Dorothy’s Forbidden Grimoire

Chapter 807 : Abyssal Serpent

South of the main continent, in a vast, boundless stretch of the Conquest Sea, there lay a hidden region unknown to most. Here, a colossal whirlpool spun violently on the ocean's surface. This massive vortex churned an immeasurable volume of seawater into a spiraling funnel that reached all the way to the deep ocean floor—and at the bottom of that funnel, ancient ruins lay in shattered remains.

“So that’s how it is… I see now…”

Standing before the submerged ruins, Dorothy gazed at the glowing illusory gate she had manifested—a door decorated with countless mesmerizing floral patterns. Nodding with realization, she understood now the secret hidden within these ruins.

This place was an entrance to a hidden passage, a gate built with divinely infused mystical force and concealed beneath the surface of the world—a passage to somewhere unknown. Even powerful Beyonders who sensed the anomaly here would struggle to perceive its true nature: the existence of a gate. Only those with specific qualities could.

In this case, the specific quality was the power of the Desire Path. Whether by design or natural affinity, Desire Dancers who had reached a certain level could hear the subtle calling of this gate. It resonated with them, for the gate was made for them—meant to be opened by them.

That was why Adèle had felt an inexplicable calling here earlier. It was the hidden gate beckoning her. As a Crimson-rank Desire Dancer, she could faintly sense its presence but was still unable to locate or manifest it. She simply hadn’t reached a high enough rank.

Adèle's level wasn’t enough to open the gate… but that wasn’t a problem for Dorothy. As long as Adèle could sense and connect with the gate, that was enough. Dorothy, wielding divine power from Revelation, could fully transform Adèle into data and attach her. In essence, Dorothy had absorbed Adèle into herself—and Dorothy’s rank was sufficient.

Using the integrated Adèle as a key, Dorothy successfully perceived and connected to the hidden gate, manifesting it with her mystical divine power—and even opening it. Adèle had become the key.

“Now then… let’s see what you’ve hidden away here…”

Facing the illusory gate, Dorothy whispered, then with a wave of her hand, opened it, revealing a dazzling kaleidoscope of light within.

Then she floated upward and flew directly into the gate, entering a strange extradimensional corridor. Around her, dazzling streams of color sped past—rays of light that continually transformed into various blooming flowers, which then withered just as quickly, again and again in an endless cycle.

“This is an otherworldly path leading somewhere… is it the Flower Goddess’s domain? It’s certainly well-guarded… Not only is the entrance so well hidden, but even the domain itself is highly repellent. I can already feel the resistance just moving through the passage…”

As Dorothy traversed the flowery corridor, she thought to herself. She could distinctly feel the repulsion radiating from the destination—and the closer she got, the stronger it became.

Dorothy realized that this realm only accepted beings who wielded Desire Path power. Even though she had divinity, she was still being rejected. Fortunately, by integrating Adèle into herself, the resistance wasn’t overwhelming.

“Rejecting all powers outside the chosen path… is that the Flower Goddess’s defense mechanism? Good thing Adèle was already a Crimson-rank Desire Dancer. If she’d been any weaker, this would’ve been much harder…”

She continued forward, knowing that even Desire Dancers weren’t fully accepted—higher-ranking Desire Dancers were granted more access, while lower-ranking ones faced greater rejection. Dorothy could only proceed as smoothly as she did because Adèle had reached the Crimson tier. Had she been one rank lower, the repulsion would’ve skyrocketed, making progress painstakingly slow.

Luckily, things were going well. Before long, Dorothy sensed the end of the passage. Light flared up one last time—then she exited the corridor.

What awaited her was a scene of horror.

It was a vast alternate realm. Above, the sky was dark and sunless, without a single star or cloud. Far in the distance, a thin sliver of twilight sat like a dying sunset on the horizon. And below it all, beneath the darkened sky… rolled an endless sea.

A sea of blood.

This ocean stretched endlessly to the horizon. In this windless realm, the crimson sea lay eerily still, its glassy surface mirroring the dim heavens above. That faint sliver of light on the horizon shone upon the red waters, casting a haunting reflection.

