Clutching his severed arm, Yvon roared at the top of his lungs, his words dripping with provocation and foul curses. Blood dripped steadily from the stump, and his face grew paler by the second.
No one answered.
Isabella remained hidden. She made no move to show herself, quietly waiting for Yvon to bleed to death.
The entire underground plaza and its crisscrossing cavern tunnels had been seeded with Isabella's flora. These magical plants, meticulously bred by mages of the Church of Nature, could flourish even in harsh environments devoid of water and light.
The greenery secreted pollen invisible to the naked eye, carried on the air until it permeated every corner of the caverns.
Though not lethal, the pollen attacked the central nervous system, inducing delusions and hallucinations, clouding judgment, blurring thought, and triggering volatile emotions.
The guards earlier, and now Archbishop Yvon—all of them had inhaled it to varying degrees.
In other words, Isabella had long since activated an intellect-draining field spell, seizing the advantage and turning the Church of the Earth's Core's lair into her home turf. Free from its influence and holding every advantage, she didn't have to lift a finger—all she had to do was wait.
Yet Isabella was not content to merely wait. Battles between mages were best settled swiftly; the longer a fight dragged on, the more variables arose.
The plaza floor bulged. Thick vines reared their heads, flicking toward Yvon like venomous serpents.
The vines possessed no sentience of their own, but under Isabella's command, each seemed to move independently. They did not advance in unison, but surged high and low, lunging from tricky angles, striking from the front and flanks, or swarming in clusters.
This chaotic, erratic onslaught left Yvon scrambling, unable to discern any pattern, let alone deduce where Isabella was hiding.
Wind blades severed vine after vine, yet even more erupted from the earth. Sever one head, and two grew in its place.
Weakened by heavy blood loss, Yvon's reactions dulled. A vine snared his ankle, and in the next instant, he was swung in a violent arc and slammed hard against the stone wall.
The vines surged forward together—hundreds coalescing into a towering wall, rumbling forward like a crushing wave.
Suddenly, a streak of red light flashed.
The blood pooled on the ground abruptly flared into snakes of fire. Expanding flames voraciously devoured the oxygen, and an orange-red orb burst in a shockwave, incinerating every vine clinging to the plaza into ash.
The flames burrowed underground, clinging like maggots in bone, almost impossible to eradicate. In moments, they wiped out the subterranean root network.
Not only that, but the fire burned away every trace of the hallucinogenic pollen lingering in the air.
Yvon slowly rose to his feet. Tearing away his white robe, he revealed an aged, somewhat withered torso. At the stump of his severed arm, pale flesh writhed, sprouting a slimy, boneless tentacle.
Through some unknown method, his pale complexion gradually returned to health, unaffected by the severe blood loss.
"I thought I could draw you out, but it seems you're nothing but a coward. A disciple of the Goddess of Nature, flaunting her so-called righteousness, can only resort to ambushes and dirty, underhanded tricks..."
Yvon jabbered his tirade, finishing with a chilling sneer. "I know you're stalling for time, but so am I. Once the King of the Underworld awakens, she will summon her children. When that happens, the entire town will call upon the name of the Lord of the Void of their own accord. You will wait for nothing but your own death."
The provocation fell flat. Isabella seemed entirely unconcerned about the townsfolk's fate; even as Yvon painted a picture of living hell, she remained as still as a stone, unmoving.
Seeing this, Yvon began chanting an incantation under his breath. The murmuring whisper gradually swelled into a deafening roar.
A surge of magic power erupted, tracing an intricate magic circle beneath his feet. Tendrils sprouted from the diagram, starting as ethereal projections before solidifying into physical form upon contacting the matter of the four elements.
The earth trembled violently. Out past the plaza, toward the abyss, several colossal tentacles over a hundred meters in diameter writhed, scaling the cliffside. If left unchecked, allowing the King of the Underworld to run amok, all of Enrold Town would face total annihilation.
On one side of the plaza, earth and rock churned as a massive flower bud, twice the height of a man, burst from the ground.
Two wind blades crossed and shot out like arrows loosed from a bow. They pierced through Yvon's body, their momentum driving them deep into the thick rock wall of the plaza, slicing clean through one of the colossal tentacles clambering upward.
Yvon's body was hacked into pieces, collapsing in shattered heaps on the ground. Yet he did not die, nor did blood, organs, or entrails spill from the cuts.
Frothing masses of pale foam bubbled and spread, seamlessly fusing his mangled remains with the surrounding tentacles, twisting him into a grotesque, bizarre monstrosity.
Looked at closely, Archbishop Yvon now bore a striking resemblance to the cult's idol.
The flower bud peeled open petal by petal, and Isabella leapt out. Looking at Yvon's warped form, she knitted her brows, muttering with a hint of uncertainty, "Life magic?!"
Life magic took many forms. Under ordinary circumstances, only a lucid legendary mage could master it.
Yvon barely qualified, but his aesthetic defied conventional logic and ran utterly contrary to humanity—it was a nauseating spectacle of grotesque horror. Rather than life magic, it was more accurate to say his mind had buckled under an overload of knowledge, upsetting the balance of his life essence and leaving him entirely corrupted.
"You know life magic..."
Yvon eyed the stout woman before him. Without mocking her heavy build, he hissed maliciously, "Of course. From the look of it, you've already mastered a portion of life magic yourself. I can see the thirst for knowledge in your heart. Perhaps one day, you too will attain a flawless body like mine."
In Yvon's eyes, a "flawless body" meant severing limbs and head, with each part grafted onto a tentacle.
The writhing thicket of tentacles resembled blooming white flora bearing bizarre fruit—his head to the left, his buttocks to the right, an arm here, a leg there.
*Boom!!!*
A tremendous roar shook the subterranean plaza violently.
"Hahaha! Because of your cowardice and selfish desire to save your own skin, you've given the King of the Underworld time to reach the surface!"
Yvon laughed madly. "But don't blame yourself! The Lord of the Void will forgive your transgression. After tonight, everyone will merge into one, and the townsfolk will forgive you too!"
Merging with the tentacles, Yvon's limbs began to transform into fleshy appendages, and his facial features blurred until eyes, nose, mouth, and ears seemed to grow directly from a tentacle. Most absurd of all, his brain had been plucked out entirely, fully exposed to the open air.
Isabella watched cold and detached. As Yvon laughed, he suddenly sensed something was wrong.
*Boom!*
Another deafening blast echoed, and the air turned sweltering hot. Yvon turned toward the tunnel entrance to see expanding fireballs and scorching waves of heat.
The explosion was not the King of the Underworld bursting through to the surface of Enrold Town. Rather, its tentacles had triggered a cluster of traps, setting off a chain of violent detonations. Flames engulfed the appendages, rapidly burning them to ash.
*Swish!*
A gale of wind blades swept across, reaping the blooming cluster of tentacles like scythes through wheat, leaving behind bare stumps.
The brain, receiving special attention, burst into flying droplets.
Fresh out of the cranium, still piping hot.
"*Raaagh—!*"
His eyes glazed over, Yvon let out a senseless roar. The writhing tentacles stitched together into a two-meter-wide mound of flesh, which sprouted four limbs and scuttled toward Isabella at blinding speed.
Chapter 50