Chapter 234 : Chapter 234
Chapter 234: Faster. Faster!
The shadow wand Vincent never let leave his hand fell from his fingers with a clang onto the cold stone floor.
His mouth hung open, but no sound came out. All the blood had drained from his face.
His greatest reliance—those strange, treacherous shadow spells...
What meaning could they possibly still have before that eerie longsword, which had made Parker’s surging frost Mana vanish into thin air?
Could shadow power really avoid being devoured?
That thought plunged him into an icy abyss.
Marcus and Olaf had long since stopped their frenzied assault. The two men stood as though turned to stone, staring in horror at the fatal frozen wound in Parker’s throat, then at the azure longsword in Ryan’s hand, as if it could devour magic itself. A chill shot from the soles of their feet straight to the crowns of their heads.
Vera had stopped dodging. Her gray-green eyes were fixed on Ryan and on the longsword in his hand, which now seemed utterly different.
She had sensed that something was wrong from the very beginning—not only the qualitative transformation in Ryan’s power, but even his weapon... What exactly had happened to him?
With her back against the stone wall, Ilyss’s violet eyes held not only shock, but also a trace of doubt and... unease.
For some reason, the change in that sword, along with the unfamiliar crimson-gold in Ryan’s eyes, made her feel a faint discomfort—even an inexplicable revulsion.
Ryan casually flicked Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss.
The few beads of blood staining the blade flew free at once, splashing across the icy stone floor and blooming into several dark little flowers of ice that froze almost instantly.
The azure blade was spotless as new, cold radiance flowing along its edge.
He slowly rolled his neck, and those crimson-gold eyes, emptied of all emotion, locked onto the five who remained, all of them facing him as though confronted by a great enemy.
At this moment, some kind of connection beyond ordinary compatibility had formed between him and Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss.
It did not merely amplify his strength, speed, and perception to an extreme degree—it also bestowed upon the sword in his hand a terrifying property that could only be described as touching the level of rules themselves. It could effortlessly cleave through any magic that came at it. The fact that Parker’s surging frost Mana had vanished soundlessly before its edge was proof enough.
The blade seemed to have become a greedy abyss, actively devouring and neutralizing all outside energy that struck it.
But what inwardly chilled Ryan even more was the change in his state of mind.
If his usual self relied on a high degree of rationality to suppress emotion, then what he felt now was numbness.
Anger, fear, even the instinctive shock that should come with killing someone—all of it seemed cut off by an invisible membrane.
He looked at Parker’s decapitated corpse, at the blood that had sprayed and then frozen, and felt nothing.
No nausea. No aftershocks. Not even fear.
Instead, alongside the surging power inside him, there was even a kind of excitement.
This was wrong.
He had not been in this world for long. In his previous life, he had not even killed a chicken.
And now, after personally ending a life in such a brutal way, he should have felt something far stronger.
But the reality was that he had adapted too quickly. He was terrifyingly calm. And that excitement had come from nowhere.
If this really was the state brought about by the so-called Twelve Elven Gospel Arrays, then why was there something within it that affected the heart and mind so deeply?
Was that the price attached to the power itself?
Unfortunately, he no longer had the leisure to think about any of that.
“The second one.”
He spoke softly, his gaze settling on Vincent, who had collapsed to the ground and looked on the verge of wetting himself.
Vincent reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. He let out a shriek and scrambled backward on all fours, flailing his hands wildly as he released great masses of twisted shadow mist to envelop himself, trying to disappear within it.
Ryan did not move a step.
He merely tossed Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss forward with casual ease.
The sword became a streak of azure light and vanished into the shadow mist in an instant.
A scream tore out from inside the fog—short, sharp, and filled with utter terror—then cut off abruptly.
The shadow mist churned violently, then rapidly dispersed.
Vincent had been pierced through the chest by Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss and nailed to the rock wall behind him.
His eyes were wide open, endless terror still frozen on his face. Frost spread rapidly from the wound in his chest, covering most of his body in moments.
The shadow mist vanished completely the instant the sword pierced him, as though it had been eaten by the blade.
Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss quivered slightly, giving off a low hum that sounded almost satisfied. Then it flew backward out of the rock wall on its own and dropped neatly into Ryan’s outstretched right hand.
Ryan gripped the sword.
His crimson-gold gaze swept over Marcus, Olaf, Shiloya, and Kallen.
Then, at last, it settled on someone who had, at some unknown point, already retreated quietly to the edge of the battlefield and hidden himself behind the shadow of a toppled half-collapsed bookshelf, his face filled with panic and uncertainty as he furtively pulled out what looked like a teleportation scroll from his robes—
Randall.
The scheming opportunist who had started all of this, tried to reap the benefits, and only just recovered a little Mana was now trying to flee.
“The third one.”
Ryan’s voice was not loud, yet it froze Randall in place mid-motion, draining the color from his face.
Ryan’s crimson-gold eyes had fixed upon that figure trying to melt into the shadows like a hunter marking its prey.
Randall, the treacherous betrayer and master schemer from beginning to end, now had not a trace left of his former smugness or mockery on his face.
Only skin pale as paper.
Pupils blown wide by extreme fear.
And the hand clutching a silver scroll, trembling uncontrollably.
“No... don’t come any closer!” Randall screamed, his voice warped by terror. His back was pressed against the icy stone wall, and there was nowhere left to retreat. The teleportation scroll in his hand was his last hope. “Ryan! Velt! Listen to me! It was all a misunderstanding! It was the Second Prince! The Second Prince forced me! I had no choice!”
His words came tumbling out in a panicked jumble, trying to push all responsibility onto the distant figure backing him. Yet his eyes remained locked on Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss in Ryan’s hand—the blade unstained by blood, yet radiating a chill so dreadful it made his soul tremble.
The images of Parker being killed the instant his Mana failed, and Vincent’s shadows scattering before he was pinned to the wall, replayed in Randall’s mind like a nightmare on repeat.
“I’m just a runner! A pawn!” Randall’s voice was already thick with sobs, and his body shook even harder. “Killing me won’t do you any good! His Highness the Second Prince won’t let you off! Spare my life, and I can tell you the Second Prince’s plans! He’s arranged others inside the academy too! And this ruin—I know more about it—”
While trying to stall with those pale, desperate words, he was also frantically pouring every scrap of Mana he had left into the teleportation scroll in his hand.
One silver rune after another lit up across the surface of the scroll.
The fluctuations of space were beginning to distort.
Ryan did not stop walking.
Nor did he quicken his pace.
He simply advanced in that same calm, measured rhythm, step after step, those crimson-gold eyes containing neither anger nor mockery—only a vast indifference, as though he were watching some tiresome farce, and the clown on stage was now putting on his final futile struggle.
“I was the one who deliberately led you to those cocoons! I knew Eleanor was there!” Randall saw that Ryan remained unmoved and hurriedly threw out another bargaining chip, forcing a smile onto his face that looked uglier than crying. “See? I actually helped you! Without me, you never would have found her! We can work together! I can help you deal with the people Parker left behind! I know their weaknesses—”
His words stopped dead.
Because Ryan had already halted three steps in front of him.
At this distance, for Ryan in his current state, life and death were no more than a single thought apart.
Randall’s breathing nearly ceased.
The teleportation scroll in his hand had lit up more than halfway already.
Only a few runes remained.
Hurry.
Faster. Faster!