CHAPTER 162: 162. OBLIVION

It opened its foul mouth—jaws widening with a sickening crack as the air itself began to tremble. Mana rushed into its mouth like a whirlpool, condensing at a single point, igniting into a massive sphere of blinding light.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me what was about to happen.

It was death. That light was death. Condensed, supercharged, hyper-focused destruction.

And it was aimed directly at us.

My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t fear—not the kind you feel when you’re startled or nervous. No, this was primal. A deep, bone-chilling dread that made your soul want to flee your body.

I—someone who had willingly killed himself in a previous life—was terrified of dying.

Beads of sweat formed instantly across my entire body, like I’d been dunked in ice water. My limbs locked up. My heart stuttered. The hair on my arms stood like tiny soldiers facing a god they could never hope to defeat.

And then—

Snap.

A simple, casual flick of fingers from behind.

The world shattered again.

Literally.

My vision fragmented like glass breaking underwater, and in the next heartbeat, we were somewhere else entirely.

Trees. Dense, green, and dark. A forest. Crickets. Distant roars. The faint rustle of wind brushing through leaves.

And the dragon?

Still here.

Still charging its damn nuke like we hadn’t moved at all.

"What the hell, Miss Isolde!" I shouted, not even trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. "At this point I’m convinced reality itself is fake! Where the actual fuck are we now?!"

Isolde, huffing as she ran beside us, answered with a grunt. "It’s a dimensional fold! I twisted Region 65’s space and condensed it into a temporary sealed space. It’s still the same forest—just warped to isolate the blast."

"Great! Love the science lesson! Now could we maybe not die?!"

Leon, ahead of me, was carrying Amelia in his arms. She was sobbing quietly, her face buried in his chest, eyes squeezed shut.

The mana backlash from the failed merger must’ve wrecked her core—her breathing was shallow, and her skin was cold. But mostly it was because of emotional damage.

Because her mother?

Gone.

Only a beast remained.

And if anyone in this group still had the audacity to say she could be saved, I’d personally beat the idealism out of them.

There was no choice now.

She had to die.

I didn’t care what sob story was behind it. I didn’t care that she used to smile and bake cookies and call her daughter "my little dove." That woman no longer existed.

This wasn’t a redemption arc.

The dragon reared back, eyes glowing with violent blue light, the attack finally reaching its apex.

And it fired.

A beam. No, a cannon of mana—wide as a building, tall as a skyscraper. It tore through the forest like a divine punishment.

Trees vaporized. Air was sucked into the blast. Reality itself seemed to blur at the edges as if struggling to process what it was witnessing.

And it was all coming down on us.

Except—it didn’t.

Because Isolde moved.

Threads—dozens, no, hundreds... thousands... millions of them—erupted from her fingers, spiraling through the air and locking onto the beam. Onto the dragon. Onto everything.

She was redirecting it.

Forcibly bending the laws of causality with her will alone.

Her threads twisted through the fabric of space, diverting the blast at a curved angle, like rerouting lightning through a copper coil.

The ground split apart. Mountains in the distance crumbled.

But not a single spark touched us.

And Isolde?

She was bleeding from her nose. From her mouth. From her ears. Her eyes were red, like the blood vessels had ruptured behind them. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed face-first into the dirt.

"Miss Isolde!" I cursed, rushing toward her and grabbing her just before her head hit a root.

She was heavy—but not because of her weight. Her mana pressure was still flaring like a dying star. Holding her felt like shouldering a boulder with the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Zyon ran up next to me. "Do you need help? I can carry her—"

I leaned close to her ear and whispered just loud enough for her to hear: "Miss Isolde, Zyon just called you fat."

Instant reaction.

She turned her head mid-collapse, eyes glowing faintly, and shot a glare at Zyon so sharp I saw him physically step back.

Even while coughing blood, she was terrifying.

Zyon raised both hands. "I said nothing! That’s slander!"

"You just got slandered by a dying woman," Art muttered. "Congratulations. New achievement unlocked."

I didn’t laugh.

Because despite all that ridiculousness—despite the banter, the quips, the drama—she had just saved our lives.

"Who are you calling a dying woman, brat?"

