Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 151: Prince of Nothingness vs Prince of Unfading Fire [1]
When Cassian saw Cordelia in front of him, he froze at first.
His eyes widened in surprise, his heart skipped a beat. However, this surprise left its place to panic within seconds.
Cold sweat began to drip from his forehead.
When Cassian set out for Frosthelm, he had left Cordelia behind.
He hadn’t given her any news, written a letter, or made an explanation.
Because coming to Frosthelm with Cordelia... That would be suicide.
Her uncontrolled power and unstable personality would slow Cassian down and put him in difficult situations.
He had done the logical thing and entrusted her to Rose and the others. In a way, he had left Fredrinn and the others alone with Cordelia’s wrath and fled.
And now... The result was obvious. "Damn it," thought Cassian, swallowing the lump in his throat. The scenario played out in his mind.
Cordelia must have arrived at Frosthelm with Fredrinn, and upon hearing from General Hareth there that Cassian had been "kidnapped" or was "lost," she had probably gone mad.
And now, with that insane courage and unwavering obsession, she had crossed the vast North alone and found him.
Looking back now, Cassian felt regret settle inside him.
At least a letter... He could have left a damn little piece of paper.
Cordelia stood like a statue in the middle of the snow.
She wasn’t moving. Her chest wasn’t rising and falling, not even her eyelashes were trembling.
She had just fixed her blue eyes on Cassian. It was impossible to decipher what was in those gazes; was it anger, hatred, or pure disappointment?
Suddenly, Cordelia began to walk towards Cassian with slow but determined steps.
Cassian hesitated under the pressure of the guilt inside him.
But then, he remembered the strange bond between them and Cordelia’s fondness for him.
Maybe this wasn’t a walk of anger, but a moment of reunion.
He spread his arms to both sides, placed a sheepish but warm expression on his face, and took a step towards her.
He was expecting a hug, that emotional reunion that comes after a long and difficult separation.
"Cor—"
He couldn’t say her name.
BOOM!
The sound was that dull and nauseating sound of flesh colliding with bone.
Cassian’s sentence was shoved back down his throat by a fist possessing inhuman strength landing right in the middle of his stomach.
The blow was so violent that Cassian’s feet were lifted off the ground.
His body was hurled backward like a rag doll and crashed into the hard mountain rock meters away.
"Kuhh!"
A clot of hot blood gushed from his mouth. With the air in his lungs completely emptied, he collapsed face down into the snow. The snow-white ground was instantly painted crimson.
"MY PRINCE!!!"
Olivia and Eula screamed at the same time, horrified by the sight they saw.
Eula had already started forming magic seals in her hands.
But Lilith stepped in front of them with a calm and authoritative demeanor.
She blocked the witches’ path by extending her arm. There was neither worry nor surprise on her face; on the contrary, a slight, twisted smile hung on the corner of her lips.
"Calm down," said Lilith, her voice ice-cold. "And just watch. This is their matter."
Cordelia lowered her fist.
With rustling steps crushing the snow, she walked towards Cassian writhing on the ground. Every step was like a hammer blow landing on Cassian’s conscience.
"I trusted you!"
Her voice... was not a scream.
It was emotionless, neutral, and deadly calm.
Unlike the violence just now, there was not a crumb of emotion on her face.
"I believed you wouldn’t abandon me."
Cassian gritted his teeth despite the burning pain in his stomach.
Pressing his trembling hands into the snow, he tried to slowly straighten up on his knees. He wiped the blood leaking from the corner of his mouth with his arm.
"I thought you were different!"
Cordelia stood at Cassian’s bedside. Her shadow fell over the kneeling boy.
Bending down, she extended her hand, grabbed Cassian’s collar, and pulled him harshly towards herself.
Their faces were so close to each other that Cassian could feel the coldness in the girl’s breath.
Blue eyes penetrated into Cassian’s red ones.
"You lied to me!"
The tension had reached a breaking point, like the thin air at the top of the mountain.
The witches held their breath. Cassian parted his lips to make an explanation, to apologize.
But at that moment, the Sky suddenly took on a sickly purple color.
Clouds began to spin like a vortex and the pressure in the atmosphere became heavy enough to pin everyone to the ground.
Cassian recognized this change, this disgusting mana fluctuation. His eyes widened in shock.
When Cassian saw this change, his eyes widened. Then his eyes narrowed. "The time has come, huh..." Cassian whispered.
Suddenly, his body lost its form. It turned into a black, fluid liquid and slipped through Cordelia’s fingers, pouring onto the ground.
Within seconds, he reappeared in human form behind the frozen Cordelia.
He slowly turned his head back.
"I’m sorry Cordelia," he said, his voice serious. "Now is not the time."
Cassian fixed his eyes on that massive rift beginning to tear open among the clouds in the sky.
"Come, Zagna!"
With his command, the four-armed massive monster Zagna appeared right beside Cassian.
Zagna, taking wheezing breaths, looked first at his master, Cassian, then at the ominous portal in the sky.
