Valindra collapsed to the ground. She was encased in a pale golden cocoon of light like a moth trapped in amber.
Her stunning features had frozen mid-expression, caught between shock, fury, and disbelief. Only her dimming eyes held a last flicker of awareness. Her gaze was locked onto Dustin, who was swaying on his feet, with his sword as the only thing keeping him upright.
It didn’t make sense to her. She commanded the earth element, and inside Immortal Palace, that power should have made her untouchable. He was clearly at death’s door, yet he still managed to defeat her.
Endless regret and venomous hatred gnawed at her remaining consciousness. But the sealing power clamped down like iron shackles, suppressing all her strength and fury inside that beautiful shell. Not even a wisp of divine sense could escape.
Nearby, Talmor lay in a pool of blood, his shoulder pierced clean through. Through the haze of fading awareness, he felt Valindra’s overwhelming presence suddenly snuffed out like a candle.
A cold dread mixed with excruciating pain nearly pulled him under. He couldn’t believe she had been defeated as well.
His mind replayed the moment Dustin’s sword strike countered his divine annihilation thunder, along with that piercing gaze that had seen through a thousand writhing vines to pinpoint his core with chilling precision. He could tell Dustin was not an ordinary swordmaster.
Lysander could neither move nor speak. His soul and life essence were firmly sealed by Dustin’s Mystical Pure Seal. Though his body was frozen, his consciousness as a Water Lord raged with disbelief.
He could feel the stone dragons shatter and sense the earth’s elemental currents suddenly flatten. And yet, he was shocked to see that Valindra, steady as a rock, had actually fallen.
A shiver ran through him as he remembered the nearly immortal strength of his water element body, severed in an instant from the world’s energy flow by Dustin’s strange finger strike.
He had never imagined a sealing technique could go this far, directly locking his core and cutting off his connection to the world’s energy.
Lysander had assumed Dustin was just a swordmaster. Now he was horrified to discover that Dustin’s understanding of cosmic laws, the soul, and the essence of energy far exceeded anything he had imagined.
On the high platform, Malthor finally moved. Instead of using flashy movement techniques, he walked down the white stone steps like an ordinary mortal.
But with each footstep, the tiles glowing with spiritual energy didn’t crack. Instead, they vanished beneath his feet, crumbling into fine dust as if consumed by some unseen force.
Malthor wasn’t trying to intimidate anyone. It was the manifestation of his suppressed rage and boiling killing intent, so potent that it had materialized into a field of pure obliteration. Wherever he walked, existence itself returned to nothingness.
He stopped in the center of the hall, 30 feet from Dustin. To him, that distance felt no wider than a hair’s breadth and could decide life or death.
Malthor’s eyes were cold as ice, yet beneath that chill burned a destructive fire. His gaze swept over Dustin’s pale, blood-streaked face. It passed over his hands, trembling from spent internal energy. Yet Dustin still held the sword hilt with an iron grip.
Then, he looked at Dustin’s eyes. Even in the face of certain death, they remained clear, deep, and fearless.
Malthor felt an unprecedented rage surge through him as he witnessed his three right -hand men fall-Talmor with his untamed arrogance, Lysander with his sly unpredictability, and Valindra steady as bedrock.
He had spent centuries shaping those three into the foundation of his rule, the ones who upheld the Elysium Immortal Palace’s order and strength.
And now, some unknown brat whose cultivation was clearly inferior to theirs had defeated them all, one after another, through his own strength alone.
This wasn’t simple defiance. Dustin had crushed the authority Malthor spent ages building and ripped open the truth behind their so-called immortality, the dream sustained by the Void-Tyrant Dragon. Because of that, he had to die.
The energy in Dustin’s body was impossibly refined, far beyond anything mortal. His swordsmanship was flawless, almost supernatural. And his sealing technique was unlike anything Malthor had ever seen, and should be eliminated.
Yet if he could strip and consume Dustin’s very essence before killing him, he might ascend to a higher realm. A thread of insatiable greed wove itself into his rage, entwining his murderous intent and hardening it into a freezing, lethal resolve.
“Dustin,” Malthor began.
There was no roar of cosmic energy in his words this time. Instead, it carried a deathly silence that seemed to swallow everything around it
“I will show you mercy one last time.”
He stretched out a hand, palm up, and a swirl of dark-gold flame and a blade of platinum light appeared in midair. They twisted and collided with each other, hissing with a sound that grated on the soul.
The dark-gold fire seemed capable of burning through the soul itself, while the platinum light could slice through even the laws of reality.
“Swear your loyalty to me. Offer me your soul imprint and swear eternal servitude. I can overlook your past defiance, and even grant you a strand of true dragon essence to share in our immortal pleasures.”
He paused, and the chill in his voice sent shivers through everyone present.
“Otherwise, your body and spirit will be annihilated. Your true essence will be scattered into the void and lost forever in absolute nothingness.”
This was the final judgment. Malthor’s killing intent was raw and unrestrained. It was enough to crush the mind of anyone not strong enough to resist.
