CHAPTER 169: COLLAPSE AND SURVIVAL

Wang Yu's mindscape shattered. A crack echoed through his mind and even seemed to pervade physical reality. The moment he understood that this was the true nature of the key he wielded and a path to Roland's treasure vault besides, he had made this decision.

Wang Yu watched as the foundation of his mindscape collapsed. That boundless lake, which had existed ever since he first entered his mindscape and awakened his wizardry abilities, was now crumbling downward along with its shattered foundation.

He could feel his ability to wield void energy slipping away as the key within his mindscape, now reduced to fragments, disappeared. That lake represented his reserve of void energy, and the moment it was completely drained would also mark the end of his wizardry.

With the key destroyed and his foundation shattered, Wang Yu would lose his wizardry for good.

"Heh, it was never truly mine to begin with. So be it. Let's collapse into the void together, you old bastard..."

Wang Yu grinned savagely as he watched the shattered foundation crumble into the depths and felt his wizardry powers fade away.

His mindscape was now completely empty. The once-clear lake that reflected a magnificent starry sky had vanished, leaving behind nothing but a barren, lifeless expanse.

But his mindscape wasn't devoid of everything. Floating alongside him above the infinite abyss of darkness was that old, tattered doorframe. Wang Yu knew now—without a doubt—that it was his true mindscape. The lake had never belonged to him; it had only ever been granted by the key.

"Let's see what's going on outside."

Exiting his mindscape, Wang Yu turned his attention to the material realm within the void that Roland had left behind.

As he expected, the moment he destroyed the key in his mindscape, the thirteen steps of the staircase, which the elder claimed shielded them from the void's invasion, began to collapse as well.

Cracks spread across the ground beneath his feet and stretched in all directions. The solid stone floor fractured, broke apart, and crumbled into scattered chunks of various sizes.

Soon, those broken pieces lost their connection to the whole and began plummeting into the endless abyss of the void. The shattered remains of the bricks and stones tumbled downward, vanishing into the darkness below.

And this collapse wasn't limited to Wang Yu's location. The destruction spread toward the ground where the other keyholders stood.

Just as the elder had said, all thirteen keys and the associated steps were indispensable, each a part of an indivisible whole. If one part was broken, the entire structure was doomed to collapse.

"What's happening?!" The elder, who had been immersed in Roland's test, snapped back to attention. He finally noticed something was wrong with the material realm Roland had left behind.

Cracks were spreading outward from Wang Yu's position throughout the entire realm. The void-bound material domain Roland had left behind was moments from destruction.

"What have you done?!" The elder's voice was filled with disbelief. He was an absolute expert in the study of the void, but that was precisely why he couldn't comprehend what was happening before his eyes.

The material realm Roland had established within the void should have been indestructible, even against the likes of a forbidden spell. Yet it was currently collapsing; soon, the entire domain would fall into the void.

The epicenter of this catastrophe was Wang Yu. It was clear exactly who was responsible. The sheer impossibility of what had happened, combined with the sudden destruction of his long-sought goal—the acquisition of Roland's legacy—drove him into hysteria. He could no longer restrain his frenzied rage. He demanded answers from Wang Yu, desperate to know what the hell he had done.

Wang Yu realized that he too was beginning to fall into the void. The ground beneath him was no longer stable; the destruction of the material realm's integrity had rendered it incapable of supporting him any longer.

But there was nothing more he could do. The only thing a weakling like him could accomplish was to throw a single punch—one that shattered a key, overturning the entire game board and destroying everything in the process.

But that was enough. Raising his middle finger at the elder, Wang Yu let himself fall, descending into the bottomless void beyond the boundaries of Roland's domain.

"What did I do? Funny, there was someone else who asked me the same question a long time ago. I didn't answer him back then, but how's this: I've got nothing better to do, so why not? I just smashed this damn key that had the nerve to exist inside my mindscape. That's all. See you in hell, old bastard."

Wang Yu grinned viciously as he fell. The elder watched him vanish into the endless void along with the ground collapsing beneath his feet.

"Destroying the key... Impossible! Impossible! What power do you have?! What right do you have to shatter a key?! Nothing should be able to affect these keys! I refuse to believe it! I won't accept this!"

The elder screamed as Wang Yu fell into the void. Yet his death brought no satisfaction—only horror. The reality that Wang Yu had shattered the key utterly destroyed his understanding of the world. He knew exactly what the keys were—how could they possibly be broken?!

But the evidence was undeniable. The ground beneath Wang Yu, formed from the key, had crumbled before his eyes. Even if he refused to accept it, even if he was unwilling to believe it, the truth remained: Wang Yu seemed to have done exactly as he had claimed.

