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Chapter 431: The Hand in the Shadows

Within the massive freezing dome, Roel dashed toward his severely injured nemesis lying on the ground. Seeing that victory was in sight, the heretics cheered aloud whereas the inquisitors felt a huge morale boost.

No one could have thought that Roel would be able to corner Count Bryan, a renowned expert in the Theocracy, within such a short period of time.

It hadn’t been long since their battle started, but both sides consecutively dished out spells that surpassed the crowd’s wildest imagination. In particular, Grandar’s terrifying strength had been imprinted deeply into everyone’s mind.

In contrast, Roel didn’t share their optimism at all. Even as he was rushing toward Bryan, there was a tight furrow on his forehead. He couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss.

Is Bryan Elric, or should I say Felder Elric, such a weak enemy?

The Elrics had descended from a lineage of knights, which was exactly the type of enemy that Grandar was good at dealing with, but Roel couldn’t believe that this was all Bryan Elric was capable of. He had crossed blows with Felder Elric two centuries ago in the Witness State, and he had known the latter to be a tenacious man.

He found it hard to believe how he was able to easily connect his chain of attacks, especially since he was only at Origin Level 4 whereas Bryan was an Origin Level 2 transcendent.

Admittedly, it would be difficult for even an Origin Level 2 transcendent to take Grandar’s attack face-on, and it was nearly impossible to guard against Glacier Creator, but even an Origin Level 2 transcendent should have been able to put up some resistance, let alone Bryan.

While the others only knew Bryan as a powerful transcendent from the Theocracy, Roel was well aware that the latter had already immersed himself in the dark arts for over a century now and had successfully secured the assistance of what appeared to be an evil god.

Most importantly of all, Roel had a weird feeling that Bryan had been trying to accumulate his mana throughout the battle.

With all of these suspicions in mind, Roel dared not to get careless.

Thus, he halted his footsteps and raised his hands. He channeled Glacier Touch to its limit, releasing the frost aura to its greatest extent. It converged on Bryan and devoured him whole.

He decided to end it with a long-ranged attack in order to play it safe. The Six Calamities were malevolent forces that had destroyed countless civilizations. Even the gods weren’t spared from their wrath. He thought that Bryan would be helpless before Glacier Creator.

He thought wrong.

“You did well,” a third voice echoed on the prairie.

The gray miasma converged beside Bryan to form a robed figure.

There was a glowing crimson stone in Bryan’s hand. It had been absorbing mana during the battle with Roel, and it had finally collected enough to be activated. It was through the crimson stone as a medium that the robed figure was able to traverse across space to appear here.

The Collector.

In the Connoisseur Guild, that alias was reserved specifically for their leader. No one knew of his true identity, and no one had seen his face before. Even Bryan had only been able to meet him in that dark room over the past century.

Omniscience would have been an apt word to describe him, but he chose to conceal himself in the darkest shadows of the Theocracy, almost as if he was hiding from something.

Yet, on this very day, he stepped out of the shadows and revealed his existence to the world.

His goal?

To ensure the death of the Ascarts’ awakener.

“!”

The robed figure formed out of gray miasma turned over to look at Roel, revealing his blurred face in the process.

That very instant, Roel felt a sense of impending danger striking at his heart like a sledgehammer. His bloodline and mana rampaged, and the Crown Origin Attribute trembled intensely. His instincts overwrote all rational thoughts in his mind, prompting him to release his strongest attack ever.

The Crown’s Stones emanated a blinding light, further strengthening the ancient calamity that threatened eternal frost. For a moment, Glacier Creator revealed its monstrous manifestation before morphing into a sphere of light that flashed across the night sky, releasing a frost aura that promised equal death to all beings.

The frost aura produced an icy fog that obscured the stars and the moon. A layer of frost encrusted the earth.

The momentary appearance of Glacier Creator left the crowd exclaiming in terror, and they instinctively backed away out of fear.

Nothing seemed to be capable of stopping the frost aura, and it looked like the battle would end just like that. Yet, to Roel’s surprise, the robed figure had no attempt to avoid the frost aura. Instead, he began walking up toward it.

This incomprehensible reaction initially perplexed Roel, but the inconceivable happened right after.

