Chapter 703: Heart
Every ghostly creature in the Ghostrealm had been utterly annihilated. Not a single spirit remained—not even the Heaven-tier ghosts. The place was a graveyard, silent and absolute.
None of the ghosts’ spells could touch this level-39 Hellfire Elemental. The Soulfire burning on its body was their doom—one brush with that flame and you’d be snuffed out, erased from existence...
The Ghostrealm was like a vat of oil, just waiting for Hellfire to stride in and set it ablaze—one step, and everything would go up in smoke, consumed to the last drop.
If Anderson feared anything, it was Hellfire Elementals. As a sentient artifact, he loathed anything designed to snuff out spirit forms—especially those that made your existence feel fragile and temporary.
Even a single touch was a death sentence—no second chances.
Leon’s face was carved with tension as he watched the Hellfire Elemental rise from the pit. For a moment, his eyes eased, but the dread never fully left.
Thank the gods it’s only a level-38 Hellfire Elemental...
If it were level-39, it wouldn’t even need to lift a finger—just a stroll through the ranks, and its Soulfire would burn half the party to cinders...
A savage wind roared, whipping up snowflakes as sharp as blades. They spun through the air and, riding the storm, descended on the Hellfire Elemental clawing its way out of the pit.
A cacophony of clanging metal rang out—Hellfire’s advance began to tremble, its heavy steps faltering with each echo.
Leon raised his Dragon Staff, unleashing a frost spell the instant danger loomed.
Anderson, who’d almost wet himself, gritted his teeth and floated out from behind Leon, wielding the Wheel of Arcana to conjure a swirling vortex of frost, easily seven or eight meters across.
A deluge of frost magic erupted from the vortex—ice spears, icicles, blades of frozen wind—hammering Hellfire like a relentless storm.
Reina let out a draconic roar, transforming into her Frost Dragon form. Ancient dragon-tongue incantations flowed from her lips as perfect crystalline snowflakes materialized in midair, each one a work of art.
Snowflakes, each over a meter wide, descended upon Hellfire, slowing its lumbering advance even further.
As Leon launched his savage assault, the Dark Elves finally snapped out of their terror and joined in, bombarding Hellfire with a barrage of frost spells.
United, everyone poured their strength into the attack. At last, Hellfire’s feet froze in place—no matter how immense its power, it could not take another step.
Leon lifted the Dragon Staff in his right hand and flipped open the Book of Curses with his left. Arcane syllables spilled from his mouth, conjuring a mass of frost in the air that coalesced into a dragon of ice, easily ten meters long.
The ice dragon, forged from pure black frost, roared and surged across dozens of meters, smashing into Hellfire with devastating force.
Instantly, the dark green flames cloaking Hellfire’s body began to shudder violently.
Hellfire’s body retreated, inching deeper into the heart of Nightfall Gorge.
"Don’t stop—whatever you do, don’t let that beast get close!"
Elsa, seasoned and sharp, barked orders at the remaining Dark Elves, knowing full well that Hellfire must never be given room to maneuver.
Hellfire may lack spellcasting, more golem than sorcerer, but a level thirty-eight Hellfire still had one trick up its sleeve: it could collapse into a ball and drop from the sky again.
This time, it wouldn’t pack the punch of a high-altitude strike, but if Hellfire landed behind the group in this dead-end gorge, they’d be trapped and slaughtered for sure.
A torrent of frost spells—practically a flood of magic—became the critical force holding Hellfire at bay.
Hellfire staggered back, suppressed but not truly wounded; only its dark green soulfire flickered wildly, refusing to go out.
They’d driven Hellfire to within three or four hundred meters of the gorge’s sheer cliff when Reina finally unleashed her Zero Degree Dragon Breath.
A river of ice-blue dragonfire burst from Reina’s maw, glittering like starlight, slamming into Hellfire and snuffing out its soulflame in an instant.
Hellfire raised its arms and howled, its body now shrouded in only a thin layer of Soulfire. Once that last flicker died, Hellfire itself would be no more—its flame was both life and soul.
But with everyone hammering it with spells, Hellfire could only keep falling back, step by grudging step.
