I Was The Hero, But I Woke Up as a Phoenix Princess! – Chapter 425

Chapter 425: The Collapsed Divine Kingdom of Twilight
With just a slight upward tilt of the blade, the reflected sword intent tore through Douglas’s domain, causing the red-haired youth’s face to turn pale with shock. He exclaimed, “This is—”
As the End Sword Blade was raised, the surging sword light shattered all the golden radiance that enveloped him.
“Arm’s Reach Sky Splitting,” “Ember Destruction and Severance”!
Ever since leaving Rubiel City, Ig had not stopped for a single day, diligently practicing these two sword techniques taught by Verafia.
—And in the dead, silent abyss, within the domain that once belonged to the Black-winged Monarch Anderdun, Ig personally pulled out the End Sword, and with that astonishingly bright sword stroke, he directly severed and split the entire domain barrier!
As if supported by the will of the former Lothel, who corrected his posture and the errors in his sword momentum, Ig’s enlightenment was far greater than that of the frost-blue maiden’s spear techniques.
Emptiness, the sword of utter destruction—an astonishing sword strike sufficient to annihilate the void and all existence, now reappeared in the same finality!
“This is the sword art of that being—”
Through the whistling wind, Douglas’s voice came, but it no longer carried the arrogance or composure of before. Instead, there was a hint of trembling and fear!
Ig’s eyes opened again, and as he raised the blade in his arm, terrifying sword light spread, and with it, the sword intent of “severing” was smeared onto every wisp of sword light.
He had a feeling that the sword technique in his hand seemed to originate from the same source as Grand Duke Oran’s sword intent. He knew that to reach the realm of Lord Lothel, he needed to compensate from this single sword intent.
Before Douglas’s shocked expression could even fully register, the End Sword was swung up, and a sword mark reflected without obstruction cut through the sunlight, almost splitting the entire solar domain in half!
Ig raised his arm and slashed.
The End Sword’s edge cut through the air as if the very concepts of time and space were severed, and a straight, blazing white sword light cut through the domain, and then almost simultaneously cut through the Blazing Sun Divine Kingdom that Douglas had condensed before him, its golden light shattering like molten gold!
Douglas could not even evade or stop it; the blazing white sword light passed through him, severing his right arm, and its destructive power completely annihilated his life force!
The power of the obliterating sword strike lasted for more than ten breaths. The church floor showed trenches, and the walls were directly destroyed, allowing the cold night wind and dim light to pour in.
And opposite Ig, where the End Sword light had completely poured, the blazing residual flames dimmed, the eternally unextinguishable golden divine kingdom collapsed, like the setting sun about to extinguish, utterly destroyed.
Douglas knelt in place, his body’s luxurious long robe, trimmed with gold satin, torn into ragged scraps, showing no resemblance to its original form. His luxurious red silk hair was also disheveled, covering his bloodstained and soiled face.
Furthermore, Douglas’s right arm was cut off without obstruction. Fresh red blood gushed from the clean-cut surface, quickly staining the fabric of his robe and dripping onto the ground.
Beneath the shattered, collapsed golden divine kingdom, the residual afterglow of the setting sun spilled backward. Douglas was now not only far from his former noble appearance but even more disheveled than a wandering mercenary.
However, Ig felt a sense of unease. He raised the blade in his hand again, preparing to eliminate this great enemy in advance.
Suddenly, Douglas abruptly raised his head. His formerly magnificent crimson-gold eyes, like blood-soaked gems, were now filled with chaos and hatred.
“Good, good, Ig, you forced me…”
A low, hoarse voice came from Douglas’s lips. His expression suddenly changed, and his raised face was once again filled with frenzied madness:
“Never, never has anyone forced me to this point before! You are the first!”
“Wait! He’s trying to—”
Ig’s pupils contracted sharply, but before he could react, the remaining left hand of Douglas suddenly shot out, a swath of pitch-black rendering upon it, heavy as mercury, like clinging mud.
—It was as if there was no temperature at all, a pure pitch-black that swallowed all colors in the world, exuding absolute obliteration!
“This is—the Abyss!”
Ig almost exclaimed in shock.
What Douglas was raising with his left hand was exactly the same as the boundless darkness that spread from the dark swordsman Hodrea, and that the immortal dragon Midiolna of the Demonic Dragon’s domain had devoured—it was the pitch-black Abyss!
The next moment, Douglas pressed his left palm fiercely against the severed shoulder. The viscous Abyss almost instantly began to corrode inward. Dark energy erupted from the youth’s face, causing him immense pain, but this was instantly replaced by an equal measure of ferocity.
At the same time, black, lusterless flesh buds grew from the blood-gushing severed end of Douglas’s right arm, connecting and weaving together in moments, forming a grotesque shape radiating the aura of the Abyss.
Similarly, the “Blazing Sun Divine Kingdom,” cut apart by the destructive sword strike and resembling the twilight’s descent, was also encompassed by the color of the Abyss. The twilight setting sun seemed to be setting, and a blazing black Demonic Sun hung high in the night sky, with evil and dark aura pouring out!
