Dorothy’s Forbidden Grimoire

Chapter 776 : Divine Armament

The Emperor of Light, Hyperion… without a doubt, one of the most important names in the history of the Third Epoch. Dorothy had come across mentions of him early on in her studies of mysticism, and as her exploration of the world progressed, so too did her understanding of this King of Light. One pivotal moment was when Addus defeated the Crimson-rank Muhtar of the Savior's Advent Sect—she obtained a scroll from him…

The scroll depicted a towering deity flanked by two attendant children. At first, Dorothy had believed the god depicted to be the Radiant Savior. However, the evidence she later gathered suggested otherwise: that figure wasn’t the Radiant Savior, but the King of Light himself. As for the two attendants beside him, Dorothy, following many clues unearthed through later investigation, had her own hypothesis.

From Beverly, Dorothy learned that while Hyperion had indeed founded the empire, he hadn’t ruled it in full. He had suddenly disappeared halfway through. From the ring given by Mirror Moon, Dorothy discovered that during that period, the empire had experienced a time of “dual emperors.” Additionally, the faith of Mirror Moon bore striking similarities to the Radiance Church; remnants of institutions such as the Court of Secrets and the Holy Mother Faction still lingered among the upper ranks of the Mirror Moon Church. Not long ago, there was even a case where the Nether Coffin Order used a slumbering war spirit of Inut as a replacement for a ritual sacrifice in the Earth Grievance Ritual…

From all of this, Dorothy was able to draw a conclusion.

The Radiance Church and the Nation of Night were remnants formed from the shattered pieces of the Third Epoch Empire. The Radiance Church was a direct continuation of the empire. Therefore, the war souls of Inut who had died under the King of Light’s empire could be considered victims of Radiance Church, and were thus valid offerings for the Earth Grievance Ritual.

As for the deities associated with these two factions… the Radiant Savior and the Mirror Moon Goddess—both were successors of the Emperor of Light, Hyperion. They were likely the two attendant children depicted beside Hyperion in the scroll—very likely his divine offspring!

Having reached this realization… faced with the unstoppable Nether Coffin Order wielding the divine corpse of the Lord of Calamitous Cold, Dorothy attempted her one and only gambit to break the impasse… She would invoke power using her potentially unique identity.

Dorothy had long investigated the mysteries surrounding her origins. Even years ago in Igwynt, she had already learned that her family—particularly her mother’s line—was far from ordinary. She had continued to remain vigilant and curious about this ever since.

During her long-term struggle against the Eight-Spired Nest, Dorothy gradually sensed a connection between herself and Mirror Moon. She began to suspect that her mother’s bloodline was somehow linked to Mirror Moon. But without Mirror Moon confirming it directly, she couldn’t be sure. Not until today, through testing involving Nephthys and Rachman, was she finally able to confirm it—she was either the divine offspring of Mirror Moon… or a divine-blood creation.

Both possibilities were profoundly close. In either case, Dorothy could rightfully call Mirror Moon “mother.”

And if Dorothy was the daughter of Mirror Moon, and if Mirror Moon was indeed a divine offspring of Hyperion, then that would make Hyperion Dorothy’s grandfather. Dorothy didn’t know why Mirror Moon’s divine blood was inert within her—why she hadn’t inherited any innate divine spirituality—but as long as she could confirm her status as a divine scion, that alone would be enough to accomplish other things.

For instance… by having the Cardinal Council acknowledge her position in the divine pantheon and strengthening the connection between the Church and the Empire, she could stabilize her legal status. Then, by utilizing the divinity of the Heaven’s Arbiter, she could convert the most powerful legal force known in mystic history into her own power—and use that to fight against the divine corpse wielded by the Nether Coffin Order!

When that pure brilliance pierced the clouds and descended upon the land… when the glow of dawn drove away the bitter cold and once more blanketed Aransdel, the stained glass of the Requiem Cathedral at the city’s center began to shimmer with the light of sunrise. The panes depicting Radiance mythology gleamed brilliantly, and several figures standing in the square before the cathedral were left dumbfounded by the sight.

“The power of the Lord of Calamitous Cold has been dispelled… What is this? Such pure light… Did you do something? Did you summon the power of the god you serve?”

Gazing toward the shining dawn in the east, basking in the enveloping warmth that now covered all of Aransdel, the recovering True Spirit Shaman turned in shock and confusion to the two cardinals beside him. He assumed it was these two members of the Eastern Church who had triggered some divine intervention—but to his surprise, both cardinals looked just as startled, even more so than he was.

