Chapter 239: Life and Death in a Single Thought
With a long cry, the blue bird beat its wings violently. A raging gale formed beneath them, lifting its heavy body from the ground as it shot toward the torn opening in the cavern ceiling like an arrow.
And less than three or four seconds after they had taken flight, when they were still no more than ten meters above the ground—
RUMBLE—!!!!!!!
The churning pit of magma below finally reached its critical point.
That dark-red molten heart exploded.
An indescribably terrifying energy, together with a vast torrent of blazing red magma, erupted skyward like a volcanic explosion.
The shockwave from the blast instantly caught up with the blue bird that had only just taken off. A searing wave of heat and splashing magma swept in from behind like the scythe of death.
The entire cavern shook and collapsed under that final explosion.
More layers of rock melted away. Red magma spread madly in all directions from the center of the blast like a flood bursting through a broken dam, instantly swallowing the battlefield below, the corpses of Parker and the others, and every remaining trace of what had happened there.
The cavern roof began collapsing on a massive scale under the continuing impact. Countless huge boulders mixed with magma came crashing down. It was a scene from the end of the world.
The blue bird in Syl’s form was buffeted violently by the explosive shockwave, letting out a cry of pain. But it beat its wings with all its might, its whole body shining with stronger blue-green light as it barely resisted most of the impact and heat and desperately flew toward the opening in the ceiling, which was drawing ever closer.
Ryan clung tightly to the bird’s feathers, pouring Mana into Syl as though it cost nothing, while repeatedly throwing up thin magical barriers behind them in an effort to block the incoming rocks and magma.
Rex shielded Eleanor with his body on his back. Lillian and Vera clung tightly to one another. Ilyss crouched low as well, her face pale.
The vertical distance of only a few dozen meters felt as long as an entire century.
At last, just before another scorching wave of heat struck them, the blue bird gave one desperate leap, burst through the widening, collapsing opening, and shot into the deep black tunnel above.
Carrying them all on its back, the blue bird beat its blue-green glowing wings with all its strength, racing upward through the narrow vertical tunnel as it collapsed around them. Below and behind, the suffocating waves of heat and the thunder of destruction pursued them relentlessly, like the breath of death itself.
“Faster! Faster!”
Rex turned back anxiously. Far below, deep within the tunnel, the red glow looked like the eye of some awakening beast, rapidly expanding as terrible tremors shook everything.
The blue bird let out a weary cry. Its blue-green radiance grew even stronger as it pushed its speed to the absolute limit.
It was carrying the weight of six people. It had already expended enormous energy in the earlier battle, and now it was being sustained only by the endless stream of pure Mana Ryan was feeding into it, along with its own unyielding will.
And just as they finally flew clear of the most dangerous core of the cavern below, just as the roar of the magma eruption seemed to recede slightly and the others had only begun to feel the faintest relief of surviving—
Something changed.
Ryan, seated at the very front, concentrating with all his strength on feeding Mana into Syl and helping guide the bird, suddenly went rigid.
“Ugh!”
A short, stifled groan escaped him, as though an invisible hammer had smashed straight into his chest.
His breathing stopped.
His heart felt as though it had been seized in the grip of an icy hand, wracked by shattering pain.
And what truly sent his soul reeling was that the pair of Seals of Enlightenment within him, which had been operating steadily all this time and granting him near-limitless Mana and extraordinary recuperative power, suddenly and completely stopped.
Without warning.
It was as though their power source had been ripped away in an instant.
Or as though the core gears inside some exquisitely constructed mechanism, spinning at the limit of their function, had suddenly shattered.
That plunge from total fullness to utter emptiness did not simply strip away his Mana in an instant. It was as if both body and soul had been brutally cut off from power at once.
“Pff—!”
Blood, mixed with tiny specks of pale golden light, burst from Ryan’s mouth in an arc of vivid ruin across the blue-green glow of the bird’s back, only to be scattered and vaporized by the searing air rising from below.
As that mouthful of blood erupted, the blazing, awe-inspiring crimson-gold in his eyes dimmed and receded like dying embers. In only one or two heartbeats, it had completely faded back into the original quiet gray-blue.
And in the depths of those eyes, all that remained was vacancy.
The power inside him ebbed away like the retreating tide. An indescribable weakness and chill spread through every limb and bone, as if all life had been drained from him in a single moment.
He lost even the strength to hold onto the bird’s feathers.
His body went limp, and like a puppet with its strings cut, he fell straight from the wide back of the blue bird toward the bottomless abyss below, where red light flickered deep in the darkness.
“Ryan!!!”
“Ryan!”
“Ryan!”
Several cries of horror rang out at almost the exact same instant.
Everything had happened far too fast. From Ryan’s muffled groan to his fall, no more than a single breath had passed.
Rex, Lillian, and Vera were all stunned. They had not even fully understood what had happened. All they had seen was Ryan suddenly coughing blood and then dropping like a dead leaf stripped of life.
Life and death, heaven and hell, had in that instant been compressed into a vertical distance of barely a dozen meters.
Under the pressure of that ultimate crisis, time itself seemed to stretch and warp.
The only one who truly reacted in the instant Ryan’s body showed signs of collapse—
was Ilyss.
The moment the crimson-gold faded from Ryan’s eyes and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, her amethyst eyes had already locked onto him with the sharpness of a hawk.
And when she saw that mouthful of blood spray out, threaded with pale golden radiance, her heart sank violently.
Then, when Ryan truly let go and began falling like an empty shell from which the soul had vanished, an icy numbness shot straight through her spine.
Her gaze, almost beyond her own control, turned toward the great blue bird, which was struggling in grief as its light flickered under the threat to its contract holder’s life.
That smooth and elegant form.
That pure, profound blue-green sheen.
That natural rhythm of wind flowing through every feather.
Azure Tempest.
As one of the descendants of the elves, scattered across the human world and struggling to preserve the remnants of ancient inheritance, if she could not recognize one of the sacred beasts of her own people’s legends—the favored child of the wind, Azure Tempest—then she had no right to claim elven blood at all.
So that was it.
The faint elven aura that Ryan had carried all this time, the one that had made her feel a strange sense of familiarity and concern, had come from this little creature that had always curled weakly against his chest.
The white crystal had indeed been its vessel.
And judging from the situation before her, it had long since formed a soul contract with Ryan. That was why it had stayed by his side so closely, bound to him in life and death alike.
If the contract holder died, and the soul contract dissolved, then this sacred beast without a master...
Could it truly become masterless once more?
Could the elven blood flowing within her, and the mission she bore to recover the sacred relics of her lost people, then finally...?
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