Dorothy hesitated, then frowned and muttered in a low voice.

“So this is the Flower Goddess’s domain? Not exactly what I was expecting…”

While whispering, she turned her gaze to the side—where she saw the monstrous entity that had twisted this space into such a terrifying form.

It was the only “continent” floating in the blood sea: a landmass of bizarre form and composition. Crimson cliffs rose vertically from the blood-red ocean, layered upon one another to form towering mountain ranges. But these surfaces were not stone or soil—they were plates of scarlet rock, each carved with howling, tortured human faces.

The texture of these perfectly smooth slabs wasn’t stone at all—it resembled something far more biological. Something like… scales.

Hummmmm…

Suddenly, the entire blood-red realm let out a low, thunderous hum. Tremors spread outward from that red continent, sending ripples across the blood sea. Waves crashed against the red cliffs—and then the “continent” itself began to move.

As the rumbling intensified, the mountain ranges twisted and writhed. Then—two orange-red moons rose from within those writhing peaks.

But they weren’t moons. They were eyes.

Two enormous, moon-sized eyes.

And those eyes belonged to something even more terrifying—a serpent’s head, gigantic and grotesque. It stared coldly at the blood sea, a foul aura radiating from its massive form.

More and more “moons” rose—more colossal serpent heads lifting from the writhing mountain range. It wasn’t a continent at all. It was the coiled body of a vast, immeasurable serpent—a godlike being that had curled itself into an island-sized knot. This body was so massive, in the real world it would cover the area of several cities, clearly marked on any map.

It was a great serpent, or rather, a monstrous god in serpentine form.

This was one of the three deities of the Afterbirth Cult.

The fallen offspring of the Mother of Chalice.

The god worshipped by the Abyssal Church.

The Eternal Hungerer.

The Sovereign of the Abyss.

The Abyssal Serpent.

“Tch… Looks like someone got here before me…”

Dorothy narrowed her eyes and muttered in a low voice. Her gaze wasn’t focused on the terrifying serpent itself, but rather at the center of its many heads—where something clearly not part of the serpent’s body resided.

It was a massive egg, glowing faintly pink and adorned with countless golden floral ornaments. Its sheer size allowed it to be tightly coiled several times over by the serpent’s many necks. Before the heads rose, the entire egg had been concealed by the body. Now, Dorothy could finally see it.

The egg was covered in cracks. Strange, dark light flickered from the fissures. One area had already burst open, revealing a large hole—into which one of the serpent’s heads had plunged. As it lifted again, blood dripped from its fanged maw.

With the addition of this final head, Dorothy counted nine serpent heads in total. Each of the nine bloodstained eyes locked onto her. The blood-dripping head sat at the center, and as it opened its maw, a sharp, reverberating sound—like a shriek that tore at the heavens—rang out.

“…It is too late… Arbiter…”

“…All is beyond recovery…”

“…You cannot dictate the fate of the Great Mother… young Fate Sovereign…”

The serpent god’s mouth opened and closed, speaking in a distorted tongue no mortal could decipher. Facing this terrible god, Dorothy responded in a quiet, cold voice.

“Whether it’s too late or not—I’ll judge that myself. So if you wouldn’t mind stepping aside… I’d rather not have to move you myself.”

“Hmph… Arrogant little whelp…”

The Abyssal Serpent snorted coldly. Its gaze focused, and suddenly, Dorothy felt all the blood in her body churn uncontrollably.

Her veins surged. Her blood began to riot, as if preparing to explode from every inch of her skin—ready to rip her body apart from within and spray into the air.

At that moment, brilliant light erupted from all around Dorothy. Her dress transformed into crackling arcs of lightning, her skin radiated blinding brilliance, and her blood turned into high-energy beams, cloaking her entire body in a dazzling aurora.

The Abyssal Serpent had attempted to force an internal blood explosion within her, but Dorothy instead turned herself into pure electricity to escape its control over the material in her body. Seeing that its initial strike failed, several of the serpent’s heads roared in unison.

