Chapter 281: The Night... Awakens

SHK!!!!!

SHKK!!!!!

"Well... I definitely didn’t see this shit coming," Jovian muttered as he swung the Fate Breaker in a wide, forceful arc, cleaving through the dense void hanging over Dream Land.

Above Akasha’s Mountain, billions of Masked Humans swarmed, choking the skies, their black-and-blue ranks spilling endlessly through the ever-expanding portal that was now above the Tree House.

Powers went off in overlapping bursts, with impacts that should have left the peak in a condition none could resemble.

Yet Dream Land remained untouched by any harm.

The treehouse still stood, and if that was true, then of course the Golden Apple Tree still bore its white fruit and vibrant canopy.

The grass was lush, the waterfalls flowed freely, and the towering, world-sized peak stood proud and unmarred.

The only thing that had shifted was the void itself, now raining the blood of Masked Humans in warm sheets that dissolved into mist before they could ever quite reach the wooden ground below.

All of this was purely because of Absolute Purification... it was so absurd that anyone who was a member or even just visiting the Mountain didn’t take any damage.

They were practically immortal.

SHKKKKK!!!!!

Jovian swung again, and this time his blade didn’t slice through flesh—it severed the fate thread that decided whether someone was allowed to keep living.

As the sword completed its arc, several Masked Humans collapsed all at once, their limbs limp, those strange, almost manic smiles still frozen on their faces.

They tumbled from the sky like marionettes whose strings had been scorched away, lifeless and eerily still.

Across that same sky, Melissa and Jack shaped fate in their own unique ways—one group of Masked Humans halted mid-charge, as if their next moment stubbornly refused to arrive, while another group found every blow they hurled veering wildly off target.

Amidst all of this, even as Harlan struggled to process the reality of his ancestors being slain before he could truly comprehend it, Liliana was experiencing the most intense emotions of anyone defending Dream Land.

’Why... why... why?!’ she kept asking herself over and over, yet the strangest part was that she didn’t even understand why she was questioning herself in the first place.

When Melvin gave chase after Milan, who had taken on Amber’s form, she made no move to stop him—because from the very first glance, she knew the person before her didn’t feel like Amber at all.

Still, it was unsettling to see a face she knew so well, yet feel nothing like the one she remembered.

And even before that moment, she’d already been gripped by a deep sense of loss—one that now had grown into a gaping void within her.

She moved through the chaos with her scepter, each life she took bringing neither weight nor proof, offering no progress toward defending Dream Land, finding the Emperor, or even her mother.

Instead, it only served as fuel for the ever-widening void in her chest.

In this moment, as she moved and the void only grew... chaotic emotions exploded all at once.

[Ink of Binding (Above Origin)]

HUMMMMMM!!!!!!

As she activated her innate power, the illusory red-and-black Eternal Grimoire unfurled above her hair as inky tendrils tore out across forty thousand kilometers.

They did not flow slowly or with grace.

No, black-red tendrils whipped through the packed void, wrapping wrists, throats, waists, and weapon-hafts before the Masked Humans could finish turning.

Those who saw them coming still tried, throwing themselves sideways through the air, cutting with everything they had to offer.

SHKKKK!!!!!

One man managed to sever a tendril, but before he could utter a word, two more emerged, swiftly coiling around his waist and arms.

No matter the effort, resistance proved futile; the power of Liliana needed only a single point of contact, and once it secured that, everything else was inevitably ensnared.

As each tendril made contact, Liliana’s attention wasn’t on them in the slightest.

Her hands were clamped tightly against her head, as if she were trying to tear away the thoughts clawing at her mind.

Then, all at once, she let out a raw, unrestrained roar.

"Just... DIE!"

HUMMMMM!!!!!

The moment her words were spoken, the power surged to its full strength, and every masked figure ensnared within her bindings met their end.

Liliana had not specified any particular method of execution; her contracts merely ensured the inevitability of death.

In an instant, hearts ceased to beat, skulls ruptured, bodies burst into clouds of crimson mist, and some vanished entirely between one breath and the next.

And as the last of the Masked Humans fell, Liliana was already moving again.

Yet, the more she moved, the more she gained, but the emptier her chest felt, the void inside still growing.

---

Inside the treehouse, Luna stayed seated through the chaos, one leg tucked beneath her on Akasha’s zafu.

Her long purple-and-pink hair draped over one shoulder, and the heart-shapes in her eyes half-lidded as if the invasion outside were nothing more than a trivial distraction.

In fact, she was the reason the portal and the billions had been received on the Mountain’s outside rather than inside Akasha’s living room.

In the same instant the Masked Humans arrived, the cocoons of Akasha and Yume had already begun to break, and there was nothing more important to Luna than the arrival of her love.

She laughed softly, a sound of quiet satisfaction, and blinked.

In the next moment, she found herself suspended high in the void above the canopy of the Golden Apple Tree, adrift in air through which blood still fell, yet never lingered long enough to leave a stain.

All around her, chaos reigned—Jovian severing threads of fate with precision, Liliana delivering instantaneous contractual executions—yet none of it held her attention.

Before her hung the cocoons, swathed in hues of purple and gray, their shells parting along slow, radiant seams.

"Fufufu~"

A soft, amused chuckle escaped her lips as she inclined her head ever so slightly.

"My love, I believe you are going to be rather pisssed, are you not?" she remarked with a knowing tone.

As the final syllables left her mouth, her gaze intensified, a deep light flickering within her eyes, and in the very next instant...

HUMMMMM!!!!!

HUMMMMM!!!!!

Two immense waves of divine energy burst forth as the shells shattered, revealing Akasha and Yume in the skies, entirely naked and still curled in fetal positions.

Catching sight of them exposed in the open, Luna’s lips pressed into a tight frown.

HUMMM!!!!

Without even needing to think, Pink and purple mist washed over their unfurling forms at once and clothed them before anyone else’s eyes could linger.

Yume’s mist drifted into a blue-and-grey dress that traced her silhouette as she began to straighten.

Akasha’s mist took shape in sleek, all-black attire, a long coat hanging open over a dark shirt and perfectly fitted trousers.

Then.... Their eyes opened.