Chapter 450: Chapter 450 - Tamers War - Turning Points - Failed Promise All fallen soldiers lost the infection quickly. The golden fungi that had been growing on their bodies withered and disappeared, absorbed by the light roots. Their breathing became more stable, their colors healthier. The intense glow that began emanating from Ren finally attracted the attention of infected soldiers who were still conscious in the vicinity. "What is that light?" one of them murmured, approaching instinctively. Several more followed him, and when their bare feet or broken boots touched the roots that now extended widely across the ground, something extraordinary happened. The roots began healing them too. "It’s healing!" shouted a soldier upon seeing how the spores on his arms vanished. "Look, the infection is going away!" It was like a savior appearing in the middle of misfortune that many of them had never wanted to experience. "Don’t get close to him!" Liora shouted, alarmed by the uncontrolled bunch of soldiers approaching, but Larissa immediately saw the opportunity. "But you can bring all the infected to the vicinity!" Larissa shouted to approaching soldiers. "Everyone you care about can be brought close to the light network on the ground to be cured!" The response was immediate and emotional. Soldiers who felt better after only seconds in contact with the roots began remembering companions, friends, brothers who had also been infected. Many decided they had important people to save and began searching among the unconscious. "My brother is over there!" a young soldier ran toward an area where several infected lay motionless. "Help me with the sergeant!" another shouted, carefully dragging an older man toward the expanded network. With power absorbed from the first cured, Mooshito grew the network again, extending roots even further. Soldiers who carried unconscious people toward the healing zone attracted the attention of more conscious infected soldiers. The procession began advancing rapidly toward the light. More soldiers arrived carrying infected companions. Some dragged several at once. Others organized groups to transport the most gravely affected. In few minutes, hundreds of soldiers had been purified of golden infection, and each cure fed an enormous network that didn’t stop growing. Ren had become the center of a phenomenon that transformed not only infected bodies, but morale and perhaps in some cases the old "loyalty" to the enemy army thanks to having witnessed the miracle. ♢♢♢♢ Victor was being dragged by retreating soldiers, his unconscious body swaying on the back of a beast and its tamer who ran desperately toward the city’s interior. Behind them, hundreds of earth elemental tamers did everything in their power to absorb Venmont’s storm blows. Massive rock walls sprouted from the ground only to be destroyed by the beast that seemed to have transformed into a true dragon. The defensive line had completely fallen. Yino soldiers from the bridge poured into the city like an unstoppable tide, following Venmont who devastated everything in his path. It wouldn’t be long before they reached the terrorized evacuation groups, and it looked increasingly difficult for them to get Victor to the castle before being overrun by Yino forces. Victor now depended completely on the speed of others’ legs to survive. ♢♢♢♢ In the main arena of battle against Kharzan, yet another tragedy unfolded. Selphira spat blood while screaming with effort that tore her throat. The drop in environmental temperature hadn’t stopped Kharzan... But in direct contact, Selphira’s power was much more than simple cold. It was the absolute absence of heat, the type of power that could stop time itself. When the ancient woman touched Kharzan’s arm with both hands... Not even the monster’s enormous regeneration was sufficient to counteract it. In direct contact with the ancient woman’s ice mana, his arms ended up completely frozen, then his entire body followed. Even with the crystal’s voices guiding him desperately. Selphira destroyed Kharzan’s frozen arms with a single blow. Fragments of ice and corrupt flesh flew in all directions while she, without time to treat her own mortal wound, only allowed extreme cold to stop the bleeding from the enormous perforation in her side. The injury was devastating, yet her determination seemed to transcend physical limitations in ways that spoke of a willpower forged across centuries. But freezing him wasn’t enough. Internal heat grew again, Kharzan’s arms were already regenerating at visible speed, and his body broke ice from within while vapor sprouted from every pore. The regeneration was relentless, powered by even older energies that refused to acknowledge defeat. Selphira pulled her glaive from the ground where she had buried it and swung with all her strength to cut his neck in a decisive movement. The blade separated Kharzan’s head before he could free himself completely and finally ended the battle. Or that should have been the case. But halfway through the cut, the blade found unexpected resistance. Corrupt forces had transformed Kharzan’s neck thickness into something enormous and much more resistant than expected. Muscles had expanded, skin had hardened, and the glaive got stuck before completing its work. Fatigue and pain from the wound hadn’t helped either. Her strength was rapidly fading, each movement costing more effort than her reserves could sustain. But Selphira found enough time to take her main spear and tear it from Kharzan’s torso with a desperate pull that shattered ice and reopened wounds that the monstrosity Kharzan had now become had already managed to heal. Yet the monster had already completely recovered his arms and broke residual ice with the deep corruption enhanced heat waves. Selphira screamed and used the last of her remaining power in a final desperate attack. The spear directed toward the partially cut neck, seeking to finish what the glaive had begun with the weapon most dense in mana from all her repertoire. The weapon that represented her own power and that she had nurtured for so many years within her beast’s abundant mana. But Kharzan reacted in time. His muscles, more enhanced by the steroid of regeneration and destruction than ever, contracted around the spear like a living trap. By squeezing with superhuman force, Selphira’s spear... 