Free Web NovelChapter 98: Interruption...
"HOW. DARE. YOU!" Aurelia screeched, her voice vibrating with a terrifying, apocalyptic heat that did more than just echo through the hall. "You dare desecrate my palace? You dare interrupt my claim? My engagement!"
No one needed to be told how furious Aurelia was over the interruption. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
With a sweep of her hands, her Divine fire aura exploded. A wave of scorching, golden flames rushed over the dais, instantly vaporising the velvet banners and melting the silver cutlery on the tables.
"Your claim is a delusion!" Selene shouted back.
The Sanctum Goddess struck the marble floor with the base of her staff, unleashing a blinding wave of Holy Light that crashed head-on into Aurelia’s fire.
The collision sounded like a bomb detonating inside the ballroom.
Beside Selene, Lyra didn’t bother speaking. The Goddess of the Aether Domain simply raised her hands, sending a heavy, crushing wave of gravity slamming across the room.
The combined weight of three Empress-level auras was instantly catastrophic.
Above them, the thousands of floating crystal chandeliers couldn’t withstand the pressure; they shattered at almost the same time, raining down a torrential downpour of jagged glass.
The ballroom’s marble floor groaned and cracked under the pressure, webbing deep fissures across the floor.
The nobles didn’t stand a chance. Dozens of them instantly collapsed to their knees, gasping for air as the heavy, clashing magic crushed the breath from their lungs.
To make matters worse, the massive influx of hostility triggered Valeria entirely.
"I will slaughter all of you!" the Vanguard roared.
She stepped directly in front of Zen and ripped her broadsword from her back. Her crimson and gold armor flared with a violent light as she unleashed her kinetic Aegis aura, ready to strike down the invading Goddesses.
At that exact moment, the shadows directly behind Aurelia’s throne warped and deepened.
Nyx stepped out of the darkness, her digital eyes glowing a lethal purple. She didn’t draw a weapon, but she released her spatial pressure, creating a suffocating, vacuum-like distortion that began to tear at the edges of the room.
Five Empress-level auras were now clashing in the confined space of the ballroom.
The air was literally sparking with static electricity, and through the shattered glass dome above, Zen could see the purple Void tearing wider, actively feeding on the massive destabilization they were causing.
If they kept this up for another sixty seconds, the entire capital would be ripped into the Void.
Zen’s eyes darted through the chaos, looking for his only vulnerable liability: Maya.
He spotted her near a shattered pillar, but she wasn’t cowering or hyperventilating like she would have days ago.
Unlike the fragile F-Rank student she used to be, Maya had planted her feet firmly on the cracking marble and had her hand forward, forming a dense, swirling shield of inverted Vitality mana around her.
It wasn’t the warm, soothing green of standard healing magic; it was dark, jagged, and aggressively consuming the crushing ambient pressure that tried to touch her.
Good, Zen thought. Now it’s my turn.
Zen’s expression remained entirely flat, though his mind was racing at a thousand miles a minute. "System," he commanded internally, his eyes scanning the violently shifting auras. "Run the board. Show me exactly where this goes if I don’t step in."
[Analyzing ambient Divine-Rank mana concentration...] frёewebnoѵēl.com
[Probability of a localized Divine-Rank war breaking out: 98.9%.]
[Probability of total structural collapse of the Crown Palace: 100% within 42 seconds.]
[Probability of Void Singularity expansion: 87.6%.]
[Simulated Outcome: The sustained collision of five Empress-level auras will permanently shatter the Domain’s spatial anchor. The Void will consume the capital within 60 seconds, leading to a cascading planetary collapse. Total ego death is certain for all lifeforms present.]
There was no political maneuvering out of this one. He couldn’t talk them down with logic, and he couldn’t wait for them to burn themselves out.
Their manic obsession was going to kill them all and take the entire planet down with them.
Knowing this clash would literally tear the glitching sky apart, Zen took a calculated risk.
He didn’t summon his Emperor’s aura to push back against them. Instead, he walked past Valeria, straight into the violent epicenter of the colliding divine magics.
Closing his eyes, he activated Primordial Breathing.
