Chapter 260: A Fatal Strike
Chapter 260: A Fatal Strike
The violent battle raged across the sky like a storm.
Shockwaves tore through the sky, sending devastating tremors across every direction.
But despite fighting like madmen, the Stormveil Academy’s forces were losing.
The sheer disparity in cultivation realms was an impossible to bridge.
High Preceptor Amarantha was bleeding profusely, barely avoiding a fatal strike, while High Preceptor Erasmus’s elegant sword arts were faltering under the relentless suppression of a middle-stage Domain Master.
"We cannot hold them back much longer!" High Preceptor Aldren roared, his hands bleeding as he frantically maintained the Dawn-Breaker’s defensive arrays.
Carmilla, whose red robes were torn and stained with blood, deflected a cataclysmic blast from the 7th-level leader, Veydris.
She turned her head, her bright eyes locking onto the pitch-black sphere of darkness where Rhain was desperately fighting a 4th-level Domain Master.
"RHAIN! DISENGAGE!" Carmilla’s voice tore through the battlefield, amplified by her essence. "Take the helm! Pilot the Dawn-Breaker into Valdris City! We are less than a dozen miles from the border! Once we cross into the Old Dean’s territory, the royal assassins will not dare to pursue us!"
Inside the Origin Domain of Darkness, Rhain heard the command.
He gritted his teeth, parrying a lethal strike from the assassin trapped inside with him.
He knew Carmilla was right. His Abyssal Sovereign Physique could keep him fighting, but the Preceptors were going to die if this battle dragged on for even a few more minutes.
Tactical retreat was their only viable option.
"Domain, retract!"
Rhain instantly shattered his own Domain of Darkness.
The pitch-black sphere dissolved into nothingness, leaving the disoriented 4th-level assassin stumbling in the air.
Using the momentum, Rhain plummeted directly toward the deck of the Dawn-Breaker.
His boots slammed onto the wooden floorboards.
Without wasting a microsecond, he rushed to the central control array, slamming his blood-stained hands onto the helm and frantically pouring his peak Spirit Manifestation essence into the core.
"Hold on!" Rhain roared.
VMMMM—!!!
The colossal golden leviathan shuddered vigorously.
The propulsion arrays erupted with blinding blue light, and the massive war-skiff surged forward, tearing through the sky toward the visible, shimmering boundary markers of Valdris City.
"You are going nowhere!" Veydris snarled.
If the boy crossed that boundary, their mission would end in complete failure.
Veydris ignored Carmilla completely. He drew his right arm back, channeling every last drop of his 7th-level Domain Master essence.
The surrounding space warped and shattered as a dazzling, condensed spear of pure essence materialized in his grasp.
With a furious roar, Veydris hurled the spear directly at the retreating war-skiff.
"NO!" Carmilla shrieked, immediately shifting her flight path, moving to intercept the devastating projectile with her own body.
But just as she lunged, two middle-stage Domain Masters flanked her, unleashing a combined wave of metal and earth essence that slammed into her side, forcefully holding her back.
"Move!" Carmilla roared, blasting them with fire, but she was a fraction of a second too late.
The spear sailed unimpeded, tearing a black rift through the space as it shot straight toward the helm of the Dawn-Breaker.
Standing at the control array, Rhain felt the paralyzing lock of a late-stage Domain Master’s killing intent.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
He turned slightly, his golden eyes shrinking to pinpoints as he saw the blinding streak of destruction descending upon him.
There was no time to dodge.
In an instant, Rhain summoned everything he had.
The invisible, indestructible layers of his Epic-Grade Armor appeared beneath his robes.
A peak Epic-Grade shield materialized in his left hand.
He pushed the Abyssal Sovereign Physique to its absolute limit, erecting a dense, pitch-black barrier of pure essence in front of his chest.
But against the concentrated, all-out strike of a 7th-level Domain Master, it was entirely futile.
BOOM—!!!
The spear of light crashed into Rhain.
The peak Epic-Grade shield shattered into a million pieces like fragile glass.
The pitch-black essence barrier evaporated in a microsecond.
The Epic Grade Armor was torn open as if it were wet paper.
"Gah—!"
The spear pierced directly through the center of his chest.
The horrific sound of flesh tearing echoed across the deck.
The devastating momentum lifted Rhain entirely off his feet, driving him backward before forcefully pinning him to the thick, array-reinforced wooden deck of the Dawn-Breaker.
Rhain’s golden eyes went dark.
His head tilted forward, a thin line of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth and running down the shaft of the spear that held him in place.
"HUSBAND!"
A heart-wrenching scream ripped through the air.
Seris’s soul seemed to be completely torn apart at that moment.
Throwing herself across the deck, she dropped to her knees beside him.
Her hands, trembling violently, grabbed the dissipating shaft of the essence spear and frantically ripped the remaining fragments from his chest.
Blood—so much blood—poured from the gaping hole where his heart used to be, instantly pooling across the golden wood.
"No, no, no, no!" Seris sobbed hysterically.
She pressed her snow-white hands directly over the fatal wound, uncaring as the warm blood stained her skin and lavender dress.
She frantically poured her Heavenly Glacial Essence into him, trying desperately to seal the wound and freeze the bleeding.
But the essence assualt of a level seven Domain Master was so strong that her weak Spirit Manifestation essence could not even stop the blood.
"It’s not working." She muttered in a strangely calm voice. "Why isn’t it working? Husband, Why isn’t it—"
Seris frantically poured more, and more, her entire cultivation base emptying itself into his ruined body without a shred of restraint.
Yet, all of it looked futile.
"OPEN YOUR EYES!" Seris suddenly screamed, and the calm shattered all at once, "YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULD NEVER LEAVE ME ALONE!"
A few feet away, Liana collapsed onto her knees. She covered her mouth with both hands, weeping uncontrollably, her tears falling like rain onto the blood-stained wood.
"Please... please, no..." Liana sobbed, her hands covering her face in despair. "Please, gods, take me instead! Take my worthless life! Just save him! I beg you, save him!"
Elara fell to her knees, her usually composed face turning ghastly pale. "Young master Rhain... please, get up... you have to get up..."
It was so heart wrenching to see the guy who had been just chatting causally with her a while ago to lie in a pool of blood.
Even Lyra, who had harbored such intense, complicated resentment toward him, felt her heart filled with unease as she saw Rhain’s blood-soaked, motionless body.
"Don’t die..." Lyra prayed, her voice incredibly fragile. "You arrogant scoundrel, you can’t die here... you can’t die here before I beat you..."
In the sky, the chaotic battle had paused for a single, eerie second as the assassins looked down at the unmoving, blood-soaked youth.
Veydris let out a cold, triumphant sneer. "It is done. The heart is destroyed."
But that silence was shattered by a shrill sound.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH—!!!"
Carmilla let out a bloodcurdling, demonic shriek.
BOOM—!!!
Her aura spiked to a completely unprecedented level.
The 6th-level assassin who had been holding Carmilla’s arms in a lock of layered stone was blasted off her entirely, his body hurled two thousand feet through the ruptured sky with both of his arms burned down to blackened bone.
But she didn’t even look at that direction, her murderous red eyes were locked entirely onto Veydris.