“Th-this… What is this? Such sacred divine force… Why would it descend all of a sudden? Has the Lord shown mercy?”

Looking toward the holy light driving away the bitter cold, Kramar spoke in disbelief. Even as a cardinal of the Church, he had rarely sensed divinity of such magnitude. He began to wonder if one of the Three Saints of Radiance themselves had descended to bestow their power.

Even Kramar, the Cardinal of Inquisition, found himself entertaining the blasphemous notion that the god of Radiance had bypassed the Pontiff and directly intervened in the world.

“Huff… huff… such pure holiness… Only the Pontiff has ever radiated this kind of light. Has the Pontiff returned? Come back to save the world… or…”

On another side, Amanda—while recovering from her injuries—was equally astonished by the divine presence. As a far older cardinal than Kramar, Amanda had lived through the war four centuries ago and had experienced similar divine power before. She immediately suspected this meant the Pontiff had returned. But recalling the recent vote that Vania had asked her and the other cardinals to cast… she couldn’t help but begin to doubt that conclusion.

This divine descent had occurred right after the Heaven’s Arbiter Sect succeeded in passing that strange recognition decree in the Cardinal Council… Could it be that this divine brilliance had been brought forth by that ancient faith of Revelation?

For a sect devoted to the power of Revelation to manifest such overwhelming Lantern divinity… As a Lantern believer herself, Amanda, in her astonishment, couldn’t help but feel a trace of unease.

“Miss Mayschoss… was able to invoke such mighty Lantern power… Could it be her divine bloodline? Did she somehow activate her divine blood? But I thought her divine lineage traced back to ‘Shadow’…”

Atop a rooftop somewhere along the streets of Aransdel, Rachman’s undead form whispered in astonishment while gazing into the distance. But not far from him, Nephthys’ reaction couldn’t have been more different.

“Ahh… so warm… Miss Dorothy really is something else. With just a single move, she’s already changed the weather…”

Bathed in the radiance of dawn, Nephthys could feel the temperature around her rising. She finally stopped shivering, exhaled a long breath, found a place to sit, and casually resumed spectating the unfolding events. It was as if she had been expecting all of this from the start. Among all the sentient beings still conscious in Aransdel, she was likely the only one who wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

After all, with Miss Dorothy around, wasn’t anything and everything possible? What’s there to be shocked about?

“This power… there’s no mistaking it… It’s the Lord of Blazing Light!”

Floating in the skies above Aransdel, Harald—who had been about to charge alone at the undead dragon—froze upon feeling the sunlight that dispelled the chill. In utter astonishment, he stood there murmuring to himself, until a realization seemed to strike him, and he suddenly burst into laughter.

“Hahaha! I knew it! You had a contingency after all, didn’t you? Southern King? Well then… perfect!

“Go! Go destroy Emperor Inut! Strike down the Emperor once more! Free Him from the humiliation of enslavement! No one is more suited to do this than you—go!

“No king shall be enslaved!”

With fervent conviction, Harald shouted from the skies above. And at the far end of the cathedral plaza, some distance from the cardinals, Vania was quietly gazing toward the distant radiance.

“Miss Dorothea… she’s truly capable of wielding such sacred light…?”

Clad in white robes, Sister Vania gazed at the distant divine radiance with astonishment flickering in her eyes. But that astonishment only lasted a brief moment before melting into a soft smile. In a sense of inner peace and clarity, she slowly knelt on the spot and began silently praying in the direction from which the holy light had descended.

“As I thought… from the beginning, I was never wrong. Miss Dorothea is the one who can truly act in the Lord’s will… Miss Dorothea is the embodiment of the Lord…”

“Miss Dorothea, please hear my prayer… Save Aransdel… Save this mortal world beset by the gaze of countless evils…”

For the first time, Vania directed a heartfelt prayer clearly and directly to Dorothy herself. At that very moment, standing atop Dragon Severance Cliff, her entire being bathed in light, exuding the gallant image of divine myth, Dorothy moved into action as she heard that prayer resound within her heart.

Gazing silently at the bitter cold darkness beneath the northern clouds, Dorothy extended her hand and raised two fingers, lightly drawing a vertical line in the air from top to bottom.

In an instant, under the invocation of a powerful force, countless rays of sunlight refracted their paths above Frisland’s skies, converging rapidly at the top of the thick cloud layer hanging over the Northern Sea. There, they fused into a single, massive, blinding beam that pierced downward, stabbing through the cloud mass and landing squarely atop the ancient Northern Sea altar.

