VIP Chapter 369: Brilliant Light, Silent Sound’s Second Phase (4k)
The End of Ice Abyss was rarely illuminated by “firelight” anymore.
As Liya launched countless beams of “Extreme Flame Meteor,” the sky, which had been as deep and starless as a path to an inescapable doom, was lit by meteors ignited by an “outsider.”
Flecks of light slowly streaked across the sky.
“An ‘Extreme Flame Meteor’ split into three hundred to be fired… I’m seeing its true form for the first time too.”
Liya took a deep breath, raised her head, and from beneath her hat’s brim, watched the meteors she had launched trace a beautiful parabola under the castle walls, precisely destroying the ice arrows shot at her along their trajectories.
However…
Liya’s brain felt like it was steaming.
For a witch, the brain was also considered a “magical organ.” When she had to meticulously divide her magic power, allocating each trace to its precise destination, her brain would experience a burning sensation.
“Hah… hah…”
If Will hadn’t insisted that she meticulously divide her magic power, she might not have even noticed such a change in her brain.
Given that all a witch’s magic was about stacking power as high as possible, she might very well be the first witch to discover that precise magic control could cause a witch’s brain to smoke.
“How is it— Empress of the Ice Abyss? You should properly lift your head and gaze upon the witch’s meteors, and wish that your death is not too painful.”
More numerous than ice arrows, more powerful than ice arrows, and capable of obliterating ice arrows on contact, the meteors rained down upon the frozen fortress.
They ignited the perpetually dark and gloomy sky behind the castle, painting a corner of the sky with a blood-red hue like a sunset.
As for the ice crossbows that fired the ice arrows, they were no match for such meteors.
Will stood behind a tree, his arms crossed. As he had said, he was not participating in the fight.
The lens of his monocle reflected the firelight from the opposite side, while his other purple eye observed everything.
“It’s beautiful, Liya.”
As someone who had watched Liya create this meteor shower step by step, he felt a sense of pride and warmth.
Witches lived through the combination of magic circuits and blood, amplified by the intense stimulation experienced during their use.
For them, this was even more profound than “dopamine” for a human. The pursuit of magic and the feeling of using it became their life’s dedication.
But…
Even with a depleted magic circuit, even with her passion for magic weakened, even if she couldn’t complete missions via the more efficient operations brought about by Blood Mint Essential Oil.
Liya, at that time, facing falling leaves, had repeatedly divided her magic power and repeatedly shot down the leaves.
Not by relying on the senses of her magic-driven body, but by her own willpower, and… by her yearning for Will’s “gaze” and “mission,” she persevered.
“However, since you’ve succeeded…” Will stretched lazily and rose from under the tree, placing his hat on his head. “Then I’ll do a little something to help you as well.”
The firelight eventually died down, and meteors were, after all, just fleeting visitors in the sky.
In the eternally dark End of Ice Abyss, the magnificent meteor shower was fleeting, leaving only the Snow Woman standing atop the ice castle.
“It’s… that small?!”
The Snow Woman poked her head out from the castle, reaching out to inspect the ice crossbows that had already melted beside her.
Upon contact with the Extreme Flame Meteors, the ice crossbows had melted. However, the meteors’ own flames were extinguished.
Only the witch’s coins, used to launch the Extreme Flame Meteors, remained, landing on the castle grounds and leaving scorched craters. The witch’s coins themselves seemed unaffected by the flames and remained intact, lying on her castle.
Just by seeing the marks left by the coins, she realized that this meteor shower had only *appeared* to be grand.
Each meteor was only about one-three hundredth of its original strength.
“It didn’t even… didn’t even breach the first layer of defense?!”
The Snow Woman stomped her foot in immediate fury.
“I… I thought it was going to be a big deal. This is no different than you throwing pebbles at my city walls!”
“Oh? Say that again?”
Liya, outside the castle, raised her staff. The staff’s shaft and the gem at its tip formed a straight line, aimed at the Snow Woman’s head.
Upon seeing the staff, the Snow Woman immediately retracted her head.
