Chapter 1301: Where Green Turned Black
Gravehook’s gaze dropped to the ground.
Another fishhook condensed in his hand.
He didn’t attack right away. Instead, he bent toward the treant’s direction and bowed with exaggerated respect.
"Honored King."
He pressed the chain to his chest.
"I will follow in your footsteps for all eternity."
Then he lifted his head. The green flame in his skull crossed the battlefield and locked onto Ethan again.
"I only need that man’s soul—and I’ll be satisfied!"
As the words left him, the black smoke behind the treant slowly gathered.
A figure wrapped in black fog took shape.
The island’s king reached out and stroked the trees Auri had awakened—lush now, shockingly alive.
Where his palm passed, the new leaves trembled.
Then the king raised his head and looked up at Gravehook.
"I want you to absorb everyone’s souls."
The order fell.
Gravehook went wild with joy in midair.
His skull spun a full one-eighty, and deep green light blasted out from his eye sockets. When the head rotated back toward Ethan, the twin flames were noticeably brighter.
Gravehook’s power was growing.
On the ground, the treant’s branches were already closing on Auri.
Ataneya’s fox tails shot out again.
At the same time, she hurled a fully condensed orb of infernal energy in front of Auri.
The fireball hit the ground.
Boom!
Infernal flames surged up into a towering wall, cutting Auri off from the treant.
Auri, held tight in Feylora’s arms, finally stopped releasing green sparks.
She opened her eyes and shrank backward inch by inch, staring in terror at the fog-wrapped figure behind the treant.
The treant—briefly lucid earlier—lifted its arm again.
Dry branches speared forward, slamming into Ataneya’s infernal fire wall. Flames climbed fast, charring the leading edge black.
But the splintered wood didn’t lose its power.
The moment the fragments hit the ground, they were "triggered" by something. Roots erupted from the broken ends, drilling into the soil. They thickened into new trunks almost instantly, vaulting over their burning "siblings" and charging Auri again.
Wave after wave of dead trees.
The more they burned, the more numerous they became.
Ataneya’s twenty-four tails met the treant head-on.
Some tails wrapped the newborn trunks and ripped them out by the roots. Others snapped through the fire wall, smashing toward the treant’s main body. Branch and tail collided again and again above the flames, scattering wood chips, tail-energy, and infernal sparks across the battlefield.
The king in the rear still didn’t join the fight immediately.
He watched the ground Auri had infused with life and murmured to himself.
"What an interesting power of life."
Black fog drifted slowly around his face.
"Even the old Mournreach couldn’t compare to this."
A longsword stood quietly at his side.
The king reached out and brushed the fresh green leaves nearby. They still glistened with damp shine—until his palm passed over them. A subtle gray smoke seeped out from beneath the surface.
The green retreated instantly.
Leaves curled, blackened, and crumbled into dry grit.
Wind threaded through the forest.
Dead leaf bits lifted from branches and swirled around the king, rising into the air.
He withdrew his hand and looked toward them.
"Mournreach doesn’t welcome you."
His voice wasn’t loud, yet it rode over every clash and impact, landing clearly in everyone’s ears.
"I—Morvane—king of this island, order you to leave."
Seraphina stared at Morvane, surprise flickering through her gaze.
Compared to when he’d been hiding in the fog, Morvane’s power had clearly grown. The black smoke wasn’t just clinging to him anymore—it had linked into the island’s death aura itself.
With every breath, the nearby ground lost a little more color.
Even the treant fighting Ataneya’s tails was changing.
Its gray-brown deadwood body darkened, black spreading from root to branch tip. Black fog drilled into the cracks in its bark, occupying most of its frame.
Only deep in the core, a sliver of clear power remained.
Weak.
But not fully extinguished.
The treant couldn’t control itself anymore.
Dead trees kept charging the infernal wall. Branches burned off, fragments rooted, and the advance continued in even denser waves.
It didn’t feel like an attack now.
It felt like suicide on autopilot.
Morvane walked up to the treant and patted its shoulder lightly.
The treant shuddered, whatever clarity remained in its core shoved deeper again.
Morvane pulled up the longsword beside him, slung the broad blade across his shoulder, and stepped over charred roots as he advanced toward the group.
In the sky, Gravehook accepted the king’s "gift" as well.
Deep green flame flowed down from the skull, then was overlaid by a black layer. Chain, lantern, and hook all darkened, and even the surrounding fog began to gather toward him.
He raised his hand.
The giant hook flew at Ethan again.
Ethan was still watching Morvane and the treant below and didn’t turn in time.
Andona spotted it first.
She slid to Ethan’s side, folding her twenty pairs of wings forward to cover him behind a shield of gold feathers.
Her twin blades crossed and chopped down.
Two sword arcs surged along the chain’s line.
The golden edge struck metal—only shaving off a few deep-green sparks. The chain, strengthened by Morvane, didn’t break. It barely even shifted its path.
As it neared Andona’s wings, the hook abruptly curved.
It traced a tight arc along the outer edge of the golden feathers, slipped through a gap, and drove straight at Ethan’s chest.
Bang!
It didn’t pierce him—but it released a crushing impact.
Ethan took it head-on and dropped from the sky, crashing through a few branches before slamming into the ground.
Mud and dead leaves erupted.
Andona looked down in alarm.
Behind her, a cluster of angel phantoms appeared—each holding a different sacred weapon. A greatsword manifested back into her hands.
A tiny golden prison hovered above her left palm.
It was only fist-sized, but the runes layered inside it were dense, stacked on stacked. As Andona advanced toward Gravehook, the little prison began to expand.
Gravehook watched her with clear amusement.
He no longer bothered with Ethan down on the ground.
In his eyes, all of their souls would end up in his lantern sooner or later. The only question was who became a "collectible" first.
In the crater, Ethan pushed himself up slowly.
His clothes were torn open across the chest.
He dropped the earlier contempt and started to gather power again—then saw black fog bubbling around the wound.
Gray-black gas wriggled against his skin, trying to drill deeper into him.
A white energy sphere formed in Ethan’s palm.
Lightning compressed into a sharp arc, ready to carve the fog out along with the nearby energy structure.
"Stop!"
Seraphina flew in from the side.
She landed next to Ethan with a short, golden dagger in her hand, its blade flowing with pure Light Force.
Seraphina didn’t touch the wound directly. She scraped lightly along the boundary where fog clung to skin.
Gold light severed the attachment.
The black fog peeled off Ethan and dropped to the ground. The moment it left him, it changed—gas compressing into a sticky puddle of black sludge that seeped slowly down into cracks in the soil.
The earth that touched it lost color instantly.
Grass roots rotted. Tiny black specks spread across the surface of nearby stones.