At the summit of the ancient island where the undead dragon coiled, the blinding column of light struck directly. The moment it hit the enormous skeletal dragon, the icy crystals encrusting its body emitted a strange gleam, and the dragon let out a hoarse, furious roar. The rapidly rising temperature around it began to thaw the sea and melt away the blizzard. Stray beams of light slipping from the skeletal dragon’s body blasted the island’s surface, scalding the earth and burrowing deep into the ground.

“This is… Radiance? Why?! Why can they still channel such powerful holy light when they’ve already sealed off Holy Mount?! Does Phaethon have more tricks up his sleeve?”

Within the crystalline ice embedded in the dragon’s ribcage, the skeletal bishop Fabrizio was reeling in shock. Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated the Church would be able to unleash such power at this point. The might of that one beam was already comparable to the Pontiff’s sacred staff.

“No matter what you are, you cannot defy Inut!”

With that beam of light interfering, the Soul-Summoning Ritual couldn’t proceed. Fabrizio still lacked numerous sacrifices to complete the Earth Grievance Ritual. He had to eliminate the disturbance to let the ritual resume, so he commanded the skeletal dragon to strike back.

“ROAR!!!”

With another deafening roar, a terrifying wave of glacial cold radiated outward. The brilliance that had bathed the skeletal dragon was instantly halted and dispelled. The sky returned to its frozen gloom, the sea froze once more, and as the skeletal dragon spread its wings to take off, it left behind a gaping, bottomless vertical chasm in the earth—left by the radiant beams that had spilled from its body.

Soaring once more from the northern island, the undead dragon flew through the frigid gloom, heading south toward the horizon where faint glimmers of dawn still shone. Fabrizio could feel that the source of the holy light lay there. To continue his great undertaking, he had to extinguish that light.

As it soared through the sky, the skeletal dragon let out a deep, resounding bellow. Across the frozen sea below, the ice began to crack and shatter. Under the influence of some mysterious force, these shattered chunks of ice lifted into the air, darkening as they rose, then rapidly combined into massive skeletal ice frames.

These gigantic frames ultimately formed into towering, clawed bone ice dragons—each spanning two to three hundred meters. Dozens upon dozens of them took to the sky alongside the skeletal dragon, flying toward the southern dawn in a terrifying formation, their wings so vast they blotted out the heavens.

These bone-dragons, forged from strands of Inut’s divine soul, each possessed power equal to or surpassing that of the Church’s Temple-Grade Saint Steel Vessels—easily capable of annihilating a city and turning its inhabitants into frozen corpses. Now, the skeletal dragon had created nearly a hundred of them, sending this entire aerial legion of frost upon Aransdel.

As the bone-dragon legion advanced, still dozens of kilometers from Aransdel, each dragon’s maw began to glow with chilling blue light. One by one, they began charging their frost breaths. In only a few more moments, they would be ready to unleash them. A volley of this scale wouldn’t merely obliterate Aransdel—it could level the surrounding satellite towns as well, burying nearly half of North Frisland under eternal glacier.

On the Dragon Severance Cliff, where waves crashed and the warm morning light bathed Aransdel, Dorothy stood with her luminous eyes fixed on the northern horizon, watching the oncoming cataclysm. Her golden hair billowed behind her as she silently extended her right arm—engraved with silver divine sigils—to the side. She spread her five fingers wide and murmured softly:

“Ninety-eight…”

As she spoke, a sharp beam of holy light formed in her palm, solidifying at her side into a gleaming, suspended spear of light—like a radiant lance.

Then, she clenched her fingers. The moment she gripped the floating spear, radiant flashes began appearing across the earth around her. In an instant, lances identical to the one in her hand materialized and thrust into the ground, forming concentric rings that radiated outward, encircling her entirely.

There were ninety-seven of them. Including the one in Dorothy’s hand, there were ninety-eight radiant spears in total.

As the spears finished forming, the bone-dragon legion reached their ideal firing position. Beneath the darkened sky, they opened their colossal jaws wide—and unleashed their gathered breaths.

Nearly a hundred dragons. Nearly a hundred blasts of frost. All fired simultaneously, merging into a massive wall of glacial mist that stretched from heaven to sea—a howling avalanche of doom surging southward.

This vast wall of white frost reached up to the kilometer-high cloudline and down to the sea surface. Its width was beyond visible range. From Aransdel’s perspective, it looked like a surging white wall that blotted out the world—a solid wall of frost sweeping down with the momentum to devour heaven and earth. Even the True Spirit Shaman and the two cardinals found themselves trembling before such overwhelming might, praying in their hearts as though before a wrathful god. As for Vania, who had been praying already, her inner voice grew ever more devout in the face of the impending end.