Roel’s Glacier Touch had never failed him before, regardless of whether his opponent was a transcendent or a god. Yet, his desperate attack didn’t manage to freeze his enemy. The frost aura had instead circumvented the robed figure and passed him by.

Meanwhile, in a faraway dark room, a robed figure with a blurred face raised his hand and stretched it toward a projection reflecting a black-haired young man. His movements stirred ripples in the gray miasma, converging it into a bundle. Then, with a wave of his hand, the bundle of gray miasma shot forth as a deathly beam toward Roel.

Roel immediately took countermeasures.

Grandar raised his fist to smash through the deathly beam of gray miasma whereas the frost aura condensed together to form a shield.

But before both forces could come into contact with each other, the intense trembling of the Crown Origin Attribute suddenly stopped, and its brilliant glow gradually dimmed. This abrupt change stunned Roel. He felt a mysterious sensation washing over him.

For a brief instant, his consciousness seemed to have traversed across time. He saw the rise and fall of civilizations. The tales of their splendor and heroic deeds washed through his ears.

Everything gradually blurred until he found himself standing in a dark space lit by a single candle.

I remember this place!

The deepest memories in Roel’s mind were evoked. He remembered this space to be one of the hallucinations he saw when he first entered the Witness State and awakened to his bloodline.

Just that there was a subtle but horrifying difference.

The candlelight was burning brightly in the darkness, but a hand was quietly encroaching on it from the darkness.

Did it just appear there? Or was it there all along?

Regardless, its gradual approach raised waves of unease in Roel’s mind.

I have to stop it.

This thought instinctively surfaced in Roel’s mind, but his body wouldn’t move. It told him that he was nothing but a witness in this dark space.

The encroaching hand wrapped around the candlelight and covered it, plunging the surroundings into further darkness. Bone-chilling frost stabbed into Roel’s body, as if the death of the candlelight would take away all warmth from him.

The only relief was that the hand was unable to snuff out the candlelight right away, but even so, the darkness grew heavier and heavier.

Everything eventually quietened down, and Roel’s consciousness returned to his body.

The first thing Roel noticed was that the Kingmaker Bloodline had stalled to a halt, refusing to flow no matter how he tried to channel it. Subsequently, the light in the Crown Origin Attribute extinguished and the Crown’s Stones fell silent.

How is this possible?!

Roel widened his eyes in horror, unable to comprehend how such a situation could have happened. He desperately tried to clutch to whatever remaining power there was, but everything was flowing through fingers.

The moment the Crown Origin Attribute extinguished, Grandar’s body froze in place. His eyes lost its glow, indicating that it had reduced to nothing but an empty shell. At the same time, the frost aura also dissipated into the surroundings.

With the unraveling of his defence, the deathly beam of gray miasma swiftly pierced through his body, bringing him a feeling of fuzziness.

Both his mind and body were fuzzing out. He felt like someone was slowly erasing his existence, and everything slowly grew indistinct. He couldn’t even hear the panicked shoutings behind him.

On the other hand, Bryan swiftly recovered by absorbing the gray miasma, and it didn’t take long for him to return to his feet. He calmly made his way toward the towering skeleton and gazed upon the black-haired man standing limply beneath it.

“Roel Ascart, your existence is an anomaly. I had to drastically change my plans because of you. Fate might have changed in the years following your awakening, but it might not necessarily go in the direction you want it to.

“You might have believed our goal to be Her Highness Nora, and you aren’t wrong about that. However, you failed to realize that you are our target as well. This is the first time you have ventured into an isolated land in the years following your awakening. It’s an unprecedented opportunity for us, just as depicted in the prophecy.

“This will be where you meet your end, Roel Ascart. I’ll send your beloved princess to your side very soon. With this, the grudge between our houses will finally come to an end. Farewell.”

Bryan murmured his farewell to the black-haired man, whose body was swiftly disintegrating into dust. In a faraway dark room, a robed figure was also quietly gazing at a disturbing sculpture depicting an angel standing above countless corpses. The medium that had been glowing crimson moments ago had been reduced to a dead rock, just like the owner of its mana.

Everything was over.