Rather than fighting the pressure, Zen turned his Low B-Rank core into a black hole. He opened his mana pathways and began absorbing the violent, ambient Divine mana bleeding off the five Goddesses.
The effect was instantaneous and terrifying.
The roaring flames, the blinding light, the crushing gravity, and the digital distortion all warped, violently bending their trajectories toward Zen.
He stood in the center of the storm, effortlessly swallowing their lethal pressure and converting their unhinged hostility into raw, dense fuel for his own core.
"Zen, stop!" Aurelia screamed. The fury in her eyes instanly vanished, replaced by pure terror.
"You’re going to overload!" Selene cried out, her holy light flickering as she desperately tried to pull her magic back.
The Goddesses watched in horror, gripped by the fear that their combined might would shatter Zen’s fragile core and kill him.
Yet, deeper than that fear, their instincts recoiled from the terrifying vacuum he would create in them; they realized that if they didn’t stop immediately, he would drain every last drop of their power.
Panicked, all five Goddesses pulled back their auras at once. The chaos stopped, the flames died out, and the heavy gravity vanished.
Suddenly, the ballroom was deathly quiet. The only sounds were the nobles gasping for breath and the faint tinkling of settling glass.
Zen stood unharmed in the epicenter, his Imperial tunic completely untouched by the destruction.
The sudden, terrifying flex of his authority... using their own power against them and forcing them to yield to save him, completely stunned the yandere Goddesses into submission. They stared at him, wide-eyed and breathless, bound by their overwhelming obsession.
Aurelia was the first to move. Abandoning all her regal composure, she scrambled down the cracked marble steps of the dais, stumbling over the hem of her ruined golden gown as she went.
"Zen!" Aurelia cried out. "Gods, Zen, are you..."
"Your core!" Selene gasped, rushing forward. "Let me heal you! Please, I didn’t mean to push so hard, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you!"
Valeria was already beside him.
She’d dropped her broadsword carelessly to the floor, but when she got close, her armored hands hovered inches from his chest, terrified to actually touch him in case she triggered a mana overload.
Even Lyra, the stoic Goddess of the Aether Domain, took a frantic step forward. Her eyes were wide with horror as she looked at the cracked foundation her magic had caused.
Zen raised a single hand, the gesture freezing all four of the frantic women in their tracks.
Zen took a long, steady breath, forcing the wild, powerful Divine mana he had absorbed deep into his expanding Low B-Rank core. He looked at the Goddesses with a cold expression, showing nothing but his deep disappointment.
"Is this what you have all become?" Zen asked in a low voice.
They all flinched collectively, stepping back under his glare.
"A pack of rabid animals fighting over a scrap of meat?" Zen continued, gesturing to the shattered room. "Look around you. Do innocent lives mean absolutely nothing to you anymore? You were willing to tear the sky open, collapse this palace, and kill me in the crossfire just to prove what? A point?"
Aurelia covered her mouth, tears welling in her blue eyes. Selene looked down at her boots, her shoulders shaking with guilt.
Before they could stammer out their desperate apologies, Zen turned his gaze away, searching the settling dust.
Near the shattered remains of a marble pillar, the dark, jagged shield of inverted Vitality mana finally flickered and collapsed.
Maya dropped heavily to her knees, instantly gasping for air. Her chest heaved violently, her hands gripping her knees to keep herself from collapsing face-first onto the floor.
She was trembling from head to toe from the mind-numbing exhaustion of holding off Empress-level pressure, but she was completely unharmed.
She looked up through her messy hair, caught Zen’s eye, and gave him a weak, shaky nod.
She held the line, Zen thought, a flicker of genuine pride cutting through his cold persona.
The Goddesses stood frozen, thoroughly chastised and trembling under his overwhelming disapproval.
In that dead, tense silence, a crisp, static-laced ping echoed directly in Zen’s mind.
"Emperor. I don’t know if this is right timing, but I have the data," Nyx’s voice whispered through their ’Shadow’ link without moving her lips.
Zen kept his face perfectly emotionless, staring down the invading Goddesses while listening to the Spymaster.
"I found the identity of the attacker in the eastern wing from the deep archives. It wasn’t one of Aurelia’s loyalists. It was a sleeper agent activated by Selene."
