Chapter 943: Abraham vs Clea

—Audrey’s POV—

From afar, I watched the battle between mother, father, and son, unable to interfere or make a single move.

All I could do was protect Seth from the Aether shockwaves left behind by their attacks.

The High Father... Abraham had chosen to side with Frey, contrary to everything I had expected.

He had chosen to fight the First Writer.

I couldn’t understand it.

Why?

If Frey was defeated and died here in the Land of Survival, he would simply be forced awake in the real world, and Agaroth would die. Once that creature was gone, everything would be fine.

I knew Frey could never defeat the First Writer, Clea. Though he had performed far better against her than I had expected, he was still losing regardless.

But Lord Abraham had ruined everything.

I still didn’t believe he could bring down the First Writer even with his son beside him, but with his intervention, the final outcome was no longer certain. He was not a man who could be easily predicted, and the sheer depth of his experience was impossible to ignore.

"Why... Why does he want to save him?"

I bit my lip unconsciously as my gaze drifted toward Agaroth.

That monster was still there, lying in a pool of blood and scattered Aura, desperately trying to regenerate after the First Writer had inflicted a horrifying amount of damage upon him.

He was in a miserable state, pitiful even, barely capable of rebuilding his own body.

But his eyes...

Those crimson eyes, hidden beneath a veil of black mist and a pitch-dark Aura...

The instant I looked at him, a cold shiver ran through my entire body.

If a mere gaze could kill, Agaroth would have murdered the First Writer a thousand times over.

Was all of that anger?

Was all of that hatred?

Never in my life had I witnessed emotions so intense, such horrifying negativity that it had taken physical form as an Aura.

Dense darkness surrounded him from every direction, stirring fear within my heart.

I had always known that he concealed darkness inside himself. A horrifying darkness that could only belong to a monster.

There was no other written creature like him.

And now...

I was more convinced of what I had always believed than ever before.

"He cannot be allowed to live... He will die here."

I gathered my courage and summoned my strength.

Even if it meant interfering in this battle...

Even if Frey came to hate me afterward...

If necessary, I would join my Lady and fight beside her.

That was the decision I made.

Yet I soon realized...

Perhaps she didn’t need my help at all.

Abraham was immensely powerful, but my Lady never once appeared to be struggling.

The High Father possessed a powerful Rune that amplified his strength, multiplying it several times over during battle. As long as he could endure, his power would continue rising without end.

His fighting style closely resembled Frey’s.

He wielded two swords, one forged from Aether and the other from Aura.

It made sense.

After all, Abraham was the one who had taught Frey swordsmanship.

Abraham attacked my Lady without hesitation, genuinely attempting to cut her down despite knowing that she had entered this world with her real body.

Unlike the rest of us, who had left our true bodies outside the Land of Survival, she had entered directly through Seth’s passage.

If Clea died here...

She would die in the Aether World as well.

And yet neither Abraham nor Frey hesitated.

They attacked her with everything they had.

I couldn’t blame them.

Holding back against the First Writer was no different from suicide.

Clea blocked their swords with nothing but her bare arms.

The Aether reinforcing her body made her terrifyingly durable, while her starry dress was extraordinarily powerful in its own right. Frey had barely managed to pierce it earlier, even with one of his strongest attacks.

All three moved at such absurd speeds that I could scarcely follow them.

Every now and then, I saw their mouths moving, proving that some kind of conversation was taking place between them.

But I couldn’t hear a single word.

I could barely follow their movements even when concentrating with everything I had.

My Lady looked angry.

The way she fought made that painfully obvious.

Abraham took the front and confronted her head-on.

His swords danced between his hands as though they were extensions of his own limbs. He moved with astonishing speed, every strike precise, aimed exclusively at vital points.

With every passing second, he unleashed at least a thousand strikes.

Not a single one reached its target.

The First Writer blocked everything with her bare arms alone.

Then she released a repulsive wave of Aether.

The force was tremendous enough to blast Abraham dozens of meters away despite his desperate attempt to resist.

The instant she created distance between them, Clea rained hundreds of pillars of negative Aether upon him from every direction.

Abraham defended ferociously, cutting through them one after another.

He barely endured for several seconds before one of his swords shattered.

" Ignition!"

