembled in the air, Anno’s light-form began to turn transparent, slowly dissipating like mist in the morning sun.

It finally dissolved into specks of faint light, melting completely into the scorched air.

Morne watched silently in the direction the light had vanished, saying nothing for a long time.

After a moment of silence, Morne shifted his gaze from where Anno had disappeared to the massive crater of scorched earth ahead, leveled by Roland’s Dragon’s Breath.

A teasing expression appeared on his wrinkled face. His voice, though hoarse, carried a rare hint of ease.

"It seems these old bones of mine really can’t keep up with the times."

He shook his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over Roland’s charred right arm.

"Young people these days, always making such a huge ruckus."

Hearing this, Roland merely twitched the corner of his mouth.

After flexing his still-stinging arm, he said in a low voice,

"His Majesty Morne, now is not the time to relax."

The smile on Morne’s face gradually faded. Just as he was about to nod in response, both of their bodies suddenly jolted.

An indescribable chill crept up their spines without warning.

It wasn’t a change in temperature, but something deeper.

It felt as if the very foundations of the world were being shaken, the fabric of space silently twisting.

A hair-raising hum filled the air, low-pitched yet penetrating to the bone.

Roland and Morne exchanged a grave look, each seeing the same warning in the other’s eyes.

The moment Morne opened his mouth to speak, the sky above the distant Golden Ears City suddenly darkened.

It wasn’t that clouds were blocking the sun; the light itself was being devoured by some kind of power.

A pitch-black fissure, visible to the naked eye, appeared out of thin air like a crack in a mirror, then rapidly spread.

Immediately after, the entire sky began to twist and rotate, forming a gigantic vortex that sucked in all surrounding light.

A deafening tearing sound was clearly audible even from such a great distance, as if the entire world were wailing in agony.

The ground began to tremble violently. Even standing at the edge of the scorched earth, the two of them could feel the unsettling tremors beneath their feet.

A gale suddenly howled from the direction of Golden Ears City, kicking up clouds of sand and stone. It carried a nauseating stench of sulfur and a certain... indescribable burnt smell.

Before either of them could react, an invisible ripple erupted from Golden Ears City as its epicenter.

Wherever it passed, the solid formations of human soldiers were struck as if by a giant hammer. Shields shattered, Warriors fell, and the entire battlefield was thrown into utter chaos.

Even more shocking were the Demons.

One moment they were slaughtering each other madly; the next, it was as if the very basis of their existence had been erased. Their bodies dissipated silently like smoke in the wind, not even leaving behind a trace of ash.

Roland’s vision began to blur, his consciousness receding like the tide.

In the last moment before he was completely plunged into Darkness, he forced his heavy eyelids open and gazed at the distorted sky...

There, in the center of the rift, a massive eye slowly opened.

Its pale, vertical pupil was as cold as primordial Ice, and within it swirled the light of dying and rebirthing stars.

Under its gaze, the shattered space around it began to repair itself as if being rewound, and the distorted light returned to Order.

At the same time, an ancient and majestic whisper, as if crossing infinite Space-Time, echoed directly in the depths of Roland’s fracturing consciousness.

"Trespasser... expelled. Timeline... corrected. Boundary... reforged."

Following this whisper, the ghastly spatial rifts above Golden Ears City began to mend at a visible rate, as if an unseen hand were smoothing out the world’s scars.

And then, endless Darkness completely devoured Roland’s consciousness.