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖 Broke. Ancestral ice that had survived centuries of battles shattered between the corrupted claws. The destruction was even symbolically devastating, not just the loss of a weapon, but something that had defined her identity as a warrior for so long. Kharzan pierced Selphira again with the claws of his other arm in a tragic attack that spent the ancient woman’s last forces. This time there was no resistance. No ingenious counterattack with ice power. Only the terrible sound of claws perforating flesh and the muffled moan of someone who knew she didn’t have a speck of remaining mana to counterattack. The brightness in Selphira’s eyes slowly extinguished, like candles going out one by one in a room sinking into eternal darkness. Each breath cost her more effort than the previous one, each heartbeat sounded more distant. Perhaps it was time to close her eyes. Four centuries were enough for any soul, even one as stubborn as hers. She felt increasingly less connected to the present. It was as if most of her had been left lying in the past, scattered among losses she had never completely processed, past joys she had missed too much, sorrows she had converted to ice to avoid having to feel them. Faces began appearing in her blurred mind. Soldiers she had lost in battles no one remembered anymore. Friends who had aged and died while she remained, immutable like permafrost. Her eyes slowly closed. But just before darkness claimed her completely, she felt a touch on her shoulder. A warm light brought her abruptly back to consciousness, but with an amplitude she had never experienced. It was as if every fiber of her being had awakened simultaneously, as if she could feel not only her own body but everything surrounding her. The happiness that still remained flowed through memories she had kept buried for decades. The most important moments that had brought her here, promises throughout her existence she had fought to fulfill. In the end, two faces emerged with perfect clarity. Laura’s smiling face, full of life, joy, and hope. And Liora’s tender face as a baby when born, so small and perfect that it had made Selphira cry for the first time in centuries. Selphira smiled. "Grandmother!" The cry followed the memory, Liora’s voice resonating just behind her. Suddenly she could feel everything with enormous clarity, like having eyes behind her head... No... more than that... 4 pairs of eyes. One pair in each of those touching the light child. Perception expanded exponentially, connecting her with each person in contact with the power network that radiated from Ren. Ren was touching her shoulder, his small hand burning with purifying power. He held Larissa’s hand, who glowed with intense light only less than his. Liora and Luna touched Ren’s back, having been dragged by the long light jump when touching him at the last moment. Even Sirius appeared from her shadow, using all the little power he had managed to recover in recent hours to stop with his last standing beast the claws of Kharzan’s other arm that were directed to cut the ancient woman’s neck. Everything appeared in extremely slow motion. The power Ren had just transferred to her was incredibly pure and warm. Selphira made an instantaneous decision. She wouldn’t use ice to avoid harming the children touching her. She used just water. But it wasn’t common water. Pure and brilliant water that sprouted from her like star tears, so hot with purifying power that it burned Kharzan’s transformed form on contact and healed the mortal wounds in her torso. The external armor that abyssal beasts had created in Kharzan melted like wax, returning his silhouette somewhat to normal. But most of Kharzan’s body was so integrated with corruption that it simply pulverized on contact with the purified water. Selphira extended her left hand toward fragments of her destroyed spear and her right hand took the glaive. Water touched pieces of ancestral ice, and something miraculous happened. Fragments joined with the glaive to reform her spear, but not as it had been before. The spear became whiter, brighter, sharper, and as if forged from solid light instead of common ice. But corruption didn’t surrender without fighting. Crystal voices became enraged upon sensing so close the presence of purifying brightness in the ancient woman. They increased corruption’s power to maximum, channeling energy that made the air itself turn purple with concentrated malice. Kharzan’s partially destroyed body swelled with abyssal power, regenerating at impossible speed while the crystal voices screamed annihilation orders. Selphira didn’t surrender either. With a cry that combined four centuries of determination with pure power Ren had given her, she injected everything she had left into the reconstituted spear. The blade became so bright it was painful to look at directly. It was pure light converted into weapon, hope transformed into lethal edge. The blow that followed cut through corruption as if it were mist. The pure light spear pierced Kharzan’s thickened neck in a brutal cut that separated head from body in a single perfect movement. Absolute purification. Kharzan’s head fell to the ground with a dull sound, his eyes losing purple brightness while corruption vanished like smoke in the wind. Selphira immediately fainted, but with a smile of complete satisfaction adorning her face. She had fulfilled her promise.