Chapter 95: A Race Against Time

Two minutes earlier, Edward, badly injured, was chugging the alchemical potion Wang Yu had given him as he grimaced in pain. The potion was indeed remarkable—he could feel his strength slowly returning—but the process was excruciating.

"Wang Yu, what's your plan?" Edward asked, watching Wang Yu methodically organize his gear.

"Based on what you said, while we've managed to escape Pernia Ryder's foreseen fate, the events that have already occurred won't change. Summoning the city guards might take too long, and at this critical moment, no one from the Nightblades can be contacted. Hoping for reinforcements is unrealistic."

Wang Yu's tone was calm as he continued to arrange his equipment. After a moment's thought, he discarded his axe and other heavy weapons to lighten his load. If his plan were to succeed, speed would be all that mattered. If it failed, the weapons would be useless anyway.

"Exactly. None of the people we've tried to contact have responded. You're the only one she didn't anticipate. Everyone else is acting just as she has foreseen."

"Well... not necessarily," Wang Yu replied after some thought.

"What do you mean, ‘not necessarily'?" Edward asked, puzzled.

"Well, I have a few suspicions, but they're unimportant at the moment. Since we can't find reinforcements, we'll focus on tools." Wang Yu pointed skyward.

Edward looked up, but he saw nothing apart from the patrolling airships and the distant floating island.

"Her problem is that she's a wizard overly reliant on the void. That always has its flaws. And to top it off, she's someone who places blind faith in fate," Wang Yu said as he finished his preparations and got ready to leave.

"You mean..." Edward's eyes lit up as he looked at the airships again, this time with a mix of hesitation, worry, and a spark of excitement.

"Exactly! Leave this part to me. You focus on contacting others and bringing the city guards here," Wang Yu answered, then sprinted off.

Edward clenched his fist. He still thought Wang Yu's plan was a bit crazy and wasn't sure if Wang Yu could pull it off, but trusting his companion was the right thing to do. Rising to his feet, he dashed toward the city center. Now, it would truly be a race against time.

A minute later, Wang Yu returned to the building from which he and Edward had escaped. The structure had fallen silent, with no noticeable activity detected.

Wang Yu began his preparations, ignoring the building. He entered his mindscape, where he stood atop the infinite lake of void energy. There, he started to harness the void's power.

Wang Yu had once used his unique ability as a wizard—his ability to deplete himself of mental energy without lasting consequences—to push the concept of destruction to its extreme. He had created a hammer with an infinitesimally small contact area and an infinitesimally brief effective duration, resulting in near-limitless destructive power. With it, he had shattered the barriers of the Undying Lord.

Now, he was attempting something similar. He drained the vast lake of his mindscape in an instant. To his surprise, he glimpsed the lakebed of his mindscape for the first time, causing him to raise an eyebrow in surprise. There was no time to ponder this discovery. The immediate priority was to deal with the demon-summoning ritual.

A nail and a small hammer appeared in Wang Yu's hands—two conceptual creations. The nail represented infinite hardness, and the hammer infinite destructive power. Due to their infinitesimally small contact area and duration, they held no practical combat value. Their sole purpose was to allow him to manipulate pure concepts.

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Lady Darkness, are you there?" Wang Yu called out to the Lady of the Night.

"I am." A tall figure draped in black appeared in Wang Yu's mindscape.

"Please help me!" Wang Yu bowed to her, once again seeking her aid.

"I am more than willing to help. But do you really think you will succeed?"

"How will I know unless I try it? I think I can."

"Very well."

In reality, this exchange took only an instant. When Wang Yu opened his eyes again, the conceptual creations were in his hands.

"Whatever the outcome, let's do this!" he thought, raising the hammer and striking the nail.

Ding! A soundless yet palpable impact shattered the hammer and nail. In the real world, nothing appeared to change—no visible effects or disturbances.

"Hmm? Did it fail?" Wang Yu frowned. This could complicate things.

But soon, a change became apparent. In his ripple-enhanced vision, tiny cracks appeared at the point where the nail had struck. This point, no larger than a pinhole, revealed the starlit brilliance of the void.

"Whew, it worked. It was just too small to see." Wang Yu sighed in relief, gazing at the minuscule void fissure he had created.

This was precisely Wang Yu's goal: to pierce the barrier between reality and the void using two conceptual tools, producing a nearly imperceptible void fissure.

It was so small that Wang Yu couldn't detect any fluctuations in the void despite being in the proximity. Even the Nightblades, skilled as they were, would likely fail to detect such a fissure unless they had extraordinary senses of perception like Wang Yu's ripples.

The fissure, though tiny, had profound implications. To others, it might seem negligible, but for Wang Yu, archbishop of the Church of Nightfall with the Lady of the Night as his patron, it was monumental.

Darkness began to seep from the fissure. A void fissure allowed entities in the void to influence reality directly, though doing so required immense power. This was why only the most powerful—and most idle—evil gods bothered to break through them.

Moreover, detecting such fissures was no easy task. Wang Yu's help obviated this problem for the Lady of the Night.

Wang Yu's request was simple: to use the fissure as a conduit and increase the void energy concentration above the building to a critical threshold. And that threshold was...

...whatever sufficed to trigger the detection arrays on the floating island. That was the non-human assistance Wang Yu had mentioned—one of the capital's autonomous defenses. If the void energy concentration reached a certain level, the patrolling airships would no longer be solely decorative.