“Lord… please save the people…”

At that moment, Dorothy tightened her grip on her radiant spear. She assumed her stance and hurled it with force toward the sky. As her lance soared heavenward, the ninety-seven other spears embedded in the ground around her began to tremble, then launched skyward in unison, following behind Dorothy’s original spear—all streaking northward, straight toward the incoming wall of frost.

The spears flew swiftly, scattering in flight, each targeting a different part of the oncoming frost wall. Compared to that monstrous barrier—vaster than even a super-tsunami—Dorothy’s spears seemed insignificant, smaller than toothpicks. To strike such a wall seemed as futile as stabbing the ocean with a needle…

And yet, when the radiant spears struck the frost wall, they passed through it like fists through cotton. One after another, massive gaps were torn open—hundreds, even thousands of meters wide. The frost wall was left riddled with gaping wounds, torn into tatters.

Even after shattering the frost wall, the radiant spears showed no sign of slowing. Maintaining their speed, they surged into the frigid darkness beyond, toward the bone-dragon legion. Some dragons attempted to block them with breath, others tried to dodge.

In a flash, Dorothy’s lances of holy light sliced through the howling winds, arcing beautifully through the air as they pierced and shattered all breath attacks, then struck their targets with surgical precision. Each colossal ice-dragon—beasts whose size made the spears look like splinters—was struck squarely and collapsed, shrieking, from the sky. Their bodies disintegrated and melted mid-air, crashing lifeless into the icy sea below.

The remnants of the frost wall they had unleashed reached within five to six kilometers of the Frisland coastline before some unseen force halted and rapidly dissolved them.

One radiant spear—one ice dragon.

In the blink of an eye, the apocalyptic legion of ice dragons was annihilated by Dorothy’s radiant spears. This was also the first time Dorothy had personally used the power she exchanged for with a single spear long ago: Sunlight Spear. And what she had just done was precisely the reason this ability had been created in the first place—dragon hunting.

With the frost-blight wall shattered and all the ice dragons downed, the northern sky was swept clean. The destruction that had threatened Aransdel seemed completely eradicated. Yet Dorothy showed no sign of easing up. Her face, devoid of expression, still radiated divine dignity. Her luminous eyes turned to the side, where one last radiant spear remained embedded in the ground.

Ninety-eight dragons. Ninety-eight spears.

Dorothy had prepared exactly the right number—no more, no less—for her dragon-hunting formation. So if a spear remained, it meant one dragon still hadn't been hunted. Though no trace of this final dragon could be found between heaven and earth, Dorothy saw it clearly.

She reached out and gripped the final radiant spear. At that moment, behind her, an enormous Silence array emerged out of thin air in space. The array quickly turned dark and murky. From within its deep abyssal void, a massive skeletal dragon head was pushing through—its gaping jaws already brimming with blue-black frostlight, ready to unleash devastation.

“ROAR!!!”

But in that very instant, as if she had foreseen it all, Dorothy spun around and hurled the last radiant spear directly into the dragon’s wide-open mouth—right into the core of the amassed blue-black energy. A blinding flash exploded within its jaws.

With a howling cry, the skeletal dragon writhed. As the cataclysmic burst of holy light was about to spill through the array, Dorothy struck the array itself, shattering it and forcing the explosion to remain within the undead dragon’s domain.

In the Nether Realm, the skeletal dragon’s body was engulfed in clashing orange-yellow and blue-black light. Violent frost and flame ravaged the silent realm, and only after a long while did it all finally settle. The skeletal dragon—its icy bones now riddled with visible cracks—gradually stabilized again.

“What… is this? Transdimensional sight?! What kind of divine being is this? How can it possess such strong inter-realm vision? How did Phaethon leave behind such potent Lantern divinity as a hidden card?!”

Inside the ice crystal in the dragon’s ribcage, Fabrizio reeled in shock. He hadn’t expected his carefully planned cross-realm ambush to be resolved so easily.

In the previous exchange, the massive legion of ice dragons had been nothing but a feint. While they assaulted Aransdel with overwhelming force, Fabrizio—empowered by the divine essence of the skeletal dragon—had conducted a deep possession into the Nether Realm with both himself and the skeletal dragon.

