"Mia!" Liam shouted, lunging forward despite the searing pain in his limbs and the roaring chaos around him. Every fiber of his battered body screamed to stop, yet the thought of leaving her behind—of letting the Mia he once knew be swallowed by darkness—drove him on.
Her eyes, once warm with a familiar light, now glowed with an icy detachment that made his heart wrench. The divine aura that clung to her like a second skin was unmistakable—a far cry from the woman he remembered.
As he neared, the flames and falling debris seemed to slow, the inferno of collapsing corridors and shuddering golems fading into a dull roar behind his pounding pulse. "Mia, come with me!" he demanded.
A cold laugh echoed in the tumult—a sound that belonged not to the woman he knew but to a stranger wearing her face. "Why don't you make me? I want to see just what sort of a person that stuck up cunt lost to. He He. You are the first person in a thousand years to make her go crazy."
Liam did not plan on engaging with her. He knew Mia was in there somewhere. She had to be. Everything could be figured out later. He simply smashed through her defenses and grabbed her hand before activating the exit token. "You are coming with me."
Mia simply shrugged. She did nothing to stop Liam from grabbing her hand.
And the next second, he understood why. His exit tattoo was not activating. He could hear Nolan's scream in the distance. "Your highness, it's not working! It's not working!"
Liam tensed up. He let go of Mia, feeling that something was wrong, but Mia grabbed his hand instead. "You should have stayed hidden and lived out the rest of your life like the rat you are. You are going to regret coming here."
Liam's eyes turned pitch-black. He unleashed his nether core and his nether dao field, which coalesced into writhing, inky tentacles of raw nether energy that shot forth like living shadows.
They lashed out, slicing through the chaos of exploding corridors and disintegrating golems, each tendril carrying with it the weight of his rage and desperation.
The air around him seemed to distort as his power surged, a dark counterpoint to the blazing inferno. With every lash of those nether tentacles, fragments of shattered metal and roiling fire were torn asunder, momentarily pausing the collapse of the ancient structure.
Liam's vision blurred with fury as he turned toward the paladin. "Let her go. Let me leave." He roared as nether plunged towards the paladin like a tsunami.
"Perfect synchronization? How do you possess a power ?" Both Mia's and the paladin's eyes widened in shock. Mia immediately distanced herself by shooting back away from Liam. However, it was too late.
Liam's nether tendrils completely arrested and prevented her from moving even an inch. "If I was at my full power, you would already be dead!" Mia spat out. Liam did not care. He was only able to retain this state for a couple of seconds. He needed to make it count.
He once again activated the exit token, trying to get out of here and take Mia with him, but things were not so simple. It looked like the paladin was the one holding all the cards in his hand. But that was not a problem.
As long as the target was not a transcendent, Liam had little to worry about. The nether tendrils immediately shot toward the paladin. His attack was only slightly shy of the power exhibited by the Elemental King.
The paladin's face contorted in fear and anger. Even though his words demeaned Liam, the look on his face made it clear that he wasn't going to take any chances.
"You have gone on for long enough. You need to be erased." Before Liam's nether shackles could reach him, the man spat up something. A drop of golden liquid appeared in front of him. A pulse of pure power rippled from the liquid.
"By the power of my divine dao, face your retribution! The righteous shall prosper, and the disloyal shall perish. Die, you wretched creature who has sinned!"
The next moment, the world stopped. An unbelievable amount of power washed over Liam. All of his dao fields seemed to shudder, but he held on. His nether dao field became pitch black, as if the endless abyss itself was acting as a barrier for the attack.
Liam could sense that his exit token was active once again. He did not know how long he could hold out against the attack. He knew he needed to take the chance to leave. That was the rational thing to do. This was not an opponent or rather an attack he could face at the moment, but he refused to budge.
He was so close to bringing back Mia. How could he leave now?
It was an impossible decision that he did not want to take. Not again. He couldn't do it to her again. His body was already in tatters from using so much power, power that did not belong to a simple awakener. He was struggling, grasping for straws.
"You are a stubborn fool!" Mia's voice sounded. Something seemed to stir in her eyes, but she snapped out of it. She glanced at the paladin next to her, who was frozen to the spot, the aftereffect of using such a powerful skill, a skill strong enough to rip open his cores and his dao seeds.
She was not willing to fight to the death over an enemy she did not care about all that much. She glanced at Liam one more time before activating the escape token on her hand.
"Think about Alex and Rey!" She heard Liam shout one more time as her body vanished from the metallic chaos. Behind Liam, Nolan also shouted something as his body vanished as well. The escape tokens were once again active.
The entire place was collapsing and Liam was locked into a fight to death with the damned paladin. It was at this time that the cauldron on Liam's chest pulsed once again.