Chapter 45: Escaping the Tragedy
Despite the brutal injuries from the first engagement, warriors and cultivators hurled themselves back into the fray without hesitation.
New reinforcements flooded in too — men and women bearing fresh armor and burning determination.
Across the plains, nobles and prestigious clans who once fled the battlefield now swaggered back into the front lines, faces proud, pretending nothing had ever happened.
Their arrogance was thick enough to choke on.
Not far from the chaotic heart of the battle, two figures emerged, clad in the gleaming uniforms of the Bright Brilliant Blade Sect. They moved like shadows through the warzone, swift and precise.
Their eyes — bright with a strange, cosmic luster — immediately caught Elton's attention. The same glow that Christy had… yet to Elton's sharper senses, there was something lacking about them in comparison to hers with the inscriptions within their eyes.
Both men radiated Gold-Tier 1 auras.
They reached Elton and his group amid the slaughter, cleaving down two demonic beasts effortlessly before speaking.
One of them nodded respectfully.
"Lady Christy extends her greetings to you all," he said, voice calm despite the chaos. "She misses you."
Zoro, mid-battle, allowed himself a rare acknowledgment — a slight nod and a faint, fleeting smile.
Ramiro laughed under his breath, dodging a beast's claw.
"Are they talking about the Christy you kept bragging about?" he teased. "Sounds like a monster who gets excellent treatment within the Bright Brilliant Blade Sect."
Elton couldn't hide his grin, pride swelling for a moment — but only for a moment.
A second later, his focus snapped back to the enemy closing in.
The sky began to shift.
At first, it was almost unnoticeable — a faint tint of ash-gray blending into the clouds.
But the longer the battle raged, the darker the horizon grew, a slow, creeping sickness infecting the heavens.
Elton's inner voice — usually smug, cold, or sardonic — suddenly screamed in his mind:
"GET OUT OF THERE!! NOW!!!"
Without warning, Elton felt the inner presence trying to take control of his body, fast and aggressively.
Grinding his teeth, he fought back furiously, mentally snarling,
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
The inner voice answered sharply,
"LOOK at the sky, FOOL! If you don't run now, you'll die here along with everyone else. Even those Mortal Shedding experts won't react in time!"
Elton's stomach dropped.
A primal instinct roared through him.
Death.
It was swiftly approaching.
Without hesitation, he gathered every last drop of his Silver-Tier 4 Ki into his lungs and shouted with everything he had:
"EVERYONE! RUN! GET OUT OF HERE! SOMETHING TERRIFYING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!!"
He pointed toward the growing energy — the hidden disturbance that had been quietly festering four miles away.
Around him, most warriors scoffed, sneering or ignoring his desperate cry.
They couldn't feel it, so they did not believe him.
But Zoro, sharp-eyed and loyal, immediately shifted.
In an instant, he felt it too — the faint, soul-chilling dread — and without a word, sprinted after Elton.
Ramiro, while unable to sense a thing, didn't hesitate either.
"Elton's got a sixth sense," he muttered, turning to follow.
Kuroha and Kageha, glancing at each other, made the decision without speaking.
In their time traveling with Elton, they'd learned one thing:
When he got that serious and things seemed dire, you didn't ask questions. For some reason, he continuously managed to make the safest bets that saved them from unnecessary troubles.
The two Aka Boshi no Tengan Gold Tier 1 clan members gave each other a brief, knowing look — a memory of Christy's private warning flashing in their minds:
"If he ever makes a serious declaration about something that leaves you very uncertain… you take it as law and never question it. It may even save your lives."
They fell in line behind Elton too, blades ready.
Around them, a handful of cautious warriors and sect disciples — not convinced but uneasy — also began peeling away from the battlefield, just in case.
Further across the plains, the Mortal Shedding Realm experts finally noticed the change.
Faces turned pale.
Expressions hardened into horror.
One of them, voice cracked with urgency, roared:
"RETREAT! RETREAT!! FALL BACK, NOW!!"
The six Mortal Shedding cultivators shot into the sky, racing to intercept the oncoming disaster, but too much time had been lost.
Even the Gold-Tier 5 reinforcements who had arrived earlier now froze, sensing the dreadful power gathering like a massive blade descending from above.
It was too late for many.
