A blinding burst of radiance erupted, and the Witchcraft Array formed by the three spirits uniting shattered in an instant.
"Go!" Seizing the opening, Eugene and the leader grabbed
"Hiss! Hiss!"
The colossal phantom serpent roared in fury. Although it continued devouring stardust and even fragments of space, the Life Energy it generated had noticeably dwindled. The most direct manifestation was that the healing rate of the wound on Leylin's back had slowed considerably.
"Carlo!"
At that moment, their gaze fell upon Carlo, now under Leylin's control, and a sliver of despair surfaced on their face.
Under the gaze of the Eyes of Comorin, the witch had already been reduced to a limestone statue. Although a layer of soul energy still struggled against the encroachment of the petrification spell, Leylin's Eyes of Comorin had long since become the true Eyes of the Snake Emperor — its lethality had surged dramatically, and even a Radiant Moon
"Carlo!? So she's the wizard who lured me into the dreamscape? Excellent!"
Leylin hoisted the statue, and the Crimson Pendant radiated dazzling light.
"What do you think you're doing? If you dare lay a finger on Carlo, Lord Throne and I will never let you off!" Eugene screamed.
"Heh heh... At this point, there's no talk of letting anyone off. Don't treat me like a child — this level of deception is nothing but an insult! An insult to me!"
Leylin's voice was soft, yet it cut through the air like a shard of ice.
"And now I'm going to show you the price of provoking me! No matter who you are or who backs you, the only outcome is annihilation!"
Crack! Crack! Countless tiny arcs of light swept across, and Carlo's stone statue burst into fragments.
For a moment, both Eugene and the leader stood frozen in disbelief — they hadn't expected Leylin to be this powerful, nor his methods this ruthless.
"You dare... you dare..." The wizard leader's body trembled uncontrollably, clearly pushed to the absolute limit of fury.
"Did you think I would stop here?"
Leylin let out a cold laugh and issued a silent command: "Chip!"
[Ding! Soul fluctuations of the target captured. Initiating coordinated search for coordinates!]
In the Wizard world, there were simply far too many methods for creating clones and preserving one's life. This was especially true for Wizards at the Morning Star rank and above — virtually all of them possessed some means of guarding against their own demise.
Carloe naturally had a few Morning Star-level clones as well, serving as a final insurance policy of sorts.
But a Radiant Moon-level Wizard! Their True Spirit had already undergone a transformation. They had begun to develop the ability to eliminate all of an opponent's clones. And when combined with the Chip's search capabilities, this effect became even more formidable.
Yujin and the other Wizard leader watched as the True Spirit image behind Leylin — a cold, pale crescent moon — suddenly erupted into a wash of blood-red.
Then a horrifying massive claw, following the trajectory of Carloe's falling True Spirit, plunged into the void and seemed to reach somewhere far away.
From the depths of the unknown, a strange and eerie fluctuation rippled outward, and the expressions of Yujin and the others changed drastically.
"The Astral Plane! The Astral Plane has opened on its own to receive the True Spirit! What's going on? Did something go wrong with Carloe's True Spirit transfer?"
They couldn't help but regard Leylin with even more wariness.
Boom! Boom!
On the Central Continent, at virtually the same instant the massive claw appeared, one of Carloe's Morning Star clones simply collapsed to the ground with vacant, lifeless eyes, completely devoid of any trace of life energy.
At the same time, inside Carloe's Wizard Tower, a magical rune radiating green light shattered with an eerie snap, and the entire tower's formation spirit blared a piercing alarm: "Under unknown attack! Reserve clone destroyed!"
"A Wizard's True Spirit is unique! In truth, no matter how many clones one has, as long as the True Spirit is destroyed or cast into the Astral Plane, most other methods of self-preservation become meaningless…"
Of course, the transfer of a True Spirit was extremely rapid. Even a typical Radiant Moon Wizard, with the support of soul power, would find it very difficult to intercept and kill one.
But for Leylin, who had the Chip's assistance, none of this was particularly difficult.
"Word from headquarters — all of Carloe's clones and the spirit of the biochemical pool have been destroyed!"
A communication pulse flickered through the air, and the Wizard leader stared at Leylin with a grim expression.
When Carloe had first been killed, the anger he had displayed was actually somewhat exaggerated — he had been thinking of using it to lull Leylin into a false sense of security, and so on. But now, seeing that this person truly had the power to utterly annihilate a fellow Radiant Moon Wizard, a deep sense of dread stirred within him.
"Today, none of you are leaving!"
Standing in the interstitial void between worlds amid the endless sea of stars, Leylin clasped his hands behind his back, looking even more composed and assured than before.
"Killing technique — Comorin Snake Transformation!"
"Hiss hiss..." The terrifying ancient pressure descended, forcing the two Moonlight Wizards to retreat again and again.
A colossal serpent over a hundred thousand meters in length materialized before them, every scale on its body appearing utterly real, its eyes gleaming with intelligence, its bearing incomparably noble.
Compared to the previous Comorin Giant Snake, what Leylin had now transformed into was an ancient Tier 5 being — the sovereign of all Comorin Serpents, the Comorin Snake Emperor!
Pinned by the gaze of the Comorin Snake Emperor, Eugene and the wizard leader both broke into cold sweat.
