Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel-Chapter 176: The Crimson Night [4]

The War for The North [63]

Chapter 176: The Crimson Night [4]

The sky was like a nightmare canvas painted in crimson. Even the air itself trembled with the weight of the approaching destruction, and the deafening roars of hundreds of monsters filling the battlefield shook the heavens and the earth.

The smell of dust and blood hanging in the air had reached a density that made even breathing a torture. Hundreds of cursed monsters of all sizes and shapes were flooding toward a single target, toward Cassian, who stood at the center of everything.

Cassian just stared at this avalanche of flesh and bone rushing at him with a calm expression, giant dragon wings gently fluttering behind him and an eerie red light glowing in his eyes.

There wasn’t a shred of fear or panic on his face. He just looked a bit bored by this disgusting noise surrounding him.

He slowly raised his hand into the air. Inside his palm, an energy sphere blacker than the darkest corners of the night began to spin.

And then, he snapped his fingers.

BOOM!

The sound was like a physical blow. A massive Chaos explosion occurred, vibrating not just the air but the very fabric of space.

This explosion, with Cassian at its center, spread around as a dark shockwave.

The hundreds of monsters throwing themselves at him turned to dust without even a chance to scream the moment they touched this wave. Their flesh, bones, and souls faded away into the absolute nothingness of chaos.

But this silence did not last long. Taking advantage of the opening created by the chaos explosion, Lyria swooped down from the sky like a hawk and landed right on Cassian.

With his lips and eyelids sewn shut with thick black threads, his pale, muscular, and humanoid body was an absolute nightmare.

The giant eye on his forehead was spinning like crazy as if it was reading the entire flow of time.

Cassian did not even flinch at this anomaly dropping on him. He just reached out. Before Lyria’s attack could even reach its target, Cassian’s hand grabbed the time guardian’s grotesque face right in the middle. His fingers sank into Lyria’s pale skin like steel hooks.

"You are too slow," Cassian muttered, his voice echoing as if it came from the depths of hell.

Without showing any hesitation or pity, he squeezed his palm violently. A disgusting sound resembling a rotten watermelon exploding was heard.

Lyria’s skull shattered to pieces between Cassian’s fingers. As black, sticky liquid splashed around, Cassian tossed the decapitated, lifeless body aside like a piece of trash.

Under normal conditions, time should have rewound and everything should have returned to how it was.

Luin and the others were expecting this too. But something different happened this time. The fabric of space and time twisted in a weird way. The torn reality, instead of rewinding, copied itself, and a new Lyria suddenly popped into existence in midair, completely intact and flawless.

Cassian narrowed his eyes slightly. The newly formed Lyria appeared right behind Cassian in the very first fraction of a second he existed and thrust the pale gray spear in his hand straight toward his heart.

Cassian dodged the deadly tip of the spear by mere millimeters by bending his spine at an odd angle.

At the same time, from the left side of his vision, he noticed a giant and rotting shadow lunging at him. It was Umrelion. The Prince of Curses was coming to tear Cassian apart with his deadly aura.

Cassian’s red eyes flashed. He swung his left hand toward Umrelion and created a massive shield made of dazzling pure holy mana, completely contrasting his dark nature.

When Umrelion’s rotting fist hit the holy shield, a hiss and a scream broke out, similar to the sound of flesh washed in acid.

As Umrelion bounced back, Cassian had already abandoned his physical form. His body turned into a dense, black smoke, drifted away, and rematerialized, putting tens of meters of distance between him and the three princes.

But the tempo of the battle did not know how to pause. In that brief moment he rematerialized, he saw a silvery gleam appear in front of him. Luin. With eyes full of arrogance and an ice cold desire to murder, he swung his sword straight at Cassian’s neck.

Slash!

The sharp blade sank deep into Cassian’s neck. Instead of blood, pure dark energy began to leak from the wound.

A triumphant smile should have formed on Luin’s face, but the sight before him froze his blood. Cassian did not show the slightest sign of pain despite the sword stuck in his neck. The red light in his eyes glowed dangerously.