Instantly, the entire space trembled from the serpent god’s roar. In response, the endless crimson sea seemed to awaken, surging with monstrous waves—blood-red tsunamis rising hundreds or even thousands of meters into the air.

From those waves, colossal serpents composed entirely of blood burst forth, baring their fangs and rushing toward Dorothy’s elemental form. In the material world, any one of these titanic blood serpents could bring ruin to a city with a single strike. Now, countless such serpents had one target: Dorothy alone.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Suddenly, the dark sky of this blood-red world split with streaks of light—cracks in the heavens like jagged claws. With them came deafening thunder that could rupture eardrums. From the pitch-black heavens, bolt after massive bolt of lightning struck down, cleaving the enormous blood serpents apart and vaporizing them.

Across the boundless sea of blood, wherever a serpent surged from the waves, a bolt of lightning from above would meet it. From Dorothy’s position to the faraway horizon—and even beyond it—this elemental war unfolded everywhere. The entire realm had become a battlefield.

Lightning and blood serpents. Sky and sea. Grand elemental forces capable of reshaping the world clashed violently. For a moment, the two sides seemed evenly matched—but this balance wouldn't last long.

As the nine heads of the Abyssal Serpent let out another synchronized roar, its once-coiled body began to unravel and churn furiously through the blood sea. The immense, thick serpent body breached the surface in places only to plunge back down—its true length unknowable.

With its movements, the sea level began to rise rapidly—illogically so. Within moments… Hundreds of meters… Thousands… Tens of thousands…

In mere seconds, the crimson tide drowned everything in view. The entire extradimensional space became saturated with blood, leaving no room untouched.

In an instant, the horizon vanished. The sky disappeared. Everything was swallowed by the rising sea. Dorothy, now an incarnation of lightning, was submerged as well—her electric form vaporizing any bloodwater it touched, creating massive clouds of steam and bubbles.

The light vanished completely. Before her eyes, there was only pitch-black darkness. She was now deep in the abyssal depths, crushed under staggering pressure. Her lightning body twisted and distorted under the immense force but did not extinguish.

This was the Blood Abyss—a manifestation of the Abyssal Serpent’s divine domain, its inner realm. Through prior preparation, the serpent had transplanted this realm into the surrounding space.

The blood sea devoured the sky, halting the descent of lightning from above. Still, Dorothy’s body continued to discharge arcs of high-voltage energy, blasting away at the blood-serpents that crept toward her.

Even faced with such overwhelming pressure and hostility, Dorothy adapted. Though the bloodwater was corrosive, her divine elemental body withstood the erosion. A lesser elemental form would’ve been instantly consumed.

For now, Dorothy was managing. But she had no defense for what came next.

Suddenly, without warning, a colossal entity materialized beside her in the blood-deep abyss. There had been no signs—no ripples. Dorothy instantly felt herself surrounded by rings of massive coils. Her lightning illuminated only the edge of the creature—revealing a row of mountainous fangs.

The serpent's jaw was closing in.

One of the Abyssal Serpent’s nine heads had silently appeared and swallowed her in a single motion. The only light in the abyss disappeared. Darkness became absolute.

Within this self-created sea of blood, the Abyssal Serpent held complete dominion. It could manifest anywhere, attack from any angle—without warning, without giving the enemy time to react.

And so, it had swallowed Dorothy.

Inside its body, it could unleash techniques far more dangerous than outside—such as divine acid that could dissolve even divinity, or the billions of apostle-like parasites that lived within it.

The Abyssal Serpent, now having devoured the thunderous enemy, hovered quietly in the abyss, beginning to assess the situation within its belly. It intended to coat its prey in acid and completely dissolve her—turning its own body into her prison and tomb.

But as it focused… something was wrong.

It couldn’t sense her.

Dorothy was gone. Completely undetectable inside.

Its many eyes widened in disbelief.

Before it could react—

"FUS—RO—DAH!!!"

