Chapter 143: The Golden Apple
In that instant, Evan's swordsmanship broke through into something new — a state beyond thought, beyond conscious will, where he and the blade became one, no boundary left between them. The sword seemed to come alive, carrying a will of its own, leading while Evan followed. Everything around him faded from awareness. Only Iniede remained before him, the single point his sword-intent had locked onto, the endpoint of everything that existed.
Then, abruptly, the Iniede his sword-intent had fixed on began to blur. Something hollow opened up inside Evan's own mind. To everyone watching, his blade seemed to land squarely on her — and yet somehow missed entirely. Evan had already surged onto the altar itself, but the mist of blood rose thick around it once more, too dense to see through. Iniede stood right in front of him, and yet she felt a thousand mountains and rivers away.
An invisible, immense force closed tight around him, and Iniede's cold voice rang out again. "Pitiful mortal. Accept your fate."
He felt something tighten around the vitality within him, as though some force were drawing it steadily outward, and his will fought back against it with everything he had.
"Hm. Give up, little insect," Iniede's voice said again, close by his ear.
"Never," Evan said through gritted teeth, having abandoned every scheme, every ounce of raw strength, holding to nothing now but a single unbroken act of will. "You can kill me. My will won't bend."
For the first time, Evan faced Iniede with nothing but pure consciousness — magic forgotten, sword-force forgotten, technique forgotten, everything fused into one. He didn't realize it himself, but in Iniede's eyes, a light radiated from his whole being — the light of an unbreakable will given form. And for a moment, she found she couldn't take him down at all.
Fury rose in Iniede. That this insect could hold out so stubbornly infuriated her. Layer upon layer of blood mist closed in around him, threaded with green light, wearing away his radiant will one measure at a time.
Evan's consciousness began to dim. To everyone watching, the altar had become an indistinct blur of blood mist, and a crushing divine pressure bore down on the whole gathering — like being trapped in a prison of pure awe. They understood, for the first time, that there was nothing left to do but endure it, with no way to know when it might end. Some of them found themselves wishing simply for death instead.
The moment felt endless, though in truth only a short span of time had actually passed — long enough, though, that it felt to everyone present like an age had gone by.
Evan's awareness slipped closer to darkness, held together only by that unbending will. Then a voice rose suddenly within his mind. You've come at last. I've waited nearly two thousand years for you. Don't be afraid. I am Avna. The secret of divinity lies in understanding the boundlessness of the mind — everything can be brought into being through consciousness alone.
His awareness nearly gone, Evan asked, almost without meaning to, How?
Let your mind open. Feel all of it. I'll lend you my strength, Avna said.
Evan's mind loosened, and exhaustion swept through him — then, all at once, a spring of divine power poured into his consciousness like clear water. Not much of it, but astonishingly pure. In that instant, Evan seemed to glimpse an entirely new world, one where anything felt possible, dreamlike and strange, where even two contradictory truths could exist together without conflict. His reason rejected all of it — and yet some deeper part of him sank completely into that vision regardless. A sound like a dragon's cry rang in his ears, and he came fully awake.
Iniede felt Evan's mind open and assumed he'd given up resisting entirely. Delighted, she pressed forward — only to feel the green divine power around her suddenly tugged by some outside force, as though being stripped away, leaving only the blood-red power behind — and that blood-red power surged back against her instead. Startled, she felt, for a moment, as though she stood on trial before all of creation, fear and elation rising together, half-believing this was the true trial of ascension itself.
Then, with a resounding crack, a young woman appeared before her, dressed in lake-green robes. Iniede's shock was total. "You've already fallen. How can you be here?"
"How could a being who's never known the world of the divine possibly understand its wonders?" Avna said with a smile, her bare feet resting on a bed of green leaves, a golden scepter in hand.
"Whatever you are, your age has ended. You have no place here. In my name — be banished!" Iniede invoked her Word of Law against Avna.
Nothing happened. Space itself only rippled faintly. Avna smiled. "Using a Word of Law against a true god? You're not a god yourself — only a demigod. Between demigod and god lies a gulf that cannot be crossed. Besides, you exist here only as a projection, unable to sustain yourself in this world for long under ordinary circumstances. It's only through the beastmen's blood, and the fact that you stand within my own half-plane, that you've lasted this long at all. In the name of life — be banished!"
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"No!" Iniede managed only that single cry before vanishing from the space entirely.
Every strange phenomenon dissolved at once. But Evan saw everyone else standing frozen in place. Avna smiled. "Their time has stopped — or rather, our time and theirs no longer run together. They can't perceive me at all. Come out, little fairy."
Xiaoshuang darted out from behind Avna. "Goddess, that was incredible! One word, and you banished the creature that stole your authority!"
