Chương 233: Chapter 230 - Peace in our time

The illusion of safety for civilians died that day. The idea that you would be safe from all the chaos and fighting, the idea that a dragonslayer deterrence would be enough to protect civilians. The idea that Earth could continue to see The Realm as a source of entertainment and resources while going on with their day to day lives It all shattered. The world finally found out the truth. One that a certain adventurer himself had found out only a few months ago.

The dividing line between a civilization thriving and careening into chaos was often paper thin. Perhaps it could have been predicted beforehand, perhaps you could have seen it coming. Though as always, nobody quite realized how bad it could be until it actually happened. A mismatched creature wearing the face of the Witch Tyrant stumbled out of the system portal and into the center of the domed building designed to protect it. It immediately caught the attention of the adventurers and civilians guards.

They all recoiled back in horror. The dome lit up as it detected a foreign power that wasn't registered with San Kingsgrove's enchantments. It notified a certain [Witch] straight away while locking down the building with defences even dragonslayers would have difficulty breaking. The portal dome was not only a deterrent to prevent civilians from entering and taking away a trial spot, it was a defensive measure to prevent any unwanted adventurers from re-entering San Kingsgrove proper.

As a Destined, Pinkie did not need to use a system portal, though she often did because it was simply good practice not to leave your Earth body exposed. That combined with the fact that she had no presence of mind to conceal herself turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the people of San Kingsgrove. It bought them a few precious seconds for the emergency alert to ring. Shields and barriers were raised against the thing that was stumbling around on the ground.

It shattered the enchanted floor like it was paper as the adventurers backed up. The creature continued to writhe around. When one left The Realm, the Trial System would stop stabilizing your Legend, preventing you from being able to use it unless you mastered it properly. In one sense, you could consider it just like another Trial skill. Though something like a Legend didn't simply disappear because you couldn't activate it.

Pinkie had been hoping that being in another dimension would strip away [Remembrance of the Fallen]—and it did work a little. Even now, she could feel that whatever curse had been placed on her was losing its grip. But it did nothing to rid herself of the memories, the scenes and emotions that were burned into her mind through biology. Her very own Legend kept her brain the way it was. Not that she had the presence of mind to attempt to alter her brain either.

Currently, the flesh of the Passive Tyrant was continuing to grow out of control. Flesh that might as well have been a Legend unto itself. All of it was unraveling. The Passive Tyrant's arm continued to stretch outwards in a mass of bubbling sinew and muscle. The skin stretching thin and exposing the writhing muscles, anyone else's skin and they would have been ripped open as the arm grew ten times the size, but the Passive Tyrant's skin held.

The left leg started to do the same, growing larger and larger as there was no more Legend that was holding it back. She stood on one growing leg as the growing shoulder started to swallow the torso. The adventurers within the dome began to flee. You did not need to have any sensory skills to see that this was a dragonslayer level threat at minimum. The Witch Tyrant's face contorted in grief and horror, drowning out the dome in a wave of uncontrolled emotions.

It dropped all the adventurers to the ground and blanked out the minds of the civilians that were keeping it running. None of them even knew that such a thing as too much concentrated mental energy could kill them. The dome crafted by Grettfield to contain threats had turned into an death-trap. Far, far up in the air, [Witch] Grettfield stood atop a broom flanked by two other dragonslayers. She had not been idle when she heard of the potential threat from Ryan.

It had been more than enough time to request aid from her old team. Three dragonslayers should have been overkill to protect a single city on Earth. Now it looked like she'd underprepared. The hidden [Witch] of San Kingsgrove held an ugly book in hand as she continued to pull upon everything she had prepared for decades. Every single enchantment of the shining city turned into black ink. A city full of pretty enchantments that had taken her services for cheap.

To the rare building that didn't use her services she simply added a backdoor into them over the decades. All of the buildings connected together in a complicated black script with Grettfield as the epicenter. Only an inexperienced fool would believe that her city was weakly defended. In fact, it was possibly the most dangerous city on Earth to assault. She had spent decades crafting her city into a single complicated ritual that empowered her. There was a reason why you did not fuck with a [Witch] in her domain.

Though, Grettfield still hesitated at what exactly she was going to do. The Passive Tyrant's flesh had started to grow beyond the size of the portal dome. Its arm strained lightly against the reinforced dome— her dome —and shattered it like paper. One leg and one arm had swallowed Pinkie's torso and was still growing. It spread out the mental grief like a memetic wave across the city, screams started to ring out in grief and horror at the emotions they did not understand.

