On the ash-gray wasteland, the wind moaned.
This patchwork of an abandoned plane was, in essence, nothing more than the wreckage of dozens of worlds whose resources had been completely drained—endless gray-white dust and the occasional exposed rock, nothing else.
Yet at this mont, in so corner of this maddeningly monotonous wasteland, an extrely incongruous sight had appeared.
Black.
A “forest” composed of countless sharp black tal spires grew wantonly across the gray-white earth.
Each tal spire stood over ten ters tall, pitch-black from tip to base, its surface covered in dense spiral patterns and razor-sharp barbs that glead with an ominous, ghostly light under the dim sky.
They crowded densely together, intertwining and interlocking to form a fearso black jungle more than ten kiloters in diater.
This was clearly no work of nature.
Any experienced wizard could tell at a glance that it was the lingering aftermath of so large-scale witchcraft—most likely a “tal proliferation” or “matter transmutation” spell capable of forcibly converting the surrounding soil and stone into specific tallic structures and sustaining them for a considerable period.
At the very center of the forest, atop the thickest and tallest tal spire, a wizard of the Chaos Secret Cult was busy at work.
He wore a deep-crimson robe that seed woven from congealed blood, his face crisscrossed with countless sutured lines.
The loose ends of those threads still twitched faintly, as though alive.
Right now he was humming a tuneless, rasping song while fiddling with the corpse of a Noren Workshop wizard.
The corpse was in terrible condition.
Its limbs had been twisted into unnatural angles, the chest cavity pried open, internal organs exposed yet not fully detached.
The skin was covered in countless fine cuts, each one deliberately severing a blood vessel.
Both eyes had been gouged out; in their sockets were stuffed two slowly rotating black orbs.
The mouth had been torn all the way to the ears, frozen in an eternal, silent scream of agony.
Yet the Chaos Secret Cult wizard still seed dissatisfied.
He adjusted the corpse’s posture, trying to “hang” it from one of the horizontal barbs at the very top of the spire.
But rigor mortis had already set in, making repositioning difficult. He was forced to snap the joints again and again, forcibly reshaping the body.
Crack.
Another crisp sound of breaking bone.
“Tch, what a hassle…” the Chaos Secret Cult wizard muttered, his voice like sandpaper scraping. “Even dead, you can’t make things easy.”
At the edge of the forest stood another figure.
A wizard of the Tower of Annihilation, wrapped head to toe in a gray-white skin-tight robe, his face concealed behind a featureless pure-white mask.
Right now he was frowning, watching his deranged ally’s “masterpiece” in the center.
If the two factions were not currently allied, he would have seriously considered purifying this madman on the spot.
“Hey.”
He finally couldn’t hold back any longer. His voice ca muffled and stifled through the mask:
“Is this really… okay?”
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard didn’t even turn his head, still busy arranging the corpse:
“What’s wrong with it? Such a beautiful piece of art. Once I hang it up and carve a few emotion-type runes on it, the waves of resentnt it emits will carry dozens of kiloters… Heh, I can’t wait to see the expressions on the faces of any Noren Workshop trash who happen to pass by.”
“That’s not what I ant.” The Tower of Annihilation wizard’s voice grew several degrees colder. “What I an is… aren’t you worried that blatantly torturing and desecrating an enemy wizard’s corpse like this—and deliberately turning it into such an obvious landmark—might completely enrage Noren Workshop?”
“If they get furious enough to send an elite squad specifically to hunt you down, I’ll end up getting dragged into it too.”
Crack.
Another bone snapped.
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard finally stopped moving and slowly turned his head.
Beneath the sutured lines, his eyes showed an almost childlike puzzlent:
“Enrage them? Wouldn’t that be even better?”
He grinned, revealing a mouth full of jagged, deliberately filed teeth like a saw:
“Then they’ll co looking for on their own. I won’t have to waste effort hunting them down outside. Much more convenient.”
The Tower of Annihilation wizard was silent for two seconds.
Then he rolled his eyes—though the mask hid any expression.
“You lunatic…” he muttered under his breath, “haven’t you considered they might send a sixth-ring wizard? What will you do then? Get on your knees and beg for rcy?”
“Sixth-ring?” The Chaos Secret Cult wizard cocked his head, as though seriously considering it. “Hm… if it’s one specialized in direct frontal assault, that could indeed be a bit troubleso. However…”
A cunning glint flashed through his eyes:
“My ‘Forest of Agony tal’ isn’t just for show. Besides…”
He never finished the sentence.
A sudden change occurred.
The Tower of Annihilation wizard’s expression abruptly shifted: “Enemy attack!!!”
Those were the only two words he managed to shout before his body instinctively hurled itself to the left. At the sa ti, his hands flashed through rapid seals in front of his chest. Three layers of gray-white shields instantly unfolded, stacking over one another to envelop his entire body.
