It was hot.
And blinding—
Something felt like it was burning, searing her back with a fiery pain. Fern wanted to lift her head, but Lady Frieren held it down firmly, not letting her move an inch.
The ground seemed to tremble, like an earthquake… yet she couldn't feel the shaking. Fern couldn't hear anything, only a sharp ringing echoing in her mind.
This chaotic sensation lasted about five minutes… until Lady Frieren's grip gradually loosened, and Fern dazedly raised her head.
The ringing in her ears faded, and as her hearing returned, the next thing she heard was the hysterical… wailing of countless people in the tavern.
The patrons who had been laughing and cursing moments ago were now, almost without exception, collapsed on the floor, clutching their eyes in agony. The tavern was filled with a cacophony of cries and shouts, like a scene from a living hell.
"W-What… what happened?" Fern stared at the scene, stunned and at a loss.
"It's hard to explain… For now, gather the nearby priests to treat the civilians. Their eyes have been burned," Frieren said, feeling more tense than she ever had, even when facing the Demon King. Recalling what had just happened, she swallowed hard, her heart still racing.
"If I didn't see it wrong, I just witnessed…"
——
"…the destruction of a star."
Chu Zihan felt the scales on his body unfurl one by one, as if breathing rhythmically.
Second-degree Blood Burst—his body was showing signs of dragonification, an instinctive reaction to a crisis.
Something liquid seemed to drip from his eye sockets… Chu Zihan instinctively wiped his face, recognizing the slick sensation all too well—it was blood.
He couldn't see anything, only darkness before his eyes.
It had been just a second—no, perhaps not even a second. In that instant, he had reflexively activated his Second-degree Blood Burst, but even a dragon's reflexes couldn't save him.
A flash of white light, then nothing but darkness… By the time he reacted, his pupils had already been burned. But in that moment of Blood Burst, he had pushed his Golden Eyes to their limit, barely glimpsing what had happened on the Celestial Screen.
"Your eyes…" The sudden blinding light had caused Caesar to close his eyes instinctively, preserving his pupils—though he hadn't seen what happened on the screen, he felt an overwhelming sense of danger.
"It's fine. I'll see a doctor," Chu Zihan said, tearing a strip of cloth to bind his eyes. Though his injuries would heal under the Second-degree Blood Burst, it would take time.
He repeated, "I saw the destruction of a star."
"What? That's impossible!" Caesar didn't believe it. "A star's destruction, from start to finish, takes billions of years. How could it happen in a few seconds?"
"I don't know what that Lord Ravager did," Chu Zihan said, his voice as calm as ever. "But I seemed to see a star compressed in her palm, small… but the energy it contained was undoubtedly planetary in scale."
"That kind of thing…" Caesar found it more fantastical than a fairy tale.
Suddenly, his phone buzzed with a "beep beep." He opened it to see a message from the principal.
"A new mission?" Chu Zihan asked.
"No, it's the principal," Caesar shook his head, scrolling through the images and messages. The more he read, the graver his expression became.
"You might not be seeing an eye doctor anytime soon. After that flash, hospitals' ophthalmology departments worldwide are overwhelmed," Caesar said with a bitter smile. "Burning out retinas in 0.001 seconds… If I hadn't seen it myself, no one would believe this even in a novel."
——
["As the group prepared their next attack, they suddenly saw Phantylia raise her hand high, pointing to the heavens."]
["'To crush ants, nothing is more fitting than dropping a star,' she said."]
["Countless ghostly lights appeared in the sky above Scalegorge Waterscape, coalescing into a dazzling orb in the atmosphere, covered in thousands of scarlet fissures, with molten lava seemingly roiling beneath."]
["But in the next second, the star shrank dramatically, condensing in Phantylia's palm into a small, fiery orb."]
["—As if toying with a delicate trinket, the smile on Phantylia's face deepened."]
["Almost instantly, Welt and Jing Yuan's expressions changed. They both understood the immense energy contained within that small orb."]
["'Everyone, be careful—!'"]
["But their warning didn't fully reach, as Scalegorge Waterscape began to shake violently the next moment. Stelle saw the Arbor's roots near Phantylia burning and regenerating in the flames. The temperature soared, and the white mist seemed to be sucked into a void."]
["Then, light erupted."]
["In that instant, Stelle seemed to see—"]
["First a blinding blue, then a searing yellow, and finally a white that obliterated everything. The shockwave from the explosion expanded visibly, withering all the roots in its path. The fiery orb in Phantylia's hand began to swell, inflating as if overpressurized, and then…"]
["A silent brilliance."]
——
Overlord
Terror.
A terror beyond words.
Walking through the streets, Sebas could only think this pale, monotonous thought after witnessing Phantylia crush a star.
His ears were filled with the townspeople's anguished screams. Though the Holy Kingdom's medical staff had begun treating residents immediately, many would likely be permanently blind after this disaster…
Lord Ainz couldn't do this—this thought flickered in Sebas's mind for a brief moment before he swiftly suppressed it. Such a thought was disloyal, even if true, and Sebas would never allow it to take root.
"Could anyone survive an explosion like that?"
Sebas harbored doubts.
Even General Jing Yuan, an Emissary himself, couldn't possibly survive, could he? An explosion of that magnitude could destroy the world Sebas stood in countless times over. He couldn't fathom how anyone could survive at such close range.
Stelle and the others… their bodies were probably reduced to ash, weren't they?
Sebas sighed, slowly raising his head.
But the next second, his pupils dilated—
As the white mist on the Celestial Screen began to clear, a glow of Preservation stood resolute behind Stelle's flame spear.