It was not difficult to imagine the Snow Woman’s personality; she only dared to shout from the absolute safety of her castle.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t possess a dungeon with a total of 70 floors, yet have almost no high-level combat methods, relying solely on a defensive strategy like a hermit crab.
“So timid, don’t you know your castle has a second phase defense?”
Liya was speechless at the Snow Woman’s reaction. The castle’s second phase activated automatically. Liya’s magic sight could now see a faint, colorful film outside the castle—its “mirror surface.”
This mirror surface was thick, but being made of ice, it appeared “transparent” to human eyes, allowing a clear view of the Snow Empress’s actions.
To magic, it was a difficult-to-handle reflective barrier that absorbed and decomposed anything that came into contact with it.
Therefore, Liya raised her staff but took no further action, knowing that insufficient energy would simply be reflected back by the mirror.
“Oh? Th-that’s true! Hahahaha.”
The Snow Woman re-emerged from below the castle walls, resuming her usual mocking demeanor, hands on her hips, and began a new round of taunts.
Liya’s eyes narrowed into a look of contempt, and her lips twitched.
In her memory, the Snow Woman had always been on the opposite side, spewing sarcastic remarks, sometimes even fanning herself with a fan as she laughed mockingly.
This made Liya wonder if she actually enjoyed being beaten.
Now, she realized she might have been wrong.
“You… you’re not actually afraid of fighting, are you?”
“Don’t you only blast those giant stones of yours?! Why are you suddenly… suddenly using such a small spell on me?! Is… is your power declining?”
“Hmm…”
Liya found herself at a loss for words.
Suddenly, she felt that this Snow Woman, who was taller, “curvier,” and more mature than her, had a more childlike personality than her own.
“Heh heh, facing the mirror surface, you’re helpless now, aren’t you?”
The Snow Woman realized she had the upper hand regarding the situation and began to brag about herself again—
“Of course, this is the best treasure I obtained at level 50. The magic that constructs the mirror surface is different from all other mirror surfaces. My mirror surface is composed of ice. Due to its purity, its reflectivity is almost the highest among similar magic.”
Liya was surprised…
The Snow Woman, who usually just chattered incessantly, actually had such a love for “research.”
“What a research nerd who’s afraid to go out and only reads with a lamp inside her little den… right…”
Liya was about to turn back and say something to Will, who was by the tree—perhaps out of habit.
Then, she stopped.
She didn’t need to turn around; she already knew one thing—
Will was no longer behind her.
Tracing back, the moment she launched her meteors, her body’s instinct had sensed Will’s gaze leaving her.
Because the thing she cared about most was Will’s gaze upon her.
Whether he saw her as a respected teacher, a close friend, or… a beloved lover.
She relished Will’s gaze, sensitive enough to perceive his every glance.
“…That’s strange.”
She muttered softly, lowering her staff from its outward-aimed position.
If it had been in the past, and Will had “left without a word,” she would have been angry, with rage surging from her heart layer by layer.
Or perhaps, it wasn’t anger, but closer to anxiety? Fear? Dread?
As long as he stopped looking at her, she would worry that his gaze would never return.
But now, she didn’t think that way.
Liya touched the ring on her finger.
She raised her head.
Now, all she wanted was to help her dear student take the first step towards revenge.
As a mad witch, to smash this detestable Snow Woman’s castle fiercely!
“Only one person has ever broken this magic before, and that person was…”
The Snow Woman was still incessantly boasting.
However, Liya didn’t give her a chance to finish her sentence.
Her staff lit up, aimed at the mirror surface.
—According to Will’s calculations, the mirror surface’s weakest point was at its center.
—To maintain the stability of the reflection magic within this ice mirror, the magic constructing it was point-distributed. Therefore, the reflection magic was most concentrated at four points, and less in the center.
—As long as it could be blasted in one shot, there would be no problem.
—With her current weakened magic, and given that the magic Meilin provided couldn’t be used now, she wouldn’t be able to defeat the mirror’s magic in an instant.
—But, it didn’t matter. From now on, this was her complete form, something the Empress before her had never witnessed.
