Chapter 388: Absolute Chaos [3]

Chapter 388: Chapter 388: Absolute Chaos [3]

Chapter 388 – Absolute Chaos [3]

At the same time, standing atop a small mountain peak, Cassius watched the raging, devouring fire in the distance.

No one needed to tell him this was one of the three bombs he’d obtained through the Origin Store, the same bombs created by his ancestor, Albert Desdemona.

He’d given one to Sarah for her own use, and if she’d used it...

’...then it means it’s time for me to move too,’ Cassius thought, smiling. He wore a white suit, holding a black cane streaked with silver.

He pulled out his sect’s Earth mask and put it on. Instantly, his entire aura shifted, as though he’d become someone else entirely.

The mask kept anything about him from being recognizable, his white hair included.

Once ready, Cassius’s body dissolved into golden plasma, shooting forward towards the battlefield.

"Praise the Queen."

...

The Tier Four bomb’s explosion had caught everyone on that battlefield completely off guard.

That level of destructive power was nearly impossible to contain in a single object, which made it extraordinarily rare to obtain.

Yet someone had used one, right there.

Mountains on every side had burned to ash, the entire area flattened, nothing left standing except blood, ash, and, undoubtedly, death.

The damage could have been far worse still, had the faceless masked woman and Omar not worked to dampen its power.

Scarlet and the Dragon Hunter were, luckily, far enough from the blast. But even the shockwave and heat that reached them gave Scarlet a decisive edge.

That fight was ending soon.

Back at the heart of the destruction, Omar lay sprawled on the ground, body scorched, coughing up blood.

More than half his body had burned, his skin peeling away. On his right side, near the flank, sat a tattoo of a fang, long and sharp.

He lifted his head with great effort, ears ringing violently. His pink pig mask still covered his face, though the left side had cracked, exposing a stunned white eye, its pupil shaped like a clock.

’Tier Four... how?’ he wondered, mind swimming, coughing blood again.

He knew he’d only survived thanks to the emergency artifact every high-ranking member of Fangs carried.

A one-time protection, triggered automatically only when death became truly imminent.

He’d never imagined needing it on this mission.

But it was spent now, and he could still faintly sense the faceless masked woman’s presence, her death energy still lingering, though far weaker than before.

A Tier Four was simply that dangerous.

Omar winced, ears still ringing with pain.

He scanned his surroundings; there was nothing but fire, still clinging stubbornly to the scorched earth. He wondered briefly whether Horus had survived, before the sound of approaching footsteps, crunching over ash, broke his train of thought.

He turned towards it and saw a woman in a spotless white dress, walking unhurried in his direction.

Her face was hidden behind a strange mask, one that seemed to hold the entire essence of the moon. Shadows seemed to slither at the edges of her presence.

His chest tightened.

Omar stared at the mask’s center, spotting a sigil — two demonic horns above a grinning mouth.

’Who...?’ Omar wheezed, watching the woman crouch in front of him and pry the black box, holding the artifact, from his tightly clenched hand.

"Who are—!"

Sarah drove her heel into Omar’s skull, cracking it, knocking him unconscious. He’d be dead within 20 minutes without treatment.

Sarah briefly considered finishing him off entirely, but decided securing the artifact mattered more than wasting time here.

She glanced around the ruined, still-burning battlefield, wondering if Meadow was safe, then turned and sprinted deeper into the Hushsight Domain.

But Sarah barely made it five steps before bony hands burst from the ground, seized her legs, and slammed her face-first into the dirt.

She groaned, pain lancing through her face.

"Where do you think you’re going with our artifact?" the faceless masked woman said, materializing suddenly like a wraith, murder thick in her voice.

Wounded, her essence badly depleted, she knew she needed to secure the artifact and leave, immediately.

More bony hands erupted from the earth at that thought, pinning down a struggling Sarah with all her strength.

"Die," the faceless woman said, aiming her death-touched finger at Sarah.

But the attack never landed as two fire spirits appeared beside her face and struck first.

One wielded a burning spear the size of a grown man, while the other set fire to the blood coursing through the faceless woman’s veins.

Both hits landed. The faceless woman shrieked, wrath and disbelief tangled in the sound.

The spear cracked her mask near the cheek, tore into her skin, drawing blood before exploding outward.

Her burning blood weakened her further, nearly dropping her to her knees, blood streaming down her mask.

At the same time, a third spirit appeared beside Sarah and burned away the bony hands pinning her.

"Run!" Première told Sarah. Sarah triggered one of Meadow’s teleportation artifacts and vanished, reappearing kilometers away, crashing to the ground.