"I know why you've come. I never expected it would be you — a lich, reaching this far, is truly remarkable. Thank you for what you've done for me. It's a shame your own level still runs too low — my life-aligned divine art would be of no use to you at all. Still, I'll grant it to you regardless." As Avna finished speaking, a beam of green light poured into Evan's mind, then drew back, scattering into countless points of light that gathered into the shape of a golden apple. She had already begun slipping into sleep, whatever divine power she'd gathered across so many years now entirely spent, a single fragment of her lingering soul resting within the golden apple as she sank fully into slumber.
Only then did everyone else stir, as if waking from a dream. They found the altar still wrapped in a haze of blood-red mist — and then, all at once, the mist cleared. Evan stood there quietly, Iniede nowhere to be found. Corey suddenly found the light returning to his eyes, everything back to normal. He'd nearly gone mad in the depths of that terror, and now, just as suddenly, everything had settled back into place. He was still crying out in his own mind when everyone else's eyes turned toward him at the sound of his sudden shriek of fear.
He shouted a moment longer, blinking against the returning light, not yet grasping what had happened — and when he did, seeing everyone staring at him, his face flushed red without his meaning it to.
Evan bent down and picked up the great club — a genuine magical weapon. He gave it a glance and tucked it away in his ring without ceremony. The casual gesture made Viscount Modi's face twist with real pain — that weapon had rightfully been his to claim, and now it belonged to Evan instead, tens of thousands of gold simply gone. No wonder it stung.
Evan lowered his head, studying the beastman king's body, drained entirely of blood. Something caught his eye — the obsidian knife still buried in the corpse, gleaming faintly with magical light.
Evan pulled it free and noticed the sigil array beneath — a sacrificial array. He studied it and committed it to memory. Nothing especially unusual about the design; it appeared in standard textbooks on sigil-craft.
With that done, he stepped down from the altar. The students broke into cheers. The mood carried an edge of awkwardness underneath it all, though — no one had any idea what Evan had actually done within that blood mist, and with their common enemy now gone, the old hostility between the parties began stirring back to life.
Xiaoshuang still perched on Evan's shoulder, watching the cheering crowd with visible excitement — she'd had her own part in this, after all. "Wang," she said, "there are all sorts of gemstones inside the goddess of life's temple. Look, for you." She produced a sapphire with obvious pride, not bothering to keep her voice down. Not far off, Viscount Modi's eyes lit up at the words, and he barked out an order at once. "To the temple, quickly!"
His men bolted for the goddess's temple the instant they heard him. Their movement set the other party running too. Evan's group, in the end, arrived last of all. They found the great doors sealed shut, and someone too impatient to wait threw himself against them bodily.
The doors burst open with a crash — and a surge of green light poured out with it, a dragon's roar accompanying it, a wind dragon bursting free from within. The moment it appeared, its presence swelled enormously, and it planted itself squarely before the temple entrance. "Humans. This is not a place for you. Whoever offends the divine will surely answer to the heavens!"
With that, it let out another thunderous roar, sand and stone whipping through the air, driving everyone back several steps. None of them had expected a guardian at all — hadn't the goddess of life already fallen?
"It's not a real wind dragon. It's something conjured through magic," Corey said, catching the trick and calling it out.
The wind dragon replied coldly. "You're not wrong, mortal. But to enter the temple, you must defeat me first."
The words had barely left it before the mages launched into their incantations, spells of every color converging on it at once. The dragon let out a roar, three pillars of wind rising up out of nothing to meet the assault, while a thief's shape vanished and reappeared right beside it, a long dagger flashing as it drove downward.
The dragon beat its wings, its massive body lifting into the air, the whirlwind off its wings sending the thief sprawling before he could recover. The dragon roared again, breathing out not fire but a dense cloud of dark green vapor — the very essence of wind itself, a force that stripped soul from flesh. The thief screamed once as the vapor wrapped around him, his body dissolving to nothing within moments.
The party's leader roared and charged forward against the wind, curved blade in hand, its edge flaring with white light stretching a dozen cubits, and brought it down onto one of the wind pillars. There was a crack, and the pillar scattered apart. He strode forward. Evan, watching his form, caught the faint trace of wind magic woven into it — another dual cultivator, it seemed, primarily a swordsman, unlike Evan's own path. That single strike, though, revealed his true level — already at the peak of knighthood, and by pure swordsmanship alone, stronger than Evan had ever been before his own recent breakthrough.
A second wave of spells arrived. The wind dragon, having only just broken free of the knights' grip, was preparing to counterattack when the magic hit, thunder rolling on without pause.
Watching this, Evan understood the wind dragon couldn't hold out much longer — a formidable opponent on its own, certainly, but against this rain of magical firepower, its fall was only a matter of time. He signaled the students to join in — better to contribute now than find themselves without a voice when it came time to divide the spoils.
Spell after spell thundered down without pause.