His goal was to catch the newly emerged, mysterious Radiance entity off-guard, striking from the hidden realm while it was distracted fighting the dragon legion. In the region corresponding to Frisland and its nether mirror, Fabrizio could leverage the omnipresent influence of the Earth Grievance Ritual to bypass normal summoning requirements. Every resentful spirit bound beneath the earth became a potential possession node, allowing him to phase in from any such point.

What he didn’t expect was that this Radiance entity wasn’t just vastly more powerful than anticipated—it wiped out the entire dragon legion with frightening speed and perceived him even after he descended into the deepest levels of the Nether Realm.

Even Gold-rank Lantern Beyonders couldn’t see into that depth without powerful artifacts… yet this being saw through it effortlessly and struck back just as decisively.

Was this a descending angel? Did Phaethon leave behind some contingency that allowed an apostle to manifest beyond Holy Mount? How?

While Fabrizio was still frantically analyzing the essence of Dorothy’s current form, she made her next move.

Atop Dragon Severance Cliff in the real world, Dorothy’s gaze burned. In this moment, her eyes could not only see across thousands of miles and pierce through all concealment—they could also see through realm barriers and directly observe scenes within the hidden realms. No illusion could escape her divine sight.

Fixing her gaze on the skeletal dragon deep in the Nether Realm, Dorothy reached out, pointing downward. A point of light formed at her fingertip, then burst forth as a ray of holy light.

This ray didn’t strike the ground—instead, it shimmered through the fabric of reality, pierced the dimensional veil, and shot straight into the Nether Realm. Within an instant, it reached directly above the skeletal dragon. Sensing the realm’s abnormality, Fabrizio quickly ordered the skeletal dragon to evade.

Even so, the slim beam of holy light struck the dragon head-on. The ice crystal at the impact site dissolved and cracked rapidly. The dragon howled and tried to flee the burning light, but the beam tracked it, locked on as though by fate.

Cornered, Fabrizio had the skeletal dragon erupt with a divine-infused frostwave to shatter the beam, as if dispelling an attack from a sacred staff. Witnessing this, Dorothy simply waved her hand—and summoned a swarm of radiant swords that floated around her, then sent them all hurtling into the Nether Realm.

The swords rained down like a storm, falling from the blackened sky of the Nether Realm in a downpour of holy light. Faced with this relentless barrage, Fabrizio commanded the dragon to unleash a thunderous roar of frost to freeze the front wave of swords in place. But just as the freeze began, those very swords exploded preemptively.

In an instant, countless radiant swords bloomed into massive orbs of light—each expanding to over a kilometer wide, like miniature suns rising in the dark. The ghostly domain of the Nether Realm was bathed in daylight.

Seeing the first wave detonate early, Fabrizio breathed a sigh of relief… until he noticed more radiant swords surging toward him from the glowing light—and his dragon hadn’t yet recharged its roar.

Pressed, Fabrizio activated his divine possession again. Empowered by his divinity, he performed a rare intra-realm shift, teleporting himself and the skeletal dragon to another, lesser-known region of the Nether Realm.

He hoped to escape the storm of blades—but as soon as he emerged in the new location, the space around him shimmered… and more radiant swords burst through, stabbing toward the dragon.

“Wha—?!”

The swords pierced the skeletal dragon and exploded into blinding light. For a moment, the dragon was completely engulfed, and this second region of the Nether Realm was illuminated like day. From the real world, Dorothy watched it all in silence, her divine eyes unwavering.

The All-Seeing Divine Eye—this was one of Dorothy’s current manifestations of Lantern divinity. With it, she could not only see across vast distances, through obstacles, deception, and illusion… she could also see across dimensions into the depths of the inner realm.

And once something was locked under her divine gaze—every one of her attacks would unfailingly cross all barriers and distances to strike their mark… unless the attack itself was destroyed.

Where her eyes reached, her power reached. If she could see it, she could hit it. Even if it didn’t belong to this world, evasion or concealment were meaningless.

That was why Dorothy’s attacks could pierce space so effortlessly.

From the perspective of Revelation, “juridical force” could be understood as the historical imprint left by an organization or political entity. And the Third Epoch Empire was the mightiest juridical force known in mystic history. Augmented by the Radiance Church and Nation of Night from the Fourth Epoch, this legalistic colossus was powerful enough to rival gods.

Dorothy’s current Radiance Scion form was primarily constructed atop the juridical legacy of the Church and the Third Epoch Empire. However, due to the limited scale of her Heaven’s Arbiter divinity, she couldn’t channel the full extent of that juridical force—it wasn’t enough to overpower the skeletal dragon alone.