She scrambled up immediately and ran with everything she had.

Meanwhile, the faceless woman’s aura surged further, undead shrieks echoing around her, death saturating the air.

The triplet spirits’ bodies trembled, and they retreated back into the Spirit World, shaken.

The faceless woman’s senses stretched outward, and she instantly located Sarah fleeing in the distance.

"I’ll kill every single one of you," she screamed, her body tearing through the air like a bullet, obliterating everything in her path, closing on Sarah, whose heart pounded with terror.

Death was coming.

...

Meanwhile, the explosion had thrown both Diaila and Mr. Green apart, the shockwave hot enough to scorch their skin.

It had been maddening.

But Mr. Green had been closest to the blast, and so the first to react out of pure survival instinct.

Now the faceless creature lay sprawled on the ground, bleeding green from every side. He now carried triple the wounds — Diaila’s, tripled, plus his own — leaving him in agony unlike anything he’d ever known.

He groaned and grunted, fighting to steady his breathing, just to survive.

Diaila had no intention of letting that happen.

Her face was streaked with blood, part of her left cheek burned away entirely. Her clothes hung in tatters as she forced herself upright.

The dagger Mr. Green had driven into her stomach was still buried deep inside.

She gritted her teeth and yanked it free, blood spraying, crying out in pain.

Diaila gripped the dagger tight in her trembling hands and crawled towards Mr. Green on the ground. He spotted her approaching and started to speak:

"You... what are you..." his words caught in his throat as Diaila raised the dagger and drove it straight down into him.

Mr. Green screamed in agony. To Diaila, that scream sounded like a lullaby.

Tears streaked her face, pain scorching every part of her body, eyes burning red with hatred.

She bit her lip until blood ran down her chin, and began stabbing Mr. Green’s face, again and again.

STAB! STAB! STAB!

"YOU—!"

"DIE! DIE! DIE!" Diaila screamed, like something possessed, stabbing without pause until Mr. Green stopped moving entirely.

But she couldn’t stop. Her rage wasn’t spent. Her hatred still burned. So, in a desperate attempt to quiet her shattered mind, she tore him open, thoughts drowning in nothing but hatred and fury.

The scene turned deeply disturbing as she pulled his intestines and organs free, ripping them apart like some feral beast.

"DIE! DIE! DIE!"

...

Mr. Green’s death, combined with the Black Knight’s transformation into a full Commander of Death, dealt a heavy blow to the faceless keeper who’d orchestrated this entire operation.

That weakened state made absorbing Meadow’s identity into his own significantly harder.

The young tycoon could feel it. Terrified, desperate, she scrambled for any way out of the situation.

"Don’t resist," the faceless keeper said, his face melting over Meadow’s. "Don’t resist, Meadow! Don’t fight me!"

Meadow gritted her teeth, hating, in that moment, with everything in her, the fact she had no combat skill of her own.

Here she was, powerless against a creature trying to devour her very identity. That thought stoked a deep, seething resentment towards her own power, a resentment that had lived in her since the day she’d first awakened it.

In a world where raw power decided everything, being born with the ability to simply tell truth from lies felt almost unbearable.

She’d tried convincing herself it wasn’t a real problem. That her artifacts would always be enough.

But even artifacts had limits. Just like now.

Meadow stared at the monster’s dreadful, melting face, that same melting substance pressing into her body, as though trying to fill her with anything other than herself.

The sensation was chilling, and Meadow felt herself being slowly devoured. Something inside her snapped in that instant, exhausted by her own weakness.

She refused to keep accepting the current limits of her power, not after choosing to walk this path alongside Cassius.

Cassius was always in danger. And she wanted to actually help him.

He was her closest friend. And he’d agreed to this dangerous mission, in part, for her own selfish wish to obtain an artifact.

’Truth... truth... truth...’

"Don’t resist! DON’T RESIST ME!"

Meadow, in that life-or-death moment, sank into a cold, absolute focus. The state of the zone.

She turned her Truth power over and over in her mind, holding onto her identity as Miss Sun, her ambition to become a bestselling author, her love for a clueless man, and finally, her most precious friendship.

Bringing all of it together, a light began to glow deep inside her, as she forced into existence...

[The Keeper of Truth smiles upon his chosen one.]

"...Ultimate Skill:"

The faceless monster froze in shock at Meadow’s words. He looked into the one eye of hers still untouched, and saw a blinding golden light, sun-bright, glowing deep within.

"...Game of Truths."

—End of Chapter 388—