A voice like a thunderclap exploded through the blood abyss. At the junction where the serpent’s nine heads connected, an intense internal expansion suddenly erupted. Its titanic body inflated unnaturally—like pressure building from within. The bulge grew rapidly, far beyond normal limits.

Finally, even its mighty scales couldn’t contain the explosive power. The swollen section at the necks burst apart—blasting out blinding arcs of lightning.

Amid excruciating howls, three of the serpent’s nine heads were violently severed, blown clean off at the base. The remaining body thrashed wildly in the endless blood sea, creating shockwaves that pulsed through the abyss.

Amid the chaos, a lightning-cloaked figure shot out from the burst wound—rising once more above the blood sea. It was Dorothy, now drastically transformed.

Her body still crackled with electricity, but her form was no longer purely elemental. Her skin had turned blood-red. Her upper body was bare, and her legs had morphed into a long, serpentine tail. Her once-human eyes had become orange with slit pupils—like a snake’s.

“What a disgusting domain… Good thing I got out quickly…”

Freed once again, Dorothy whispered in a voice like a serpent’s hiss—tongue flicking, voice low and sharp. This new form resembled a kind of Heroic Spirit Armament, an awakened transformation that embodied aspects of her enemy.

With her divinity and the authority of a divine throne, Dorothy’s power of Myth Embodiment had grown far stronger than before. Like the infant once did, she now had the ability to manifest partial entities from minor mythologies. But instead of creating a projection, she had chosen to weaponize the Abyssal Serpent’s traits directly—becoming, in a sense, its avatar.

In doing so, she had temporarily taken on the nature of an Abyssal Serpent offspring—sufficient to deceive even the serpent itself.

Using fate-thread manipulation and essence-mimicry, Dorothy successfully tricked the serpent’s internal systems—including its immune response—into believing she was part of the serpent.

Instead of being sent to the acid-filled stomach, she had disguised herself as a mobile internal cell, convincing the serpent’s body to open a path. From there, she infiltrated deeper into its body.

Before it could react, she launched a devastating strike at what she deemed its most vulnerable vital point.

And it had worked.

The explosive surprise attack, enhanced with massive electric discharge, had blown off three heads and inflicted severe internal injuries. But as a god under Chalice domain, this was still not enough to completely incapacitate it.

The serpent’s enormous body quickly steadied itself. The severed heads—still writhing—crawled back toward the neck base. They began to rapidly regenerate, reattaching themselves at the wounds.

On the other side, after escaping from the Abyssal Serpent’s body, Dorothy immediately discarded the manifested serpentine flesh she had armed herself with and transformed once more into a form overflowing with pure energy—a lightning elemental body. With a sweep of her hand, dazzling bolts of lightning burst forth again from the dark abyss around her, lashing relentlessly at the colossal serpent’s body, concentrating especially on the rapidly healing wounds to try and halt its regeneration.

The Abyssal Serpent shrieked and writhed in agony under the renewed lightning assault, its wounds once again torn open. Several of its undamaged mouths opened wide and spewed out massive amounts of a strange fluid—its color indistinguishable in the blackness. These fluids quickly merged with the surrounding blood sea, drastically altering its composition.

That fluid… was the Abyssal Serpent’s venom.

Unable to directly inject the venom into Dorothy, it instead flooded the entire ocean with it, turning the sea itself into a toxic environment where Dorothy’s body would be forced into contact with the divine poison on all sides.

The blood sea was already corrosive—but this venom was exponentially worse. So potent was it that even non-organic bodies, even spiritual forms, could be rapidly eroded by it. As soon as the venom spread, Dorothy’s lightning form began to visibly weaken. Her once-stable energy flickered with strange, unnatural colors before quickly collapsing and dispersing in places.

The venom… could even “poison” lightning itself.

Coated in the venom, Dorothy swiftly realized her elemental body was growing unstable. The infiltration of the divine toxin was threatening to destabilize her completely.

