Chapter 1285: The Village That Never Looked Up
After Ethan confirmed the array didn’t pose any immediate danger, he led everyone through together.
Purplish-red light washed over them again.
But when the transfer finished, the world on the other side had changed so completely it was almost absurd.
The ancient caves were gone.
In their place sat a neat, quiet little mountain village.
Houses lined up along flat, well-kept roads.
Out in the fields, farmers were bent over at work. On a distant slope stood a power station, steady lines running down into the village.
No matter how you looked at it, it was just an ordinary, modest settlement.
Ethan turned in place, frowning.
Auri perched near his shoulder and patted the top of his head like she owned him.
"Dad, I wanna go play!"
She pointed toward the edge of the village.
"There’s water!"
Ethan followed her finger.
A clear river really did cut through the farmland.
With Auri staring at him like that, he didn’t have much choice but to agree.
They descended toward the village.
The moment their feet touched the ground, Seraphina expanded into her dragon body.
A huge shadow swallowed most of the village. When her wings opened, even the sunlight over the fields disappeared under black scale and membrane.
But the farmers working the land didn’t react at all.
No one looked up.
No one ran from the sudden appearance of a dragon.
They kept the same pace, repeating the exact same motions over and over.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
This wasn’t a real village.
It felt more like a space someone—or something—had simulated.
He walked up to a nearby house, condensed a small energy sphere, and gently pushed it into the wall.
The contact didn’t cause normal damage.
The wall dented inward, then reshaped itself around the force. Windows, boards, even internal supports shifted as if the whole structure was soft clay under invisible hands—and when Ethan pulled the attack back, everything recovered as if nothing had happened.
Not just that house.
This entire space could be controlled and rewritten.
Ethan gathered power again.
This time, he pressed an energy sphere lightly into the ground.
White light slipped into the soil and spread outward beneath the village.
As the energy sank into the structure of the space, Ethan caught something different—an alien presence, far off.
He looked up.
A purple bird was flying in from the horizon.
At first it was only the size of a normal bird.
But as it closed the distance, it kept growing. Frost clung to the surface of its violet feathers, and one by one, ice arrows began to form around it.
They rotated in a slow orbit.
Every arrowhead aimed at the group.
Before it even reached them, an ice wall erupted from the ground.
Ice surged up and around them, sealing into a circle. The wall climbed higher and higher, and the top began to bend inward, trying to close the space completely.
No one wasted time on it.
Different powers hit the ice at once.
The wall shattered easily.
Chunks sprayed outward, and sunlight dropped back into the ring.
But in the instant the ice broke, Ethan felt it—the energy hidden behind it.
The wall had only been bait.
A girl stepped out from behind the flying ice shards.
A cluster of mechanical cannons was mounted across her back, metal brackets locked along her shoulders and waist. Every barrel was already charged. Red targeting dots slid through drifting ice dust and settled over the group.
As she appeared, the cannons behind her adjusted in unison.
The muzzles flared.
The first wave of fire slammed straight at them.
And at the same time, she raised one hand, energy gathering into her palm.
Andona spread ten pairs of golden wings.
Light Force poured between the feathers, first forming a stable halo under everyone’s feet—then snapping outward and sealing into a pale-gold shield that wrapped the entire group.
Almost simultaneously, two golden blades condensed at Andona’s sides.
Their tips pierced out through the shield, stabbing toward the mechanical girl from different angles. The first locked onto her chest. The second swept toward her right side, cutting off her retreat toward the ice bird.
The mechanical girl didn’t dodge.
The purplish-red energy bubble in her palm kept swelling, layer after layer of light compressing toward its center. Only when the two golden blades reached her did she thrust her arm forward.
The bubble met the blades head-on.
White light detonated at the point of contact.
Blade and bubble crushed against each other, gold and purplish-red tearing outward from the center. The shockwave rolled over the village, flattening crops in the fields and making the "farmers" who were still repeating their motions sway slightly—like dolls bumped by a passing hand.
That was when the ice bird arrived.
Its massive violet wings spread wide, and the ice arrows orbiting it all snapped to a new angle at once. Dozens of arrows dove from the sky, tips aimed at the people below. Frost trailed behind them in pale streaks.
Queen Elowen raised her left hand.
She didn’t form new ice.
She didn’t raise a shield.
Her deep-blue pupils flickered once.
Every arrow stopped in midair.
The frost trails behind them still stretched downward, frozen in the shape of motion—but the arrows themselves were pinned in place, as if an invisible grip had locked them there.
The ice bird’s wings jerked, stiffening.
Elowen curled her fingers slightly.
The suspended arrows rotated with her gesture.
One by one, their tips turned away from the group until all of them were aimed at the ice bird high above.
The next instant, the arrow storm reflected back along its original paths.
The ice bird flapped frantically.
It couldn’t control every arrow in time, so it threw up a thick ice pillar in front of itself. Cold gathered from its chest, the pillar swelling fast, wedging between its body and the returning barrage.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Arrows hammered into the pillar.
The first layer of ice shattered quickly, and the arrows behind it punched deeper. The ice bird kept pouring power into the pillar just to keep the defense from being pierced clean through.
Meanwhile, the cannons on the mechanical girl’s back finished reconfiguring.
The barrels that had been spread across her shoulders and waist folded back. Metal segments slid along rails and recombined into several long, narrow laser emitters.
The barrels began to glow red.
Heat bled outward, warping the air around them as they charged.
The girl twisted her body.
Every barrel swung over her shoulder, locking onto Andona’s shield at the same time.
Purplish-red beams shot out.
Each beam took a different angle, first curving around the strongest frontal defense—then crossing from above and the sides, trying to trap everyone inside a killing web of fire.
Elira spread her Divine Sovereign Moth wings.
The rune-eyes on the wing surface opened one after another.
Those eye-like markings didn’t watch the mechanical girl.
They locked onto the rapidly shifting purplish-red beams overhead. Every trajectory, every angle change—captured cleanly, as if she could "see" the paths before they finished forming.
Elira lifted both hands.
Pink light gathered from the center of her wings, compressing into a thick beam.
She didn’t wait for the purplish-red shots to land.
Her pink blast fired first, colliding head-on with the beams coming from the girl’s cannons.
Boom!
The two forces met in midair, forming a rigid column of clashing light.
Purplish-red power kept surging out of the barrels. The mechanical girl slid backward under the recoil, then increased output—metal brackets on her back tightening one by one as she tried to shove Elira’s pink beam down and back.
Elira didn’t give an inch.
The rune-eyes on her wings blazed brighter, and more pink energy streamed in from different patterns, feeding into the center of her attack.
The stalemate tilted.
The purplish-red column was forced back, inch by inch.
The barrels on the girl’s back began to tremble with overload, their surface temperature climbing higher. The red glow intensified.
Finally, Elira’s power overwhelmed the attack completely.
The girl cut output instantly.
Her gun barrels snapped downward, and the propulsion system meant for firing vented force instead, lifting her off the ground. She rose steadily into the air, stopping beside the ice bird at the same height.
At last, both sides paused—just barely.
The girl looked down at Ethan and the others.
"What are you?"
The cannons behind her remained charged.
"And what are you doing here?"
Since she was willing to talk, no one rushed to strike again.