An ancient Tier 5 creature — its terror actually surpassed that of most Moonlight Wizards. A sovereign-class being like this possessed a vast array of mysterious and fearsome abilities, making it a veritable slaughterer.
"Let's do this!" The leader and Eugene exchanged a glance, determination rising in both their eyes.
Dazzling light coalesced around them, and a terrifying, overwhelming aura radiated outward in turn.
"Ancient Tier 5 killing technique — Abyssal Lock!"
"Ancient Tier 5 killing technique — Spatial Cataclysm!"
Driven by Moonlight-level soul power, five innate wizardry arts fused together, and the devastating killing techniques were unleashed from their hands, surging toward the oncoming Comorin Snake Emperor.
"Petrifying Gaze! Toxic Domain!"
Terrifying petrifying rays shot forth from the Comorin Snake Emperor's eyes, striking into the mass of black energy before it.
A great deal of black gas turned to stone and fell away, but fresh black gas immediately regenerated, forming a terrifying scene like an abyss. A massive bronze lock burst forth from the phantom of that abyss.
On the other side, endless silver spatial currents gathered under the wizard's command, forming an even more terrifying spatial storm that swept the Comorin Snake Emperor into its vortex.
"Hiss hiss..." The Comorin Snake Emperor roared and hissed, its petrifying rays striking the massive lock head-on and briefly petrifying it. Then, with a sweep of its tail, the entire abyssal scene collapsed and the bronze lock vanished without a trace.
Just as Leylin was focused on dealing with the Abyssal Lock, the storm of Spatial Cataclysm had already engulfed the Comorin Snake Emperor.
The silver storm raged, tearing scales from the Comorin Snake Emperor one by one, exposing fresh, bleeding wounds beneath.
"Devour!" The Comorin Snake Emperor opened its maw toward the spatial currents, and a terrifying black hole materialized.
Vast quantities of silver spatial current were swallowed whole, and were rapidly converted into Life Energy, causing the wounds on the Comorin Snake Emperor to heal at an astonishing rate.
"It can even devour spatial storms! Monster! Monster!"
After witnessing firsthand that even a Fifth Order killing strike couldn't so much as faze Rein, the two Wizards immediately teetered on the brink of a complete breakdown.
They exchanged a glance, both already entertaining thoughts of fleeing, but how could Rein possibly give them that chance? In the blink of an eye, the Comorin Snake Emperor surged forward, engulfing Eugene and the Wizard Chief's figures within its mass...
Within the cosmic spatial rift, the colossal Comorin serpent roared without cease.
Beneath it, two orbs of light in differing hues grew dimmer and dimmer, nearly on the verge of vanishing entirely.
It was at that moment that the brighter of the two orbs suddenly shattered, and the figure of a gravely wounded man emerged. He cast a look of venomous hatred at the Comorin Snake Emperor, dared not linger a second longer, and rapidly transformed into a streak of prismatic light that fled into the distance.
A voice filled with bitter unwillingness echoed in its wake: "You actually abandoned me!!!"
Eugene screamed in fury, but the orb of light representing his life force grew even fainter, until it finally snuffed out completely.
Once the very last glimmer had faded, the Comorin Snake Emperor dissolved entirely into wraiths of black mist, which then reconverged into Rein's true form.
He stood before Eugene's corpse — now devoid of any trace of life — and a blue luminescence flickered in his eyes.
[Appearance and energy fluctuations of the target have been recorded!]the Chip reported faithfully.
"One got away, but all things considered, that's still an impressive haul!"
Rein gave a nod.
This time he had not only slain both of the other side's Crescent Moon Wizards, but had also grievously wounded the Full Moon-grade Crescent Moon Wizard from before, forcing him to flee in retreat. The toll inflicted by this battle was something that even the Dawn Throne would have to mourn for a very long time.
One could say that this was a crushing counterstrike against the power standing behind his enemies!
Moreover, once word spread of his advancement to Crescent Moon, those Wizards who had been eager to snuff him out early would likely lie low for a while.
Of course, should they decide to strike again in the future, the ones they sent would almost certainly be far more formidable than mere Crescent Moons.
At that moment, an endless radiance poured down from the void. The Astral Realm unfurled, and threads of starlight descended to carry Eugene's body into its depths.
The blue glow in Rein's eyes intensified. After Eugene's corpse was drawn into the Astral Realm, Rein could still faintly make out vast quantities of gray-brown earth and stone converging around the remains, transforming Eugene into a small, barren island.
The island's surface was incomparably hard, bearing the marks of desolation, and it began to drift through the Astral Realm.
In the boundless void beyond, such barren islands seemed to number in the countless... countless...
"When a Morning Star Wizard dies, their essence returns to the Astral Realm. But if a Radiant Moon Wizard falls and their body remains intact, does it form this kind of barren island?"
A small flicker of fear stirred in Rein's heart.
How many Radiant Moon Wizards had fallen throughout history? And someday in the future, would he too become such a desolate, lonely island?
"But even so, I will pursue eternity! To fall on the path of chasing one's dreams — that is how one can have no regrets, and a life can be filled with splendor!"
Rein's eyes blazed with endless radiance.