At least they weren't dead, even if the entire city would be traumatized for life. The fingers high in the air twitched, as if in response to the gathering mana. And Grettfield stopped her spell." Stop." Her words were not for Pinkie, but her allies and the other adventurers readying to take potshots at the horrifying limbed pillar. Her allies knew what she meant exactly, they immediately fanned out and started glaring at other adventurers and started defending the monster instead. She had made an assessment.

Grettfield understood better than any of them what exactly this was. Even incomplete and out of control, even with it being in the nexus of power of a dragonslayer tier [Witch], they could not kill the damned thing. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. A telepathic message came in from one of her team, Ulhen a [Barbarian].

'It's getting bigger. What's the plan, Grett?'

'Dying if this thing decides to attack. It's not getting any stronger, it's just losing control over the Passive Tyrant's flesh.'

'That doesn't make me feel better.' Ulhen looked up at the sky that had folded into multiple large concentric rings. A manifestation of too much uncontrolled power rippling through reality. She glanced at another dragonslayer on the field. Ineza was readying a scroll of not inconsiderate power." Nobody attacks, or even uses any sort of malicious intent. This is the Passive Tyrant's flesh we're dealing with. If it decides to attack, we are all dead."

Her voice that echoed throughout the city was being drowned out by the tide of uncontrollable emotions pouring out of Pinkie. People were stuck between being in mortal terror and an uncontrollable grief they could not place. The wails that echoed out were enough for her to make a decision. Grettfield stared at her book, Chester her familiar. She flipped to the last couple pages and Chester stopped shaking in her hands. Grettfield caressed the page and in a form of sacrilege—tore open multiple pages.

The ripping of pages from a book echoed throughout the city. [My Last Chapter: One Last Stroke of Wisdom] A merged Epic, for her domain, for her city. For the sake of saving as many as she could. —— Ryan was there as his [Dangersense] screamed at him like never before. It was like a final death wail of a monster, the promise that there was nothing he could do if whatever it was wanted to kill him. The flesh broke through the dome as he watched Grettfield high in the air encase the city with her spell…

or perhaps it had always been there and none of them realized they'd been walking on one massive spell circle. A glance from the dragonslayer tier [Witch] and it swept away the emergency teleportation scroll that dragonslayer Ineza had been activating. Taking the mana and adding it to Grettfield's own. Ineza cursed and reached for something else at her belt. Ryan… just stared at the giant fist breaking out of the dome. It was too soon for something like this. This wasn't what he was expecting.

He had been expecting controlled chaos from the Witch Tyrant. One where the people involved had a chance to rise to the challenge. Not… not where one mistake would wipe out the entirety of California, perhaps even annihilate the United States if something went wrong. This was… too far. Too much, even for the Witch Tyrant. Ryan came to a simple conclusion. The Witch Tyrant wasn't in control either. Despite everything, it was not a comforting thought at all. Was this all part of a greater plan?

Or was the fight with the Passive Tyrant simply too much for her to handle? Or had she well and truly completely lost her mind? How am I supposed to make a difference here? As his [Dangersense] rang, as dragonslayer Ineza grabbed his collar and activated a different emergency escape, Ryan just stared at the pillar of burgeoning flesh and— Tried to think of a plan.

As bad as it was, as terrible as the mental wave of grief made him want to sink into the ground, all it did was remind him of every melancholic moment he had with a dead girl. Of a sad girl that tried to keep up a cheerful tone while secretly believing that everything was her fault. Ryan never gave up, refusing to believe he couldn't make a difference, even here. [A Glimpse of Perspective] A Rare rarity skill, a relatively simple skill compared to the Epics he had.

For once, he purposefully called upon the Trial class instead of the other way round. Unity For he was the Conceptual Metamorph, and the class he observed was similar to his own. Concepts. Gloriously powerful concepts were screaming out into the world, resonance of a sort, or rather just pure power that went beyond what skills were to the point that they occupied a fundamental place in reality. That was what Legends were. Something with so much conceptual weight it might as well drown out everything else.

It was why they burned into your mind. It was why they overwrote your class when it manifested for the first time. Taking over all of the concepts as a whole. The Aberrant Shapeshifter was being assaulted from her own flesh, from her own mind… and continuously reinforced by the concepts of her class. A foul curse that twisted the Shapeshifter's fundamental ability to take the form of even concepts of another. Ryan tried to pull away from the hand that had grabbed his collar. I can see it. Apex. Aberration. Grief.

Pain. Loss. Longing. Change.