A voice cut in, sharp and heavy, from behind Art. One that definitely did not belong to any of us.

Art froze. Slowly, ever so cautiously, he turned his head over his shoulder. His smile was brittle, his eyes already brimming with regret.

"Who else but her?" he said, pointing to Isolde like a child caught sneaking cookies. "I mean, look how bad she’s bleeding. C’mon, Cassius—you know I’m joking, right? And you too, Aunty? Please, please, let’s not make this into a thing. It was a joke! A harmless, friendly joke!"

"That’s not something you should joke about, Mister Crown Prince," the voice replied, flat and toneless.

Art’s smile twitched. His whole body flinched as if the words physically hit him. "Okay—now I’m scared. Why are you calling me Crown Prince? Don’t be formal, just call me Art. Art’s fine, nice and casual—holy shit, I’m so fucking dead."

Because standing right behind him, tall enough to cast a shadow that might as well have been an eclipse, was none other than Lucian Lancaster.

Husband of Isolde. Head of House Lancaster. The man who’d issued a personal declaration to erase Opalcrest from the map.

His amber eyes gleamed like molten gold, staring straight through Art with enough malice to make you think he didn’t need a weapon to kill—just intention.

"You’ve got guts, talking about my wife like that, kid," Lucian said. "Not many survive that."

Art let out a laugh—dry, cracked, like he was dying inside. "Haha...! Since when did jokes decide my life expectancy? Come on, sir! Please! I haven’t even been married yet, I’ve still got a lot to see in life! It was just some harmless teasing! Please don’t vaporize me!"

Watching him beg for his life in front of Lucian was... therapeutic. I genuinely couldn’t explain the amount of cathartic relief that washed over me. If I had popcorn, I would’ve opened it.

Lucian, of course, didn’t dignify Art with a response.

He stepped forward, toward Isolde, and crouched beside her. Gently. Not like the man who had just threatened to kill a Crown Prince. No, this was a different side—one no one else ever got to see.

From his inventory, he pulled out a glowing red vial, uncorked it, and tilted it to her lips. She was still bleeding, still lying across my lap, her face pale and trembling. But when he caressed her cheek, something shifted. Her eyelids fluttered slightly. Her breathing steadied.

And while all this domestic affection was happening, let me remind you:

The dragon hadn’t stopped attacking.

That oversized, mana-fueled abomination was still in the middle of charging its beam and blanketing the area in pure destruction. A breath attack that could level a city block. And yet—

We were untouched.

Because somehow, somehow, the space around us rejected the idea that the attack existed at all. It just vanished the moment it reached a certain radius around us.

Like the world itself was pretending, "Nope. Don’t see it. Not real. Doesn’t count."

That’s how powerful his presence was.

As soon as Isolde finished the potion, color began returning to her cheeks. Her trembling eased, but her eyelids remained closed. Lucian stood up, eyes never leaving the distant form of the dragon as it roared in futility.

He didn’t speak to me. Just gave me a single nod.

"Take care of your mother," he said. "I’ll handle the thing that laid a hand on her."

And in that single sentence—delivered in that flat, bloodthirsty tone—I felt something go cold inside me.

So of course, I nodded like my life depended on it.

The air around Lucian shifted. The pressure multiplied. Not mana—not just mana—but intent. It pressed down on my lungs, made my bones ache. Amelia was still clinging to Leon’s chest, refusing to even look up.

She was smart. Lucian in this state was something no child wanted to see.

The dragon was about 500 meters away. Still distant. Still screeching. Still standing there, trying to channel another catastrophic blast.

And Lucian?

He disappeared.

No sound. No flash. Just gone.

Then, in the next heartbeat, he was there. Right in front of the dragon’s chest. The distance didn’t exist for him.

In his right hand, a sword manifested.

If you could call it a sword.

It wasn’t made of metal, nor crystal, nor any recognizable element. It was hazy, like fog, but somehow sharp. It hurt my eyes to look at it. My attention kept slipping off, like my brain didn’t want to acknowledge it existed.

"What... the fuck is that sword?" I muttered.

Isolde, barely conscious on my lap, responded with a flat, exhausted voice.

"Oblivion," she said.