CHAPTER 143: WIN

The warm blood that splattered across the cracked wooden tiles began to sizzle faintly under the aura of death. The stench of vaporized flesh mixed with charred sorrow filled the air as silence returned once more, heavier than before.

The undead princess let out a breath of frost, slow and indifferent. Her eyes swept across the blood-soaked earth, unshaken.

"To defy the will of the dead... how foolish," she murmured softly, as if reciting a bedtime story to ghosts.

What remained of the quick reaction team was now scattered like broken toys—torn limbs, split torsos, twitching fingers clinging to swords they never got to swing.

The horned bear, the team’s leader, lay crumpled near the center. His body had been shielded by nothing but pride and duty—neither of which could stand against the sheer pressure of a Stage Three cultivator’s spiritual field. His lone horn, once a symbol of leadership and strength, rolled to the side like a discarded pebble.

Smoke curled upward from the ruined wall, painting black streaks in the twilight sky. In that moment, the Emerald Green Kingdom’s last hope of resisting within the castle perimeter had been silenced.

Somewhere within the crumbling halls, a child began to cry. It wasn’t loud—just a thin, confused wail echoing through broken beams and dusty corridors. But it was enough to stir the silence, just enough to deepen the weight of what had occurred.

The undead princess looked in the direction of the sound. Her ears twitched faintly beneath the rabbit mask.

But then she turned away.

She had no interest in weaklings.

Her focus shifted forward, toward the hidden pulse that still beat somewhere beyond the battlefield—Ricky.

"I wonder... how strong you’ve grown," she whispered, lifting her hand and casually dusting off a bit of blood that had reached her gown. "Will you entertain me... or will you disappoint me like the rest?"

Without waiting, she stepped forward.

Each footfall sent a ripple through the decaying floor, and wherever she passed, the vibrant green of life withered—flowers turned gray, vines curled up and shriveled, and even the air felt thinner, heavier, choking with invisible chains of death.

But even as her presence grew more suffocating, far away, across the battlefield where earth and sky clashed with sparks of furious energy—

Forty-Two had already made her way out of the castle.

She stood alone, her back straight, her small frame framed against the dying light of the day. Unlike the chaotic, cruel beauty of the mysterious princess, Forty-Two’s presence held clarity—a sharpness like a dagger forged in silence.

Her blue gown fluttered in the wind as her eyes narrowed, searching through the battlefield until she spotted him.

Ricky.

Still battling against the Undead Princess

But that wasn’t all. The moment she turned, she felt it.

A pressure. A familiarity. A chill crawled down her spine.

"She’s here..." Forty-Two whispered.

Her fists clenched. "So that’s why everything feels so wrong."

The past she had desperately buried within the recesses of her mind—the oppressive etiquette of the royal castle, the cruel competition among undead sisters, the rumours in the dark, always afraid to speak one’s own mind—was now walking toward her with grace and murderous intent.

The mysterious princess wasn’t just an enemy. She was a shadow from Forty-Two’s past, a sibling veiled in blood and ambition.

"I should have known you’d show your face again," Forty-Two muttered, her voice hardening.

She stepped forward, the cold determination in her eyes burning brighter with every heartbeat.

This time, she wouldn’t run.

This time, she wouldn’t bow.

This time, she would stand tall—not as the forty-second ranked princess of a forgotten realm, but as a warrior who had seen the taste of freedom and would never again kneel to fate.

..

Ricky had long sensed the forty-two approaching presences, creeping like a tide of inevitability—but he said nothing. Or rather, he couldn’t. It was taking everything he had just to avoid being crushed beneath the overwhelming fury of the undead. The repeated use of his Darkness Pulse had pushed his mana reserves past the danger threshold, leaving his limbs heavy and his vision dim around the edges.

He grit his teeth.

"Here it comes again."

His pupils shrank as the familiar prelude to disaster echoed in the air. After clashing with the undead princess for what felt like an eternity, Ricky had begun to recognize the rhythm of her assault. There was a pattern—a deadly choreography laced with malice. She would first dissolve into elemental shadow, slipping through his strikes like smoke through fingers. In that incorporeal state, she became virtually untouchable, like her crimson counterpart from the northern swamps.

"Their mastery over elemental magic is insane," Ricky thought, crouching low and drawing his remaining strength inward, readying himself to merge with the shadows. A cold wind prickled across his skin. "I have to move now."

Then, the world howled.

A deafening shriek tore through the atmosphere as the death ray surged forth, splitting the very air with a shrill, otherworldly wail. The temperature plummeted, and a wave of freezing darkness carved a jagged path across the battlefield. From afar, it looked as if a god had drawn a sword across the land, cleaving it in two. Ancient trees hundreds of meters away were turned to statues of brittle frost—then shattered into icy dust.

