**Chapter 680: 158. Center**
“.”
Fisher listened to Valentina’s slightly downcast question, feeling compelled to comfort her. He reached out and touched the pink branches in the snow, using the chaotic power within his body to try to find a possible solution.
However, what he sensed was the same cold sensation he felt earlier with Alicia. The chaotic power within the Duke of Peach was exceptionally strong, residing in every inch of her continuously regenerating body. Moreover, unlike Alicia, if the nature of her body was altered, she would die.
The Duke of Peach was currently serving as the base for the descent of an otherworldly deity’s power.
As Fisher withdrew his hand, he understood this, which meant that this process was difficult to change.
In the back of his mind, he felt a flicker of corresponding inspiration, but he couldn’t catch it, letting it slip away.
“Perhaps there might be a way. Valentina, I need to think about it.”
Due to this slight inspiration, Fisher hesitated and didn’t finalize his statement.
But Valentina felt this was just a word of comfort. She shook her head, forcing herself to be strong. After slowly standing up, she finally spoke,
“Yeah, let’s go back first. We’ll talk about the rest when the Duke of Peach wakes up.”
After saying this, she spread her wings again, took Fisher’s hand, and soared towards the Parasol Tree below the peak.
At that moment, the sun had completely darkened. As night fell, the ethereal crimson hue in the sky appeared gloomy with the darkness, looking quite horrendous.
Fisher was carried on Valentina’s back, and the feeling of being on the back of a phoenix was quite novel. Unlike the Cangniao Tribe’s dual-winged arms, the phoenix wings, grown on either side of the back, were even more robust due to the changes in rank. With full force, they could even create a sonic boom, maximizing Valentina’s speed.
The only downside was that the phoenix’s wings produced constant frost while flying, making Fisher, who was on her back, particularly cold. He was curious about the principle behind it and playfully pulled apart a couple of swaying blue feathers, causing Valentina’s entire body to wobble.
“Fisher!”
She blushed and turned back, playfully chiding him. This made the inquisitive Fisher retract his hand apologetically,
“Sorry, I was just a bit curious why there’s frost in the phoenix’s feathers.”
“If you want to see, at least wait until we get back.”
Valentina didn’t finish her sentence and turned around, leaving Fisher, who was seated on her back, swallowing hard.
“Miss Valentina!”
At that moment, a call came from the far snowy ground below. Straining his eyes, he saw Isabel, bundled in heavy fur, waving at them from the snow-white mountains, seemingly beckoning them to come down.
Next to Isabel were three round Mouse Daughters, and at the end of the group was the youngest and most in need of care, little Alicia.
“Alicia didn’t go to eat? Why did she go to Isabel?”
Valentina flapped her wings and gradually descended, quickly arriving above Isabel. She hadn’t seen Fisher earlier, but now she noticed him next to Valentina.
“Teacher Fisher?! You’re here too! Just in time; I have something I want to ask you!”
“Big brother!”
Alicia bounced over, appearing as if she had just been playing with the group of Mouse Daughters. Oh, and a mischievous Emhart was trailing behind her.
“Miss Valentina, the matter you instructed earlier has been checked around the Parasol Tree.”
“Not just Isabel, but us too!”
“Yeah, and Dot and Holly!”
Isabel smiled slightly, shouldering the recurve bow in her hand, which was laden with small critters playing and hunting, and she struggled to restrain the several eager little girls crowded around her, saying laboriously,
“I’ve checked around the Parasol Tree; the stationed troops found no records of Miss Heidi Lin entering or exiting. We also checked some more treacherous and remote paths, and found nothing. Miss Heidi Lin seems to have vanished into thin air.”
Valentina slightly froze upon hearing this, her expression more despondent,
“Is that so.”
In a single day, her trusted Heidi Lin had gone missing, and the reliance on the Duke of Peach was about to slip away from her. She felt like a child forced to grow up overnight, utterly confused, leaving her to force herself to face it calmly.
“Stop with the Heidi Lin! Your Heidi Lin is disguised by Baemon! Didn’t I tell you when we came up? She’s not someone easy to deal with; take my advice and keep your distance!”
Emhart flew in front of Valentina, disdainfully saying this. Apparently, after leaving Captain Alagina’s laboratory, he had discussed this matter with Valentina, who instructed Isabel to check the area, but unfortunately, she remained unconvinced.
Fisher sighed, about to say something, when Alicia, who was playing in the snow, suddenly yelled,
“Wow, everyone, look! It’s a meteor!”
“A meteor? What meteor?! Let me see!”
The little ones were the most excited upon hearing this, quickly looking up. Fisher and Valentina reacted somewhat slowly, but when they finally looked up, the sight in the sky instantly stunned them.
