Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 175: The Crimson Night [3]

The War for The North [62]

Chapter 175: The Crimson Night [3]

Cassian had fixed his eyes on Umbrelion. Among the Princes, he was undoubtedly the weakest against Cassian.

The Lord of Curses fed on fear and despair, but Cassian’s [Dragon’s Arrogance] had turned his mind into an impenetrable fortress. Moreover, the Holy Mana flowing through his veins was pure poison to Umbrelion’s dark existence. He was the natural predator of this dark prince.

Turning his head slightly, he saw the annoying, calm stance of Lyria Vael, the Princess of Lost Time.

She was the real problem. Her ability to rewind time by seven seconds made her almost invincible. The lack of a cooldown turned this ability into a nightmare, but Cassian knew the rules of the game: The same timeframe could be rewound at most three times.

The only way to defeat her wasn’t strategy or speed. The only way was an absolute attack that was impossible to evade, one where the outcome wouldn’t change even if time was rewound. He had to seal fate with a single sword stroke.

And Luin... the silver-haired monument of perfection. Just like Charles, he possessed a natural superiority over Cassian.

Chaos flames extinguished on him like fire hitting water.

However, Cassian remembered their brief clash in the Inferna Duchy. The situation was different that day. That day, chaos flames or void rot had an effect on him.

Lilith had said he was flawless, and even Luin himself believed it.

But Cassian knew Toven had designed this body specifically to gain superiority over the 6 princes.

Luin was not invincible or flawless; he was just someone ordinary wearing a mask of perfection.

Seeing Cassian standing motionless like a statue, only weighing them with his eyes, Luin broke the silence with his melodic and calm voice.

"Hey, how long are you going to stand there, Prince of Nothingness?"

Luin smiled, spreading his arms wide. "You are aware that time is flowing against you, aren’t you?"

Without turning his gaze to Luin, Cassian continued the calculations in his mind. The words falling from his lips were no different from a command.

"Be quiet, mortal. I am thinking about something important."

At this insulting answer, Lyria covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. The smile on Luin’s face froze, and he shot a glare at Lyria from the corner of his eye.

The woman simply shrugged. Then she raised the white, spiraling spear in her hand into the air and threw it with an elegant movement.

The spear split into four pieces in the air before reaching Cassian. The pieces stabbed into the ground on all four sides of Cassian and instantly merged, turning into a translucent white dome covered in runes that trapped him inside.

However, Cassian didn’t even care about this prison of light surrounding him. His pitch-black, horned head was still turned towards the horizon, towards the Winter Castle far away. The [Scarlet Night] counter in his mind was ticking mercilessly.

[Death Count: 48,210] [Death Count: 49,055]

The numbers were increasing at a crazy speed. Cassian slowly turned his head and finally faced Luin.

"Teleport me back to the capital." "If you do this, I will spare your worthless lives." His voice sounded less like a request and more like a king’s decree.

"Or... In seven minutes, nothing will remain of you."

The absolute certainty in Cassian’s voice caused Umbrelion, who was already wary of him, to involuntarily tense up. The Prince of Shadows took a step back, sinking a bit more into the darkness.

Lyria, on the other hand, ran her tongue over her lips. Cassian’s arrogant, dangerous attitude was fueling the twisted excitement inside her.

Luin fixed his silvery eyes on Cassian. What he saw disturbed him.

Cassian wasn’t bluffing. The expression in his eyes was not that of a gambler, but of an executioner who knew the outcome.

"Don’t you realize the situation you are in?" asked Luin, his voice hardening a bit.

"There are three Princes in front of you and your power is running out. If you are waiting for backup or something... Your friends are in a much more difficult situation than you. That castle will be their grave."

As Luin continued to speak, the darkness concentrating in Cassian’s right hand began to take shape. Chaos flames solidified, lengthened, and turned into a sword as black as obsidian that swallowed light.

Cassian changed his stance. He pressed his feet firmly onto the burnt ground, slightly bent his knees. He pulled the sword to waist level. He took a deep breath. The air filling his lungs returned to the outside as black smoke.

In that moment, the pressure in the air changed. Although Luin, Lyria, and Umbrelion didn’t understand what was happening, they tensed up involuntarily. Something was coming. Something dangerous.

Cassian whispered.

"Absolute Cut."

"..."

Cassian lunged forward, but this was not a run. His body moved as if it were a frame in a slowed-down film. His speed was so high that reality couldn’t keep up with him. As he moved, he left translucent, black silhouettes of his own body behind him.

Each silhouette represented a different stage of the movement, creating a strange, dizzying, and unbelievable image.

The moment the tip of Cassian’s sword touched the dome, it turned to dust as if its existence was denied.

