Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 470: The ray of hope when there is no other way out?
In an instant, it seemed as if the world had returned to its original state of silence. All light shrank and collapsed at the smallest point, forming countless dark cracks that sunk inward. Eternal chaos descended here, depriving the soul of its perception of the outside world. Time stopped, space stagnated, and both sides in the fierce battle were shocked to find that they had lost their cognition of the things around them. They could still see each other's existence, the empty world in front of them, and the battlefield extending eternally behind the enemy... but they could not put this concept into words, and could not even form even the slightest thought in their minds. Thoughts lost their existence, and souls lost their weight, floating in the eternal chaos, as if they were in a black ocean, wandering involuntarily with the rise and fall of the tide.

The earth is a dry and cracked scorched earth, and the sky is an endless darkness. This darkness is as silent as steel, and yet burning like fire. The temperature solidified into deathly silence gradually burns everything to ashes. Every piece of debris floating in the sky is wrapped in a solid shell, neither human nor animal, neither claws nor teeth, neither alive nor dead, in a realm that common sense cannot understand. At a glance, it looks chaotic and empty.

In the pitch-black crack, the world is as blank as before birth and as empty as after the end of the world. The extreme darkness can even make people mistakenly think that they see pale colors. However, only those who are in this dark world can clearly perceive that this place is not empty. Those creatures whose shapes cannot be seen by the naked eye, whose existence cannot be confirmed by the mind, and whose lives cannot be confirmed by the senses are hidden in the deepest part of the crack. They open their snow-white eyes, cling to the edge of the black hole, and cast a gloomy and malicious gaze on the residents of another world. They whisper, speak loudly, and speak sharply... to evaluate these weak souls. What they say is some indescribable weird language, like chaotic mumbling, which makes people feel painful just by listening, and the eardrums are pierced with needles and dripping with scarlet blood. The uncontrollable fear gradually boils in the chest cavity and dominates everyone's emotions.

Before the birth of the world, everything was still undefined, life had not been born, death had not appeared; light could not be seen, darkness was only a fleeting blur... All life and death, time and space, fate, and reincarnation were still in a confused state. They existed here, but could not become facts, be observed and defined by people. Therefore, we can say that the lives at that time were the most ignorant. They did not know how they were born, when they would die, what the light they saw meant, and what the state after the light went out meant. Their souls were more blank, empty, and hollow than chaos itself.

Because they cannot understand anything, the language of the universe is so indescribable to them, which makes them feel painful, fearful, and instinctively want to escape. The knowledge and secrets of the universe chase the souls of mortals, but they retreat in fear due to their ignorance. Therefore, later philosophers defined this phenomenon as the fear of the unknown.

Then, the power of the Dread Witch Scarlet can naturally be equated and determined to be the power of cosmic nothingness.

She used the nothingness of the universe to induce fear in the hearts of living beings, making them realize their own insignificance and humbleness in the face of the vast unknown realm, and they could not help but have the idea of ​​self-destruction. Perhaps, only by eliminating one's own subjective consciousness and integrating both body and mind into the nothingness world where one was born can one understand the true meaning of the universe and pursue eternal truth.

The temperature around began to drop.

If it was bone-chilling cold before, then now it was an irresistible deep and cold that would completely freeze people's minds and even their souls. Even the passionate and boiling blood in the chest caused by the war could not dispel this sudden low temperature. At the same time, the darkness in the sky was torn apart.

It was as if an invisible giant hand penetrated into the clouds and split the heavy and dense dark clouds into two. A huge wound visible to the naked eye appeared, like the eye of a deep-sea whirlpool, or the center of a violent tornado. It looked extremely calm on the surface, but it conveyed an extremely suppressed violence and deathly silence.

Everyone's pupils shrank involuntarily when they saw this scene. The ominous premonition in their hearts finally became a fact at this moment: the ethereal monster, or pale whale, that had always been lingering behind the clouds, suddenly changed direction, poked its head downwards, and through the huge wound torn by the vortex of dark clouds, it gradually poked its body out of the darkness. Its huge body pressed down on the surrounding sky, and the void began to crack, crackling and tearing open scars visible to the naked eye. At the same time, violent gale roared across the sky and the earth, driving the extreme cold and heavy shadows towards the battlefield. The sound sounded like the roar of a wild beast and the roar of a giant, which was chilling.

The world was turned upside down by the hand of the Great Judge. The noisy whispers of the universe penetrated the ignorant fear of all living beings and gradually moved towards the end of chaos.

Nevi subconsciously stopped the action in her hands. Her snow-white hair was blown up by something more gloomy and empty, not by the wind, revealing her beautiful silver eyes. She stared at the giant beast that fell to the earth in amazement, and saw its shadow slowly spread from the horizon, like a wave of the four seas, swallowing up everything in the world. Then she could not help but feel fear, as if she saw the impending destruction. For many years, she had always used blood magic to induce fear in the hearts of her enemies, but facing the scene of this annihilation world, she had to admit that the fear she had mastered was too superficial, just an instinct that existed in both human nature and animal nature: fear of injury, fear of pain, fear of death... But the real fear is not to define this acquired will, but to realize that you are heading towards destruction, but you know nothing about it.

She felt her throat was hoarse, like a dry river, revealing the cracked riverbed underneath. She needed a hearty rainstorm to moisten her lungs and relieve her depressed mood. But the rainstorm never came. The more she expected it, the stronger the feeling of depression became. In the end, even the voice she spoke out was as difficult as a dry river: "What is that...?"

She had once faced the power of the Grand Inquisitor together with Wolfgang, the leader of Silver Moon, and had had such astonishing questions at that time. Even now, she still asked the same question, because even if she was given a second, third... or even countless chances, she could not understand the nature of the other party's power, just as humans could not understand the nature of chaos.

Naturally, no one could answer this question, because they were all replaced by fear, as if they had returned to the era when life had not yet developed wisdom and rationality. It was difficult for them to think about the problem on their own. Even Linger, who was always the calmest, was trembling slightly as he clenched his magic gun. He just gritted his teeth and tried his best not to let his emotions spill out. Among all the people, only Saint Shallia's eyes were not filled with fear and panic, but confusion.

She looked at the entire dark world that was gradually collapsing, listened to the hollow whispers coming from behind the pitch-black cracks, and the savage and vast outline of the giant monster in the void seemed to be reflected in her eyes... The blue-haired girl opened her mouth, wanting to say something but stopping herself, but in the end, she couldn't say anything.

At her fingertips, a golden thread disappeared silently.

"It's not over yet! It's my turn!"

Just when everyone thought that the collapse and nothingness of the universe was inevitable, and their inner desire for resistance and fluke were gradually being eaten away by fear, a figure suddenly appeared in their sight. A maid with blonde hair and red eyes walked past the crowd and came to the front. She raised the silver-white cube in her hand towards the huge beast of nothingness above her head. A crisp sound echoed in the dark world -

"Game, start!"

The next moment, a faint blue light overflowed from between her fingers, and a phantom light as bright as day surrounded everyone's figures.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)