Chapter 73
The embers fell slowly into the air, like torn gray snowflakes.
237's breathing was rapid, each breath accompanied by a burning pain in his lungs. He looked down and saw the light in his palm still flickering slightly, dim but not extinguished.
That was the echo of him and Sprout 12 joining forces to strike down the giant blade.
The wound on his chest was still dripping blood, yet the darkness and light within him were strangely balanced, no longer tearing each other apart, but barely maintaining a fragile coexistence.
This was a state he had never imagined.
It felt as if a new "breath" had entered my body, both heavy and vibrant.
He looked up.
Its enormous shell writhed violently in the distance, blood still gushing from the wound on its chest. Countless tentacles pounded the earth frantically, yet they could not heal the wound.
Those are the marks they left behind.
An indelible mark.
The deep, resonant voice of the mother tree's lingering image echoed in 237's ears: "...The protection...is not yet over..."
The sound seemed to vibrate directly into the depths of his soul, shaking him awake.
He suddenly realized:
This is not just a desperate struggle.
They are not isolated beings, but rather they carry the last threads of the entire world.
A sharp pain caused him to fall to his knees. Sprout 12 knelt beside him, his long blade stuck in the ground, his body covered in blood, but his eyes remained steadfast as he looked ahead.
237 slowly raised his hand, his fingertips stained with blood, yet he still held up the faint point of light.
"I'm not done yet..." he murmured.
That voice was a vow to himself, and to the entire battlefield.
From this moment on, the real battle is no longer just about "confrontation".
It was him, 237's return.
The world was deathly silent.
The storm resembled a hollow cavity left after being forcibly torn open, with only embers drifting in the air, reflecting the cruel outline of the battlefield.
237 knelt on one knee, blood still seeping from the tear in his chest. Darkness and light intertwined within him; each heartbeat felt like a blade slicing through flesh, yet it also brought him an unprecedented clarity.
He looked up and gazed into the distance.
The avatar was struggling to rebuild itself, the crack in its chest still unhealed, yet the surrounding void was pouring new power into it. Countless eye sockets opened, projecting a cold, dark glow that seemed poised to engulf the entire plain.
Sprout 12 stood beside him, his breathing disordered, the long blade still stuck in the ground, but he could no longer lift it. He had burned to his limit.
This time, I must bear the consequences myself.
237 closed his eyes, feeling the tangled contradictions within his body. Light and darkness tore at each other, threatening to backfire at any moment, but in the deepest tug, he heard the heart's voice of the mother tree's lingering image echoing in his blood:
"...The protection...is not yet over..."
He slowly reached out and placed his hand on the projection of the root veins on the ground. Instantly, countless rays of light surged from his palm into his body, as if the earth and its afterimages were responding to his will. Darkness then boiled over, and the pain almost made him faint, yet he was also reshaped in the burning sensation.
His eyes suddenly opened.
One burned with white light, while the other was as deep as an abyss.
"Light and darkness are not opposites..." he whispered, spitting out blood, yet his voice was unusually clear.
"They are... the other half of my existence."
The air began to vibrate.
Behind 237 emerge two intertwined wings, one blazing white and the other dark, constantly engulfing and merging with each other to form a new form that transcends the two poles.
The avatar let out a piercing roar, and all its tentacles and black spears locked onto him simultaneously.
The atmosphere of the battlefield froze once more, foreshadowing the imminent arrival of a third, more thorough outbreak.
237 slowly raised his hand and crushed the still-extinguished light.
They transformed into countless shards of flame, igniting the entire void alongside him.
The sky suddenly collapsed.
The power from the other side of the rift burst forth like a bottomless black sea bursting its banks, with tentacles, black spears, and twisted eyeballs surging down as if to compress the entire battlefield into a speck of dust.
Yet, in the heart of that invisible purgatory, 237 and Sprout 12 stood side by side.
237's wings spread wide, one burning with blazing white flames, the other swirling with pitch-black flames. Light and darkness tore at each other on his body, yet he forcefully compressed them into a balanced core, pulsating around the crack in his heart.
Sprout 12's body was almost torn to its limit, and the runes on the long blade seemed to be about to completely collapse, but the roots of the mother tree's afterimage were still spreading under his feet, supporting his last will.
"Can you stand up?"
237's voice was deep, yet resolute.
Sprout 12 gritted her teeth, raised her blade, and a faint light shimmered among the broken branches and leaves: "...Even if I only have one breath left, I will cut to the end!"
They took a step at the same time.
A storm of black flames swept over us, its tentacles whipping up countless pebbles and corpses, transforming them into a vortex-like cage.
237 suddenly spread its wings, tearing the storm apart with its dark wings and cleaving through the rain of spears with its light wings, each step going against the tide.
Sprout 12 followed closely behind, its long blade igniting with a blinding light.
With each slash, the tentacles were severed in pieces, and the radiance of the roots spread from his feet to the blade, as if channeling the power of the entire earth into him.
"drink--!"
The two roared simultaneously.
