Chapter 274: The Phantom In The Castle

I turned to Azalea, my voice low.

“This… this is where you fought the Ferans?”

She nodded slowly, her expression distant.

“Yes. Fought and lost.”

I didn’t say anything. Just stood beside her in silence.

Azalea stayed quiet for a while, then finally spoke again.

“I can feel Dahlia’s seal in the area. It’s faint, but it’s still holding.”

I narrowed my eyes and extended my Psynapse, trying to sense what she was talking about. I swept my perception outward, layer by layer, searching for any trace of Essence patterns or sealed runes. But I found nothing. It felt like a dead zone.

She continued, her voice calm but warning.

“Once we cross the seal… we’ll come face to face with it.”

My brows furrowed.

“We can’t use the seal to our advantage somehow? Trap it? Limit its power?”

Azalea shook her head.

“This seal is already doing all it can. It’s not keeping the Phantom in—it’s stopping it from spreading. If it weren’t here, this entire range might have fallen under its influence by now.”

I let out a long breath and began activating my core abilities.

“[Essence Engine].”

My core pulsed, and Essence flowed cleanly through my body.

“[Absolute Domain].”

A field of invisible authority bloomed around me, sharpening my senses and syncing me with the ambient Essence.

“[Psynapse Fracture].”

My mind split into two, each capable of processing thoughts, sensing danger, and shaping my will.

I felt the shift immediately. My power surged. Everything became sharper, clearer. I was ready.

Azalea floated forward and placed her palm on a broken boulder resting near the cliff edge. At first, nothing happened. Then the air in front of us shimmered like heat waves on a summer road, revealing a veil of distorted space.

She looked back.

“Let’s go.”

I gave a nod, dismissed Silver with a thought, and sent him back to the core.

Then I stepped forward and passed through the veil.

The world changed.

I found myself in a sealed pocket realm—one I wasn’t prepared for. The entire sky was gray, as if the color had been drained from it. The ground was cracked and lifeless, a wasteland of broken soil and dust. No trees. No rocks. No signs of nature. Just a flat, empty world.

And there, floating in the sky like a nightmare, was a castle.

It looked eerily familiar—almost identical to the one Azalea had on the floating runes. But it wasn’t resting on land or stone. No. The castle hovered on clouds made entirely of Deathmist, thick and roiling like a storm given form.

The castle itself wasn’t made of stone either—it was formed entirely from that same black, corrupted mist, its spires leaking waves of it into the air like smoke from a dying flame.

I stared at it, eyes narrowed.

“That’s… way too much Deathmist. How much life force did you gather here?”

Azalea floated beside me, her face serious.

“A lot. More than I should have.”

She looked at the castle with narrowed eyes.

“The Deathmist has consumed it all. And now… I think the Phantom has evolved.”

I turned toward her.

“Evolved? Into what?”

Her voice was grim.

“I don’t know. But this—” she gestured toward the castle, “—this isn’t something it should have been capable of.”

I studied the castle again.

“But why does it look like yours?”

She gave a bitter smile.

“Because it consumed my soul fragment. Somewhere in that corrupted mind… it thinks it is me.”

My wings flared open behind me, Essence flowing through the veins etched in their structure. I took one step forward, ready to launch myself into the air and fly straight toward the castle. But before I could, Azalea raised her hand.

“Wait.”

I paused and looked at her, waiting for an explanation. Her expression was calm, but her eyes were sharp.

“Just wait,” she said again. “It knows we’re here. Let’s see how it responds first.”

I gave a slow nod and stepped back. With a thought, I summoned my staff into my hand. The familiar weight settled into my grip. I kept my eyes locked on the floating castle, ready for anything.

We didn’t have to wait long.

The clouds of Deathmist under the castle began to churn violently. They twisted and bubbled like something alive. Then a chunk of the mist broke off—massive and fast—ripping through the sky like a meteor with a long black tail. It slammed into the cracked ground with a thunderous crash.

From within the dark fog of that impact, figures began to emerge.

Tall humanoid shapes stepped out—each one nearly seven feet tall, forged from the same rolling Deathmist that made up the clouds.

Their forms were solid but wreathed in shifting black smoke. They looked like smaller, tighter, more refined versions of the twenty-foot-tall Phantom we had fought before.

Azalea’s voice was steady beside me. “Its Creation Law has evolved.”

Even before I could fully process that, another chunk of Deathmist detached and came crashing down. Then another. And another.

One after the other, twenty in total fell from the sky like divine punishments, each giving birth to more of those mist-forged soldiers.

When the haze cleared, we stood across from an army—twenty different units, all shaped from Deathmist, each carrying different weapons, wearing mist-shaped armor, and radiating violent auras.

Some wielded massive cleavers. Others held scythes, spears, axes, or bows formed from condensed Deathmist. Their stances were not random—they stood like disciplined warriors, grouped and positioned as if they had purpose, strategy, and coordination.

Then the sky twisted.

The clouds above the castle swirled violently, spinning inward like a vortex. Essence trembled in the air around us. A moment later, space itself seemed to creak, and the air turned heavy.

From the center of the castle, something began to emerge.

A massive, colossal finger.

The mist parted like curtains as a giant finger slowly pushed out of the castle, tearing through the sky. It wasn’t vague or shapeless—it had bone structure, folds of skin, and a damn nail at the end, all made of the mist.

It was real. Physical. Not some loose cloud of Deathmist. The finger was easily five hundred meters long and a hundred meters wide, its shape too detailed, too monstrous.

Thick waves of black mist poured off it as it moved, forming swirling currents of corrupted air in its wake.

Then, without warning, it launched forward.

It tore through the sky like a divine spear. The wind split apart. Essence scattered. And for a moment, I felt like an insect under a descending mountain.

My eyes widened in shock, not just from the sheer size—but from the speed. One moment it was far above, and the next… it was already over us.

Everything else fell silent.

My grip tightened around my staff.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!