These airships were equipped with metal pillars used to stabilize reality—relics from the Nightblades' purge of the Font of Life. Known as reality anchors, they were designed to suppress the void.

However, deploying these anchors required either a commander with Sieg-level clearance or void energy concentration exceeding a certain threshold. Both were nearly impossible for the special ops team.

Nearly—but not entirely. Wang Yu's plan was working. He had pierced the barrier between reality and the void, providing a channel for void energy to surge into the real world. Now, it was the Lady of the Night's turn.

Though not a powerful deity, her control over void energy was on an entirely different level compared to mortals. She gazed at the tiny fissure Wang Yu had created, her expression unreadable.

With a wave of her hand, void energy began pouring from the fissure. Simply manipulating void energy wouldn't use much faith, and she had power to spare.

Under her guidance, the energy gathered above the building where Pernia was located. Slowly but surely, the void energy concentration began to rise.

Now, they just needed to wait and prepare to charge in.

As the void energy continued to gather, its concentration gradually approached a critical threshold.

After about ten seconds, that energy surpassed a certain limit, releasing an invisible wave that swept outward from a central point on the building's rooftop.

The array on the floating island activated the instant it detected the wave. Complex rune circuits began to operate as rapidly as the components of a computer on Earth.

Target: Wall District.

Void Concentration: Exceeded.

Command: Deploy reality anchor from the nearest airship.

Notes: Notify the highest-ranking Nightblades member currently available.

Status: Notification failed, pending.

The array autonomously transmitted signals and magical flows, eventually reaching the nearest airship to the area. Receiving the command, the airship adjusted course and headed toward Wang Yu's location.

"It's coming..." Wang Yu readied himself. The moment the reality anchor struck the building, he would act.

Boom! The instant the massive metal spear descended from the sky and struck, the building—already weakened by the earlier destruction caused by Pernia and Wang Yu—completely collapsed. The structure, old and poorly maintained, gave way under the staggering impact of the reality anchor.

Dust and debris shot into the air. Load-bearing columns fractured under the impact, and the upper floors crumbled under their own weight. Rubble flew in all directions. Objects stored within the building were hurled outward, creating total chaos.

"What just happened...?" Pernia stumbled out of the collapsing structure, limping. If it weren't for the fate she had glimpsed at the last second, she would have been crushed to death.

Fate had only shown her the building's collapse; her vision abruptly ended as the void fell silent due to the arrival of the reality anchor.

Nonetheless, it was just enough forewarning to save her from being buried alive.

"The void... it's silent? A reality anchor? Impossible! Only the Nightblades' upper echelons can deploy something like this! How could this happen? Could the guidance of fate have gone wrong? No, absolutely not."

Pernia tried to sense the void around her but found herself almost completely unable to manipulate its energy. Unaware that the floating island's array had an autonomous detection system, her shock and fear reached new heights.

"I need to get out of here." Pernia pressed her hand over her nose and mouth, disregarding the injuries on her legs and the tears in her clothing as she hurried through the swirling dust.

Suddenly, as rock shattered around her, before she could react, she was slammed to the ground. Her frail wizard's physique was no match for Wang Yu's without her ability to scry into the future.

Wang Yu burst through the dust, pinning Pernia's throat to the ground with one hand. The smoke and debris that hindered her vision posed no obstacle to him.

"Where is the demon summoning circle?" Wang Yu demanded coldly, his grip tightening. Without access to the void, a wizard was no different from an ordinary person.

"Let me go. Ahem, ahem! I can't breathe. If you let me go, I'll—ugh!"

Pernia smiled in a teasing fashion. Her curvaceous figure, made more revealing by her tattered dress, combined with her pale, vulnerable appearance, was captivating.

Wang Yu's response was to break one of her fingers.

"Talk. I don't have time to waste with you," Wang Yu said icily. He had no patience for games—he wanted answers.

"Do you know who I am? Even if you're with the Nightblades, you'll pay a heavy price for harming a member of the Ryders," Pernia hissed, grimacing in pain. Wang Yu's ruthlessness was beyond anything she had imagined. As a powerful seer, she had never suffered injuries this severe.

"Enough of your delusions! Let's see how you handle this."

Wang Yu's brow twitched in irritation. He pulled a vial from his pouch—a potion identical to the one he had used on the Abyssal Gate spy. Without hesitation, he forced it down Pernia's throat. He briefly considered the consequences of her Ryder family ties but quickly dismissed the thought. Sieg, Hugin, and Father Fang wouldn't have hesitated; neither would he.

"W-What did you make me swallow?!"

Pernia's voice trembled as the potion quickly took effect. The frailty of her wizard's body offered little resistance. Her eyes turned glassy as her consciousness blurred.

"Where is the demon summoning circle? How do I stop it?" Wang Yu demanded, wasting no time.

"Underneath... beneath us..." Pernia's trembling hand pointed downward, toward the building's ruins.

"Underneath?! How do I stop it?" Wang Yu asked immediately, stunned by the revelation.

"Stop... it? It's too late!" Pernia, her mind muddled, struggled to answer. Suddenly, her body twitched violently. She swung her arm with unexpected force.

"Damn it, more tricks?!" Wang Yu flipped backward, narrowly dodging a claw swipe. His eyes locked on Pernia, whose pupils had turned into slitted lines—a clear sign of demonic possession.