The golden divine kingdom collapsed, and the darkness of the Abyss surrounding Douglas dyed the golden land. A face as handsome as jade became incredibly distorted under the demonic power of the Abyss, and he grinned savagely:
“Young Master Ig, this is the last move I have prepared for you: Moment of Twilight Collapse!”
—
There was not a trace of wind in the air, yet, like the ripples of clear flowing water, the sheer fabric on the girl’s luxurious gown wafted gently.
Her crystal-clear, slender fingertips, like jade bamboo shoots, gently pulled at threads like silk. Her gilded long hair cascaded down her smooth, slender shoulders, sliding over her delicate skin and touching the exquisitely beautiful butterfly bones at the back of her evening gown like an artwork.
The girl slightly raised her gorgeous golden eyes, the entire silent sky consumed within them.
Verafia knew where she was: Chrisis had painstakingly, even by dissolving her own flesh and blood at the last moment, used herself as a key to open this “Gate of Creation,” and it undoubtedly led to the Divine Realm of Life that once belonged to Atros.
Chrisis had hoped this would be an ideal place—a land paved with white jade, with streams of honey and milk flowing, and the Creative Divine Power that formed the entire world, which could be shaped according to her will.
If material wealth was inexhaustible, whether it be gold, silver, pearls, or jewels, what people painstakingly exploited and earned in this world would be readily available there by a mere wave of the hand. How then could there still be classes or exploitation?
However, the Divine Realm of Creation that Chrisis had envisioned existed only in the past.
Verafia’s gaze shifted. The entire world was devoid of even a single intact tile. The white jade palace’s jade liquid had turned to dust. Even the so-called immortal divine power had rotted into dust over nameless epochs in this sealed world.
In its place was eternal desolation and ruin upon the earth. Outside the void, cracks spanning tens of thousands of miles tore through the divine realm’s sky dome, half of it collapsed.
A subtle ripple flashed in Verafia’s pupils.
Atros, the god of “Creation and Death,” was undoubtedly a deity who truly existed in the history of the Mythic Era. Even now, the ruins of his divine temple were occasionally passed down in human legends.
However, as seen, not only Atros himself, but even the divine kingdom built by Atros, had been completely destroyed in a turmoil.
—Although Verafia could not confirm the reason, it was certain that it must have had a close connection with the world-ending war that the God of Light had interfered with, or even it was that war itself.
“A war that almost destroyed the world, and even the gods who ruled the sky and the earth in the Mythic Era have almost all fallen or fallen into slumber…”
Verafia’s slender eyebrows furrowed slightly, and she whispered softly with her delicate lips. Even a hundred years ago, the Demon King’s invasion of Asgard was also called world-ending, but it was clearly not at all comparable to that “turmoil.”
The young girl suddenly shook her head forcefully, her gaze falling on Chrisis, who was also on the ground not far away.
At this moment, the flesh and blood that filled Chrisis’s body with the origin of life seemed to have been burned away. Her once colossal body, like the ancient life tree of the elves, had shrunk back to human form. Not only could her girlish figure be vaguely discerned, but even her face was revealed to Verafia.
However, Chrisis’s face appeared pale, and her water-blue eyes were filled with confusion.
In the serene space, like crystal touching a glass floor, a pleasing tone seemed to pluck her heartstrings. Verafia walked to her opposite.
“Chrisis, this is the Divine Realm of Creation of Atros.”
Chrisis slowly turned her head. She seemed to have been in a stupor for countless long ages, and finally, a tremor of life appeared in her eyes. Her lips moved:
“Miss Verafia… You, you can mock me now.”
Looking at the girl’s face, this feeling of having placed all hope and ideals, only to have them instantly shattered and vanish before her eyes, leaving her with nothing to rely on—Verafia could clearly see it.
“Why should I mock you?”
Verafia’s cheerful tone dispelled much of the oppressive, stifled feeling that had lingered in this world for untold years. She tilted her head slightly and thought, her clear, bright big eyes looking up:
“At least, you didn’t lie. You truly wanted to bring Lorinc into Atros’s Divine Realm of Life.”
For a deity’s domain, life and physical bodies never truly represented life; it was the soul that represented everything.
Chrisis using the Creative Divine Power to erode their bodies and lives, as part of the key to open the gate to the Divine Realm of Life, undoubtedly meant bringing their “spirits” to this world.
Chrisis shook her head slightly.
“You don’t have to comfort me… Miss Verafia, the hatred I told you about before is not false—I truly did fantasize about completely destroying them.”
She raised her face, looked around at the collapsed divine realm, bit her lips until they turned pale, and then suddenly gave a desolate smile:
“As for the poor people I claimed I would bring into an ideal kingdom—I already knew that Atros had fallen for tens of thousands of years. Even if all the gods had fallen, his divine kingdom surviving for ten thousand years was unlikely. Moreover, you’ve already said it clearly: if I truly believed, why would I have hesitated with the young master?”
“These… are just excuses that I used to justify myself, to deceive myself, and to use ideals as a crown to strip away the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.”