Chapter 111: Total Annihilation

According to the convention repeated countless times in myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, and epic chronicles throughout the ages, heroes dedicated to saving the world without exception invariably end up stumbling upon a powerful evil overlord and engaging in an arduous and grueling battle.

The good news is that in all similar legends I have known, the protagonist of every story wields the divine sword of bugs, wears the armor of GMs, rides the white horse of cheat codes, and squanders the magic of backstage data—though I am not quite sure what these things that cause my Sky-farer friends to drool with infinite yearning actually are—slashing through thorns and thistles, winning the ultimate victory bloodlessly and without exception.

The bad news is: judging by the current situation, we do not seem to be the protagonists... I did not expect this final battle to save the world to be so protracted. For at least over half an hour, Lady Black Baroness Dengott's health points have decreased by probably less than a quarter.

For many leader-level opponents we have encountered in the past, the health bar floating above the head of this violent woman possessed of monstrous strength and wielding a giant hammer was not particularly long. Yet, what terrified us was that her vitality seemed exceptionally tenacious. No matter how much we hacked and slashed her until blood flew everywhere, that health line stubbornly and desperately refused to shrink.

Our attacks yielded little effect against the Black Baroness, but her ferocious twin hammers were a nightmare we could not shake off.

Those two massive black objects spun ceaselessly before us, constantly grazing our fragile bodies and hammering a despairing panic into our hearts.

Shield slams, headbutts, war stomps, entanglements, clouds of slowness, holy light protections... We tried every possible means to restrict the Black Baroness's movements in hopes of slightly slowing down the moments when those two giant instruments of death fell, buying ourselves a few more seconds of breathing room for our gasping lives.

As is well known, these skills aimed at restricting opponents usually do not possess significant offensive power in themselves, yet they consume a tremendous amount of magic and fighting spirit.

To ensure these life-saving skills could be successfully unleashed at critical moments, we did not even dare to use overly powerful combat skills during our attacks, fearing we might encounter the embarrassing predicament of insufficient magic or fighting spirit when it mattered most.

This straitened circumstance, in turn, further restricted our combat effectiveness, making the rate at which the Black Baroness's vitality dwindled even slower.

This could no longer be considered a battle. The obsession with victory, the yearning for honor, the mission to save the world... All those lofty and great beliefs became so untimely at this moment.

Residing within our hearts was only the final shred of bestial, desperate struggle. Yes, struggle! Squeezing out the very last ounce of life's strength to gasp for breath and make a dying struggle at this critical juncture of life and death.

Not a single person still harbored the expectation of winning this struggle, yet no one stopped struggling. This seemed to be an instinct, with death acting like a glib-tongued swindler deceiving every living soul.

Making them always catch a glimpse of a delusive glimmer of hope amidst despair, making them mistakenly believe they truly still had a sliver of a chance of survival.

Even when their reason gave up, this instinct continued to drive them, compelling them to struggle to the bitter end.

Originally, we all thought such a struggle would have to persist for a while longer. But very soon we discovered:

The situation was deteriorating far faster than we had imagined. Sir Dengott's hammer carried an irresistible, immense force; with every clash, it drove her opponents back a few steps.

Moreover, the attack range of these two unimaginably large weapons was so vast that once they swept across, there was no escaping them. They were like the brutal wings of a golden eagle or fierce vulture, unfurling to ruthlessly drive her prey.

You must remember, this was neither an endless desert nor a vast grassland. This was the summit of a towering, dilapidated tower.

Even if this had once been a magnificent tower, its area was ultimately limited. Very soon, we found that the space available for us to dodge and maneuver was shrinking.

The Black Baroness's twin hammers seemed to be intentionally forcing us toward the corner of the tower top where the ramparts still survived, sealing off our escape routes.

This was sheer humiliation for us. Supported by an absolute, irresistible advantage in strength, she alone had successfully surrounded all five of us.

"We can't retreat any further, I'm already backed up against the wall..." Finally, the Elven Druid girl, Fairy Descent Face Plant, shrieked in panic.

"Then go crouch in the corner of the wall, draw circles, and curse her..." Tingting Xiaoge cast a "Shadow Bolt" while still managing to ask the Druid girl to help him complete some mysterious religious ritual.

"Can I write 'B-flat minor Nocturne was here'?" The Gnome Bard seemed to possess no conscious sense of preserving historical war ruins.

Ah, watching as our mission failed and the world came to an end, these ruins hardly seemed worth protecting anymore.

"Do you think she'll give me time to finish writing my name?" Niu Baiwan slanted his eyes to glance at his "illustrious name" he had thrust all the way up into the sky, and retorted irritably.

