Wizard: Stronger through Marriage

Chapter 1193: Chapter 552: Exile for Survival

"Rift of Worlds · Severed Current · Banishment!"

As the Spell’s power surged outward, a blinding blue-white pillar of light that seemed to rend the void itself erupted from David’s palm straight into the heavens, colliding violently with the leaden stormclouds and unleashing thunderous detonations!

The Giant Beast roared again and again; it sensed the threat carried by this overwhelming power and, acting on instinct, lashed its immense tendrils and hurled itself toward David.

Yet that ghostly blue dimensional Energy formed a vast barrier, shredding it midway through its charge!

The cold bit so deep it seemed to pierce the marrow, yet it could not extinguish the burning resolve within the Soul!

As the pillar of light kept swelling, a vast rift in space-time, wide enough to devour heaven and earth, slowly opened.

Like a black hole, it devoured all existence around it, yet it carried a peculiar rotational rhythm, as though gravity itself reversed and suppressed the spiraling flow, until infinite spatial Chaos violently converged and then congealed into a stable passage.

"Into the maelstrom!"

David roared, while at the same time scattering his Soul into countless fragments, driving a thousand Puppets at the highest frequency to seal every direction, lest the chaotic current leak outward and cause even greater destruction to spread to the Sacred Tree’s roots and core region.

The hundred-meter-long Giant Beast was instantly swallowed by the cerulean vortex of chaotic currents; it thrashed in fury, yet was inexorably dragged toward the Abyss of the void.

Before it vanished, its shrill bellow shook heaven and earth; its dreadful corrosive miasma suddenly dispersed, yet the entire field, under the violent impact, erupted in vast ripples—countless branches and shattered leaves withered in an instant, spinning away, as though time here were reversing and accelerating through ten million cycles!

Suddenly, from the sundered Earth came a heavy rumble—

"Time... has sped up..."

Amy cried out; cold sweat beaded on her brow, yet She gripped Her Magic Staff with a surge of Magic Power. "It’s as if we’ve stepped into a layer of reality with a different temporal flow! The grasses and trees are sprouting and withering in an instant, over and over!"

Zelros tightened his Longsword and looked around: the once tranquil, desolate Wilderness was changing in a heartbeat;

The outlines of distant mountains flickered between light and shadow;

The falling snow whirled like unbound, fine grains of sand, rapidly cycling through appearance and dissolution in the air...

Reina murmured, "This is the price... the price is too dreadful. We traded the banishing ritual for a fleeting peace, but this portion of the Ice World has had its flow of time utterly disrupted."

David’s face was ashen, yet he still held firm at the forefront of the formation.

His breathing came in ragged gasps, each inhalation and exhalation accompanied by a faint tremor of his body.

He knew how much of his mind and flesh had been driven to their Limit to complete this banishment, and he also understood that the tenfold acceleration of time’s flow would bring dangers far from trivial:

The cycle of life and death had suddenly hastened; uncountable creatures were being forced through birth, growth, aging, and demise in endlessly compressed loops. Such turbulence could well trigger the collapse of the ecosystem and inflict grievous side effects upon the root system of the Sacred Tree of the Star Pupil Race!

Yet there was no room for choice; they had to wager everything to defend the tribe’s future...

Under the night’s shroud, snow fell in great, raging sheets, like a furious tide washing over the entire region.

Inside and outside the tents, people knelt or stood, their gazes fixed upon the distant scene—still wavering, still inconstant—where the Gale drove the grasses and trees to blaze through birth and death in an instant, like dream-bubbles rising and bursting—

This was victory, and it was also a warning bell, and even more, a stark portrayal of reality after Sacrifice.

Amy gently steadied the trembling stone slab of the altar, whispering soft blessings to the Earth, hoping to lessen the harm that temporal disorder would wreak upon nature: "May the Power of Sanctity safeguard this place, that life might yet endure..."

Zelros lifted his gaze to the sparsely starred sky and ran his fingers across the sigil on his chest. "We have trod such a bitter road only to stand firm in this moment... The future is still riddled with unknown trials, but so long as we hold hope in our hearts, we must never retreat."

Reina tightened her grip on the twin scabbards, stained with crusted blood, and said with iron resolve, "Every drop of blood, every Sacrifice, will become the surest bedrock upon which we conquer the darkness!"

The wind kept blowing, and that new order—mingled of silence and grim slaughter—had already descended unseen upon this ancient Wilderness.

Dawn in the Far North Ice World had not yet fully broken; pale blue morning light, soft as gauze, spilled over the ravaged camp.

The air remained bitterly cold; snowflakes drifted slowly with the wind, settling over the land that had just endured the rending of space-time and the ravaging of chaotic temporal torrents.

Upon the Earth, all seemed to have sunk into stillness, yet every falling snowflake seemed to bear a weight of smothered tension, proclaiming that this battle was far from its end.

David stood before the tents, pale of face yet steadfast as tempered steel.

His eyes were fixed ahead, on the Frost Puppet legion still encircled by ghost-blue Soulflame, their bodies yet faintly aglow.

This undying army—borne of his fragmented Soul and subject to his control—was like an invisible net, sealing the Holy Tree’s outer ring in impenetrable defense.

Though they had just endured the ecological convulsions brought on by accelerated time, they yet stood unshaken.

In this peril-laden Wilderness of the Northern Territory, such guardianship granted a sense of safety beyond words.

At that moment, a gentle yet uncannily mysterious radiance streamed from the depths of the Holy Land of the Star Pupil Race.

It was a breath of power ancient and inscrutable, a presence that compelled all who felt it to hold their breath in awe.

David sensed the message borne upon that power: "You are in need of this."

With a faint yet lingering peal of bells, an elder of the Star Pupil Race walked slowly into the camp.

He wore a silver-blue robe, emblem of exalted rank, its shoulders adorned with subtle, shifting Runes that seemed to swirl with the hidden mysteries of the Cosmos.

In his hands he bore a strange instrument, a small device of unique design, as though an ancient compass had fused with a cluster of stars.

"David," the old man said solemnly, his voice low and weighty, like stone colliding with Ice, "this is the Chaos Observation Instrument, a relic left by the sages of the Star Pupil Race. We now bestow it upon you, in the hope that it will aid you in detecting those nodes where the Chaos Law leaks from beyond the layers of space."