"Tsk. She sure runs fast—top-tier survival skills."
The Herta curled her lip, a bit regretful at not collecting more complete data on an Lord Ravager in a near-death state.
Then, as if remembering something, she flipped her wrist and produced an object from nowhere, tossing it toward Acheron who still stood quietly.
"Hey, catch. Xiao Ming specifically told me to give you this when you were done."
It was a plump, dewy peach, radiating a tempting sweetness.
In that moment, a faint yet genuine light rippled through Acheron's formerly hollow, lifeless eyes.
Almost by reflex, she reached out gently and caught the peach as it traced a graceful arc through the air.
"Thank you."
Her voice was soft, the ever-present ethereality seeming to thin, tinged with an almost imperceptible hint of human warmth.
She quite liked peaches.
They held the joy of life's growth and the sweetness of sun and rain, yet were so fragile and fleeting. That contradiction always sent tiny ripples across her long-still heart.
Watching Acheron come alive at a peach, even showing a touch of satisfaction, The Herta couldn't help but purse her lips, a complex look on her face.
For those like them—existences summoned by Lu Jingming through special means—Lu Jingming could be… a bit unfair.
His understanding of them sometimes exceeded their own.
Likes, temperament, hidden wishes, and subtle longings buried deep within—Lu Jingming always seemed to grasp them exactly, and produce the perfect key.
Just like now: though Acheron had only just been summoned into this realm, she had almost immediately become one of Lu Jingming's most reliable enforcers.
And to rekindle the human glow in the eyes of one who walked the Path of Nihility—a being who should scorn all—the cause was not some earth-shaking miracle, but a peach so ordinary it was common across countless worlds.
Who else but Lu Jingming would think of this—or do it?
All her life, Acheron had searched along an endless road for fleeting encounters and the meaning of existence, to resist that ever-gnawing, maddening sense of void.
And Lu Jingming, by chance, gave her a new, unexpected encounter and anchor, letting her slip free of the bottomless nihil long enough to continue her long and lonely quest.
Thus she had chosen, without hesitation, to help Lu Jingming—coming to the star's inner sea to intercept the Lord Ravager Phantylia.
"At last, mission accomplished. This place can be quiet for a while."
The Herta rose from the throne and stretched lazily, the curves of her figure fully on display.
"Alright, we're done."
She clapped her hands. Her figure and the tech-forward throne began to fade, like data being erased.
"Remember to tell Xiao Ming I helped him clean this up. He owes me double for lab consumables—not a gram less."
Before her words fell, she and the throne vanished completely, as if they had never been.
Acheron stood quietly, gazing in the direction The Herta had disappeared, silent for a moment.
She slowly turned to the halo of planar will still trembling and rippling with fear, her empty gaze resting on it for a long time.
"Only oblivion…"
She murmured, her voice as soft as a sigh yet bearing an ageless, chilling weight.
"…is the eternal demise."
In the end, her purple silhouette thinned like ink melting into water, blending into nihility and disappearing from the now-peaceful star's inner sea.
The inner sea's ripples had not fully subsided when, in a pocket dimension adhered to the Douluo plane's wall, cold starlight flowed like a curtain, reflecting Celenova's frost-carved, indifferent profile.
She stood in the void, as if she were part of this silent domain.
Suddenly, the mirror-smooth observational interface before her twisted violently, like glass smashed by a mighty blow, spiderwebbing with cracks.
Next, a dim, dark-green streak—almost one with the void—stumbled out, wrapped in an inexpressible chaos, weakness, and a near-dissipating decay, and crashed heavily onto the formless floor, sending out ripples of unseen energy.
The light faded, revealing the figure within—Phantylia, who only moments ago had been full of confidence.
But now all her enchantment and Lord Ravager majesty had been stripped away.
The perfect body—carefully crafted from the golden tree's core—was laced with countless fine yet horrifying fissures.
These were not ordinary physical wounds, but scars left by the forced erasure of her existential essence—wounds of nihility whose edges still held a chilling aura, continually corroding established rules with the intent of Nothing.
Her body had turned half-transparent. Her aura was withered to the extreme. The emerald life light and pitch-dark destructive energy that once interwove around her now flickered like guttering candles, threatening to go out at any moment and return to stillness.
Wracked with pain, she curled on the ground, trembling uncontrollably. Each shallow breath bled precious life energy; even maintaining a basic form was a struggle.
She struggled to raise her head. In those once world-toppling, seductive eyes, only pain, weakness, and a mix of rage and humiliation remained.
Just then, a cool, steady voice—without a trace of emotion—came from not far ahead.
"It seems your probe… did not go smoothly."
Celenova did not even bother to turn fully, merely tilting her head. Her emotionless eyes gazed down with near-absolute rationality upon her wretched colleague, her tone as flat as if commenting on something unrelated.
"Indeed… I was careless."
Phantylia's voice was hoarse, yet unexpectedly calm—cold clarity forged in extreme pain.
"A Nihility Emanator… heh, what a Nihility Emanator… truly beyond expectations!"
Only then did Celenova stride, unhurried, to stand before her.
Her icy gaze swept over those dreadful wounds—lingering especially on the fissures suffused with the aura of Nothing—as if studying them.
"The power of Nihility—and at Emanator level."
Her voice remained purely factual, emotionless.
"No wonder you're in such a state. I anticipated much, but I didn't expect… you'd lose so miserably."
She knew Phantylia too well.
Though calculating and devious, her greatest flaw was swelling arrogance once she gained the upper hand.
Against the weak, that conceit was effortless sport. Against peers or higher beings, it courted disaster.
Empowered by the golden-tree body, Phantylia had indeed swelled again, just as expected.
Knowing The Herta was likely lying in ambush in the star's inner sea, she still charged in, full of confidence.
Not because she was foolish, but because she trusted absolutely in her immortality and newfound strength—believing she could retreat intact no matter what.
And judging by the outcome… that was barely the case.
Far from intact, but to keep her life and escape from a joint ambush by an Erudition Emanator and a Nihility Emanator—by some measure, that was a success.
"The Herta… did not strike me directly."
Phantylia forced the chaotic energies within to stabilize. As her body's violent ripples calmed, cold light gathered once more in her eyes.
"Otherwise, I might not have made it back alive. At the very least, this hard-won body would be lost."
"I can guess what's going on."
Celenova spoke blandly, unsurprised by this turn.
In her roaming, spreading destruction across the cosmos, she had met too many self-styled schemers who tried to use the antimatter legion as a blade for their own ambitions.
Most who played at that game became cinders along the path of ruin, burned by the very flames they summoned.
"To use two Lord Ravagers as pieces, paving a road or achieving some end…"
Phantylia regained her graceful, bewitching poise. Though her body remained in tatters, she forced herself to sit up. The folding fan reappeared in her hand, and she hid a smile behind it—her earlier wretchedness as if an illusion.
"My interest in The Herta… and the one truly setting the board behind her… only grows."
Though she had taken an unprecedented loss, her anger and humiliation were but temporary fuel.
As an Lord Ravager, what mattered was tangible gain.
At the very least, she had successfully tested a key point: the emergence of a never-before-seen Nihility Emanator, the nature of that terrifying power, and the complex intent—both utilizing and counterbalancing—of the hand behind the scenes.
Information worth a king's ransom.
"How long until you recover?"
Celenova cast a glance at Phantylia's slowly mending body, her tone direct and pragmatic.
With The Herta and a Nihility Emanator guarding the planar will, that matter was now impossible; she had no further hopes there.
But for what came next, Phantylia's strength remained indispensable.
After all, aside from The Herta and the others who let them be, two Hunt Emanator still barred their path.