Ricky had already slipped into the shadows, his body melting into the ground like ink poured into water. But even here, in the half-real plane between light and dark, the attack reached him.

"Tch!"

A muffled grunt escaped his lips. His skill, Shadow Leap, didn’t make him truly intangible—not like her elemental transformation. The icy energy still tore at his form, freezing his edges and clawing at his mana with jagged fingers of death.

Hidden under a veil of darkness, Ricky’s jaw tightened. "So strong..."

From the sidelines, Darius watched, his heart pounding in his chest like a war drum. His eyes trembled—not from fear, but from something more disturbing: a feeling of inadequacy.

He had always known Ricky was exceptional. But this... this was something else entirely.

The undead princess stood alone, radiating death like a dying star. Every movement, every flick of her wrist, reeked of ancient violence and untamed magic.

As a royal—no, as a direct son of Eldros’s supreme commander—Darius had always been told he would be a pillar of the realm. He had access to the finest teachers, the richest resources, the deepest secrets of the kingdom. But here he was, standing helpless, watching a girl from the undead realm wield a power so monstrous, it twisted the very laws of nature.

Before the weight of this realization could settle into despair, the death ray finished its course, lancing past him with mere inches to spare.

Crack!

The ground beside him split. The air snapped with a piercing whistle, and the earth around him turned to a glistening wasteland of frost. Trees collapsed, their trunks frozen solid before shattering like glass.

The breath caught in Darius’s throat.

He hadn’t moved. Couldn’t move.

If she had wanted to kill him, there wouldn’t even be a corpse left to bury.

For a moment, it felt as though the entire world had been sealed within an icy coffin.

A breath, a blink—then silence.

The ground crackled under a sheet of frost as white mist coiled eerily in the air. Death’s breath lingered long after the ray had passed.

Kael and Felicia, stationed a little further back, were not spared its effects. Kael’s long brown hair, usually unruly and wild, had turned brittle and stiff, frozen into jagged strands that snapped with the slightest movement. A thin layer of ice coated his armor, each exhale forming frost on his lips.

Felicia fared better. Golden flames shimmered faintly along her skin, the divine essence of the Sun God shielding her from the worst of the chill. Still, even her radiance dimmed, her expression grim as she stared at the aftermath.

Boar’s massive frame trembled slightly as he took in the devastation. His beady eyes squinted into the distance, troubled. "Can he really win?" he muttered under his breath, voice thick with unease.

Beside him, however, stood a boy whose certainty did not waver. Ramon. Young, sharp-eyed, his gaze locked onto the battlefield with unwavering confidence. Unlike his teacher, his heart held no doubt.

The Venom Fang Sovereign would win.

It was not a question of ’if’, but when.

...

Far from the blood-choked clearing and glacial battlefield, inside the wooden castle half-buried under creeping vines and time-worn defenses, the undead princess moved with unhurried grace. Her steps echoed through the hollow corridors, confident and lazy, as if this crumbling stronghold was her personal palace.

The shadows of the hallway bent gently as she passed, drawn toward her like threads of silk caught in a breeze.

Then she stopped.

Her head tilted ever so slightly, and she sniffed the air.

Her eyes gleamed with a peculiar hunger, a momentary flicker of something feral beneath the surface.

"So this is the place..." she murmured, her voice low and dreamy, almost reverent. "This is where the scent of pure mana was coming from."

Her gaze lifted toward a doorway beyond, where sunlight poured through broken slats of wood. Beyond the light, nestled in a courtyard wrapped in nature’s embrace, stood an orchard of strange and vivid beauty.

A grove of spiritual fruit trees swayed gently despite the lack of wind. Their leaves shimmered with translucent greens and golds, their fruits pulsing softly with inner light—like miniature stars plucked from the sky and rooted into bark. Each breath drawn near them felt fresher, lighter. The air itself shimmered with dense strands of refined Amma.

These were not natural trees. Each had been transplanted from the sacred garden of the Divine Saint Selene, a legacy of purity and divine cultivation. Wherever these trees were planted, they reshaped the land, driving away corruption, refining mana, and bringing order to chaos.

The undead princess’s smile grew wider. A strange emotion flickered in her eyes—not joy, not greed, but something older. Hungrier.

The light of divine power was supposed to be poison to her kind.

But here she stood, unburned. Unafraid.

"This fruit..." she whispered, licking her lips, "was once guarded by saints. Now it lies forgotten in a cursed forest. Such irony..."

With that, she stepped forward.

Not in haste.

But with the slow, patient elegance of a queen reclaiming her throne.