Abraham roared the moment he found himself completely surrounded.

A new sword emerged to replace the broken one.

His strength surged, his Aura expanding dramatically as he resumed defending against Clea’s relentless barrage of Aether.

Yet even after amplifying his power, Abraham remained trapped among those pillars.

He couldn’t approach her at all.

My Lady was deliberately keeping him pinned down.

She wanted Frey alone.

His power posed the greater threat to her because his Rune possessed the same fundamental nature as hers.

Frey’s sword combined Aether and Aura, carrying the properties of both and making it nearly impossible to destroy.

With a single swing, he could cut through Aether projectiles, and he had already proven capable of inflicting genuine damage upon her starry dress.

But even that wasn’t enough to give him the advantage.

Purple flames suddenly erupted across my Lady’s body.

Then she unleashed them everywhere.

Terrifying flames that devoured everything they touched.

That wasn’t the power of a Rune.

It was her Aether itself.

Her anger had driven it into such a violent state that it transformed into a horrifying force capable of burning everything away.

Frey and Abraham attempted to stop her by attacking simultaneously.

The instant they approached...

Both were blasted away.

Spears of Aether immediately pursued them, accompanied by countless pillars and projectiles that completely surrounded the pair.

Defending against such an overwhelming barrage demanded nearly all their strength and concentration.

They barely survived, both suffering several injuries in the process.

And when the onslaught finally ended...

They found Clea floating above their heads.

One hand stretched high toward the heavens.

Above her palm, an enormous violet sun of Aether came into existence, burning with unimaginable power.

It was colossal.

Terrifying.

As though she had forged an entire star from Aether.

That amount of power...

"Just... how much Aether does she have?"

I found myself wondering, horror creeping through me.

Aether was extraordinarily powerful, naturally superior to Aura under ordinary circumstances.

But that very strength came with a price.

It burned away incredibly quickly, making prolonged, large-scale usage nearly impossible.

That was a fundamental limitation every Writer lived under.

Every Writer...

Except her.

The First Writer wielded Aether without restraint, without showing even the slightest sign of exhaustion.

It was almost as though she breathed Aether instead of air.

My Lady held that Aether star above her with a single hand.

For one brief second, she looked down at her husband and eldest son.

Then she hurled it at them without hesitation.

The star was enormous.

If it struck, it wouldn’t merely erase Abraham and Frey.

It would wipe out every form of life here.

Including me.

Seth.

And Agaroth.

It seemed like a fitting end to everything.

But I had underestimated what the High Father was capable of.

Abraham charged directly toward the descending Aether star without the slightest hesitation.

Then he unleashed a technique I had never seen him use before.

It was fast.

So unbelievably fast that it surpassed anything I had witnessed until that moment.

For an instant, it seemed as though Abraham’s two swords had multiplied thousands upon thousands of times.

And then...

An incomprehensible number of slashes erupted almost simultaneously.

One strike could never have stopped that Aether star.

But thousands of cutting attacks could.

The High Father tore the Aether star apart beneath a storm of white and violet slashes, forged from pure Aura and destructive Aether.

He had erased it completely.

Though judging from the strain left upon him...

That single technique had likely burned through an enormous portion of his strength.

Seeing the sheer strength of the High Father, I hesitated.

For a fleeting moment, I truly believed that with Frey beside him, he might actually have a chance.

A chance to win.

Then my Lady erased that belief in an instant.

I found myself trembling.

At last, I understood why the Council intended to rely on Clea to face Oden should he ever return.

Because for the first time...

I had caught a glimpse of her true power.

And so had Abraham and Frey.

The instant the High Father destroyed the burning Aether star, Clea had already finished preparing her next attack.

Another Aether star had formed.

One far larger than the one Abraham had just destroyed.

But its size wasn’t what made the sight so horrifying.

It was the fact that she hadn’t created only one.

Nor two.

There were dozens.

Dozens of Aether stars filled the heavens, each carrying an immense concentration of her Erasure Rune within it.

The blackness of space turned radiant violet beneath the influence of her overwhelming power.

Every living creature throughout the Land of Survival must have felt it.

The First Writer possessed enough power to annihilate an entire world by herself.

She left her opponents with nothing...

Except despair.