The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 373: Descent of the Overlord

Realization dawned on Qilin.

Epilogue was the pride monster, and Lilia the awakener.

It seemed that the palace hall under the Sacred Mountain Church was indeed holding an evil ritual.

Lilia wasn’t the first sacrifice. The Godbearer Cult had attempted the ritual many times—Lilia was simply the only one to survive.

Somehow, the Cult had merged Lilia and Epilogue, the head of pride monsters.

It might be a long process. That was why Lilia had lived as herself for a while after the success of the ritual, sent to Li City on an exchange program. She declined Qilin Guild’s invitation and later went missing.

It was possible that Lilia had been merged with Epilogue after her disappearance, of course. That was something Qilin couldn’t know for sure.

The point still stood though: Lilia was both a pride monster and an awakener, which meant she was neither a pride monster or an awakener, and the Heavenly Way could not restrict her.

They could do anything.

Then why did Lilia choose to make a move during the last night of the Crimson Tide?

In theory, Lilia could attack anytime.

Perhaps it was because the other elite monsters could only attack humans when the Crimson Tide came. Perhaps there was another scheme involved.

With the questions in mind, Qilin asked tentatively, “You’ve defied the Heavenly Way. Aren’t you worried about the punishment?”

“What of the Heavenly Way?”

Lilia’s smile dropped, her eyes turning prideful and dark like she had switched personalities. “I have a more important mission to complete—to wipe out all humans.”

Not just the awakeners, but all humans.

That was Epilogue’s answer.

“Unfortunately,” Dragon’s eyes glinted coldly, “I’d like to live a little longer to open the Gates of Closure and take a look.”

“If there’s no deal...” X stretched his arms and smirked. “Let us fight.”

Qilin nodded. “Let’s go.”

Lilia vanished instantly.

She’s quick!

Qilin started. Although he wasn’t that strong in close combat, his eyes were keen, and even he only caught a fleeting glimpse of her moving figure.

A second later, she appeared behind him.

—Blank.

Qilin thought, tapping into his full Willpower to influence the mind of all organisms three meters from him.

Lilia, who was just about to pierce through Qilin’s heart, felt all the emotions, thoughts, and logic in her mind draining quickly. She even forgot who she was and why she was standing there.

A second later, she regained control over her mind.

With a quick leap, she retreated to twenty meters away.

Qilin whirled around, his keen eyes searching for Lilia to use Eidos on her.

Lilia, however, didn’t give him the chance. She disappeared again before reappearing before Dragon a second later, her right hand, morphing into a crimson blade, stabbing into Dragon’s chest.

Dragon stood where he was, his heterochromic eyes twitching, radiating a strange force field around him to stop Lilia’s attack.

Moreover, the pressure was growing in intensity, the weight on her doubling.

Feeling the great threat, Lilia broke free of Dragon’s forcefield with an explosive power that even dwarfed other pride monsters, flying twenty meters back.

The moment she steadied her footing, an intangible poisonous wind swirled about her.

Black particles enveloped her, but the dense cover they formed couldn’t really make contact with Lilia.

Long foreseen X’s attack, Lilia had conjured a transparent wall of wind element around her.

Bam!

A second later, the wall exploded and scattered the tens of thousands of poisonous particles. When the current quickly emerged again, Lilia was already gone.

She leapt over the three men, the fingers of her right hand splayed.

Countless red pillars of light fell from the sky and shot into the ground, trapping them in a red cage. Then the ground cracked. Red crystals shot out like blooming flowers of red ice, breaking the prison and freezing the three men.

Without hesitation, she shot a giant beam of red light from her palm, sweeping over the red crystal flowers and melting everything. The entire road was destroyed, plowed into a ditch. The shopping mall not far from here had a hole put into it as well.

Was it done?

Lilia looked ahead, her eyes shaking.

She finally realized then.

This was an illusion!

...

In reality.

The moment Qilin said, “Let’s go,” he had trapped Lilia with an illusion secretly. Although Lilia had fought the three men for close to a minute in the illusion, it had only been two seconds in the real world.

Lilia woke up then.

But it was too late. The two seconds had been enough for Dragon to activate his Talent with her as the target.

“Good work. Leave the rest to me.”

Dragon walked up to her.

The night wind lifted his long hair, revealing his beautiful face. Under the moonlight, his heterochromic eyes look eerie.

“The Overlord descends. All will kneel in submission.”

The world seemed to dim, and a forcefield powerful to the point of absurdity swarmed up to Lilia from all directions, sacred and dignified in a divine way.

Nothing else existed around Lilia but herself and Dragon.

All she could see was gray fog. It seemed to be flowing, but also still; silently lonesome, but also boisterously noisy.

It was a space of incomprehensible contradictions.

Lilia frowned, extending her right hand and shooting a deadly red ray that was doubly powerful. That, however, disappeared immediately, or it would be more accurate to say that it was seized and absorbed by the gray fog.

She was suddenly reminded of a line from mythologies: when the world first started, there was chaos.

This felt like being in a world of chaos.

A chair consisting of the fog that embodied chaos appeared behind Dragon. He quietly sat down and leaned in with his hands on the armrests, one hand propping his head up like a god with a careless attitude.

At this moment, Dragon was the overlord of this world.

“Let the judgment begin.”

His voice was quiet, but deep, ancient, and dignified like the sound of the world.

Then the chaos dispersed.

The world around them became a desolate wasteland of gray. The sky was all muddled and gray as well, making the line between the sky and land obscured.

On the wasteland stood an ancient stone platform for judging sinners. Two bronze pillars rose into the sky with black chains wrapping around them, tying Lilia’s two arms.

An intangible power forced her to kneel, but she refused to and remained standing.

“Rain,” Dragon said.

Soon, cold, sharp gray rain fell quickly from the sky, the droplets hitting Lilia in all parts like deadly lasers.

The raindrops didn’t inflict physical damage on her, nor did they do psychic damage. It felt like they were cutting away Lilia’s essence of existence, slowly melting it away.

It didn’t feel like dying, but disappearing.