Cassian reached out to Luin standing right next to him and grabbed the arm holding his sword tightly by the wrist. The moment he touched it, pitch black, sickly thorns burst out from Cassian’s palms.

These thorns pierced through Luin’s pale white skin and stuck into his flesh, seeping into his veins in seconds and starting to move up along his arm toward his heart. The black poison was visibly darkening Luin’s veins.

Luin’s eyes widened in shock, but the arrogant prince’s survival instincts were above all else.

Without even blinking, he used his free hand like a sword and sliced off his own arm near the shoulder in a single move. As the severed arm fell to the ground with the black thorns inside and rotted quickly, Luin leaped backward to create some distance.

Cassian did not care about the fatal cut on his neck at all. He took a deep breath, his jaw expanding like a dragon. He was about to spew out all the chaos he had gathered in his lungs.

But right at that moment, perfect synchronization was achieved within the chaos of the battle.

Bursting from the shadows beneath Cassian, Umrelion slammed his giant fist right under Cassian’s jaw, violently shutting his mouth.

As the dragon roar got stuck in his throat, Lyria came down from the sky and brought his spear down on top of Cassian with all his might.

Crack!

The gray spear shattered Cassian’s skull, pierced his brain, and went all the way down his neck.

When the shockwave created by Umrelion’s fist and the deadly blow of the spear combined, the massive chaos energy waiting to be unleashed inside Cassian spiraled out of control.

BANG!

Cassian’s body blew up with a massive explosion from the inside out. Flesh, bone, black blood, and waves of dark energy scattered everywhere.

In the middle of the destruction, only one thing remained. A pitch black dragon heart suspended in the air, radiating a suffocating pressure with every beat.

Luin did not miss this chance even though he was left with only one arm. He dashed forward with a wild gleam of victory in his eyes. He was about to stab the white dagger he held in his remaining hand, its tip shining with a divine light, into the defenseless dragon heart. The tip of the dagger was just about to touch the heart when...

The world cracked.

It was a massive and indescribable tremor that made it feel like the core of the planet was shattering.

The ground beneath Luin’s feet suddenly split open. In seconds, no, in fractions of a second, giant trees with pitch black trunks burst from the cracks.

The growth speed of the trees defied reason. In just a few seconds, a massive forest kilometers in diameter and hundreds of meters high swallowed the battlefield.

Thick, snakelike branches shooting out of the trees skewered the last surviving monsters like bugs and lifted them into the air. The battlefield suddenly turned into a deadly labyrinth. Luin, Umrelion, and Lyria found themselves trapped inside this giant wooden hell all of a sudden.

Luin swung his sword against the branches raining down on them like spears from all directions, and Umrelion tore the trees apart with his dark claws. However, this forest was a place where logic did not apply.

From the spot of every branch they cut, two new branches grew in the blink of an eye, attacking them even more savagely. Cut, smash, destroy, the result was always the same. An endless cycle of growth had begun to slowly suffocate them, narrowing down their space to move.

"Get close to me!" Umrelion roared.

The Prince of Curses released a pitch black, nauseating aura from his body. This aura formed a spherical barrier around him. Every branch and leaf trying to enter the barrier dried up, rotted, and turned to dust in seconds. Luin and Lyria took shelter inside this rotting dome without hesitation. The trio was left panting inside this temporary safe zone.

But they were not safe.

In the middle of the forest’s suffocating darkness, a blinding light flashed, turning the sky into day in an instant. When the three princes looked up, they felt their blood run cold. Piercing through the clouds, an enormous arrow even more massive than the forest itself, made entirely of holy mana, was falling right on their spot. The divine pressure radiating from the arrow made Umrelion’s rotting barrier tremble like paper.

Luin’s eyes widened in panic. "No..."

But it was too late. The holy arrow crashed down on them with a force that would wipe out the barrier and everything underneath it. As the absolute coldness of death wrapped around their bodies, the giant eye on Lyria’s forehead began to spin wildly.