Suddenly, the depths of the gorge rippled with violent spatial distortion, as if their magic had triggered something ancient. The world itself began to twist before their eyes.
The ground shattered, breaking into massive chunks that tumbled downwards like a collapsing dream.
At the very heart of Nightfall Gorge, a vast abyss yawned open. The falling earth vanished into its depths within seconds, swallowed whole.
Hellfire, too, plummeted into the abyss.
Mid-fall, Hellfire curled into a massive dark-green fireball, desperate to claw its way back up.
But its flames faded rapidly—gone in a heartbeat. The green stone that made up its body turned a dull gray, lifeless as common rock.
Crack—
With a sharp snap, Hellfire’s body shattered into rubble and tumbled into the abyss below.
The spells they’d cast vanished above the abyss, as if swallowed whole by some invisible maw.
Thump. Thump.
Thump. Thump.
With the earth shattered and the abyss exposed, the ever-present heartbeat thundered, deafening and relentless.
A limitless, malevolent aura seeped out from the depths below.
Suddenly, a Dark Elf near the abyss shrieked, clawing at his own chest in a frenzy—he tore out his still-beating heart with bare hands.
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The rhythm of the heart matched the abyssal pulse. The Dark Elf showed no pain—only wild fanaticism and satisfaction as he held his own heart aloft.
While everyone else reeled from the overwhelming heartbeat, the Dark Elf leapt with his heart into the abyss...
His crazed, feverish cries echoed, but faded almost instantly.
Leon saw it clearly—the Dark Elf’s face withered, aging in seconds as his magic, life, and soul were devoured.
A second after plunging into the abyss, he was dead—utterly and completely. Only an ancient corpse tumbled into the darkness, swallowed alongside the shattered earth.
When the last fragments of earth disappeared, the group finally glimpsed what lurked in the abyss.
A mass of thick, evil black mist hovered in the depths. The sinister heartbeat thundered from within.
With every pulse, the mist contracted and expanded, like a living heart beating in the darkness.
Slowly, the black mist parted, revealing a colossal heart—taller than a man—exposed to all.
It was just a heart, yet it pulsed with unnatural life. Countless arcane runes were etched across its surface, glowing and shifting with each beat. The surrounding black mist was devoured and then spewed out again as endless, inky runes.
There was a terrible, seductive profundity hidden within those runes. One glance and you were lost—if you reached out to touch the heart, you’d touch the very origin of magic itself.
In an instant, that thought infected everyone’s mind.
And then, someone acted—a Dark Elf, unable to resist the lure, believed that by touching the heart, every spell would become an ultimate sigil, even the ones he’d just learned.
A seventh-level ultimate sigil, right within reach...
The Dark Elf leapt off the cliff, face glazed with bliss, reaching for the heart—even as he fell, his body began to wither and age.
In just over a second, his magic, life, and even soul vanished, leaving only a decrepit corpse to be devoured by the abyss below.
Witnessing this, Leon was the first to snap out of it—cold sweat dripped from his brow as he scrambled backwards.
Constantine’s heart!
Damn it, that’s Constantine’s heart!
Leon cast a spell in a flash, pulling everyone back—even slapping a couple of weakened Mage Hands across their faces for good measure.
This was a lethal temptation. No wonder the allure was so strong—it was Constantine’s heart playing tricks.
No one understood better than Leon just how terrifying Constantine’s power truly was. Even the legends in books were enough to kill any greedy impulse stone dead.
Legend had it that Constantine died horribly, cursed before his demise, and even in death, his body was ravaged by that curse. Only the skull—said to be the source of all wisdom—remained untouched.
When Constantine’s divine realm was unearthed at the height of the magical age, every inch was picked clean by swarms of powerful mages.
Everything hidden was eventually unearthed.
Legend says that after his death, Constantine fused his body with the Tree of Wisdom, using its power to suppress the curse.
His heart, the most vital part, was found and recorded as being sealed in a profoundly dark place within the Tree of Wisdom.
That place was completely sealed, so the curse couldn’t spread—but when Constantine’s heart was found, many mages fell to its temptation, as if the heart itself had developed a will.