Chapter 374: The Sea of Perdition

"What the hell is this place?"

Wang Yu held Avia tightly in his arms, shielding her as the power of the Chariot strained outward. Blood surged through his veins, struggling to form a protective armor of living steel. But the pull from the bottomless abyss below was overwhelming and tore at everything with impossible force.

With the Chariot's power, he was barely able to compel his blood to obey. Relying solely on Material Shaping or Blood Tempest would have been hopeless.

Even so, the gravitational force tore his armor apart in an instant. Blood was ripped away from his body and shredded piece by piece. Even the fighting spirit that bled from his body was violently dragged downward, unraveling into the void.

"Avia, our speed's still rising. If we hit solid ground—or even water—at this rate, we'll be pulverized."

The currents around them grew sharper and harsher as they plummeted. Wang Yu could feel the acceleration climbing endlessly. There was no air resistance to slow them; the air itself was hurtling down at the same speed.

The further they fell, the faster they went. Wang Yu didn't know how much farther away the bottom was. At this rate, even as a grand knight, he wouldn't survive. Avia's slender frame would fare far worse.

"I'm trying to do something," Avia replied, her voice steady even as she was pressed against his chest. "But the abyss is drawing the magic out of my mana vortex. Any power I release is drawn downwards before I can even shape it into a spell. Spellcasting is almost impossible."

Her tone remained calm. Panic would only hasten their end. "The void here is stranger still," she continued. "I can feel its presence, but when I reach for it, it rejects me. The void itself refuses my command. It won't let me use it."

Avia's unmatched, unprecedented affinity with the void was useless here. The abyss denied her utterly. Her wizardry was gone. The abyss drained her void energy faster than she could gather it.

Even if she tried to form a spell purely within her body, the spell model was forcefully broken by the ridiculous pull as soon as it materialized.

And though the void existed around her in staggering quantities, she couldn't command it at all. It simply wouldn't listen to her.

"Wang Yu," she said at last, "it has to be you. Use your Chariot's power to seize the magic and build a spell model. I'll act as the trigger to ignite it. Only your power, which boasts the force of natural law, can resist this pull."

Her mind had flashed through every option. This was the only path left.

"Alright. What spell do you need?" Wang Yu replied without hesitation. The power of the Chariot hummed from within, dragging all nearby magic into his grasp, ready to weave it as Avia commanded.

"We're falling with the air itself," she said quickly. "If we slow down suddenly, the surrounding currents will tear us apart. None of our existing spells can save us."

Her eyes sharpened. "So we'll build one. Follow my words. We'll piece it together from the foundations."

The Spellweaver's Tome had given her a new method of spellcraft, one even a non-magician could wield. Now it would be the key to their survival.

"Circuit 4: first row, positions four and six; third row, positions two and five... Circuit 7: first row, positions one and three; fifth row, positions four and six... Circuit 79: forty-eighth row, positions five and nine..."

Her words poured forth without a pause, each instruction precise as a razor's edge. Wang Yu's eyes blazed.

"Understood!"

Like a machine, he obeyed, his Chariot acting as an extension of his will. Every circuit Avia named, he shaped into place, dragging the reluctant magic into the form she envisioned.

Their synchrony was flawless. In mere seconds, a spell of more than a thousand basic circuits stood complete, molded by Wang Yu's power. Without hesitation, Avia pulled the trigger. Her mana vortex ignited the construct, activating its magic.

The spell flared to life. Once the magic started to flow, even the abyss could not strip it away directly. A spell took hold for the first time since their fall.

An ovoid bubble of spiraling air swelled and split the air around them. Drag formed between the bubble and the atmosphere all around them, an unnatural, "unscientific" resistance that slowed their plunge.

There was no time to name the spell or consider it in full. Avia focused only on guiding Wang Yu's control of the bubble, easing their descent until his body alone could withstand the impact of the fall.

Their speed dropped to a level still catastrophic but at least survivable for a grand knight. Friction between the air bubble and the roaring winds generated blistering heat. Without pause, Avia directed Wang Yu to shape yet another spell with the power of the Chariot to vent the searing energy away.

Down and down they fell. Thousands of meters passed, perhaps tens of thousands—there was no way to know. The abyss's depth defied imagination.

Neither of them had ever dreamed such a chasm lay beneath the Tidewall. How had the Dragon God known of it? What waited at the bottom? None of these questions had answers.