Time rewound.

After a momentary sickening feeling of slipping, the three princes found themselves in the same position among the giant trees. Time had rewound, but the memory of death was still fresh and terrifying in their minds. The pain of being crushed under that holy arrow was etched into their souls.

This time, all three of them moved at the same time without saying a single word. They needed to escape this forest and get higher than the treetops before that arrow fell. They launched themselves towards the sky with all their might. The wind was cutting their faces, and the giant trunks of the trees were rapidly blurring past them. They were so close to the top, the light of freedom was seeping in from above.

But before they could even reach the top... They heard a sound.

Just the peaceful rustling of leaves, and right after that, the disgusting, wet sound of flesh and bone being sliced perfectly and smoothly. They couldn’t scream, nor could they feel any pain. The attack was so fast, so absolute and flawless that even their nervous systems couldn’t react.

When Luin turned his head to the side while floating in the air, he faced a terrifying sight. Umrelion’s giant torso was sliced into six pieces. Lyria’s pale body, on the other hand, was cut into dozens of perfect slices, scattering around like a bloody puzzle floating in the air. He realized right then that his own body was missing everything below the waist, and his organs were raining down from the sky.

As the cold embrace of death wrapped them once again, the eye on Lyria’s severed head spun again in a final effort.

Time rewound once again.

This time, they didn’t even find the time to think about what to do. The dizzying feeling created by the rewinding of time hadn’t even passed yet when the air in the room turned ice cold.

Cassian was there.

He was standing right behind Umrelion, his body completely healed and not even his clothes ruined. He had a relaxed and careless attitude, as if he had always been there.

His hand was lightly touching the broad back of the Prince of Curses. However, Cassian’s eyes were not on Umrelion, but on Luin meters away. The dead stare in those red eyes was tearing into Luin’s soul.

The moment Umrelion felt the terrifying presence behind him, he opened his mouth. "Lu..."

BOOOM!

Before he could even finish his word, a holy glare erupted from Cassian’s hand, piercing through the darkness of the forest.

The giant body of the Prince of Curses shattered like sparkling stardust drifting in the dark and faded into nothingness without being able to put up the slightest resistance. Only bright particles floating in the air were left behind.

Time rewound once again.

As soon as the tremor of the loop ended, Umrelion threw himself into the shadows, growling like an animal. His survival instinct had already crushed his pride. He just wanted to escape, to get away from this monster.

But... No attack came at him.

The surroundings were deadly silent. Only a heavy anticipation hung in the air. Even the arrogant Luin had taken a full defensive stance, gripping his sword tightly with both hands and tensing all his muscles.

A single drop of sweat trickling from his flawless forehead was slowly making its way down to his chin. He was scared. He was feeling a primal emotion he hadn’t felt in centuries, right down to his bones.

Seconds that felt like minutes passed. The silence remained unbroken.

A terrible thought appeared in Luin’s mind. Lyria... Lyria couldn’t rewind time again.

With this bitter and freezing truth, the eyes of Luin and Umrelion, who had half emerged from the shadows, turned to where Lyria was supposed to be, as if looking for confirmation.

But the Prince of Lost Time was nowhere to be found.

In his place... Stood a coffin. A tall, upright, ominous black coffin tightly wrapped in thick, glowing purple chains.

The muffled screams leaking out of the coffin sounded not like a human, but like the cries of thousands of tortured souls.

Just hearing that sound was enough to make one lose their mind and make their soul shiver. Lyria was torn from his own time and trapped in endless torment.

Cassian was sitting right next to the coffin. He had pulled his knees to his chest and rested his back against that cursed coffin. His shoulders were relaxed, he looked almost like an ordinary guy resting after a long and tiring day. He had tilted his head slightly, fixing his gaze on the dirt at his feet.

What tore through the silence was his calm, whispering voice mixing with the screams inside the coffin.

"That leaves..." Cassian said, lifting his gaze from the ground and locking it onto Luin and Umrelion. A faint, freezing smile lingered at the corner of his lips. "...two."