Faced with this, she underwent another transformation. With a flash of radiant light, her lightning body shattered into a swarm of glowing characters—tiny runes inscribed in all languages, mystic symbols, and sigils, whirling through the pitch-dark sea to construct an entirely new form.

To counter a divine poison of the material domain, Dorothy decisively shed her semi-material lightning body and became fully informational—a pure data-being. In this world, that was the form farthest from matter—even further removed than spiritual, dream, or mental forms. From the standpoint of the world’s anchor tree, her new form now crossed through multiple domains, practically unreachable by any ordinary means.

Sure enough, once transformed into a data-being, the material-based venom’s effect weakened drastically. But this wasn’t without cost. Severed from the material and energy domains, Dorothy’s ability to directly wield physical power was significantly diminished. She could no longer command vast bolts of lightning for attacks.

Fortunately, she possessed powerful offensive tools within the realm of pure information.

From the dark abyss, the glowing symbols forming the Fate Sovereign began to proliferate and spread. In an instant, more and more characters emerged throughout the blood-red depths—rotating, drifting, saturating every inch of the abyssal space.

With them came endless whispers and murmurs—mystic utterances in countless tongues from different nations, eras, races, and reincarnations. Each matched a corresponding word floating in the sea.

In an instant, the abyss echoed with incantations. Runes lit up across the space.

The Abyssal Serpent, still spewing venom, saw these runes and heard the whispers. Its orange pupils were quickly overwhelmed with symbols—its consciousness overtaken by the rising tide of memetic data. All it could hear now were the whispers in its mind.

“Sssshhh!!”

A howl of agony followed. The vast serpent’s immense body convulsed again, writhing in the blood sea. The information flooding its mind tore at its will and crushed its focus.

Memetic contamination.

That was the method Dorothy had chosen—flooding the serpent’s consciousness with large-scale memetic data to shatter its mind directly.

If the serpent used venom, Dorothy used memetic poison—not physical, but informational. Now both sides were locked in a duel of corruption.

With no direct means to resist the onslaught, the Abyssal Serpent turned to extreme measures.

It let out another screech—and then its nine “moon-like” eyes all burst simultaneously. Blood oozed from each of its nine heads.

To resist the memetic assault, the Abyssal Serpent began to destroy its own senses. Its eyes, ears, even its tongue—all disintegrated into bloody pulp.

By discarding its sensory input, it hoped to sever the pathways through which Dorothy’s information was infiltrating. But it didn’t work. The memetic contamination kept spreading, bypassing ordinary perception entirely. The serpent continued to thrash, tormented by intangible toxins.

When even self-mutilation failed to halt the infection, it took one final, desperate measure.

It exploded its own brains.

With a sickening burst of flesh, all nine heads detonated—brains and all—obliterated in an instant.

If memetic corruption invaded the will, then eliminating the source of will itself should end the threat. No mind, no infection. The serpent’s logic was sound. And indeed, once it was brainless, its massive body ceased its wild struggling.

But then… how would a creature without a brain fight?

Even without a head, the Abyssal Serpent answered.

Floating in the abyss, the now-headless god paused briefly… and then resumed movement. As if obeying a hidden command, its immense body coiled into a spiraling loop, generating a massive vortex in the sea.

“Its body’s moving reflexively? Even without a conscious mind, its instincts can continue combat? So this is the resilience of a god under Chalice...”

Dorothy, still in data form, thought to herself as the vortex intensified.

But then the serpent’s body began to change. The flesh unraveled. It dissolved into a thick, dark blood current. Its physical form faded—the serpent was elementally transforming.

The Abyssal Serpent became one with the blood sea, spinning it into a colossal vortex with ever-increasing speed, drawing all toward a central point.

Dorothy’s data-body should’ve been immune to such forces. But over time, she felt something was wrong.

The characters that made up her body… were being pulled.

Drawn with the water. Dragged toward the center.

“Even information is being swept up… The space itself is warping… Is this the fundamental divine law of water? The inescapable, eternal ‘Flow’…”

As she analyzed the unseen center of the vortex, she continued her internal thoughts.

