CHAPTER 721

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Mary kept her eyes tightly shut, repeatedly opening them again. As her hazy vision gradually brightened, the figure of Diphus became clearer.

"Ugh...!"

Examining Diphus' condition, Mary unconsciously covered her mouth.

There were eighteen fist-sized holes all over his body, and his lower body was twisted in the opposite direction. It was truly a hellish reality.

"Now, my sanity has returned..."

A single drop of blood trickled from Diphus' dry eyes.

He remembered how he had fallen into corruption and the atrocities he had committed after his corruption. And he knew what he had to do now, what he had to say to Mary.

"Your sanity has returned, you say? And you expect me to believe that I shouldn't kill you...?"

Mary alternated her gaze between the sword embedded in Diphus' hand and his eyes.

'Even this could be a trap set by the corrupted Diphus. But if he really has returned, what should I do...!'

Should she pull out the sword and stab Diphus again, or should she listen to his story? She couldn't grasp the situation.

"Mary... listen to me... If the curse is activated now, it's all over. And… Don't follow in my footsteps, keep fighting bravely, like the youngest."

Diphus struggled to continue speaking, then his pupils closed.

"Diphus oraboni!"

Mary quickly pressed her ear against Diphus' face and chest.

She could faintly feel his weak breath and heartbeat, and Mary immediately made up her mind.

'I have to save him for now. Even if he ends up dying again, I have to hear the reason why he did all this.'

If she couldn't hear directly from Diphus about the reason behind this nightmare, she had no confidence in living on, in not succumbing to despair.

The temporary alliance fleet was preparing to retreat.

'Signal Flare! I have to fire a rescue signal...!'

However, most of her belongings had been destroyed along with the viper. When she reached into her pocket to take out the pouch, all that came out were crushed pieces of paper and sand.

She shouted towards the sky several times, but her comrades couldn't hear her cries at all.

Under normal circumstances, her voice would resonate throughout the battlefield, but now she was too exhausted to even control her body.

Still, Mary desperately tried to lift Diphus and move, reaching out her hand to him several times before shaking her head.

Unless a mage like Valeria sealed him or a healing mage on the level of a Holy King helped, it was impossible to move Diphus while keeping him alive.

In the end, all Mary could do was wait for someone from her allies to come.

She fervently prayed that Diphus' breath wouldn't cease until then.

***

"You're quite tenacious, Prophet," Jin said.

The battle between Jin and the Prophet was reaching its climax on the other side of the battlefield.

[Kuu…]

The massive form of the Prophet, which once filled the entire Rikalton Castle, was now nowhere to be seen, replaced only by flames that engulfed everything.

Jin was in the midst of purifying the remnants of chaos with eternal flames.

There were only five chunks of chaos left.

With each slice of his blue blade, Jin's anger manifested, and the Prophet let out agonizing screams.

"But now, it seems we're finally reaching the end."

Three, two, one piece of chaos disappeared.

[Stop... s-s-stop!]

"Ever since I learned of your existence, I've been waiting for this day."

Eternal flames surged like a typhoon from all directions, representing Jin's anger.

All of that eternal flames were replacing the remnants of the Prophet, the manifestation of her true self.

Three, two, the last one.

Jin trampled on the remaining chunk of chaos and opened his eyes wide.

"It's finally over."

Thud!

The blue blade that rippled with azure light struck down the last piece of chaos.

Then, the chunk of chaos shattered like glass, and sharp fragments scattered. But those fragments were not made of chaos; they were composed of another power.

'Shadow force?'

Shadow force.

In the past, Dox saw the shadow force of the Prophet at Rikalton and mistakenly believed that she was somehow connected to Jin.

Jin, like Dox at that time, was momentarily taken aback, but only for a moment.

He had long been aware of some relationship between shadow force and chaos.

[Don't you wonder how I can manipulate shadow force? 12th flagbearer. Let's make a deal! If you release me now, I will work for you in the future.]

"Prophet."

Interrupting the Prophet's words, Jin turned his blade, caught in chaos.

"There are humans in this world who never fall into corruption. Such people would never make a deal with you, and I am one of them. The reason why you can manipulate shadow force? It's obvious. Solderet must have blessed Helluram in the past, or perhaps Helluram usurped his authority."

[Aaaargh! You will regret refusing me, even if you can make me suffer, you cannot destroy me! That is an impossible task!]

Indeed, the last chunk of chaos from the Prophet did not disappear even as it burned and shattered into pieces.

However, Jin silently amplified his eternal flames.

While he didn't know the criteria for the Prophet's "destruction," a clear sensation came from the blade. The sensation of eternal flames devouring the Prophet's vitality.

There was only one thing that Jin was worried about.

If Diphus died before eternal flames could finish off the Prophet, the situation would be completely reversed.