This truth tore his worldview apart. The elder, who had schemed for countless years to claim Roland's legacy, was thrown into emotional turmoil that went beyond words.

All his cunning, all his meticulous planning, all the wisdom he had accumulated over his unnaturally long life—none of it remained. All that was left was impotent rage and the sheer madness of a man who had lost everything.

"I won't give up! If the path is broken, I'll just force another one into existence!"

The elder raved like a lunatic as he waited—for the collapse to finish, and for the void to reclaim this space.

The collapse continued without pause. The ground beneath the skeletal keyholders had already fractured, turning into scattered fragments that broke away from the whole. The keyholder closest to where Wang Yu had stood had already fallen into the void, just as he had.

The cracks rapidly spread to the elder's position. He sensed the breath of the void seeping into the material domain and attempted to manipulate the void energy with his wizardry, only to discover that he could not.

For some reason, his formidable wizardry was nearly powerless here despite being deep within the void. Though void energy surrounded him, Though he was within the very source of all his wizardry, he could not command even a sliver of it.

The elder couldn't comprehend why his powers weren't working—and the void wouldn't grant him the time to do so. As the ground beneath him shattered, he too began to fall. The power of the void took hold, consuming all thirteen keys and their wielders.

The void enveloped the elder, who could not wield his power. The energy of the void began distorting his body, his soul—everything about him.

Just as the void had done to the material world, just as the elder had done when he borrowed the void's power for his spells, the void now swallowed the wizard whole, ruthlessly warping him.

"Why... why?" The elder tried to summon his power to control the void energy, but it was useless. The methods he had always used to channel void energy for wizardry were now completely ineffective.

His limbs twisted and mutated. His soul was invaded by the void's madness and frenzy. His consciousness unraveled, deformed beyond recognition. The rational part of himself grew smaller and smaller.

"Why... can't I use it? No... I am using it, but... why so little...?"

Even in his final moments, the elder desperately tried to wield void energy. His fading mind kept attempting, and he felt... something. A minuscule trace of void energy indeed responded to him, but compared to what he once commanded as a legendary wizard, this was nothing. So little, so pitifully little—barely a trickle against the ocean of the void's power, a feeble few drops that came from within his own body.

"Could it be... I..." In the last flickers of his consciousness, the elder was still trying to understand why he could not summon his power. Perhaps he did have an epiphany by the very end—but by then, it was too late. And in truth, it no longer mattered.

The void twisted him completely, reducing him to a deep-purple mass of energy—not even a grotesque mass of flesh, but something further removed from humanity. Without consciousness, he could no longer be called a person. Like all void-born creatures, he became a shrieking, mindless entity, lost in the void.

Wang Yu didn't feel like he was falling. The ground beneath him remained relatively still, while Roland's material domain above shrank further and further away, his only reference point for movement.

By then, the domain above had already shrunk beyond visibility. Whether it had crumbled entirely or simply drifted beyond his sight, he couldn't tell.

There was no other sensation. Above him lay the starry sky; below him, endless darkness. His wizardry was gone, though his ripples remained. The void energy around him was incomprehensibly dense, yet he could not command it—but nor was he affected by it.

Unless something changed, he would fall like this forever, until he either starved in this void where his body still perceived time... or until some powerful void creature found and killed him.

It was a bad ending, but Wang Yu didn't mind. The fact that he had dragged that old bastard down with him was enough to be satisfying.

If the key hadn't been inside his mindscape, he might not have even been able to destroy it. In Roland's material domain, he couldn't even fire his gun, let alone shatter the key.

But unfortunately for that elder, the key existed in Wang Yu's mindscape. He didn't understand why, but in his mindscape, nothing could harm him—and so a key that couldn't run away had no choice but to shatter upon coming in contact with his fist.

What he didn't know was that the moment he destroyed the key, something within it was also released. It returned to the void, then reappeared in the material world, where it returned to its rightful owner.

In the academy's demiplane, Avia was relentlessly using her newly mastered Gate of Phases to search for Wang Yu. No matter how she tried, she kept getting the same result: his location was nonexistent. Agitation, frustration, anxiety—she forcibly suppressed all these emotions, leaving only unwavering focus. She tried, then tried again.

And then, she sensed something change. She lifted her arm in disbelief, her arm covered by her Twinned Star glove. Aunt Lilya had given her that glove. Then, Avia had continuously modified herself. It was the same arm that had virtualized upon saving Wang Yu's life with her latent ability.

Now, for some reason, it was restoring itself. It no longer seemed to be part of the void—it had returned to normal, just like her other arm.