"Don't you always go on and on about how your premonitions are this and that? How is your premonition right now?" I struggled to raise the shield in my hand, taking a heavy blow from the Black Baroness head-on, and inevitably staggered back into the crowd.

"You wouldn't be interested to know..." Looking at Niu Baiwan's legs trembling like a winnowing sieve, I figured the answer to that question was self-evident.

It must be said that as the "knight among knights" favored by the Supreme God, Niu Baiwan's premonitions had always been remarkably accurate. Just as his voice trailed off, a giant hammer smashed down from overhead, beating him until his face was covered in blood, and his proud bovine nose almost retreated into his skin.

He instantly lost all sound, lying stiff and flat on the ground. The second to suffer was the Gnome Bard, B-flat Minor Nocturne, who possessed close-combat skills but lacked close-combat defensive capabilities.

He looked with utter despair as the Black Baroness's hammer swept across his body, expecting to sacrifice his life on the battlefield right then and there. But unexpectedly, this massive iron hammer, which was a full two times larger than his body, floated right through him without touching, and then two strange little characters floated gracefully and languidly into the air above his head: Dodge... The 15% dodge probability naturally inherent to the Gnome race, surpassing all other races, finally manifested itself.

This monstrous stroke of sheer luck made Nocturne lose his mind with arrogance. The Gnome Bard burst into loud laughter: "Ha! You didn't hit me..."

"Clang..." Another hammer smashed down. B-flat Minor Nocturne's crooked neck and lolling tongue of a corpse thoroughly demonstrated one point to us: the 15% good luck belonging exclusively to the Gnome race had failed to visit him a second time.

Two lives that had been jumping about full of vigor moments before met their violent deaths right before our eyes in less than three minutes.

Their corpses were still warm, their eyes reflecting an infinite attachment to life as they stared blankly at us, making it hard not to feel a chill rising from the depths of one's heart: the journey of death was so hasty, leaving no one any time to pack their bags.

The instinctive fear of death inherent in the nature of all living things in the world descended instantly, pressing heavily upon our hearts.

Bit by bit, it crushed our willpower. At this moment, I could not even distinguish which was the true source of my terror: death itself, or the helpless dread of death lurking deep within my heart.

Perhaps it was the latter. Based on my personal experience, death seemed like a sudden, ignorant darkness cast down by the gods of the firmament—neither painful nor agonizing, merely an unconscious termination, a complete liberation, and nothing more.

What was truly terrifying, however, was knowing for certain that you were going to die, being utterly powerless to resist, yet unable to die instantly, forcing you to wait quietly and strain your ears to listen to the footsteps of the Grim Reaper pacing step by step behind your back.

Clearly sensing every single inch of desperate chill before the arrival of death. The space in the corner had grown far too cramped; our three remaining lives were huddled together, and my skin could even feel the dampness exhaled from their cold sweat. When the half-orc Warlock Tingting Xiaoge's pasty-green head was battered into a bloody pulp, the spattering gore covered our very heads, and in an instant, the sky seemed dyed in a desolate, bloody hue.

"Ah..." After all, not everyone could endure the suffocating terror of this final moment.

Especially when she was still a young and delicate elven maiden. The Druid girl, Fairy Descent Face Plant, finally suffered a hysterical collapse. She completely abandoned all magic skills meant to prolong her life, instantly transforming into a frenzied black bear and screaming in despair as she lunged at the advancing Black Baroness.

If you cannot endure the fear of waiting for death, then let death come faster. For those fragile creatures struggling on the edge of death yet powerless to escape, this was perhaps the only choice left for them to exercise.

The dread of death catalyzed the final shred of ferocious cruelty remaining in the elven maiden's blood. I saw a massive black bear sticking her full, rounded rump high up in the air, twisting her neck with her eyes closed, one hand—pardon me, paw—viciously grabbing hold of the Black Baroness's hair.

Her other paw exposed sharp claws, desperately scratching the opponent's face and neck until successive bloody trails were gouged out—this kind of combat skill capable of directly reflecting one's distinct battle achievements on an opponent's face seemed to be an innate nature engraved in the blood of all females in this world, which, in my view, was far more terrifying than any of the Bear Druid's combat skills like "Mangle," "Swipe," or "Rake." I believe the vast majority of males in this world—especially married ones—would agree with my statement, though I have no idea why this is the case.

Fairy Descent's final strike, brimming with life's tension and the aesthetics of violence, actually triggered an auxiliary effect of critical hits and combos, achieving unprecedented, glorious results—over two thousand points of the Black Baroness's health vanished under this chaotic, dancing ultimate skill of hair-pulling and face-scratching, not even counting the continuous damage caused by the rake effect.