Meanwhile, just some moments before in an area miles away:
Inside a ruined formation half-buried in cracked earth, a lone figure sat cross-legged in eerie stillness.
The man — if one could still call him that — had horns curling from his forehead and razor fangs gleaming between cracked lips. His skin was a sickly shade, etched with demonic runes that pulsed with malevolence.
A shroud of Middle Stage Mortal Shedding Realm energy enveloped him, pressing down on the landscape like a suffocating blanket.
Dark magic — ancient and foul — seeped out from his body, slowly tainting the land… even reaching toward the distant ruins of the Bright Blade Sect.
Suddenly, his blood-red eyes snapped open.
A slow, cruel smile stretched across his face.
Without a word, he lifted one finger… and pointed straight toward the battlefield.
Above, the sky blackened further — almost imperceptibly at first — but steadily deepening.
The true calamity had already begun.
The sky was a funeral pyre,
and Elton's group sprinted straight through the heart of it.
Above them, Mortal Shedding Realm experts fought a desperate, bruising battle.
The very heavens screamed with the clash of blade, Ki, and magic against the endless bombardment of dark, fiery meteors.
Some of the elders were wounded — scorched, bloodied — but none had yet fallen.
Their sheer willpower defied the apocalypse for just a little longer.
"Move, damn it!" Elton bellowed, yanking a barely-conscious Ramiro forward.
Beside him, Zoro grunted, dragging his injured leg. Blood streaked his side, but he clenched his teeth and ran without complaint.
Kuroha, short of breath with a fierce grit of her teeth, ran with her right arm uselessly hanging, darting through falling debris like a ghost.
Her twin brother, Kageha, wielded a broken sword in one hand and a cracked dagger in the other, covering their flank with desperate swings.
The group's bodies were battered, their breaths ragged, but still, they ran.
A fiery meteor smashed into the ground ahead, sending a shockwave of molten dust screaming toward them.
They barely threw themselves flat in time.
The Bright Blade Sect was being shredded into nothing before their very eyes.
Temples, statues, training fields — all reduced to smoking craters.
And through it all, more desperate survivors sprinted: Bright Brilliant Blade Sect and Fighting Brawlman Sect fought their own losing battles.
Elton's mind barely registered it.
His focus tunneled to one thing: survive.
A new meteor plummeted directly toward their path — a massive, burning behemoth of death.
The ground shuddered violently.
Zoro stumbled.
Ramiro gasped, too slow to rise.
Kuroha's knees buckled.
They weren't going to make it.
Not like this.
You cannot outrun destiny like a mortal,
Gamble, fool!
His inner voice snarled, its deranged wisdom crashing through Elton's mind.
Without thinking, Elton planted himself, teeth gritted.
"EVERYONE — HOLD ONTO ME!!"
No hesitation.
Zoro grabbed his left shoulder.
Ramiro clamped onto his right.
Kuroha and Kageha locked onto his waist.
The two Gold-Tier 1 Aka Boshi no Tengan clan members also grabbed on.
At that instant—
CRACK—!
Three meridians, all at once, burst open inside Elton's body.
The pain was so pure it was nearly blissful.
His inner voice — a harsh chuckle.
Dragging them along, are you? Fine. But remember, they're just extra weight.
Aloud, through clenched teeth, the inner voice possessed Elton muttered:
"You're all lucky today…"
The twins blinked in confusion — then everything exploded into light.
BOOM!!
A White Starburst of energy detonated around Elton's form.
The world twisted.
A mysterious, ancient formation etched itself into existence beneath his feet, glowing bright silver and blue.
At his side, his Blue Long Sword ripped itself free, singing like a living creature.
It expanded outward, stretching massive in size, a platform of celestial metal swirling with star fire.
The blade rose into the air, carrying Elton and all who clung to him.
For one split second, the group could only gape in wide-eyed shock.
Above them — a giant meteor screamed down, so close the heat seared their skin.
FLASH!!
In a pulse of blinding brilliance, Elton and his group vanished into the horizon, propelled at a speed beyond even an Early Mortal Shedding expert's comprehension.
Behind them, the sect was no more.
Ash and flame swallowed everything they had known.
But Elton's group lived, streaking toward an unknown future — wounded, bewildered, but alive.