When the image stopped, Cassian straightened up behind Luin, his back turned to him. The black sword in his hand turned into smoke and mixed into the air.

For a moment, Luin felt nothing. The wind continued to blow. "Did he miss?" he thought.

However, when he checked himself with panic, he couldn’t see any damage on his body. He was intact. Just as he wanted to turn around...

And at that moment, the pain arrived.

"Huh?"

His eyes slid down. A deep, incredibly thin cut appeared on his stomach, separating his armor, skin, and muscles with a perfect line, about to bisect him. Blood began to spurt with a delayed reaction. Luin brought his hands to his stomach and looked at his own warm, silvery blood with horror.

Further back, a muffled sound came from Umbrelion. The Prince of Shadows’ upper and lower body slid apart from the waist and collapsed to the ground in two pieces.

As for Lyria, she had tilted her head to the side at the last moment with a reflex bending time. But the attack had taken a piece from her too; a vertical slit had opened in the middle of her forehead, bleeding like a third eye.

The texture of time cracked.

Lyria screamed and activated her ability. Time flowed backward. Blood returned to bodies, wounds closed, Cassian returned to his former position.

When time started winding forward again, the three Princes did not make the same mistake. They instantly changed their positions, activated defensive spells, and took their guard against Cassian’s deadly attack.

But the attack they expected did not come.

Cassian was standing where he was. He had tilted his head slightly to the side, looking at the black sword he had recreated in his hand with blank, expressionless eyes.

"Strange..." he muttered to himself, as if there weren’t three deadly enemies in front of him.

"I still don’t understand. I can use it even though I don’t possess such a skill. My body remembers it, my muscles know this movement." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

He swung the sword lightly in the air.

"But unlike Kaiser... my attack is still flawed. It seems I’m not doing something right. What is missing?"

Cassian turned his blank and eerie gaze to Luin.

"What do you think I am doing wrong, Luin?"

Luin grit his teeth. Muscles in his jaw were twitching. This boy... This damn anomaly wasn’t even taking them seriously.

Just now, if time hadn’t been rewound, he would have reaped all three of them in a single move, and now he had stopped and was critiquing his technique.

"You..." Luin growled.

In the back, the atmosphere suddenly became heavy. Umbrelion and Lyria had stopped playing games due to the horror brought by the death experience just now. They were abandoning their mortal forms.

Umbrelion’s body melted and turned into a pitch-black, fluid shadow. His hair grew, wrapping around him like a cloak. From the darkness around his body, bony, long shadow arms erupted.

But the real horror was what rose from within his shadow. Accompanied by pained moans, sounds of chains, and screams, the remnants of the selves of the people Umbrelion had consumed with his curse rose as rotten silhouettes.

Dragons that died hundreds of years ago with their flesh fallen off, skeletons with green flames burning in their eye sockets... Old knights groaning inside rusty armors, skinned mages... Umbrelion’s personal army surrounded him, bringing the cold breath of death.

On the other hand, Lyria’s transformation was much more grotesque and disturbing.

The woman pressed her slender fingers into her own two eyes and gouged them out with a savage movement. Instead of blood, white light leaked from her eye sockets. She crushed the eyes she removed in her palm.

Her only remaining eye was the one in the middle of her forehead, and now, it was growing from inside the wound opened just now, starting to cover her entire face. Her body began to collapse from the outside in, her bones breaking and reshaping.

This was a disgusting sight. Like a cocoon imploding. In the end, the only thing remaining was a single massive eye hanging in the air.

The next moment, white chains with thousands of pupils engraved on them shot out from the eye. These chains merged in the air and wove a strange, humanoid but non-human body.

It wasn’t clear if it was male or female. It had a muscular, pale white body. It had no hair, no nose. Its lips were sewn together with thick, black threads. Its eyelids were sewn the same way, but the massive eye on its forehead was open and alive, as if watching the entire flow of time. Behind its head, a metallic halo resembling a time wheel was turning.

This was Lyria’s true form, the Guardian of Lost Time.

Cassian looked at these two completed forms, two nightmares. There was neither fear nor surprise on his face. Just mild curiosity.

He turned his head and looked at Luin, who was still standing in human form.

"Are you not going to transform?" he asked in a calm voice.

Luin brushed the dust off himself and held his head high. Arrogance could be read in every line of his face.

"I can use my true form only once," said Luin, his voice ice-cold. "And that honor is not reserved for an anomaly like you, Prince of Nothingness. I can destroy you in this state too."

Cassian shrugged. He tightened his grip on the black sword in his hand.

"Suit yourself," he said. The red light in his eyes combined with the shadow of the dragon wings behind him. "After all, you will be dead in seven minutes. It doesn’t matter what form you are in