A beam of light and a dark flame impact converged in mid-air, forming a massive cross-shaped slash.
The cross-shaped blade of light traversed the heavens and earth, forcefully tearing apart the avatar's attack and shattering the entire black tide into countless embers!
The avatar emitted a piercing shriek, and the crack in its chest expanded again, spraying out black flames like blood.
Enraged to the extreme, hundreds of its eye sockets simultaneously unleashed beams of destructive light, engulfing the entire battlefield.
237 and Sprout 12 exchanged a glance.
Without needing to say a word, they understood each other perfectly.
—In the third storm, they stood shoulder to shoulder, light and darkness, to meet the most ferocious counterattack head-on!
The beams of destructive light fell like a galaxy, turning the world completely black.
On this battlefield on the verge of collapse, only one root extends under the protection of the afterimage, supporting the foothold of 237 and Sprout 12.
"Here it comes!" Sprout 12 roared, his long blade suddenly sweeping horizontally, slashing out an arc of light, forcefully splitting open several black flame pillars in front of him.
The blade shattered, his arms were covered in blood, and the branches and leaves were broken into almost nothing but charcoal, yet he still did not let go.
237 spreads its wings and rotates around itself as an axis, guided by the light wings and swallowed by the dark wings, forming a ring-shaped vortex.
The overwhelming beams of destructive light were torn apart and devoured at the edge of the vortex, transforming into two streams of power that continuously flowed into his body.
—The opposition of light and darkness finally merged into one within him.
"Bean sprouts!"
237 growled and slammed its wings down, channeling all its power into the blade of Sprout 12.
In an instant, the long blade, which was on the verge of breaking, reignited with a light so intense it was impossible to look directly at it.
What flickers on the blade is no longer a single rune, but a network of interwoven light and darkness, like the twin spines of the world's origin.
The two roared simultaneously:
"break!!"
The giant blade cleaved down, as if tearing apart the boundaries of time and space.
That strike not only shattered the wound on the avatar's chest, but also cleaved its massive body in two!
The avatar's roar shook the heavens and earth, thousands of eye sockets burst open at the same time, and black flames flowed out in reverse, condensing into a crazy vortex.
It tried to rebuild itself, but it was already teetering on the brink of collapse.
A deep, violent rumble came from the depths of the rift, as if the true "other shore" was roaring in anger.
The sky over the entire battlefield turned crimson in an instant, as if it would collapse completely in the next second.
This is the critical point.
Victory or defeat can be decided in a single thought.
237 and Sprout 12 knelt on the ruins, almost exhausted.
But the look in their eyes when they looked up also burned with a final, resolute determination.
"Either... completely eradicate it."
"Either... we'll be dragged into the abyss together."
The air seemed to freeze, and time seemed to stand still.
Everything is waiting for the final curtain to fall.
The sky has cracked open.
Crimson and pitch black intertwine to form a gigantic maw, as if it were about to devour the entire world.
Its enormous form struggled at the edge of the rift, black flames constantly spewing from its shattered chest, yet it still roared, attempting to rebuild itself.
"...You...can't possibly..."
Its sound was like the superposition of countless shattered souls, shaking the battlefield to its core.
Sprout 12 knelt on the ruins, his long blade teetering precariously, its edge almost transparent.
He turned to look at 237, his voice hoarse, yet carrying an irreversible resolve:
"This final blow—we'll use all the light."
237 gasped for breath, and the spot of light on his forehead suddenly expanded, with blazing white and dark flames churning and roaring within it.
The roots of the mother tree's afterimage extended from beneath their feet, slowly rising as if to lift the two of them to the highest point of the battlefield.
A storm gathered around them, and the dual forces of light and darkness began, for the first time—to merge completely.
Sprout 12 raised the long blade, blood from her arm flowing down the blade along with the light.
237 spread his wings, light and darkness intertwined, and the wings transformed into countless runes, covering the long blade.
They roared simultaneously:
"The End!!"
The long blade transformed into a giant beam of light that stretched across the heavens and earth, its veins containing both pure white holy radiance and deep black flames.
At that moment, it was as if the two poles of the world were forcibly merged, and all destruction and protection intertwined in this strike.
A deafening roar erupted.
The giant blade slashed down fiercely, aiming straight for the core of the rift!
The avatar's body suddenly collapsed, countless eye sockets burst open at once, and the gushing black flames were swallowed up in the light.
It let out a heart-wrenching howl, filled with resentment and fear, before being completely swallowed up in the torrent of light and darkness.
The gaping maw in the sky was forcibly sealed, and the crimson and black cracks gradually faded, leaving only a faint, still-burning streak of light stretching across the heavens.
The battlefield fell silent.
The wind stopped, the fire died down, and only embers fell like snow.
Sprout 12 and 237 fell from the sky and landed heavily on the ruins.
The light on their bodies gradually faded, their long blades shattered, and the light spot on their foreheads shrank back into faint embers.
—But they did it.
The embodiment of the other side of the rift was truly destroyed for the first time.
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