Lam Huy Trường opened his eyes.
The books were gone.
The tower was gone.
That little moe girl was gone too.
He was standing alone in a place...
A place that looked no different from a real hell.
The ground beneath his feet had been scorched black, as if something had burned it beyond recognition.
The air carried a strange, unpleasant smell.
He looked down at his clothes and even leaned in for a quick sniff.
Did some creature mark its territory with ammonia or something?
Probably not.
With rain pouring down like this, any smell should have been washed away long ago.
Lam Huy Trường tried to remember where he had been before this.
To remember what had happened.
He searched through the scattered fragments of his memory.
Eventually, it came back to him.
Before losing consciousness, he had collapsed beside a nearby wall.
He immediately turned to look.
Then froze.
Why was it so wrecked?
It looked as though the wall had already been ruined once before being crushed all over again.
The ground was the same.
The vegetation too.
In his memory, things hadn't been anywhere near this bad before he passed out.
Everything was withered.
Lifeless.
Like it had just survived a catastrophe.
Where was the green field he remembered?
Where had all the grass gone?
Hm?
Then his gaze suddenly stopped.
Not far away, someone was kneeling on the ground.
Their body hung limply.
Their head was lowered.
Their entire weight seemed to rest on their knees.
In the middle of their chest...
A murky yellow eye was partially open.
A long crack ran through the center of it, blood slowly seeping out from within.
What was that?
That thing was...
Lam Huy Trường's memory immediately supplied the answer.
The Hazard Driver.
The thing Zero used to wear.
Was that Zero?
No.
It didn't look like him.
One of Zero's disciples?
Or some disciple-avenging-master scenario straight out of an old wuxia novel?
Lam Huy Trường's heartbeat began to quicken.
One beat.
Then another.
A growing sense of unease slowly spread through his chest.
He took a cautious step backward.
That guy...
Why was he kneeling there?
Wait.
This scene...
The more he looked at it, the more it resembled one of those classic trap setups from martial arts dramas.
The kind where a good person accidentally stumbles upon a corpse and immediately gets framed as the murderer.
Suspicious.
Very suspicious.
Lam Huy Trường swallowed.
Could it be...
That the moment he walked over and touched the body...
The corpse would collapse to the ground...
And he would instantly become the prime suspect?
Oh.
If that was the case, then he absolutely should not go near it.
For all he knew, the guy wasn't even dead yet.
Maybe he was just pretending to sleep.
What if the Hazard Driver had run out of energy, causing its owner to... power down as well?
The more Lam Huy Trường thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded.
He immediately decided to get as far away from this place as possible.
Far AWAY.
Fastttttttttttt.
And without hesitation.
Everything about this place reeked of danger.
And he had absolutely no desire to get involved.
Lam Huy Trường began sneaking away.
One careful step at a time.
Quiet enough that he barely made a sound.
When he finally judged the distance sufficient...
He didn't even bother looking back.
He turned around.
Bent his legs.
Then sprinted away at full speed.
His figure quickly disappeared behind the ruined walls.
Vanishing from the devastated wasteland.
...
A few seconds later.
The kneeling figure trembled slightly.
Not because it had come back to life.
Not because it had moved.
But because it was disintegrating.
Starting from the hands.
Then the arms.
Then the body.
Everything slowly crumbled into countless tiny particles of dust.
The wind carried them away.
As though that person had never existed.
As though no one had ever been kneeling there in the first place.
---
Far away beneath the dark, cloud-covered sky.
A streak of light suddenly tore through the clouds.
A shooting star.
It streaked across the heavens and plunged toward the ruined battlefield below.
There—
A gigantic crimson pillar of light still erupted from the earth into the sky.
Like a blood-red column supporting the heavens.
Standing firm within a dying world.
The remaining Eva Spawn on the battlefield gradually gathered around it.
One after another.
Silently approaching.
No screaming.
No frenzy.
As though something was calling them.
The moment they touched the crimson pillar...
Their bodies melted and merged into it.
Like water finally returning to its source.
Kai and Lyra witnessed the entire scene.
A quiet sense of unease spread through both of them.
The black vortex that had swallowed everything was gone.
