She was stunned.
‘He... he did it? He actually did it?’
There was a long moment of silence. Everything in the world seemed to grow still.
The invisible force pressing Cassie back seemed to grow weaker, and countless items floating in the air were on the verge of falling down...
‘He did it!’
Cassie opened her mouth, wanting to say something.
But then, a terrifying premonition suddenly grasped her heart, and a terrible sense of wariness flooded her mind.
And a moment later, a harrowing scream shattered the silence, making her clutch at her ears.
It was Mordret... Mordret was screaming,
his voice full of such indescribable agony that it cut Cassie like a knife.
‘W-what... what is...'
What could have made the King of Nothing, who remained nonchalant while thousands of his vessels were being slaughtered in a myriad of ghastly ways, scream that way? Cassie could not see...
But if she could, she would have witnessed a subtle change happening to the enormous soul core shining brilliantly in the somber sky of his inner Realm.
There was a flaw in its radiance now, having appeared there at some point...
There was a tiny, barely noticeable drop of darkness in its very heart.
However, that drop of darkness did not remain small for more than a moment.
It expanded with a dreadful speed, growing like a virulent tumor. The tendrils of the vile darkness pierced the heart of Mordret's soul core like veins, and then snaked outward, permeating its entire great mass.
The fractures that had almost fused were torn open, and the outer layers of the core began to crumble as its heart was being consumed by the darkness.
By the Corruption.
Mordret's chilling, inhuman screams echoed in the great hall of the Ebony Tower like a deafening litany of curses, making Cassie shiver from a terrifying cold.
And in her mind's eye, the runes changed once more.
Rank: Sacred.
Rank: Sa... ed...
Rank: Sup... me...
Rank: Supreme.
Rank: Sup... e...
Rank: Gr... t...
And finally, the string of runes describing him as a Supreme being began to falter, while a new string began to take its place. Cassie shuddered when she saw the new string of runes, which was gradually becoming the only one.
The runes told her something that she had hoped never to hear.
They said:
..Rank: Great.
She froze, feeling stunned, not ready yet to comprehend the meaning of what she saw. It was at that moment that the island quaked one final time, more violently than before, and something broke down the great gate of the Ebony Tower by sending it flying inward and crushing onto the floor.