Chapter 555: A Perfect Counter
Max could feel the change in the air, as if the entire temple had taken a breath and was holding it. Each leaf, now cloaked in black flame, trembled faintly in the air, brimming with sharpness so refined it could slice through divine metal.
She wasn’t holding back anymore.
Max narrowed his eyes, watching as the swarm of pitch-black leaves slowly lifted around her in formation, poised to strike from all directions like a storm of death.
The elven woman’s expression remained graceful, composed, but her intent was razor sharp. She had thrown down a challenge—and now, she was going to carve the answer out of him.
But Max wasn’t worried at all.
"Emperor’s Domain," he muttered softly, almost casually, as black flames began to flicker around his head. Within seconds, those flames surged upward, coiling and twisting until they solidified into a blazing black crown that hovered regally above his head, pulsing with quiet dominance.
But that wasn’t all—high above the temple itself, as if summoned by the sheer gravity of his command, another crown formed. Towering, vast, and woven from the same black flames, it expanded until it stretched across the entire ceilingless temple, casting a dark glow over everything beneath it like a second sky.
The moment that massive flaming crown took form, the air changed. It became heavier, almost reverent, as though the very realm acknowledged the arrival of a sovereign. A force not just of strength—but of control, of rule, of an emperor.
The elven woman narrowed her eyes, her brows knitting ever so slightly. "This inheritance..." she murmured with rare seriousness. "To use it to this degree... one would need absolute perfection." Her tone lost its earlier calmness. "Only then could it hope to block my leaves."
Without hesitation, she raised her arm, and the obsidian leaves that had hovered around her whistled through the air with a shriek—sharp, deadly, and infused with a divine authority of their own.
They darted toward Max like arrows of light and darkness fused together, each one carrying enough force to pierce mountains and silence souls.