Chapter 235: Just in Time

The change did not go unnoticed by anyone.

Beasts, humans, or Hollows alike, all of them noticed the enormous pillar of light falling upon the Fallen Lands. All of them felt a strange presence entering their world, and all of them instinctively began to fear that something immense was about to happen.

Whether that something would prove good or bad remained to be seen.

In the Fallen Lands, in what had once been a prosperous empire and now lay in near total ruin, with barely a trace of it left standing, there was a crater, enormous, nearly the size of a small nation. It was the consequence of the final battle against the Abyss Gods during the fourth cycle, and it also marked the very spot where the capital of the Kingdom of Death had once stood.

For a long time now, it had been nothing more than an extremely dense concentration of void energy, one that kept every living creature at bay and made the Fallen Lands even more dangerous than they already were.

It had been this way for centuries. But today, finally, something changed.

The center of the crater was struck directly by the pillar of dark light. The pillar's size grew steadily, its diameter soon expanding to match the entire crater itself.

From within the pillar, something enormous and slightly irregular could be seen descending at tremendous speed. Those below a certain rank couldn't perceive the phenomenon at all, but those at Paragon rank noticed it, and those at Demi God rank and above could see it almost clearly.

It was the Lost City of the Dead, descending exactly onto the spot from which it had once been uprooted, a city that almost no one remembered anymore, and that even those who did remember had no idea where to find. Until today.

Evangeline's eyes, the first to recognize the familiar city returning, filled with a swirl of complicated emotions, because she understood exactly what it meant.

Her Master was coming back.

As if to confirm that very thought, a powerful roar echoed across the entire continent, a roar that came from the pillar of light itself. A moment later, the figure of a colossal dragon, made of deep violet smoke, could be seen bursting out of the pillar and circling around it, as though overjoyed to have returned.

The sight of such a phenomenon filled the six kings of the human territories with terror. They halted their own battles just to witness the scene, difficult as it was to make out from such a distance. Even those among them who had never seen it with their own eyes had heard more than enough about it.

It was one of the Three Calamities, the Crawling Plague.

The missing Calamity.

Each of the Three Calamities was a source of terror for everyone.

With one of them having already returned some time ago, the six kingdoms had remained on constant alert. Only recently had they become somewhat more at ease upon realizing that the Calamity was on their side.

Now, seeing another of the Three Calamities emerge from nowhere filled all of them with complicated emotions.

They did not know what its intentions were.

Was it an enemy?

Or would it be an ally, like the other Calamity?

That weighed heavily on the hearts of the kings. But unlike them, Evangeline, watching Venom's radiant figure glide effortlessly around the pillar of light, seemed filled with nothing but joy.

Among the Three Calamities, Venom was the youngest. And though no blood ties bound the three of them together, they were, in every way that mattered, a family, and within that family, Venom was the baby sister of them all.

Seeing her little sister alive and well, finally returning after several centuries, filled her with more happiness than she had felt in ages.

That joy, however, wasn't shared by the Abyss Gods, who watched the scene with complicated expressions, something between disbelief and rage.

"This... this can't be. How did it come out of the Abyss?" one of them said, sensing that the far end of the pillar was connected to the Abyss itself. And yet that shouldn't have been possible, no living being lacking void energy should be able to survive there. And yet that city was full of countless living beings, almost none of whom carried any trace of void energy at all.

What's more, the city's condition was far too pristine for it to have possibly remained within the Abyss all this time. And yet, that was exactly what had happened, leaving all of them confused. Or nearly all of them.

The fetus and the humanoid Abyss God were not nearly as surprised. Quite the opposite, their eyes sharpened as they sensed a painfully familiar presence radiating from that city.

"It's him…" the fetus said, its voice trembling faintly, memories surfaced of how it had been sealed inside that dimension for so long, and how it had only barely escaped with its life when it fled from there not long ago.

The humanoid being nodded as well. It was the oldest of the Abyss Gods, second only to the Supreme of the Abyss itself. It was the one being that had lived through every single cycle of this world, and in every one of them, it had either not participated at all, or had managed to flee before things turned fatal.

It knew exactly who that presence in the city belonged to. And it was precisely because it knew that it, too, sensed that things were about to go horribly wrong for them.

"We need to warn him," the fetus finally said, clearly referring to the Supreme of the Abyss, understanding there was no way they could possibly face this on their own. But the humanoid being didn't agree, simply saying,

"There's no need. He's almost certainly already noticed. Now it's only a matter of how long it will take before he awakens from his slumber and can finally enter this world," it said.

Those words, meant to sound reassuring to the other Abyss Gods, only masked one simple truth, that they were in grave danger, and if the Supreme of the Abyss failed to return in time, they were almost certainly doomed.

Every other Abyss God present understood this immediately, whether old or newly formed, and they all realized they needed to act now, if only to buy themselves more time.

The humanoid Abyss God turned its attention back to Evangeline, who met its gaze with a provocative smile, and raised its hand.

"Our encounter was brief, but sufficient to pass judgment on you. Since you've rejected our mercy, you may only perish now," it said, pointing a finger toward her.

A small sphere of dark light formed at its fingertip, deceptively simple in appearance, yet containing an extreme concentration of void energy. It was an attack far more powerful than the previous one, one that left no possibility of survival.

For the first time since the battle had begun, Evangeline felt an overwhelming, almost certain sense of mortal danger. She realized, with total clarity, that there was no way she could avoid this attack.

In the same instant she reached that realization, the attack launched and arrived before her, giving her not even enough time to think about defending herself.

But right at that very moment, something else happened as well, not here in Ashwick, but in the Fallen Lands, where the Lost City of the Dead had just touched down upon the ground it had once been torn from.

The moment the city landed, the atmosphere shifted.

Everything stopped.

Time itself seemed to hold its breath. In the sky, the colossal dragon made of violet smoke froze mid motion, suspended in midair as though time itself had seized it.

The leaves of the trees, still trembling in the wind an instant earlier, stopped halfway through their movement. Sounds faded away one after another, the distant clashes of battle echoing across the continent, the dragon's roar still spreading through the air, all of it simply vanishing into silence.

The Abyss God's attack, now only a breath away from Evangeline's body, stopped in midair.

A sphere of dark purple energy hung motionless in space, as though the world itself had simply refused to let it advance any further.

And it wasn't only her.

Every living being, in every corner of the world, including the four Abyss Gods who had been preparing to act, found themselves frozen, unable to move so much as a single muscle.

And it was in that very stillness that the air beside Evangeline seemed to twist and warp.

A silent fracture opened in space itself, and from it emerged a figure, tall, with long white hair, and golden eyes that seemed capable of uncovering any lie the world could hold.

Evan took in the scene before him, the suspended attack, the four Abyss Gods frozen like statues, and sighed. His eyes glowed faintly for a brief, barely perceptible instant.

"Seems like I got here just in time," he said, his voice calm, almost amused.

"Well then. Let's finish this quickly."