Before them, the crimson mist in the sky suddenly began to churn, forming wave-like ripples. Within the crimson mist, it seemed countless terrifying powers were continuously colliding with the illusory barrier in mid-air, causing the entire illusory sky to start trembling.
“Fisher, what is that? Something seems to be falling!”
Emhart couldn’t care less about his earlier frustration with Fisher and quickly flew to perch on Fisher’s shoulder, gazing up at the sky with him.
But before he could finish speaking, with a violent crash above, a mass of twisted substance, roughly the size of a mountaintop and wrapped in bubbles, abruptly shifted from illusion to reality, falling from mid-air towards the snow-covered mountain not far from the Parasol Tree.
The sight of that twisted material caused everyone present, except for Fisher, to pale in fear. Their magical circuits became exceptionally bright, and an eerie and frightening murmuring echoed in their ears, as if about to explode their heads.
“Don’t look over there!”
Realizing something was wrong, Fisher called out to everyone nearby to avert their gaze while quickly turning to Valentina, saying,
“Valentina, take everyone back to the Parasol Tree, don’t look outside! Hurry!”
“What?”
Once Fisher finished speaking, he prepared to lead Emhart to that side, when Valentina quickly reached out to stop him, asking,
“Wait! Fisher, what exactly is happening in the sky? Is it related to the Apocalypse Prophecy?”
Fisher glanced back at the worried Valentina, sighed, and looked at the sky where the muffled crashing sounds were incessantly coming from, his expression serious,
“The stars beyond the heavens have started to attempt breaking through the fragile barriers. If I’m not mistaken, the mass that just fell is part of a deity’s body.”
After instructing Valentina to take everyone inside the Parasol Tree, Fisher used chaotic energy to sprout fleshy wings and flew in that direction.
At this moment, the mountaintop-sized twisted mass had heavily crashed into the snow mountain, falling into a depth beyond measure.
Affected by Dalasgon’s authority, all matter nearby began to obliterate, laws started to collapse, and the snow was morphing into colorful bubbles floating into the sky. On the ground, flowers resembling sunflowers began to bloom, but instead of black fruits in the buds, there were numerous illusory bubbles of various colors.
“Fisher, what did you learn in the Spirit Realm? Did you contact Dalasgon?”
“Not at all, Dalasgon has lost consciousness due to the burning crevice, but we reached Ramastia.”
Fisher floated in mid-air, gazing at the fleshy mass that hit the ground and transformed the surrounding snow mountains into such a state. He dared not approach since the rules there had begun to collapse; even the basic gravity felt strange, let alone the matter nearby.
At that moment, the twisted flesh had already polluted the environment to resemble the nature of the crevice.
Above in the sky, the fierce crashing sounds persisted, and it seemed that this was not the only piece of Dalasgon’s body that had fallen.
“What’s going on, Fisher?”
Behind him, the Fate Lord, hearing the commotion outside, instantly shrank in size and appeared outside, staring, dumbfounded at the mountains about to transform into a crevice.
“Is this… the result of Dalasgon’s body falling into the mountains?”
“Yeah, fortunate amidst misfortune. Luckily, his body was covered by the bubbles of the crevice. Just now, Valentina and I witnessed all of this. If they saw the true body of a True God, I would…”
“Boom!”
Before he could finish, a violent crashing sound reverberated from above the heavens. In the far distance of the sky, from an unknown direction, a slightly smaller mass encased in bubbles suddenly transformed from illusion into reality.
Like a meteor, it tore through all laws from the sky to the ground, infusing everything with Dalasgon’s authority, before plummeting to an unknown surface.
“Crack! Crack! Crack!”
Following that, the burning crevice’s outer layer, like shattered glass, developed裂缝 resembling spider silk. Both Fisher and the Fate Lord understood that this meant the fragile crevice had begun its countdown to total annihilation.
Fisher’s heart raced. He gritted his teeth, turning to the equally pale Fate Lord, and forced himself to calm down,
“I need to enter the crevice now. I want to communicate with the Chaos Races.”
“Enter the crevice? You mean use the method you employed during your battle with Erwind?”
“Yeah, I will engrave a Dream Magic.”
“Alright, you best hurry. I’ll go with you. The Northern Region and Southern Continent are the two most fragile places in the crevice. If Dalasgon’s body falls in the Northern Region, then the Southern Continent will probably face the same situation soon. If it gets worse, it’s likely not just these two places but the entire world.”
Fisher did not bother to find other materials; he lowered his head and handed the folded letter meant for Raphael’s Jasmine to Emhart beside him, saying seriously,
“Emhart, quickly take this letter to the Parasol Tree and give it to the Slime Clan leader, Balien. Have him send it to the Southern Continent. Hurry!”
“Okay… then you all must be careful!”
Emhart hesitated a moment but then grabbed the paper airplane-shaped letter in his mouth and swiftly left, flying towards the distant Parasol Tree.