At last, after a seemingly endless fall, light flickered below. The eternal darkness gave way to a dim yellow radiance. As the glow grew, the outlines of terrain sharpened—stretching wide and barren. A desert.

Pop.

Though they could hear no sound, they had the feeling of having passed through an unseen barrier. The crushing pull vanished. All at once they were free and plummeting into a vast sea of sand.

Driven by inertia, the winds continued screaming downward, slamming into the desert floor and blasting up an explosion of dust and grit. An immense crater blossomed below as yellow sand surged skyward in a choking storm that blotted out the sky.

The abyss's grip was gone. Magic returned. Avia seized it instantly, shaping the sands themselves into a crude glider above them. With one arm wrapped tight around her, Wang Yu caught the glider and steered them down in a controlled descent across the roaring desert winds.

Wang Yu set his boots upon the desert beneath the boundless sea. Stretching around him was a wasteland of sand without end, illuminated by no sun, yet bathed in a strange light whose source could not be seen. Far off, at the edge of his vision, a city rose from the sands, its silhouette stark against the barren horizon. But from this distance, he couldn't make out any details.

"Just where are we? A desert beneath the Endless Sea... the Sea of Perdition, perhaps? No, that would be reversed, wouldn't it? Ah, forget it—better confirm where the Professor and the others are first."

Wang Yu's muttering cut off as Avia rapped lightly against his chest. She gestured for him to set her down so she could survey their surroundings and try to sense the whereabouts of Noelle and Sieg, from whom they had been separated at the very start. Neither of them possessed Wang Yu's overwhelming power of the Chariot. Without it, their situation might be grim.

Instead of placing her on the ground, Wang Yu hoisted Avia onto his shoulder with practiced ease and began walking toward the distant city. Their real problem was ignorance. This place was unknown, unrecorded in any archive; no one would be coming to their rescue. If they were to escape, it would be by their own hands. He had no intention of languishing here for a lifetime.

"I can't lock onto the professor and the others. Even with the mark Aurelian bestowed, there's no response. For now, we can't regroup with them."

After some time, Avia shook her head in resignation. She could not confirm Sieg's location. Finding one another wouldn't be a trivial task.

"We'll take it step by step. Let's head toward that city and see what we find. By the way... do you hear anything?"

He pointed to the distant skyline, then paused, listening. From all directions, faint singing reached his ears: ethereal, elusive, yet undeniably present.

"No," Avia replied with a puzzled shake of the head. Under ordinary circumstances, it was she who could hear something he couldn't. This time, however, it was reversed.

Meanwhile, in the endless darkness, a thunderous roar split the void. Crimson light flared, swelling into a blazing fireball that plummeted from above.

It struck the ashen plain with cataclysmic force, hurling molten fragments skyward before they descended in a slow, drifting fall.

When the flames subsided, a colossal red dragon lay half-buried in the impact crater. The recoil from his speed alone had shattered bones and torn muscle, leaving grievous wounds deep within. The living dragon armor encasing his body was broken and tattered. Even the dragon's formidable physique had not withstood the fall unscathed.

The dragon's throat convulsed, spewing blood that ignited as it left his mouth. Sieg was gravely hurt.

"Brother, are you all right?"

From beneath his massive body, a smaller red dragon pulled herself free. Her horns were scarcely formed, her frame still juvenile. Noelle had been shielded by Sieg's own body. In human form, she could never have survived such an impact. She had instead been forced to take on her draconic form.

"It's nothing I can't handle," Sieg rasped. "I'll need time to recover. The living dragon armor absorbed much of it for me, though it'll need to be mended now."

He shrank back into human form, battered and bruised, then collapsed onto the ash-strewn ground, panting for air. From his storage ring, he drew out the stock of potions Wang Yu had prepared for him. He swallowed a portion himself, then poured more over the cracked and fading armor that had taken the brunt of the blow.

"Brother... this place is strange. There's nothing here. No light, no magic, no void. It feels as if... everything has already died."

Noelle's words drew Sieg's gaze. Darkness smothered the land, broken only by the feeble glow of lingering fire. Ash filled the ground beneath them.

He extended his senses, and his pupils contracted. Noelle was right. This wasteland held no magic, nor even the energy of the void. Only dust, cold and alien, slumbered within the earth.

This was a dead world, a wasteland where all things had burned to ash.