What allowed her to dominate this far… was history itself.

Thousands of years ago, Emperor Hyperion had fought and defeated the Northern Emperor Inut in this very place. Now, Hyperion’s divine descendant Dorothy stood again in nearly the exact same location—facing the remains of Inut once more.

This historical convergence allowed Dorothy’s Heaven’s Arbiter divinity to receive an immense amplification—enough to let the divine echo of Hyperion from millennia past resonate through her body.

Quantity gave rise to quality.

When Dorothy invoked a sufficiently vast juridical force, she could even simulate divinity.

In the Nether Realm’s depths, when the searing radiance finally faded, the skeletal dragon’s form emerged once more. Compared to before, the cracks in its icy armor had significantly increased.

“What… is this…? This level of Lantern divinity… it rivals even Phaethon…”

Inside the fractured crystal, Fabrizio thought in terror. But the battle offered no time to dwell—the next barrage of radiant swords was already descending.

“Obey the great Lord of Calamitous Cold—form a shield!”

Fabrizio spread his senses wide through the Nether Realm, forcibly summoning an enormous host of spirits and binding them with the skeletal dragon’s dominion.

Instantly, countless souls materialized around the dragon—layer upon layer forming a massive spirit-shield. Fabrizio bound them to the dragon as meat shields, hoping to block the sword rain.

The captured souls, dazed and terrified, trembled in confusion under the pressure of forced obedience.

But Dorothy only whispered:

“Those who believe in me shall be redeemed.”

Her voice—formless—resounded through the Nether Realm.

In that instant, the countless imprisoned, helpless souls shimmered with faint light. One by one, their faces grew serene with reverence—and then they vanished.

The massive shield of souls dissolved in a flash, leaving Fabrizio stunned once more.

“Redemption…”

This was the power of redemption.

Radiance, in countless myths, symbolized hope and miracles. It was the thing that countless ordinary people prayed for and revered.

Radiance naturally possessed the ability to redeem all things—to save the mortal world.

For anyone in danger, under oppression, who yearned for salvation—whether consciously or instinctively—Radiance could grant miracles and deliver them from peril.

This was a power that turned hope into reality—almost like the granting of wishes—a miraculous manifestation of divinity embodying the traits of the Radiance “Savior.” If the redeemed target already had faith in Radiance, the effect would be even more potent.

Dorothy used this power of redemption to deliver all those tormented souls Fabrizio had dragged over in a vile attempt at moral coercion. This power could offer tremendous protection for mortals caught in the collision of divine forces.

However, this ability had its limits. It could not redeem those who possessed divinity and had transcended mortality—like the now-controlled Inut. Nor could it redeem those whose hearts had been utterly twisted beyond salvation—like the evil spirits who constructed the Earth Grievance Ritual. These beings harbored no hope at all—only twisted hatred toward Radiance.

After effortlessly dismantling the soul shield, the rain of radiant swords continued to fall. With another wave descending, Fabrizio had no choice but to activate the skeletal dragon’s final defensive mechanism.

With a roar, the skeletal dragon released a faintly glowing blue-black field around itself. The light then vanished, and the spherical domain turned into near-total darkness.

Then, any radiant sword that entered this dim field instantly shrank, contracted, and finally vanished. In that moment, every sword that entered the blue-black domain disappeared almost instantly—none could reach the skeletal dragon’s body.

This was Inut’s divine domain—an area where basic laws could be broken and all forms of energy could be directly reduced or erased. Fabrizio had initially underestimated the threat and delayed activating it to conserve divine power, but now that the domain had been deployed, the rain of radiant swords was rendered completely ineffective.

Faced with this seemingly difficult situation, Dorothy immediately responded with a solution—the Eternal Flame.

The moment her sword rain was swallowed, Dorothy, still in the real world, formed a new radiant lance in her hand. As it materialized, golden flames burst forth along its length—flames of the Seraph—the inextinguishable Eternal Flame!

This Eternal Flame kindled by Dorothy was even purer than the one ignited by Hilbert. Holding the burning lance high, Dorothy hurled it directly into the depths of the Nether Realm—toward that nearly lightless, shadowy domain.

On the other side, Fabrizio had just neutralized the rain of swords, only to be faced with a golden blaze, descending like a meteor from the top of the Nether Realm. As the fiery lance plunged into the dark domain, the surrounding flames dimmed—but only slightly. They did not vanish.