Even such a loss was negligible to the Black Baroness Dengott. Having endured the elven maiden's final madness and effortlessly dispatched her, the Black Baroness once again targeted her pair of deadly instruments of death at me.

I knew that everything was over: my insignificant life; this world of tens of thousands of living beings; the beautiful and miraculous continent of Falwei; and this hatred and war that had lasted for two hundred years.

The world's last flame of hope and salvation would extinguish along with the flowing away of my life. Tomorrow—no, perhaps it wouldn't even take that long.

Perhaps just the next hour, the next minute, the next second, the Black Baroness, who had betrayed humanity out of paranoid vengeance, would scatter the completed undead toxins into every corner of this world.

Would death become eternal? Whether for us native inhabitants who were already precariously clinging to life, or for those Sky-farers who had once been able to ignore the existence of death?

Had those warm and benevolent gods abandoned us? Abandoned this colorful world they had created with their own hands?

Leaving it to rot in the hands of the destroyer? Those about to die ought to pray, but for someone like me who was about to turn into an ugly undead creature, did such prayers still hold any practical significance?

If my bones were destined to deviate from my dying wish and become a source of poison accelerating the destruction of this world, which deity could possibly save my soul?

Allowing me to enjoy eternal peace within the everlasting realm of the dead? I ought to resist still, shouldn't I? Call it a final stand, call it a desperate struggle—shouldn't I, just like Fairy Descent Face Plant, exhaust my very last ounce of strength to futilely bring a sliver of negligible trouble to the enemy, thereby demonstrating our determination and willpower as living beings?

Yet. As the black shadow of the iron hammer grew larger and larger in my eyes, and the scent of metallic rust in the howling air grew thicker and thicker, I flinched after all.

Remember? I had a pair of battle boots named "Footprints of the Sylph," which possessed a magical effect allowing me to instantly vacate my spot.

In the end, I did not step forward to embrace the death that ought to have been mine, but instead evaded this fatal blow.

You might say this was out of cowardice. But I think not. In fact, within my despair-ashened consciousness, death was no longer an unacceptable thing; if it could not be avoided, then arriving a second earlier or a second later held very little meaning for me.

This was an unconscious, unperceiving action; I simply dodged away like that, and the movement was so natural.

It was as if all of this had already been written into a book as black-and-white text, and was always meant to be this way.

If you must draw a conclusion about my behavior, then view it as the guidance of fate.

In the dark and unfathomable void, there truly seemed to be such a force, allowing everything that should happen to happen, allowing the story to become a story.

My dodge did not eliminate the Black Baroness's intent to kill; on the contrary, it seemed to make her even more urgent. This woman appeared intent on pouring all her hatred for the entire world onto my head, roaring as she wheeled around and charged at me without a moment's hesitation.

Hand raised and hammer dropped, the shield on my left arm had reached its absolute limit, shattering inch by inch. Its durability was down to less than thirty points, and the defensive role it could play was reduced to a mere third of its original capacity.

The twin hammers swept across, slamming into my ribs. I felt as though I had been struck by a collapsing mountain, and instantly went flying backward flat on my back.

When I hit the ground again, I had arrived at the edge on the other side of the tower. The wall on this side had already collapsed, with most sections reduced to broken parapets less than half a person high.

Amidst the gaps in the ruined walls were several jagged breaches, wide open and exposed. Directly behind me was one such unshielded breach, where the fierce plateau wind howled relentlessly, battering the armor on my spine.

It made a rustling sound, as if I were trembling on account of the impending death. Another hammer arrived. This was the final hammer; my remaining health points, barely fifty, were powerless to withstand such a heavy blow.

Let it be thus; my life ends here. I pressed my hands down and tumbled my entire body out through the gap in the tower's ruined wall.

Dodging this final strike, I plunged downward toward the ground at a rapid pace. If I smashed into pieces, perhaps my corpse wouldn't be able to be resurrected into a decaying creature, I thought.

The wind blowing up from the ground poured into my mouth and nose, compressing my lungs as if it couldn't wait for me to hit the ground and wanted to tear me to shreds right there in mid-air.

The scenery all around rushed past at blinding speed, condensing into large swaths of grim color blocks that I could not recognize. I felt as though I had entered a vertical express lane leading straight to death, wondering if such a powerful impact would be enough to hurl my soul down into the eighteenth layer of hell.

Ahead, an imperceptible halo lit up, and space seemed to be stealthily torn open to reveal a small opening, inside which lay unspeakably dark scenery.

That, presumably, was death. It is said that every dying person sees that shining gate between the mortal world and the netherworld right before they perish.

It was just that this gate wasn't as grand as I had imagined. Darkness suddenly fell before my eyes. Close the doors, I've reached my stop...