Chapter 784: Come Back! Everyone Is Waiting for You

And she finally realized that she had long since been influenced and interfered with by that quill without even noticing, making a series of erroneous decisions.

It had been influencing the development and direction of the entire event from a higher domain!

"Damn it!!"

At that moment.

Her eyes bulged with rage, her face crawling with rolling black mist, her massive wings abruptly straining as she came to a sudden halt mid-motion.

Because leaving this great hall now held absolutely no meaning!

She spun around wildly.

But at that very instant, it was as if she had abruptly overlooked something again, her train of thought completely locked onto the direction of "she needed to go back, to counter that quill's interference," subconsciously ignoring the situation she was currently facing.

Subconsciously forgetting... the young man with unwavering eyes who was racing toward her.

[She had finally broken through the quill's interference and understood that leaving this great hall held no meaning at all, so with a clear awareness of the quill's situation, she made the most correct decision—return to the great hall and activate the magic circle.]

[But perhaps because she was eager to succeed, she subconsciously overlooked her current circumstances, and this gave the young man named Lynn an opportunity to strike, finally allowing him to close the distance between them.]

As the quill's tip descended, thin traces of blood and stains appeared upon her pristine white feathers.

But at that very moment.

In the underground passageway below.

As Lynn's foot landed, blinding silver light spread from beneath him like ripples, instantly illuminating the darkness and revealing those six pairs of enormous angelic wings.

"Matriarch, it's time to come back."

With a solemn gaze, he held the light aloft in his hand, and leaped upward.

The blinding light illuminated the Fallen Angel's neck, and made her pupils suddenly dilate as she turned back, her entire body trembling violently once more.

The flickering silver light also made her suddenly remember the situation at hand once again.

Blind spot!

But by the time she once again remembered Lynn behind her whom she had overlooked, everything was already too late.

Because Lynn had already leaped into the air, and at the moment she turned her head, her pale eyes could clearly reflect his cold and solemn face, as well as the fist shimmering with piercing silver light.

Her pupils dilated violently.

It was only a single turn...

She had already realized she was under the influence of Authority, she had already discovered it, yet she was still subconsciously interfered with once again.

She didn't even know.

Whether it was because she had realized the quill's interference, or whether under Its pen, her very act of "realizing" was nothing more than another of Its arrangements and writings...

Authority!

So this was Authority...

Indeed, just as that butcher had said, in this hell, only by mastering Authority could you truly become the warden of this hell. Otherwise, you would forever remain its prisoner, never to rise again...

"No!! None of you can even dream of controlling me! No one!!"

In that instant, her wings thrashed wildly, her face instantly contorting like an evil ghost.

Overwhelming fury erupted into immense power and resolve, driving her to the brink of madness. Her pitch-black hair flew wildly as she desperately spun around, gritting her teeth and letting out a piercing shriek like an evil spirit.

And at that very moment.

Her hand shot toward Lynn's heart through the blinding silver light, crazed and relentless.

She was the dark side of the Sacred Angels, a twisted being born from curses, but as a once-proud deity, she would never allow herself to be toyed with like some clown.

She would destroy everything!

She would drag this entire hell into a maelstrom of chaos, and she would use her own will to dominate and change all of it!

No one could stop her!

"I want you dead!!"

In that hysterical shriek, her massive twelve wings suddenly spread wide, and her hand surged with black mist like a spear, nearly breaking through the silver light's embrace in an instant.

In her ferocious gaze, she could see reflected within the silver light those serious, determined eyes of Lynn's.

Everything was so close.

Just like when he had first joined Nightfall City, bathed in this same radiant silver light, he had brought her unprecedented warmth and hope.

Everything seemed to freeze.

The quill paused slightly mid-sentence, as if sensing something, slowly stopping its strokes.

Because sometimes.

Fate didn't need a quill to be deliberately written.

Because so-called fate was built from the accumulation of every past moment, a force strong enough to drive future development, constantly influencing every subtle shift in what was yet to come.

Like those bonds, or those...

unwavering...

convictions.

Whoom—!

The vast darkness almost instantly suppressed the blinding silver light. The glow appeared so fragile at that moment, like a crystal goblet that would shatter at the slightest touch, where even the smallest force could easily extinguish and destroy it.

Reflected within those pitch-black pupils, an imperceptible tremor surfaced, uncontrollable and faint.

Her hand.

Pierced through his chest.

One could even clearly see her arm piercing through his chest, stained with vivid crimson blood, droplets flying through the air.

Drip. Drop. Splattering onto her face.

But those eyes still gazed at her, unchanged, as if pain and death meant nothing compared to what was written within them...

trust.

Her pupils trembled violently, as if something deep within them was surging madly.

Those golden struggling glimmers were like an imprisoned evil ghost, draining all color from her face.

Because she realized.

The hand that had pierced his chest had not penetrated his heart.

It seemed that at that final moment, some power had caused her to deliberately shift her target, barely veering past his vital point...

Not the interference of Authority.

But rather...

from her own heart...

And amid the flying feathers and blood, in her violent trembling, the young man whose chest she had pierced closed his eyes, his silver-glowing fist slowly relaxing as if losing its strength, and amid the spray of bloody crimson, he wrapped his arms around her body.

"Matriarch, listen to me... come back."

In that instant, her pupils dilated immensely.

And only then did she clearly realize that the silver light surging from his body was never the ability of Curse Purge at all.

He had used it so many times already.

He had long since run out of power to purge or suppress her curse...

He seemed to have fooled everyone, wielding the mimicry of silver light, yet he charged fearlessly before her as if he truly possessed that ability...

"Come back."

"Everyone... is waiting for you."