He could feel the tension in the environment, the approaching disaster. The muscles in his four arms tensed, he took a position ready for war.
Cassian took a deep breath.
The skin on his back tore and a pair of magnificent, jet-black wings opened to both sides as if regaining their freedom.
With a powerful flap of wings, he took off into the sky. He rose towards the forming portal, but maintaining caution, he kept a safe distance.
The portal was almost about to be completed. Purple and black lightning bolts were dancing around the rift.
Cassian called out to the system in the depths of his mind.
[System!]
[Activate Sovereign Form!]
[Request detected. Restrictions are being lifted...] [Sovereign Form is activating.]
At that moment, Cassian’s existence began to change.
His eyes lost everything related to humanity and took on a pitch-black state. In the very center of the infinite darkness, a small, wild, and primitive ring remained, glowing like a fire ember.
A pair of jet-black, curved horns resembling a crown extended from his skull.
His smooth skin hardened, matte, black dragon scales capable of absorbing light appeared on it.
He grew taller, his shoulders broadened, his body grew large, exceeding human limits.
The nails at his fingertips turned into curved and deadly claws capable of cutting even steel.
But the biggest change was in his mind.
His mind was clearer, sharper, and colder than ever before. Human fears, worries, regrets... All were wiped away. Only pure power and a sense of absolute superiority brought by that power remained.
Cassian looked at the portal shaking the sky. He tilted his head slightly to the side, as if bored.
"How pathetic..."
He extended his hand towards the portal, spreading his claws.
In front of his palm, a small sphere made of absolute darkness, from which not even light could escape, appeared.
The sphere began to absorb the mana, air, and light around it like a greedy monster.
A humming sound rose.
The sphere grew gradually, pulling everything, even the color of the sky, into itself like a black hole.
Below, the girls on the ground had to hold on to trees and rocks due to the intensity of the wind.
While Olivia and Eula trembled with fear, they couldn’t take their eyes off this apocalyptic scene in the sky.
However, Lilith... While the wind tousled her hair, there was a proud, satisfied smile on her face.
And finally, the portal was completed.
However, neither an army nor a monster came out of it.
Contrary to that, a massive, inconceivable stream of fire covering the entire sky, turning night into day, began to pour out from inside the portal towards the earth.
The temperature increased instantly, the snow began to evaporate.
Cassian did not lose his composure against the massive wave of flames coming at him.
He controlled the black hole he created.
The sphere suddenly shrunk, compressed, and continued to shrink.
Its density increased so much that the space around it began to bend.
The flames were about to reach him, roaring.
When the black hole remained almost as small as a speck of dust, time seemed frozen. Sounds ceased. The world held its breath.
Just at the moment the flames reached Cassian and were about to swallow him and turn him to ash... It stopped.
Remaining a millimeter away, it hung in the air as if hitting an invisible wall.
"Devour."
With Cassian’s command, the black hole as small as a speck of dust suddenly exploded.
But this wasn’t an outward explosion; it was a vacuum pulling existence in.
The pitch-black, chaotic mana wave opened like a hungry mouth and began to swallow that massive ocean of flames.
The image was inconceivable; fire was twisting, shattering inside the darkness, and blending into nothingness.
The flames of chaos were not only stopping the incoming attack but using it as their own fuel, growing larger and wilder.
Within seconds, the massive flood of fire covering the sky was completely swallowed by Cassian’s chaos, down to its last spark.
However, Cassian didn’t stop.
The dark mana wave, instead of stopping after swallowing the flames, continued to advance towards the portal as if to satisfy its hunger.
Chaos seeped into the edges of the portal, gnawed at the purple energy, disrupted its structure, and finally, shattered the portal into pieces like the breaking of a glass mirror.
The shards of the portal scattered like a dark rain and then disappeared.
The sky cleared.
The clouds had dispersed, the smoke was erased. The moon and stars were shining clearly as if the apocalypse just now had never happened.
Currently, two people stood in the illuminated, silenced sky.
One was Cassian, floating in the air at the peak of his Sovereign form, with an indifferent and godlike stance, not even breathing faster despite the enormous show of power he performed.
And the other...
A figure who had slipped through the ruins of the portal, evoking war even with his appearance.
One of his arms was irregularly, savagely shattered and severed up to the elbow.
His clothes were in tatters.
This was a dwarf, short, broad-shouldered, with red hair and a bushy beard. But the aura he radiated was of a magnitude inversely proportional to his height.
Aethrax Emberion. Prince of the Undying Fire.
On his back, he carried a massive, sword-like staff, almost as tall as himself, with runes burning like embers on it.
His eyes had widened with anger, with pure hatred.
Despite his missing arm, his wounds, his presence was ready to erupt like a volcano.
And those eyes were looking at a single person, the black, horned figure floating in the air.
A roar rose from between his teeth, making the sky groan:
"PRINCE OF NOTHINGNESS!!!"