“If I get dragged into that core… it won’t end well. This is tricky. But… if your elemental state left you immune to my memetic attack, you should still be mindless, yes? In that case…”

As she thought, Dorothy resumed her counterattack.

In the divine throne domain, her incarnation coalesced once more. With a graceful backstep, she sat upon the monolithic Throne of Fate.

She began to issue judgment.

First, she revoked all prior edits to Charles’s history—all the salacious rumors she had previously legitimized. Then, with a wave of her hand, she summoned new phantom pages.

These too were anecdotes. But the main one had nothing to do with scandals or affairs. It was a new version of Charles’s story.

“It was Crown Prince Robert who orchestrated the mysterious shipwreck that led to King Charles’s downfall. Greedy for the throne, Robert sabotaged the voyage and indirectly caused his father’s death. But Charles survived. Disfigured, he returned to Flottes in secret under the alias Dubois, becoming none other than the infamous Black Chancellor at Robert’s side.

“Charles, seeking revenge, infiltrated his son’s court in disguise, manipulating events behind the scenes and ultimately orchestrating the downfall of the Bourbon Dynasty. He then vanished with the royal treasury, living the rest of his life as a reclusive tycoon, having lost all interest in power.

“Rumors say… that Black Chancellor possessed a mystical power—one that allowed him to command gold and fortune at will…”

Dorothy looked down at the primary anecdote before her—a version of events that had originated from the royalist faction in Falano following the fall of the Bourbon dynasty. Resentful of Robert for leading the kingdom to ruin, nostalgic for Charles’s rule, and coveting the immense fortune said to have been taken by the mysterious Black Chancellor, they had crafted this anecdotal account. In their bold fantasy, the Black Chancellor was none other than Charles himself. If they could find this hidden chancellor, then they would find both Charles and the lost treasure—thus enabling them to persuade Charles to use his wealth to restore the monarchy.

Though absurd, this version had served as the final, unrealistic delusion and desperate hope for the royalist faction of that era. They even proposed various “proofs”: such as how there were no records of the Black Chancellor during Charles’s reign, yet he suddenly appeared after Charles’s death; or how he rarely appeared in public yet seemed to know countless royal secrets, and so on.

Besides this bizarre tale created by the desperate royalists, Dorothy also manifested other anecdote—all centered around the Black Chancellor. Among the public, rumors spread that this enigmatic figure had some mystical connection to wealth itself.

Once these secret texts were in place, Dorothy, seated upon the divine throne, waved her hand—and all these anecdotes were officially “judged” into validity. The moment her adjudication concluded, the battlefield of the crimson abyss underwent a dramatic transformation.

At the core of the blood sea abyss, the cracked “eggshell” that had been coiled by the Abyssal Serpent began to glow faintly pink. At the same time, the abyss itself began to tremble violently. It was no longer drowned in total darkness; strange lights of gold, silver, and pink began to emerge, radiating across every corner of the deep.

Under the illumination of these unusual lights, the immense vortex—formed by the spinning blood sea—began to visibly slow. Dorothy’s data form stopped being forcibly dragged. Seeing this, she whispered softly with quiet confidence.

“It worked… Just as I expected. Since we’ve come this far—let me give it one final push.”

With those words, Dorothy ended her data form state. She reassembled her runes into a blinding burst of lightning.

Then, in her reconstituted elemental body, she unleashed a massive storm of violet lightning throughout the blood-drenched space. Her bolts pierced through the corrupted blood currents that composed the Abyssal Serpent’s body. At the same time, the floating spheres of gold, silver, and pink light erupted with brilliant radiance, combining with Dorothy’s lightning to flood the entire abyss in blinding light.

“SSSSSKHHHHH!!!”

In the midst of this radiance, the Abyssal Serpent let out a soul-rending screech. But as the light slowly faded, so too did the serpent’s cries—fading into silence, as though retreating into the distance.