She had no time to feel shock or joy. As the arm returned, she found herself with a set of spacetime coordinates in her mind, a location so chaotic, so utterly incomprehensible that it defied all attempts to decipher it.

"Is that it? I'll keep trying!"

And Avia wasn't the only one who noticed these coordinates, either.

Wang Yu continued to fall. There was nothing around him. He tried to use his abilities—everything except wizardry worked. Potions, his body, Fury of the Forge, even the Spellweaver's Tome and his ripples.

But none of it helped him escape the void. Even so, he kept trying. If he had to starve to death, he might as well keep trying until then.

Then, something caught his attention—his ripples had detected something behind him. A door had opened. It resembled the Dark Ritual codex's bidirectional portal, though far smaller and more unstable.

A hand reached out from within, grabbed his armor, and yanked him inside. That hand was familiar, and Wang Yu didn't resist.

As he passed through the gate, he saw Samuel, his body almost completely having virtualized.

"Thank you, Mr. Samuel," Wang Yu said sincerely. The librarian had truly kept his word.

"It was beyond coincidence," Samuel replied. "I never expected that, in my final moments before virtualization, I would regain some of my humanity—enough to finally master this Dark Ritual codex, which I had studied for so long without success."

The fading Samuel held up the Dark Ritual codex, his voice filled with emotion and warmth. It reminded Wang Yu of Sieg.

The void portal within the tome was slowly closing. It had opened the way, allowing Samuel to pull Wang Yu back from the void.

"I couldn't locate you before. But just now, something pierced the boundary between void and matter—a shifting coordinate.

"I took a gamble and opened a gate. I never thought I'd actually pull you out. Saving an interesting person like you in my final moments—well, it's not a bad feeling."

Wang Yu glanced at the Library's collapsing space. The shelves were turning to dust, and the ceiling transparent. The librarian, too, was slowly fading from sight.

"Mr. Samuel, is there anything I can do for you?"

"The library was always meant to close someday. Knowledge does not disappear—it simply returns to those who seek it. It will no longer be occult knowledge, but simply knowledge.

"I will use the last of my strength to send you out. If you do want to do something for me..." Samuel laughed. "Maybe you can. Haha, I'm getting sentimental at the end. Not much of a Flamewarden, am I?"

Though his face remained hidden underneath his hood, he sounded relieved, as if he were soon to be freed of a great burden.

"Remember my surname—Hayden. I am Samuel Hayden, the last of my line. A decent Flamewarden, if I say so myself.

"As expected, in the end, I still hope that someone in this world will remember me. You are special—telling you my identity won't have any occult implications. And once you tell others, it will simply become part of the concept of 'knowledge.'"

Samuel told Wang Yu his surname, as well as a position Wang Yu had never heard of before—a Flamewarden. This librarian seemed to want someone to remember him, yet for some reason, he had never revealed his identity to anyone else.

"Forgive me for asking, but... are you a deity?" Wang Yu pondered for a moment. Once upon a time, someone had said something similar to him before.

Samuel was momentarily taken aback. "How did you know? Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. Indeed, I was once a priest of the God of Knowledge. Now, I suppose I am the God of Knowledge myself. But in the future, no such deity will exist—only the concept of knowledge itself, pure as can be."

"Because... a friend of mine, a deity, once told me something similar," Wang Yu replied.

"A deity as a friend? You really are even more extraordinary than I imagined." Samuel sighed slightly, then continued, "Alright, one last Tier 6 spell, and I'll send you out. Your companion is still trying to find you—take good care of her, kid."

With a slight wave of his hand, the space around Wang Yu rippled with the standard fluctuations of a teleportation spell.

"Mr. Samuel Hayden, if possible, may I take a biography of yours as a physical item from the library?"

Just as he was about to be teleported away, Wang Yu thought of something.

Samuel blinked, then laughed. "You greedy little rascal. My power is really running low... Fine, but you'll only get a very small part of it."

As Samuel spoke and the teleportation spell took effect, a thin booklet appeared in Wang Yu's hand. The next moment, Wang Yu vanished from the collapsing library.

In the crumbling remains of the library, Samuel smiled as he watched the "fire" that had accompanied him for countless years gradually fade away. He sank into silence.

Inside the academy, Avia stubbornly continued her efforts despite the principal's repeated attempts to dissuade her. At that moment, she detected an abnormal fluctuation in space. The headmaster, a powerful mage, noticed it as well. Both of them turned their gazes in the same direction.

A stable portal opened. Wang Yu stepped out, a thin booklet in his hand.

He smiled.

"I'm alive. And I even got a physical item. Not bad!"