Reborn as the Failed Lord with my Resource Gathering System.-Chapter 210: Battling a witch III
The raw power was staggering. It wasn’t just fire or force; it was the total erasure of matter. Where Bonnie stood a moment before, there was now a void, a temporary rupture in reality where energy consumed everything.
The force wave slammed into the boundaries of the campus.
CRUNCH!
For a terrifying, drawn-out second, the world turned white.
The impact struck Dorian directly, not with the force of a punch, but with the pressure of a collapsing mountain.
His teeth jarred, his vision momentarily blacked out, and a guttural roar of pure, pain-filled effort escaped his lips as he channeled every scrap of his Dragon Monarch authority into maintaining the ’Shi’ around the academy.
The sound was unbearable, a tearing, grinding scream of reinforced rock and magical energy fighting against absolute destruction.
The ground he stood on vaporized instantly, but the blast did not penetrate beyond the inner shell of his barrier.
When the white light receded and the cacophony faded into a ringing silence, the scene was one of impossible contradiction.
The exact center of the courtyard, where Bonnie had initiated the sequence, was a mile-wide, perfectly circular crater that plunged dozens of feet into the earth.
There was no smoke, no fire, only superheated, glassy stone where the blast had scoured the ground clean.
Beyond that immense crater, however, the campus stood largely intact.
The main academy building, though blackened and stripped of external decorative elements, was still structurally sound.
The trees were gone, reduced to ash, and every window was shattered, but the core foundation of the school, encased in Dorian’s Authority, had held firm.
But the most immediate change was the Doom Walkers.
The giants, which had been lumbering and wreaking havoc across the school grounds, were gone. They were not simply killed; they were vaporized.
The explosion, being a magical self-destruct sequence, did not discriminate between friend and foe, consuming all complex magical beings caught in its immediate radius.
Silence descended upon the cratered campus, broken only by the distant, frantic sounds of Yelena’s final engagement with the last few remaining stray creatures further out.
Dorian stood at the edge of the newly formed abyss, his chest heaving.
His dark wing had collapsed into mist, and a sheen of sweat covered his brow.
He felt a deep, profound exhaustion, the kind that came from overdrawing on his very essence.
Maintaining ’Shi’ against that level of uncontrolled power had been a drain far beyond a simple battle.
He looked down into the crater. Nothing. Not a trace of Bonnie.
’So, she was serious,’ he thought, letting out a slow, stabilizing breath. ’I dont think i can see witches the same after this. What the hell just happened?’
On the far side of the campus, Yelena Aurelian was momentarily stunned, her crimson flames flickering low as the world had turned white around her.
She had been busy incinerating the legs of a particularly stubborn Doom Walker when the blast hit.
She saw the colossal, annihilating power, felt the impossible heat, and immediately retreated behind a massive, magically reinforced wall she had spontaneously erected.
The wall saved her from the immediate kinetic wave, but the sound had nearly ruptured her eardrums.
When the dust settled, she saw the crater and the eerie, untouched core of the campus shielded by a barely visible dark mist. And then she saw the giants.
Every single one of the remaining giants, save for the one she had been fighting, was reduced to nothing but streaks of scorch marks on the ground.
The creature she had engaged, caught on the absolute periphery of the blast, had been torn to shreds, its internal structure failing simultaneously. It slumped, dead, before her eyes.
She quickly finished off the last struggling creature with a concentrated burst of flame, then responded to her brother’s hail the moment she heard his voice in her mind.
"Brother, was that you?" She immediately asked before all else.
"No, the witch, A self-destruct sequence, if i would have to guess..." Dorian cut her off, his voice flat. "The witch is gone. Erased herself and everything within a thousand-meter radius, trying to cover her tracks and take out the school."
Yelena whistled, a sound of genuine awe and alarm. "I see... she got away."
"No, the witch, A self-destruct sequence, if i would have to guess..." Dorian cut her off, his voice flat. "The witch is gone. Erased herself and everything within a thousand-meter radius, trying to cover her tracks and take out the school."
Yelena whistled, a sound of genuine awe and alarm. "I see... she got away."
"I suspect she knew this was a possibility, and she was prepared to commit to it," Dorian continued, his tone tight with a new suspicion. "I want to talk with you more about this, but first, I need to see the Principal. I want a full breakdown of who was involved in bringing her here. You return home, i’ll get you the leave you need."
Before Yelena could reply, a wave of noise washed over the campus.
Students, who had been hiding in the deepest reinforced bunkers during the assault and subsequent blast, were beginning to emerge.
They saw Dorian standing at the precipice of the massive, smoking crater. They saw the intact, albeit damaged, main academy building behind him.
A collective, staggered gasp went through the crowd, quickly followed by an explosion of cheers.
They were alive; somehow, they were alive.
Dorian was the only thing that had stopped the total erasure of their school, their home, and potentially, their lives. Relief and adulation painted every face. Students started sprinting toward him, tears of joy and nervous exhaustion streaming down their cheeks.
Inasmuch as Dorian wanted to enjoy their cheers, he knew the area could not be totally safe yet, not with Bonnie being missing.
As such, he quickly yelled—
"Everyone, return to your designated safe zones until the all-clear is officially given," he commanded. "No one is to leave until the orders are given to do so."
The students, though bursting with gratitude, immediately complied, their trust in him absolute.
High above the chaos and the cheers, perched precariously on the damaged peak of the academy’s tallest spire—the only part of the roof not completely stripped bare—sat Ciel.
Her delicate, porcelain-like face held an expression of profound, quiet satisfaction.
Her red eyes, usually cool and remote, held a glint of genuine warmth as she watched the successful evacuation and Dorian’s command.
But in that moment, only one thing constantly rang in her mind.
A witch showed herself in public.
...
[A/N]
I am low-key demotivated asf.