“No matter who you encountered before, the one who will shatter it for you now is me.”
She took out the vial containing a blood-red liquid from her ring.
In fact, she had seen this vial many times in the temporary laboratory Will had set up and had attempted to guess its composition by observation.
But…
She had never succeeded. This liquid was too bizarre. It was mixed with Blood Mint Essential Oil, but its components were certainly not limited to that. The Blood Mint Essential Oil seemed even more like a ruse to confuse her witch’s sense of smell and mask the true ingredients.
She used her single-hand explosive magic to shatter the bottle, tilted her head back, closed her eyes, aimed at her throat, and poured the scarlet liquid deep into her throat.
“!!!!”
Initially, a burning pain spread through the inner lining of her esophagus from within her body. But it was immediately followed by a refreshing sensation as her capillaries began to spin wildly, as if she had drunk a cup of clear spring water, invigorating her.
Liya opened her eyes, her blood-red magic eyes shining with a more pronounced light than before.
How long had it been since she last experienced this?
This feeling of her entire magic circuit boiling.
It was like having a severe cold, where all senses of smell, taste, and touch became numb, and then one day, upon recovery, all those sensations returned.
After downing the entire bottle of potion…
She finally…
“Felt” this world again.
Especially…
Within this dungeon, where magic and various monsters were most abundant.
Every drop of blood in her veins pulsed with the surge of her magic circuits. In an instant, she felt every organ in her body open up and begin to breathe.
What is lost is cherished. The current Liya felt the magic surging here more deeply than ever before.
She could even see the magical fluctuations of the mirror surface, which appeared as a rainbow-colored film, more clearly.
“You… what are you doing? How… how have you changed, you’re… you’re a bit like that… that Witch…”
The Snow Woman clearly panicked upon seeing Liya’s transformation.
Liya, standing below the castle, stepped forward.
Her brown boots stepped onto the ice in front of the castle, melting the ice with a single stomp. However, the melted ice did not cause her to sink; instead, it transformed into a long expanse of red rose blossoms.
With every breath she took through her nose, a wisp of smoke rose.
She could feel her body reigniting, burning anew.
But…
It felt somehow different.
After reconnecting her body’s senses to magic, making all her senses more acute and able to be touched by magical fluctuations…
She found something was missing.
“Never mind, now is not the time to ponder this. After all, reclaiming the power that rightfully belongs to me now feels incredibly exhilarating.”
“I want to blow something up to celebrate.”
Liya’s constantly furrowed lips relaxed.
They gradually curved upwards, revealing the “mad witch’s” smile—one of unrestrained, wild joy and recklessness.
She channeled her magic circuits, as if releasing all the suppressed resentment of this period, focusing it at the tip of her staff.
“—Do you hear, the pulse of life?”
Around her, a sonic wave vibrated outwards, centered on the staff.
“—Do you hear, the sigh of the earth?”
At the tip of the staff, as if drawing in all the surrounding energy, the heat rose frantically.
“—Do you hear, the burning heat from the sky?”
Liya’s entire body seemed to be “burning.” The crimson gradient at the ends of her hair spread upwards, and at the same time, the veins on her neck appeared to ignite, glowing a scorching red.
“—Listen, listen, for this is—”
“Brilliant Light, Silent Sound—”
In that instant, the strongest flame magic in the current reality, Brilliant Light, Silent Sound, erupted from the Staff of Ancient Flames, the force even causing cracks to appear in the crystal ball of the metal staff.
“…?!”
The Snow Woman cowered, covering her head. She wanted to scream but found she couldn’t hear her own voice.
An explosion erupted against the semi-transparent magical mirror barrier.
It tried its best to “swallow” the energy. After the dazzling white light subsided, the first sound to emerge in the silence was the earth-shattering sound of the mirror shattering—
*Crackling.*
The transparent ice surface, which had covered the entire sky, shattered into thousands of light-reflecting fragments in this single blast—
The castle collapsed.
Author’s Note: I was called out for team building. I didn’t want to stop mid-chapter today, so I apologize for updating a day late.