The sunset-hued flame lance surged through the divine domain, piercing straight toward the ice crystal in the skeletal dragon’s chest. It looked poised to melt the crystal and destroy Fabrizio inside. Seeing this, Fabrizio quickly shrank the dark domain, condensing its power to suppress the Eternal Flame that was already embedded in the crystal, reducing its intensity to the minimum and preventing it from melting his protective armor.

In the end, the Eternal Flame lance was successfully suppressed. Fabrizio managed to preserve himself and finally exhaled a breath of relief.

“That divine being’s power… is beyond expectation. The strategy failed…”

At this moment, Fabrizio admitted in his heart that he had suffered a tactical defeat.

He had thought that infiltrating the Nether Realm would grant him the advantage of terrain, allowing him to limit the enemy's offensive while drawing them into his own domain. But he had never anticipated that the enemy’s cross-realm perception and attack capabilities would be this overwhelming.

Instead of hindering the enemy, the boundary of the realm had only restricted his own counterattacks. In the Nether Realm, he found himself at a disadvantage, unable to land a solid blow.

In truth, the skeletal dragon’s current strength wasn’t that far off from Dorothy’s Radiance Scion state. The main reason for this imbalance was operator error. Fabrizio was piloting such a powerful divine corpse for the first time—he lacked the battle experience Inut once had.

Dorothy, by contrast, had far better mastery over her newfound power. Thus, she was able to suppress the skeletal dragon despite their comparable strength.

Fortunately, the skeletal dragon’s divine constitution made it highly resilient. Fabrizio’s high margin of error meant that even with multiple missteps, he still had room to recover.

Fabrizio immediately adjusted his strategy. While Dorothy was still catching her breath and preparing her next Eternal Flame lance, Fabrizio once again initiated divine possession—pulling both himself and the skeletal dragon out of the Nether Realm and back into the real world.

Now he understood: fighting a divine Lantern being of this caliber across realms was asking for a beating. To even have a chance, he needed to stay in the same realm.

When the skeletal dragon reappeared in the real world, it manifested several kilometers above Aransdel. Fabrizio had deliberately chosen a location far from Dorothy’s position to avoid getting smacked like a whack-a-mole.

The moment it appeared, the dragon opened its jaws and spewed a massive blast of blue-black breath downward, aimed straight at Dorothy and the city, attempting to freeze them eternally.

In response to this sky-born crisis, Dorothy waved her hand. The Eternal Flame, already prepared, ignited across the heavens of Aransdel, scorching the sky itself.

In an instant, golden flames blazed across the city's sky, forming a fiery barrier that clashed against the descending blue-black breath. The frostbreath, capable of erasing all energy and freezing all matter, collided with the undying Eternal Flame, and the two forces intertwined, locked in deadlock.

Fabrizio stopped playing tricks. He commanded the skeletal dragon to directly engage Dorothy in a head-on clash of divine power!

In this moment, Eternal Flame and blue-black breath were locked in a stalemate, neither side able to overwhelm the other.

In terms of sheer divine magnitude, the skeletal dragon surpassed Dorothy. But because Dorothy’s projection of divinity originated from a main god (Hyperion), her performance was equivalent. 

Moreover, Fabrizio had allocated a large portion of the skeletal dragon’s divinity to maintaining its avatar and suppressing Holy Mount…

“Come… let’s end this. Let me show you the true power of the Northern Dragon!”

Muttering with fanatic fervor, Fabrizio abruptly recalled the distant divine power that had been suppressing Holy Mount. He planned to use that surge of reclaimed strength to annihilate Dorothy in one blow—before Holy Mount could react.

The plan proceeded smoothly. As the avatar on the far side collapsed and the divine power returned, the skeletal dragon’s breath suddenly intensified. The already enormous stream of blue-black breath expanded even further. Dorothy’s shield of Eternal Flame—previously holding strong—now faltered under the surge. The breath pressed downward like a tidal wave.

And yet, Dorothy showed no fear.

She had anticipated this move from Fabrizio from the start and had already prepared her countermeasure.

That countermeasure came from something she had sensed upon becoming the Radiance Scion—two presences… one large, one small… Both filled her, a descendant of Hyperion, with overwhelming familiarity.

These presences came from deep within the southern heartland of the continent—both from the same origin.

Dorothy could feel them… and she knew that in her current state, she could summon the smaller one and invoke its power.

She had a rough idea of what that presence was, but the timing hadn’t been right. When she first sensed it, she had chosen not to call it forth.

But now… the time had come.

Struggling against the crushing blue-black breath, Dorothy silently closed her eyes.

…

Heart of the Main Continent, Holy Mount.