But what had appeared in its place...
Was somehow even more disturbing.
Inside the crimson pillar of light.
A grotesque mass of flesh was slowly taking shape.
A faint heartbeat echoed from within.
Slow.
Heavy.
Like the heart of some enormous monster.
"If that monster is dying..."
Kai stared at the forming mass of flesh within the crimson pillar.
"Then this is the best chance we'll ever get to finish it off."
His expression grew heavier.
"And if we can't kill it..."
"Then we should at least stop whatever it's trying to do."
He knew they had to act.
They had to do something before the situation spiraled even further out of control.
But at the same time, another thought surfaced in his mind.
What if stopping it right now...
Only led to something even worse?
The thought lingered for only a brief moment.
Because the Flying Carpet beneath them suddenly tilted to one side.
Lyra guided it in a wide arc around the crimson pillar.
The wind whipped through her hair.
Then she spoke.
Her voice was loud enough for Kai to hear.
And loud enough to reassure herself.
"Whatever it's doing..."
"I don't think it's anything good."
Her eyes never left the crimson pillar.
"Is it gathering energy for some kind of explosion?"
"Or something similar?"
Her hands unconsciously tightened.
"If we attack recklessly again..."
"Can we really guarantee the safety of the people nearby?"
Her voice remained steady.
But when she mentioned the people nearby...
It trembled slightly.
As though someone specific had appeared in her thoughts.
Someone who wasn't here.
Kai immediately knew who she was thinking about.
Because he had just thought of the same person.
The man who had planned the defeat of this monster.
The man countless people had called insane.
Had that professor...
Been caught up in all of this?
Kai clicked his tongue softly.
The discomfort in his chest finally pushed him to speak.
"We don't even know what that monster is thinking."
He looked up at the crimson pillar stretching into the heavens.
"But if it's him..."
Kai shook his head.
"No."
"The professor isn't crazy enough to return to the battlefield after entrusting everything to us."
Lyra didn't turn around.
But Kai had the feeling she had nodded slightly.
The Flying Carpet continued cutting through the sky.
Powerful winds lashed against them.
As Kai flew onward, the things the professor had left behind suddenly surfaced in his mind.
The Flying Carpet.
The mysterious boots.
Those bizarre items that somehow produced unbelievable results.
He had bet everything on them.
Entrusted everything to them.
And that secret weapon...
It had probably already been used during the battle against the Red Serpent, hadn't it?
Kai slowly clenched his fist.
"He's already done everything he could."
Kai tightened his fist.
"If he comes back to the battlefield now..."
"That would be no different from committing suicide."
Nobody in their right mind would do that.
As she guided the Flying Carpet through another sweeping turn, Lyra dodged the crimson lightning bolts that kept crashing down whenever they flew too close to the pillar.
"No one would blame him for running away."
Her voice carried through the howling wind.
"Not in a situation like this."
Yet deep inside her heart, something continued to smolder.
A small spark of hope.
Hope that he—the professor—would once again overturn the board.
That he still hadn't given up.
That he was still fighting for his goal.
The image of a small brown-haired girl sitting in a flower garden, carefully weaving a crown of flowers, suddenly surfaced in her mind.
"This time, I won't give up..."
Lyra murmured softly.
"So I hope you won't give up either, Professor."
At that very moment, the Flying Carpet suddenly accelerated.
It shot past ruined walls and plunged through the countless crimson lightning bolts raining from the sky.
Kai's eyes widened.
He had not expected Lyra to speed up so abruptly.
"So until then..."
Lyra's voice rang out once more.
"I'll do everything I can."
The laser cannons mounted on the Flying Carpet opened fire again.
Brilliant beams of light poured toward the crimson pillar like another declaration of war.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Violent shockwaves erupted in the sky as the lasers collided with the descending crimson lightning.
Kai had no idea what Lyra was thinking.
But her actions right now clearly carried a sense of desperate resolve.
Was it possible that some lingering trace of the madness from the previous battle still remained inside her?
Right now, she looked ready to fight any monster that appeared in front of her.
Then again...
Kai glanced up at the churning black clouds overhead.
Where was the Red Serpent?