Fisher also lowered his head, not daring to slack off, reaching out to use chaotic energy to gradually dissolve his fingers into blood, while the other hand instantly transformed into a carved knife, engraving the Dream Magic from his memory onto the ground.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
“Senior Ashley!”
As the ground’s magic quickly took shape, Fisher did not say another word and activated the magic, only reminding the other party at the last moment.
In the next second, as the fragile tension from the crevice pulled at them, the nature of their mythic rank, body, and soul became one, transporting them into the Dream Magic within the crevice. However, this scene greatly differed from when Fisher first arrived.
Firstly, this time the Dream Magic did not have Tang Zeming Asuka’s infinite power enhancement; secondly, the crevice was on the verge of collapsing, so the current Dream Magic resembled a shabby house filled with leaks, exposing the crevice’s scenery outside.
The dream scene was Fisher’s rented room in Saint Nali, where both he and the Fate Lord stood in front of his office desk, originally used for writing.
However, now the window facing the desk didn’t overlook the bustling streets of Nali but was filled with swirling crimson mist.
The crimson mist had spread from the Spirit Realm to here, covering everything in the area, causing Fisher’s Dream Magic to be affected by the present crevice, devoid of gravity and entirely illogical.
For instance, when the Fate Lord attempted to open Fisher’s door, upon opening, there lay the bedroom of the Empress Elizabeth in the Golden Palace, which had several toys of various strange shapes and sizes.
The Fate Lord examined it a few times before she awkwardly retracted her gaze and closed the door.
Fisher paid no heed to what the Fate Lord was doing behind him, only focusing on engraving the star magic to communicate with the Chaos Races.
Soon, the magic was completed. Fisher slammed his palm on the desk, and a pane of glass-like image spread from the magic on the desk.
The image was hazy, and the Chaos Races had yet to respond to him.
Above the crevice, the crashing sounds fluctuated, and as the star magic called out, the crashing sounds eerily stopped, leaving a deathly silence. The only change was the star magic before them, revealing a brilliant compound eye that Fisher had seen once before.
However, this time, compared to the dimness of last time, the brilliance streaming through the crevice illuminated him brightly, revealing a massive, humanoid figure covered in something akin to marine scales behind the magic.
It was Pisces.
“.Fisher.”
The Fate Lord also heard the voice emerging from the mist, directing her gaze towards it, only to be startled by the oppressive figure within the magic.
The presence before them was one of the twelve most elite among the Chaos Races.
Staring at the figure, Fisher went straight to the point, omitting any pleasantries, clearly stating the pros and cons, trying to persuade the star beings residing in the Spirit Realm to abandon entering reality.
“Pisces, this is pointless. Even if you can breach the barrier for temporary refuge, once the crevice opens, the collapse of reality is only a matter of time. Then what? Where will you hide? This is merely a superficial solution; is this what you truly want? I possess a method to enter the Spirit Realm’s Angel Sanctuary; it can serve as a place for you to land.”
But Pisces remained unmoved, merely gazing at Fisher with its luminous compound eye, and after a long silence, it suddenly spoke,
“We are tired of living in hiding, Fisher.”
“.”
Fisher raised his gaze towards the mist but only felt the pressure from Pisces intensify. Its massive tentacles solidified into an actual shadow, slamming down on the magic before him,
“For a long time, we have suffered from the erosion of pollution. The gods resent us just as they resent the Mother God. We were born from the Sea of Souls, and the Sea of Souls comes from beyond the barrier; it was stolen by the gods. You, like us, were born from the Sea of Souls, birthed from the hands of the Trans.”
As Pisces spoke, countless mists swirled, vaguely forming an image with long flowing hair, like a figure walking in the sea. She bowed her head, extending her hand to retrieve a seemingly supreme treasure that formed the center of the ocean, while a song-like voice of the Chaos Races echoed,
“Those called gods are guilty of immense sins, hiding like frightened sheep within the barriers. Until the judgment strikes with a [Plea of Guilt] on the door, just as the Grim Reaper lifts his scythe.”
“You are the supreme nature, swaddled in the highest power and wrapped within the infinite ocean, destined to meander freely beyond the barrier, leading us to appreciate the mysteries that make even the gods bow in respect. Yet now, you drown in the transgressions committed by the thieves.”
As the song concluded, Fisher’s magical circuits twisted incessantly, gradually taking on a form reminiscent of the Chaos Races.
Behind Pisces, faintly, were eleven other massive existences similar to it, representing the main forces currently assaulting Dalasgon’s true form.
They looked down upon Fisher, their compound eyes seemingly filled with some yearning,
“Fisher, just as the Empress of Nali stated, this prophecy of doom is not about this world… but about the gods.”
“About you.”
(End of this chapter)