"Let go of me." Ineza had finished setting up her secondary escape, a talisman made of qi.

"There is nothing you and I can do here—" Ryan tried to struggle, to push her away but he was simply a fifth realm against the might of a dragonslayer, and dragonslayer Ineza refused to let go of such a precious resource. He stared at her, his skill still active as she met his eyes and flinched at the piercing gaze. You're just like a damned dragon. The Thousand Winds Talisman tore open and picked up both of them at speed, blitzing them away from the city.

Ryan tried to shout at her but he couldn't with the wind completely against him. Dragonslayer Ineza was a coward, and that, more than anything, soured his opinion of her. —— [Witch] Grettfield saw all that had happened, the final chapter of her and her team's lives. There had been five of them at the start, but now they were three. Every single page of her recent life's story went through her mind like scenes from a storybook.

[My Last Chapter: One Last Stroke of Wisdom] was a skill based on skipping to the end of a story. A skill to teach you all the lessons of her life's story, compressed into one final chapter. She had used this skill once and then never again. It ate away at her future potential to do so. It destroyed her achievements, cutting down the insights on her own life to bring out the wisdom that she should have had when she took her time to digest her own story in full.

A skill for a [Witch] that grew up on tales of Legendary Tyrants. One that had joined the secretive Witch's Coven, listening to and sharing the exploits of others like they were stories out of a book. [A Witch of Fables]. She would not be able to cast this again for another decade at minimum. Her best and worst skill. A Witch's skill in nature. But she would do so, because this was her city. It gave her the confidence and wisdom to do what was needed. A witch's way.

Her allied dragonslayers were still flying around at speed, making sure not a single attack was being directed at the pillar of flesh. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

"Pinkie or Ayla, can you hear me?" The foot and fingers twitched, shaking the ground around it. A localized earthquake went through her city. Though her inkscript and the modern design of the city kept the buildings intact.

'Please do not move, there are innocents around you. Children you will crush if you attack.' It worked. As if accepting that fact, the bulging flesh stood stock still. Even its growth started to slow, as if reining it in with sheer willpower. Of all the things, Pinkie had never gone so far as to kidnap or eat children. The Passive Tyrant was even less likely to threaten anything beneath her. She was hoping that those two would be enough to combat the ever present grief and malice of the Witch Tyrant.

And there was more than a little bit of malice bubbling in the epicenter of the pillar of flesh. While it was mostly grief, more than a little cold anger started to simmer underneath. It put her on guard, crafting her spell and adjusting the emergency teleportation spell to connect with a location she had prepared in time.

'I will be teleporting you away to keep the children of the city safe. There is nothing to be gained here. Do you understand?'' But what about a reminder?' Grettfield froze as the voice of the Witch Tyrant rang in her head. A voice echoed out to Grettfield as if it had seen what her final chapter would conclude beforehand. As if it expected all of this in the end. If it was the old Xie Lihua, the tone would have been one of sneering victory. This was just dripping in cold venom.

Grettfield's own words and magic were what had triggered the trap. Sympathetic magic. Grettfield stumbled as the mental attack hit her with overwhelming emotions. An attack that [Witches] considered taboo upon one another. Grettfield hadn't prepared for something like that. Her emotions were sent into an overwhelming turmoil as the message spell went through her defenses and entered her mind. You have all grown lazy in the peace I have granted you. You take it as if it were a birthright.

None of you remember the debt you owe me. You do not remember the world like we do. This is merely a reminder.' A small dainty hand, covered deep within the flesh of the passive tyrant, finished its spell. [Shades of the Dead]'My daughter is dead, and I have come to collect for all the peace you have enjoyed.' Grettfield had been casting her teleportation spell the entire time, the Passive Tyrant's flesh was stock still, trying hard not to crush the ants around it.

But the Epic from the Witch Tyrant, the simple precursor skill from [Remembrance of the Fallen] had started to bring the dead forward. Most of them actually died within the flesh of the Passive Tyrant. Perhaps even the Witch Tyrant did not expect just how large the arm and legs would grow. But the monsters being summoned in the periphery was bad enough. Grettfield took a moment to recover from the mental attack, going as fast as she could, covering the pillar of flesh with multiple spell circles of black ink.

Taking out pages from her book as she did, reintegrating the broken emergency teleportation spell in the dome and strengthening it with the insights from her [Final Chapter] skill. It was still too much, there was far too much weight and power behind what she was trying to teleport. All of it would take time. Meanwhile, the shades started to flood into her city.