Blue-black and golden flames entwined, scorching the heavens above Holy Mount. Transformed into a Seraph, Hilbert was struggling to withstand the breath of the heretical divine dragon, defending the sacred mountain. Countless people across all of Holy Mount were using every means at their disposal to assist Hilbert in resisting the power of the heretical god. But in truth, only one thing could actually make a difference: the Staff of Radiant Decree held by Alberto.

"This is endless..."

Facing the unrelenting blue-black breath, the apostle-formed Hilbert had begun to show signs of “fatigue.” Just as he and countless others on Holy Mount were racking their brains for ways to counter the dragon’s breath, the torrent abruptly ceased. For a brief moment, the skies above Holy Mount burned only with golden flame.

"What’s going on… did it retreat?"

Staring at the sudden disappearance of the breath, Hilbert—who had been bracing himself with all his might—was momentarily confused. Driven by unease, he maintained his Seraph form and looked toward Alberto, who stood not far below.

“Use the Sacred Staff—find out what’s happening!”

“Understood...”

At Hilbert’s command, Alberto immediately ceased channeling the staff’s power to resist the dragon’s breath and prepared to use it for divination instead.

But just as Alberto was about to begin the scrying, something unexpected happened.

The Staff of Radiant Decree suddenly began to glow faintly. Without anyone’s input, it pulled free from Alberto’s hands—he couldn’t even hold onto it. This made Alberto cry out in alarm.

“T-The Sacred Staff… it’s moving on its own?! What’s happening?!”

“What?!”

Hilbert turned, equally shocked. As his gaze landed on the staff, he saw it rapidly ascending into the sky. He reached out, trying to catch it—but by then, the staff had already transformed into a beam of holy light, shooting like lightning toward the northern heavens, leaving several cardinals behind, staring in stunned silence.

“The Pontiff’s Sacred Staff… it just flew off?”

“What in the world just happened…?”

…

North of the Main Continent, Frisland.

Under the Eternal Flame’s protection in Aransdel, standing atop Dragon Severance Cliff, Dorothy slowly opened her eyes.

When her gaze lifted toward the heavens, she saw a meteor streaking downward, piercing through the sky where dragonbreath and golden flame collided and descending upon the earth.

As the light arced directly toward her position, it rapidly decelerated, then came to a gentle halt before her. When the holy light enveloping it faded, a pure white, sacred staff appeared before Dorothy’s eyes.

This… was the thing she had sensed—the Sacred Staff of Holy Mount.

Because the people of Holy Mount had been relying on it to fend off the skeletal dragon’s attacks, Dorothy had refrained from summoning it earlier. Only after the skeletal dragon withdrew its divine power did she dare call it forth. She hadn’t been sure whether Holy Mount could endure without the staff’s support... but now, that concern no longer applied.

Gazing at the Sacred Staff—an object shown countless times from others' perspectives—Dorothy silently extended her hand. The silver divine sigils glowing on her skin reached out and grasped the staff’s shaft. And the moment she formally held the Staff of Radiant Decree, dazzling light burst forth once more from its form.

Within that light, the staff began to change—visibly bending and transforming. Its original shape altered before her eyes. When the light receded, the Staff of Radiant Decree had become something else entirely:

A bow.

A bow of radiant white stone, inlaid with flickering gold, elegantly arched and engraved all over with sacred arcane inscriptions. A holy bow of divine craftsmanship.

“So this... this is your true form?

“The divine armament of the Solar Wheel… Hyperion’s Bow…”

Looking upon the holy bow, Dorothy murmured with awe. Then, lifting it high toward the sky, she let the silver divine sigils on her arm flow across the bow’s surface. When the sigils covered the whole of the weapon, a fine string of light formed between its notched ends.

Beneath the blazing sky, Dorothy drew the bow. A plain, glowing arrow materialized on the string.

Through the veil of fire in the heavens, she locked eyes with the skeletal dragon still breathing above the firmament. Then she let go.

The arrow soared straight into the sky.

Neither the eternally burning Eternal Flame, nor the blue-black dragonbreath that erased all energy, could hinder this radiant arrow in the slightest.

While Fabrizio, deep within the ice crystal in the skeletal dragon’s chest, was still relishing his apparent upper hand and preparing to eliminate the last resistance, that single radiant arrow had already pierced through the breath and flame alike—striking directly into the ice-crystal coffin that sheltered him.

Before the skeletal bishop could even react, he and his coffin were engulfed in holy light—vaporized into nothing.

And the skeletal dragon, too, was pierced through in that same instant.