Almost in the sa instant…
The sky lit up.
A pillar of blazing white light more than three ters in diater descended like a spear of judgnt, piercing straight down through a gap in the lead-gray clouds and striking with pinpoint accuracy at the very center of the black tal forest.
BOOM!!!
The explosive roar appeared for only an instant before vanishing.
Or rather, the sound was completely drowned out by an even more violent release of energy.
Where the white light struck, everything began to lt, vaporize, and annihilate.
The black tal spires, upon contact with the white light, jumped instantly from solid to plasma state, erupting outward as boiling tallic vapor.
The ground vitrified under the extre heat and pressure, then continued to sink and lt, forming an ever-expanding lava crater.
A shockwave spread outward in a spherical pattern centered on the point of impact.
Wherever it passed, the tal spires that had escaped direct hits snapped and flew like straw pushed over by an invisible giant hand.
Gray-white dust was hurled skyward, forming a dust wall hundreds of ters high that surged outward like a tsunami.
The entire attack lasted quite so ti.
When the white light finally dissipated, the black tal forest that had once spanned ten kiloters in diater had been transford into a searing lava basin.
Magma roiled at the bottom of the pit, radiating dark crimson light and scorching heat waves.
And at the very center of the strike…
“Cough… cough cough…”
A violent coughing fit rose from within the lava.
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s current state was utterly miserable.
More than half of his deep-crimson robe had been incinerated, exposing blackened, cracked skin crisscrossed with sutured lines.
His left arm had vanished completely from the shoulder; at the stump, no blood flowed—only unstable dark-red energy sparks flickered.
In the final mont he had deliberately severed the limb, transferring the majority of the damage to the discarded part.
His right leg was gone below the knee. He half-knelt on the scorching, already cooling lava surface; the exposed flesh fused stickily to the searing ground, his body swaying on the verge of collapse.
The sutured lines on his face writhed frantically, attempting to repair the damaged tissue, but the rate of repair could not keep up with the continuous burning and energy corrosion.
Yet even in such a state, he was still laughing.
A twisted, perverse smile that mingled pain with manic exhilaration.
He lowered his head and looked at what he still clutched tightly in his remaining right hand.
It was half a charred remnant of the Noren Workshop wizard’s corpse.
In the instant the white light descended, he had used the body as a “substitute death dium” to absorb part of the attack’s power.
Now the half-corpse had been carbonized beyond recognition; it seed that the slightest touch would reduce it to ash.
“Really went all out, huh…”
The Chaos Secret Cult wizard raised his head, looking up at the sky, laughing hoarsely:
“You don’t even care about your own comrade’s remains? You Noren Workshop ‘gentlen’?”
In the sky above, two figures slowly descended.
Both were wizards of Noren Workshop, clad in standard gray combat robes embroidered with the Noren Workshop emblem on the chest.
Both were fifth-ring—one male, one female. They hovered roughly fifty ters above the lava basin, coldly looking down at the enemy below.
Hearing the Chaos Secret Cult wizard’s taunt, the male wizard gave a cold snort:
“As long as we kill you, that will serve as vengeance for our comrade. A corpse… is rely leftover material.”
“Oh? So ruthless?” The Chaos Secret Cult wizard licked his cracked lips, a dangerous gleam flashing in his eyes. “I like it.”
Before he finished speaking…
“Flank!”
The female wizard suddenly shouted sharply.
Almost simultaneously with her cry, a gray-white “annihilation beam” that seed to devour all light shot out from the shadows at the edge of the lava basin, aid straight at the male wizard.
It was the Tower of Annihilation wizard!
He had escaped the core zone the instant the white light fell and had lain in wait at the periter for precisely this opportunity to ambush!
The male wizard reacted extrely quickly. His body twisted sharply in midair; his left hand swept forward in a virtual arc, instantly conjuring a pale-blue water-curtain shield.
But the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s attack was clearly not sothing an ordinary water curtain could block.
Sizzle…
The mont the annihilation beam touched the water curtain, the shield vanished silently like pencil marks erased by a rubber—large sections simply ceased to exist.
The beam pierced through the gap and continued toward the male wizard’s body.
At the critical mont, the female wizard acted.
She raised her right hand. A tal disk engraved with complex runes flew from her sleeve, exploding in midair into countless fine golden threads that wove together into a large net, blocking the path of the annihilation beam.
The golden threads collided with the gray-white beam, producing a piercing screech.
The two forces locked in stalemate in the air, canceling each other out.
And taking advantage of that opening…
“Heh heh…”
From below ca the low, sinister laughter of the Chaos Secret Cult wizard.
His remaining right hand suddenly ford a strange gesture.
From his fingertip, a nearly invisible thread of dark red drifted out, silently sinking into the lava ground beneath.
Then he himself shot upward, charging straight toward the two wizards.
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