Chapter 226: A Final Gambit and a Dead End

A ghostly green flame danced across Wang Yu's ravaged body. The searing heat warped the faint light that hung in the air around him.

Without reservation, he channeled every last bit of energy into these flames, causing the blaze to roar as it devoured every last scrap of matter within him.

The Cursed Fire burned indiscriminately, consuming anything in Wang Yu that could serve as fuel—blood, bone, flesh, the rotting swarm of flies, the curse of frailty, and even the invasive energy injected into him by the latent ability that made up this space.

"Ah... that's better."

A twisted grin split his battered face, devoid of emotion. His already mangled body, wreathed in fierce firelight, resembled a demon from the depths of the infernal planes.

Pushed to its peak, the Cursed Fire was barely contained—though truthfully, Wang Yu had no intention of controlling it. The invaders within him stood no chance. They were cast into the blaze like kindling. The inferno blazed ever higher, ever wilder.

Above his head, the mystical Banner of Triumph shimmered within the void, converting the scorched remnants of the foreign influences into life force and feeding it back into Wang Yu—only for it to be hurled into the fire once more in a grim and endless cycle.

Wang Yu had since recalled his blood twin. The Cursed Fire's hunger for food was growing insatiable. Even with his internal threat purged, Wang Yu's broken body was struggling to endure its toll.

"I'd have died multiple times over if not for the Elixir of Recaptured Glory. A dragon's power is truly staggering..."

He exhaled. The exhalation alone sent a tongue of flame a full meter outward from his mouth. The heat radiating from him was already absurd—it was enough to melt steel and transform it into slag in moments.

Wang Yu could feel the effects of the Elixir of Recaptured Glory fading. There should still have been half the potion remaining, but the Cursed Fire had consumed those reserves along with the invaders within him.

As the fire devoured the remaining potion, it underwent a strange transmutation—some sort of sublimation. The pale golden liquid became an invisible force that coursed through Wang Yu's veins, suffusing his entire being.

His body absorbed the energy instinctively as he consumed the rest of the potion's power in a flash. Unfathomable strength surged through him.

The golden light, reminiscent of a dragon's gaze, slowly faded from Wang Yu's eyes—a sign that the elixir was about to expire.

And once his strength waned away entirely, only two fates awaited him: either the Cursed Fire would burn him to a husk, or his body would collapse, unable to sustain the pressure of fighting at such an elevated level.

This had to end now.

Ripples surged out from Wang Yu's body, far beyond his usual two-meter range, spreading outward until they engulfed the entire realm. They locked instantly onto the void-shrouded form of the wizard Xiphra.

"Found you."

Something about Wang Yu's ripples had morphed—he could sense the change even if he couldn't explain it. Their range had grown, and they moved faster. Even without Material Shaping, these ripples could now influence the world beyond his body...

Wang Yu's flaming silhouette tore forward. A series of afterimages trailed behind him in a chain. The crater in the ground behind him had only just formed when his fist crashed into Xiphra's chest.

Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. She never even saw it coming.

The searing heat stripped away the enchanted bandages on her body, burning her skin in an instant. The iron fist punched clean through her ribcage, shattering heart, lungs, and vertebrae. Her mind only registered the blow long after it had landed.

A black vortex spiraled into existence around Wang Yu's arm. The body he had just punched vanished straight through.

His ripples, which now covered the entire pocket realm, detected the reappearance of a spatial rift elsewhere. Xiphra, clutching her chest, tumbled out of it alive.

The wooden effigy nestled in her white hair snapped apart, splintering into useless debris. Cold sweat ran belatedly down her brow.

That effigy had been a spellstone for the sixth-tier Substitution Effigy. The sole life-saving artifact she had uncovered during all her years dungeon delving into ruins had saved her life, if only barely.

Just who was this man? How could he react with such incredible speed? It was beyond the level of an advanced knight—was he already a grand knight? Just how could an intermediate knight draw on such strength?

Her heart clenched. Wang Yu's gaze had locked onto her the moment she reappeared. The Void Cloak spell concealing her had done nothing.

Wang Yu wrenched a metal plate from his own battered armor. In less than a breath, the Cursed Fire heated it until it glowed red-hot.

He swung. The air cracked like thunder. The blazing shard streaked forward at impossible speed, and before Xiphra could react, it pierced her heart again.

"Hm?"

Wang Yu's brows furrowed. His ripples still couldn't penetrate the wizard's body, which meant that she wasn't dead. Somehow, she had survived a second killing blow.

Panting, Xiphra reeled from the delayed shock of being pierced. Her heart had skipped a beat, literally. But she was still alive. It was lucky that Wang Yu was a knight. As long as her void reserves lasted, he couldn't finish her off.

This was the fourth-tier spell Void Procession. She constantly imprinted the state of her body on the void. If that state were to change too drastically, reality would warp and rewind her form to what it had been half a second earlier.

To a magician, this was nothing—a simple firestorm would overwhelm it. But against a knight, as long as she could buy even a sliver of time to slip away from a fatal strike, she had a chance. Knights had no counter to this spell.

She narrowed her eyes, recognizing Wang Yu's technique as Cursed Fire. She hadn't expected someone to wield this ancient druidic art in such a way, but she was familiar with its limits. She just had to hold out a little longer. Wang Yu wouldn't be able to keep it up for long; the flames' purification was temporary. Once he ran out of fuel, he would die.

