Read Novel Full Chapter 887: The End
Chapter 887: The End
The seventh strike came down like divine wrath.
Under the shocked eyes of everyone watching, Michael did not rise to meet it. Instead, a loud gulping sound echoed across the ruined battlefield, so out of place that several elders thought they had misheard it.
Below, Michael’s body lay collapsed in a pool of blood, barely conscious, his breathing shallow. Beside him stood Lily.
The instant the lightning descended, Michael forced his will through their connection. This was not simple control. Lily became something closer to an extension of him, a second body, and in that desperate moment he made an insane decision. He made Lily open her mouth and try to swallow the lightning whole.
The moment it touched her, her body convulsed violently. The lightning did not vanish. It thrashed inside her like a trapped dragon, tearing through her throat and chest in blinding flashes.
Her body swelled as bones cracked and reformed, and she expanded into something grotesque and overfilled, the lightning raging inside her just as it had torn through Michael.
But somehow it worked. Not perfectly, not cleanly, but it worked.
A large portion of the strike disappeared into Lily instead of hitting Michael. The remaining energy exploded outward, turning the crater into a storm of scattered lightning.
High above, the Rank Four observers went silent.
"Did she just eat it?"
"She tried to."
"I think she actually ate it."
Below, Lily’s swollen body trembled as arcs of lightning crawled across her gray skin. Slowly the crackling weakened, and beneath her Michael lay still.
For a moment nothing seemed different. But everything had changed.
His original body was broken, drowning in pain and weakness, yet at the same time he was standing. Through Lily, the dual perception was disorienting and terrifying, as if his existence had extended and rooted itself into another vessel entirely.
A chill moved through him. If his focus slipped or his will fractured even slightly, something could go terribly wrong. The risk was real, and this was his first time attempting something like this. He had no idea if reversal was even possible.
Then another sensation surfaced.
"Delicious."
The thought formed instinctively and Michael froze. The same lightning that nearly killed him felt satisfying, filling in a way that made no logical sense.
But there was no time to dwell on it. The heavens did not wait.
The storm above twisted violently, as if enraged by what had just occurred, and the eighth round formed.
A condensed pillar of lightning so dense it looked almost solid descended like a beam of judgment meant to erase everything beneath it.
High above, several Rank Four elders’ expressions changed instantly.
Lily still stood, and in that moment the Law of Echoed Existence pulsed violently. Her form began to change. Her already swollen body expanded again with more stability this time, her frame stretching upward as bones lengthened, muscles thickened, and her gray skin reinforced itself as something far more monstrous emerged.
Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty. She towered over the crater like a grotesque titan, her massive frame trembling but holding, her head tilting upward and her mouth opening far wider than it should have.
The eighth strike fell like a descending star, a pillar of pure destruction aimed directly at Michael. Lily swallowed it.
The moment the lightning entered her mouth her body still shook violently, but there was structure to it now. The energy did not immediately spiral out of control, and though it still tore through her in explosive arcs, it was being drawn inward more efficiently, devoured and contained.
Her massive frame cracked in several places, fractures spreading across her skin as portions of her flesh burned and destabilized. The damage was severe, and the eighth round did a number on her, but she endured it far better than before.
The lightning continued raging inside Lily, yet it was being consumed. Forced inward through sheer unnatural hunger.
Michael felt everything. The pain, the tearing, the overwhelming pressure. But mixed within it that same sensation flickered.
"Still delicious."
Then something changed. Michael felt it instantly, a disturbance subtle and faint but unmistakable, rising from within Lily. At first he thought it was simply the instability caused by the eighth strike, her structure barely holding together. But this was different. It was not external. It was a will.
His focus sharpened despite the exhaustion weighing down his consciousness, and then he felt it clearly. A fragment of Lily’s will remained in her body.
Right now Michael could feel there was resistance in his control. It was not strong or overwhelming, but it was present and growing. Lily, who had been unconscious the moment he took over, was waking up and pushing back.
Undead did not resist their master. That was a fundamental rule, except in certain conditions. Yet here it was happening, and for the first time since he gained this power, an undead was fighting him.
It was weak for now, more instinct than conscious rebellion. But it was unmistakable. Lily was trying to reclaim her body.
Michael’s control faltered slightly as the two wills clashed within the same vessel. If he pushed too hard and tried to completely suppress her, there was a real chance something irreversible could happen. The balance between them was already fragile.
If he destabilized it further he might force a complete displacement. And if that happened, he might lose his original body permanently and become trapped in hers.
But he needed Lily. The next strike was coming, and without her there was no way he would survive it.
The dilemma was simple and brutal: suppress her and risk everything, or release control and gamble on something far less certain.
His thoughts raced, then paused. Through the connection he felt something else. Her hunger. Her focus was on the sky, on the lightning. She wanted more.
His thoughts stilled and slowly a decision formed.
"Fine."
Instead of tightening his control he loosened it, carefully and deliberately withdrawing his consciousness from Lily’s body. His awareness snapped back more firmly into his original body, pain flooding in instantly as his control recentered.
Above him, Lily’s massive form steadied. For a brief moment there was tension, and then her head tilted upward and her gaze locked onto the storm. She was going for it.
That was exactly what he wanted. Michael vision dimmed slightly as exhaustion dragged at him, but for now all that mattered was enduring the next strike.
The heavens answered. The storm above did not roar this time. The final strike simply formed, and high above even the Rank Four powerhouses felt it.
"This one..."
No one finished the sentence, because they all understood. This was the last.
To be honest, most of them in their own time, if converted to the intensity of Michael’s tribulation, could have only lasted to the sixth or seventh round before reaching their limit.
Below, Michael’s breathing grew faint and his vision blurred. But even through fading consciousness he could feel it. Real death. If this one landed directly, there would be nothing left.
Above him Lily stood, her massive damaged body trembling violently. Then the point of light descended without warning.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The world disappeared into light.
Lily met it head on, her mouth stretching unnaturally wide as she lunged upward to meet the descending pillar and began devouring it.
Her body almost broke.
The lightning detonated inside her and her entire form convulsed violently as the energy tore through her from within. Massive cracks spread instantly across her body, deeper than before, reaching into her very core.
Large sections of Lily’s flesh disintegrated, her arms fractured, her torso split in places, and her head nearly collapsed inward under the pressure. The light raged violently inside her, trying to tear her apart completely.
Michael felt everything. The destruction, the collapse, the edge of annihilation. And yet that same sensation flickered faintly through it all.
"Still delicious."
Then the light faded.
The blinding glow dimmed, the violent pressure receded, and the final remnants of the tribulation were consumed.
Silence returned and the oppressive weight that had covered the heavens vanished.
Lily stood, barely. Her massive form wavered, then began to shrink uncontrollably as the strain finally caught up to her, collapsing from thirty meters to twenty to ten until she dropped to one knee, her body cracked and broken and nearly falling apart, but not destroyed.
She had survived.
The tribulation had passed.
[You have Ascended.]
Or so Michael thought, until he noticed the clear sky beginning to darken again as a certain realization immediately hit him.
Now he understood why Lily had resisted.
The moment Michael completed his Ascension, Lily, who had finally finished her own accumulation, was beginning hers.
Michael was not having any of it.
Before the sky could darken further and before he lost consciousness entirely, he dragged the unsuspecting Lily into the damaged Coffin of the Forgotten.
*
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