72: Chapter 72 The Final Battle
The howling wind tore at their ears, and the boundless darkness seemed to swallow everyone's consciousness.
After tens of seconds of terrifying free fall, PD and all the players finally felt solid ground beneath their feet, crashing heavily onto a cold, hard rock layer.
"Ouch..." PD rubbed his virtual body, which felt almost broken, and struggled to get up from the ground.
Surrounding them was no longer the blue sky and white clouds of Uruk, but a vast space shrouded in endlessDark Blue ghost fires and deathly silence. Above, inverted black spires hung like the Sword of Damocles.
This was the realm of death that the living could never set foot in—the Underworld.
Before the players could recover from the dizziness of the high-altitude fall, a terrifying roar that shattered the soul suddenly came from the dark abyss ahead.
"BOOM——!!!"
The Mother Goddess of Creation, Tiamat, as massive as a mountain, carrying tens of thousands of Lahmu and a sea of black mud, crashed heavily onto the wilderness of the Underworld!
"Ahhhh——"
A mournful song echoed through the valley.
Tiamat's beautiful body struggled on the ground, trying to stand up again. Her huge pair ofDark Blue wings had broken from the fall, but the endless Chaos Tide immediately surged and spread in all directions, attempting to assimilate this dead realm into the amniotic fluid of life.
"It's over! The black mud is spreading again!"
In the livestream, the players who had just breathed a sigh of relief felt their scalps tingle again.
However, just as the black mud was about to engulf PD and the others, a small but infinitely majestic figure stood in front of everyone.
"Don't act wild in someone else's territory, you hopeless monster!"
Ereshkigal, the golden-haired twin-tailed mistress of the Underworld, slammed her giant spearblade heavily onto the ground.
In her ruby-like eyes burned the absolute fury of a deity.
"This is the underground world! My absolute domain, Ereshkigal's! Even if you are the Mother Goddess of Creation, under the laws of the Underworld, you will obediently lie down!"
With Ereshkigal's angry shout, the entire Underworld seemed to come alive.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Countless red spears, like towering pillars, burst from the cracked earth, forming a huge cage that firmly pinned Tiamat's massive body in place!
The originally surging, deadly black mud tsunami, under the suppression of the Underworld's laws, instantly slowed to a crawl, and even the edges of the mud began to freeze and shatter under theDark Blue ghost fire!
[System Notification: All enemy units are suppressed by 'Cold of the Underworld', all attributes reduced by 50%! The 'Chaos Tide'Devour effect is greatly weakened!]
"Nice!!!"
"Ereshkigal, my wife, is invincible! This home-field buff is amazing!"
"Weakened this monster by half, now we can finally fight!" All the players instantly became excited.
But PD noticed that Ereshkigal, standing at the front, was trembling violently all over.
Her hands, gripping the spearblade tightly, were white-knuckled from excessive force. Her fair forehead was covered in fine sweat, and even a trace of golden divine blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.
"No... it's not working..."
Ereshkigal gritted her teeth, her voice tinged with despair, "Her magical energy scale is too massive... The Underworld's authority can barely suppress the proliferation of the black mud..."
As if to confirm her words, Tiamat let out a sharp screech, and the black mud surged again. The red spears began to emit cracking sounds under the corrosion, unable to bear the strain.
"Are we going to lose?!" PD shouted in despair.
At this critical moment.
In this cold, deathly valley filled with decay, suddenly... a pink petal drifted down.
"Huh?"
One petal, two petals, millions of petals.
Soft pink-white petals, like a spring breeze, miraculously blew into this lifeless Underworld.
Where they passed, the deadly black mud stopped surging, and under the purification of the petals, even tender green grass grew!
"How could I miss such a terrible time, big brother's entrance?"
A frivolous yet reassuring voice with a smile came from behind everyone.
Everyone turned around abruptly.
There stood a white-robed magician with a staff and dreamlike silver hair, walking toward them with a smile, stepping on the flowers covering the ground.
"Merlin?!"
PD rubbed his eyes repeatedly, almost unable to believe his VR window, "How... how are you here?! When the front line collapsed earlier, the system clearly showed that your Servant's spirit origin had dissipated!"
The livestream's bullet comments were also shocked:
"Holy crap, the scammer mage has been resurrected?!"
"Did Old Thief Gu give him a resurrection item?"
"Oh dear, don't say it so harshly."
Merlin walked up to Ereshkigal, raised his staff, and a massive flower magic instantly neutralized the raging black mud, greatly easing Ereshkigal's burden.
He turned around and winked playfully at the players, "When thedefense line was breached earlier, it was too chaotic. Theclone I was summoned as a Servant was indeed destroyed in the accident."
"Then you are now..."
"Because the crisis in this world has reached a level that even 'that tower' cannot ignore, so I had no choice but to use myOntology, from the distant end of the starry sea, step by step, and run over."
"Run... run over?!"
In the livestream of the lore expert Chu He, this doctoral student from Shangjing University was so excited he almost jumped up.
"Brothers! Did you understand?! In the setting, Merlin is a half-incubus with the trait of 'immortality', and he is forever imprisoned in the ideal realm 'Avalon', so he cannot be summoned as a heroic spirit of the dead!"
"His currentOntology ran all the way from theOther dimensions of Avalon, on his own two legs, into the Underworld, which cannot accommodate the living, to save the day!"
After hearing Chu He's explanation, the bullet comments were stunned by this sudden surprise.
"Running into the Underworld on his own legs to save people?! Teacher Mei, I will never call you a scammer again!"
"Hope in desperate times! With Ereshkigal's suppression mechanism and Merlin's purification of the black mud, this is stable! All Servants, prepare for the final battle!"
With the players' rekindled fighting spirit, the immersive CG slowly faded out.
"Buzz——"
With a dull system roar, a tactical holographic sandbox, larger than any before, shrouded inDark Blue ghost fire and endless black mud, unfolded before all the players!
[Main Story Final Stage: Absolute Demonic Beast Front - The Final Underworld]
[Clear Objective: Completely repel the Mother Goddess of Creation, Tiamat!]