[Boong!]

"Jin!"

A white dimensional portal opened, and Syris and Valeria appeared once again. The two had come to Jin in haste while searching for remaining allies on the battlefield.

It was because of the marble.

Valeria had brought the marble, the "Helluram Record Device," which Jin had obtained from Joshua's villa in the past. Before going to the Kaldran Snowfield, Valeria discovered that the Prophet had come from that marble.

So, in this operation, Valeria had brought the marble to further investigate it, and she had just finished the analysis.

When Valeria took out the marble from her pocket and handed it to Jin, the Prophet's resistance against eternal flames rapidly destabilized.

Unlike when they first obtained the marble at the villa, the marble in Valeria's hand was now tinged with a purplish hue.

[Oh, how did you get that, you bastards...!]

The Prophet couldn't even imagine that the marble would suddenly appear.

She had no idea that Joshua had possessed a shadow force marble or that it had been taken from him by Jin in the past.

After Joshua's fall, he never mentioned anything about the marble to the Prophet.

If he had revealed that such a thing had happened, it was obvious how he would be treated.

"Jin, destroy it with your Shadow Sword."

Valeria revealed that the marble was a connection between the sealed Helluram and human world.

As long as this connection remained, even if the Prophet's physical body disappeared, her soul would return to the marble.

The reason the Prophet said, "You cannot destroy me," became clear.

Jin accepted the marble.

[Give it to me! How dare you destroy something that should not be destroyed!]

"We need to go find Diphus immediately. Right now, he is barely clinging to life to stop the curse."

Jin's pupils widened.

"He's holding on? To stop the curse."

"It seems like his sanity has returned. It can't be just a whim."

"...I understand."

Once again, a white dimensional portal opened, and Jin tightly clenched the purplish shadow force marble in his hand.

[No, please. Mother, Mother! Can you hear my voice...?]

Soon, Jin threw the marble into the air, unleashing his Shadow Sword 1st technique, Soul Slash.

[Ah, Aaah! Mother!]

Jin swung his Shadow Sword, shattering the marble into countless pieces.

The purple fragments scattered like droplets of blood, and finally, Jin can see Prophet dying in front of his eyes

Grrroooar!

The chaos consumed by eternal flames dispersed in all directions, annihilating itself. The Prophet's voice could no longer be heard, and in that moment, Jin was enveloped in an indescribable intense intuition.

He felt a piercing sensation in his heart, a direct intuition that just now, somewhere on the battlefield, Diphus had taken his last breath, succumbing to death's embrace.

The power of the evil god that Diphus possessed was ultimately not restored to Rosa.

Instead, the power of the evil god that remained with Diphus after his death was running rampant. A gigantic black sphere was emerging above Diphus' lifeless body.

The chaos forming the sphere no longer enhanced Diphus as before, nor did it infect people nearby with corruption. It simply caused a tremendous explosion. The chaos burst forth from the sphere incessantly, as if hundreds of volcanoes were erupting simultaneously.

Jin immediately rushed towards the sphere. If he left it alone, the retreating allies would be slaughtered en masse.

The first person to come into Jin's view upon reaching the sphere was Mary. She was kneeling in front of Diphus' corpse, sobbing.

"Save oraboni... We need to take him back... Ah..."

Someone's breath brushed past her like a gentle breeze.

Diphus' body disintegrated into particles.

Mary absentmindedly reached out her hand towards the dispersing particles, then collapsed and slumped forward.

In front of her, a white dimensional portal and a steel gate opened, revealing Valeria and Orgal.

Orgal appeared fatigued, as expected. He had been interfering with the evil god all this time, just as Jin had anticipated.

[Jin, now it's only you and me left. If we can stop the explosion and escape, the mission will be a success.]

Jin struck a piece of chaos that protruded from the sphere towards the opposite sky. Each piece possessed the power to inflict fatal damage on the fleet.

Meanwhile, Valeria examined the remaining records left by Diphus in the spot where he disappeared. She wondered if there might be any records that could be relayed to Jin and Mary later.

Mort took Mary.

Silently, Syris and Valeria stood in front of the white dimensional portal, heading towards the fleet. Jin nodded, as if urging them to go.

"Valeria, relay this to Veradin. Instead of firing a signal flare, have Kozec's main cannon fire above the sphere. The explosion might obscure the signal flare."

"Understood. Return safely."

As Mort disappeared, Jin and Orgal threw themselves towards the power of the evil god that had turned into a sphere.

It was about ten minutes later that Kozec's main cannon passed over the sphere.

Before crossing the steel gate, Jin briefly looked back at the spot where Diphus had vanished.

If Diphus had not returned until the very end, if he had not been able to resist death until the Prophet's destruction...

This mission would have never succeeded.

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