When the blinding light cleared, the crimson abyss returned to its dim state. Yet the blood sea that once filled the realm began to recede rapidly. In moments, the falling sea level passed beneath Dorothy, revealing the gleam of a distant horizon beyond the dark ocean.

The Abyssal Serpent’s massive form was nowhere to be seen.

Dorothy knew: the serpent had been expelled from this space. She, together with the inherent laws of the realm itself, had driven it out.

Before entering this realm, Dorothy had already sensed that it heavily repelled outsiders who weren’t high-ranking dancers of the Desire Path. It was only by integrating with informational Adèle that she had managed to enter and use her powers smoothly.

If that was the case for her—then how had the Abyssal Serpent, who was not a god of the Desire Path, exerted such power here?

The answer was simple: like Dorothy, the Abyssal Serpent had incorporated a high-ranking Desire Dancer into its body. And in the past few centuries, there had only been two known Crimson-rank dancers—Adèle… and Charles.

Yes. The serpent had absorbed Charles.

After discovering the island that served as the gate, Charles had been immediately devoured. The Abyssal Serpent used him as the key to invade this space. Dorothy had long suspected Charles was under the control of the Abyssal Church—but now she realized it had been literal: he had been imprisoned within the Abyssal Serpent.

By housing Charles in its body, the Abyssal Serpent gained the ability to bypass this domain’s rejection and operate freely. Therefore, Dorothy’s previous actions made complete sense—she had used a specific anecdotal version of history to transform Charles’s identity, rewriting him as Dubois, the infamous Black Chancellor of the late Bourbon dynasty.

And that Black Chancellor had another name: Frederick—one of the high-ranking directors of the Dark Gold Society, and a Crimson-rank Aurum Gargoyle—a formidable Stone Beyonder.

By crafting one judgment to rewrite Charles as the Black Chancellor, and another to reinforce his identity as a Stone Beyonder, Dorothy effectively changed his path—from Desire to Stone, a domain directly opposed to Chalice.

The result: Charles lost his function as the key, and the space began to repel him violently. With Dorothy’s full-force assault and the serpent still in a mentally disabled state, it had no means of responding—thus, the Abyssal Serpent was expelled from this hidden realm.

“Haaah… As expected of a quasi-god. Going head-to-head really isn’t easy… Good thing Charles was such a gossiped-about king… otherwise this would’ve been much harder.”

Watching the crimson tides retreat rapidly, Dorothy sighed. If Charles had been a low-profile nobody, she wouldn’t have had so many anecdotes to draw from.

As the sea level fell, the ground that had once been drowned emerged again. Before her stretched a sea of endless hills stretching to the distant horizon—and atop those hills grew countless flowers. But all of them had already withered, leaving behind only dried buds and brittle stems.

“If this place had once been in full bloom… it must have been breathtaking… What a shame…”

Dorothy couldn’t help but sigh inwardly as she gazed over the dead flower field. Then, with her elemental form fully dispelled, she flew swiftly toward the now-shattered, glowing giant egg—she needed to see the Flower Goddess’s legacy with her own eyes.

However, mid-flight, Dorothy suddenly furrowed her brows—sensing something familiar. She shifted course and descended into the withered flower fields below.

There, atop a small hill, she found the ruins of a crumbling chapel. The few architectural details that remained revealed a Radiance Church motif. Dorothy immediately recognized the style—it belonged to the imperial period of the Third Epoch.

Following the pull she felt, she stepped into the ruined chapel. Her gaze slowly turned toward a cracked stone pillar—there, engraved in Imperial script, was a line of text.

“This realm is dedicated to my beloved, Astarte. May you be spared in the great disaster to come…”

Dorothy’s eyes widened. She could feel it—this engraving carried an aura she was deeply familiar with.

She knew exactly whose it was.

It was from her grandfather—Hyperion! This place had originally belonged to Hyperion—but had been given to the Flower Goddess!

And more shockingly…

Emperor of Light, Hyperion… had a romantic relationship with the Flower Mistress, Astarte?!

They had likely been lovers.

“Don’t tell me… Astarte is my grandmother? That makes no sense!”