After days of panic as the Void Rift reopened and Chaos surged in, that foreign name that once owned every headline took center stage again. And its owner had only just woken.
Like she’d slept well, she yawned with her eyes closed, then stretched lazily and sat up.
“Mmm—ugh, my neck’s stiff.”
Adelaide muttered, kneading her shoulder. She tilted her head and a faint crackle slipped from her neck. For someone used to a goose-down mattress with just-right firmness, this post-sleep stiffness felt rare.
But that discomfort ended there.
And that fact itself was the strangest thing.
If anyone saw her, they’d be stunned she still wore the scarlet Flower Dancer ritual dress—not because she could sleep in such fussy garments, but because the dress was flawless, as gleaming as when she danced before the World Tree.
Alone, that proves nothing. Paired with the view beside her, her “intactness”… means something else entirely.
So what’s around her? Toppled walls, a sea of flowers burning, or a brutal plain scraped flat?
Good question. Even Adelaide couldn’t answer.
Beneath her was a varicolored surface like sunlit asphalt, yet dim like a corpse gone two weeks. Beside her, rose-shaped lumps of flesh trembled and burned, crying like wounded animals. Far off, buildings from different eras, races, and styles flickered into being, then shattered the next second—some collapsing under time and moss, some ripped apart by brute force and ground to powder.
She saw everything and its ending. Things appeared, unspooled, turned into feral symbols, then slipped back into null, toward that unavoidable, meaningless finale.
This wasn’t a paradise for the dead.
It was the ground zero of the Void Rift’s renewed invasion—the instant flashpoint.
“Hmm… this weirdly feels like the ‘Backrooms’ from that dream?” Adelaide tilted her head and snarked.
She stood in a space warped by heavy Chaos taint, yet her tone held no surprise and no panic. She pushed herself up with a little grunt, patted her clothes, then checked her body head to toe.
Finding nothing amiss, she snorted, a shade of pride in the sound.
Because she’d won.
In a game that staked her life.
…Alright. Adelaide admitted she wavered for a heartbeat when she tossed that scroll to Bingxia.
Knowing she’d take the Chaos shockwave point-blank, throwing away her safest lifeline was like diving naked into a lava lake.
But she strangled her survival instinct. She used a move that was basically suicide to verify a mad guess.
She didn’t need that Blood Magic scroll to withstand the Void Rift tearing open.
In fact, she needed nothing.
Even if she did nothing, the Void Rift wouldn’t hurt her.
“Looks like… fate still favors me.”
Adelaide covered her smile with her hand, yet those lifted lips showed anyway. She was in a very good mood.
She was sure now: that Blood Magic defense scroll that arrived with the “new script” was just the Follower of Pleasure’s clumsy bid to cover his tracks.
“‘A charm for my most treasured fiancée’… heh. Heh-heh.” Adelaide echoed the letter’s line, pity shading her smile. “For someone who doesn’t dare face me, your mouth’s iron-hard, Follower of Pleasure, Krus.”
Yes, the protective scroll for all the First Generation had come from the Follower of Pleasure. The letter gilded it—meant to keep her safe when the Void Rift unfolded. But truth?
Even without that scroll, he wouldn’t dare let Chaos touch her.
Adelaide’s gaze swept the surround again. Since waking, a tide of Chaos Spawn had surged toward her. They packed the space tight as scales, then climbed one another, stitching a dome from twisted flesh.
They’d sealed every way out, yet stopped there. No strike. No closing in.
Instead, they acted like they’d hit an invisible barrier. All halted at a distance that was neither far nor near. Not one dared cross.
Adelaide tilted her head. She strolled a few steps at random. The Chaos Spawn ahead unlatch their maws. Jagged teeth rasped out a hiss, a messy warning. Yet while they bluffed, the base layer of meat kept inching back with her approach.
To Adelaide, they looked almost like frogs puffing themselves up, gulping air to look bigger, hoping to scare off a predator.
“Pfft… pff—hahaha~”
Adelaide covered her face, but laughter spilled out.
What she saw only nailed down her verdict.
The Follower of Pleasure, Krus, didn’t dare fight her now.
For a simple reason: he’d die the first time he faced her.
“You’re a ridiculous, pitiful coward.”
She flicked her hand. Threads of bloody mana hooked the fallen Ceremonial Sword and lifted it back into her palm.
“You won’t meet me head-on, yet you pose like you’ve got it all in hand.”
Here, in this Chaos place with no second soul, her flawless mask finally cracked.
All the rage banked since the Soul Devourer Sormaidon hunt spilled from her throat.
Her fingers clamped the scabbard. Her breath grew heavy.
Then she dropped restraint and shouted at the sky-high wall of Chaos Spawn before her.
“Won’t fight, won’t let me leave—trash, you’re making this hard! How about you call your master over, so I don’t have to go find him myself?”
Her voice bounced around the fleshy dome.
The only reply was hissing and clacking teeth.
“Figures, we’re done talking.” Adelaide laughed in anger and clapped her hands. “Fine. I’ll use the blunt solution.”
Lines of mana lit up along her slender forearm—the one that didn’t look made for war. The supposedly blunt Ceremonial Sword hummed.
She drew it free, and the core mana crystal along the blade burned with a wicked, opulent red.
Adelaide stared into that red. Her pupils took the color, flame-like crimson.
This was the Void Rift’s ground zero, the most polluted by Chaos. A dead zone for most magic. Most mages here became weaker than farmers, their craft broken by Chaos deconstruction.
But Adelaide wasn’t most.
Blood Magic, the misfit among magics, didn’t get suppressed. It meshed with Chaos like lock and key.
In a sense, Adelaide felt amplified. Her blood capered with joy, buzzing with abundant mana.
“Since you won’t come to me, don’t blame me for coming to play, Krus.”