Xiphra calmed herself quickly. The wealth of combat experience she possessed quickly allowed her to come up with a plan, even when faced with a sudden, overwhelming eruption of power from Wang Yu.

Wang Yu had to admit that these three combatants were the most tactically astute and troublesome foes he had ever encountered.

Unfortunately, Xiphra's luck was abysmal. Wang Yu was nothing if not a quick learner, and with a brilliant and erudite wizard like Avia at his side, his understanding of the arcane had grown by leaps and bounds. Through the subtle ripples revealing the changes in Xiphra's body, he discerned the wizardry Avia had once described to him.

"Void Procession, huh..."

Although Wang Yu himself could not cast spells, Avia's Spellweaver's Tome could.

Reaching out with his mental energy, he wrung out the last remnants of mana from its embedded mana crystal. The power surged into the array as two spells spun into existence—the third-tier Cyclone of Terror and the second-tier Basalt Torrent.

A furious cyclone burst into existence within the pocket space. The gale grew faster and fiercer, sweeping everything into its mad spiral.

Among the debris were the countless razored shards of stone conjured by the Basalt Torrent. The two spells merged in perfect synchrony, unleashing devastation across the entire pocket realm—they formed the composite spell Shardstorm Tempest.

Stone fragments caught in the howling storm became spinning projectiles that lacerated everything indiscriminately. Wang Yu and Xiphra were both engulfed in the chaos.

A shard sliced across Xiphra's neck, cleaving her soft flesh with ease. Void Procession activated and restored the initial state of her body, but her expression turned ashen. She was finished.

Several fragments struck her simultaneously. Though the arcane defense triggered again, it could only mend the wounds inflicted by the first few shards.

A gaping wound tore her chest open to the bone. The tempo of the Shardstorm Tempest outpaced the restoration of her Void Procession. There was no time to counterattack.

The moment his ripples detected the rupture in her body, Wang Yu moved.

A streak of flame tore through the darkness. His flame-wreathed iron fist struck Xiphra squarely in the face, shattering the high-ranked wizard's head into a pile of smoldering fragments with impossible force.

As the wizard perished, the pocket space unraveled. Wang Yu was quickly expelled from within. For a moment, the fire on his body flickered and went out—then flared back into existence, hotter than ever.

Wang Yu had run out of life force for Cursed Fire just half a second after killing Xiphra. Any longer, and he would have been dead instead. His Banner of Triumph had activated just in time, surging with power and refueling him with a fresh wave of life force from the dead.

This Banner of Triumph provided life force commensurate to the foe's power, not vitality. Killing a high-ranking wizard like Xiphra provided life force equivalent to what he would have obtained by slaying a full-fledged knight.

A tenth of a full-fledged knight's life force poured into him, an immense wellspring of power. His Cursed Fire was pushed past a critical threshold. The fire, sputtering and almost doused, flared back in rebirth.

The Banner of Triumph had been derided as useless and had been in storage as a mere curiosity. Even so, Wang Yu was able to take devastating advantage of a curio that restored a fraction of his enemy's power as vitality after that enemy's death. The banner was the catalyst that saved him in this very fight.

Not only did that boon of life force empower his Cursed Fire, it also ignited the last lingering traces of the Elixir of Recaptured Glory in his bloodstream, flooding his body with energy...

Beyond the collapsing space, the magician was tending to the badly wounded knight, healing the worst of his injuries while closely monitoring the spatial fluctuations around them.

The search squads were drawing closer. Their plan was to teleport away with the wizard and Wang Yu's soul as soon as they emerged from the hidden realm.

The void rippled faintly. The magician raised a hand, poised to invoke a teleportation spell he had prepared in advance.

Then, his senses registered something else: a burning figure erupting from the void at unimaginable speed.

A flame-clad fist struck the knight in front of the magician. Armor and flesh alike meant nothing before Wang Yu's blow. The upper half of the knight's body exploded into cinders and ash.

Wang Yu's entire right arm shattered in the impact, his bones pulverized beyond recognition.

The magician didn't even have time to react. Wang Yu's blazing form spun. The motion was so fast that it created two blades of air that sent twin fissures into the stone wall nearby.

An empowered shield flickered into existence across the magician's body. Though he was caught off-guard, his enchanted defensive artifacts activated slightly before Wang Yu's next strike.

Four layers of protection, each equivalent to a third-tier physical defense spell, interlocked before Wang Yu's sweeping kick.

Wang Yu's Cursed Fire, now burning crimson, pierced the barriers before they even touched his leg. It no longer fed solely on Wang Yu's life—it incinerated anything combustible, including the magic constructing the shields.

His leg swept through the magician's shoulder like a hot knife through butter.

The magician's body ignited from the shoulder down. Everything above his chest vanished as if wiped from existence.

The fire engulfing Wang Yu was extinguished at the moment of the magician's death.

The power of the Cursed Fire and the Elixir of Recaptured Glory faded with it. He collapsed.

The deficit he suffered was staggering. His reserves of fighting spirit were drained entirely, and his muscles taxed beyond belief. That he was even alive was already a miracle.

Footsteps echoed toward him. His ripples brushed a body that resonated with fighting spirit, then transmitted the data they captured to him. It was a grand knight...

"Damn it!"

Wang Yu tried moving an arm—but his ruined limbs hung limp, utterly unresponsive.

Barely, with sheer force of will, he used the ripples in place of his nerves to force one hand up.

Arduously, he raised his middle finger at that final intruder.

He was at his wit's end.