I'm really not a Sanctuary Warlock.

"I'm alright." Lynn didn't refuse her help. "Let me catch my breath."

Anna walked over, stood in front of him, and looked down at him.

Lynn knelt on the ground, panting for about half a minute.

Then he looked up and gazed at the canyon.

The grayish-purple mist was still surging up from the valley floor, thicker than before, as if the Plague Core knew its trick had been broken and was increasing its output.

Lynn slowly stood up, looking at the mist with an impatient expression on his face.

"Anna, Lisa."

"Ok?"

"Take the unicorn and step back a short distance."

"I want to bury it in the canyon."

Lisa didn't ask any more questions, but simply helped Anna climb onto the unicorn.

The sound of hooves faded into the distance.

Lynn stood alone at the edge of the canyon.

He raised his right hand.

The temple guards are still there.

The golden giant stood at the edge of the canyon, half its body submerged in the valley, its massive head level with Lynn's line of sight. Soft golden light streamed from the gaps in its armor, like an inextinguishable sun.

"Hold your hand and cleanse this entire canyon, from the surface to the depths."

The temple guard slowly raised the golden spear in his hand.

This time, the light gathered at the tip of the gun was completely different from before.

If the previous "Rain of Divine Punishment" was a star, then...

This time, however, it resembles a sun.

The golden sphere of light rapidly expanded at the tip of the spear, growing from the size of a fist to the size of a wheel, then to the size of a house, and finally transforming into a blazing white sphere with a diameter exceeding tens of meters.

Lynn was so blinded by the light that he could barely open his eyes.

The power contained within that ball of light made his skin tingle.

It was at this moment that there was movement at the bottom of the valley.

The grayish-purple mist began to erupt and surge upwards, as if something was struggling desperately deep in the canyon.

In the mist, countless spirits began to climb the cliff face.

Their movements were no longer as stiff and sluggish as before, but were filled with a kind of almost frantic urgency.

The plague core is driving them.

It knew what Lynn was going to do.

The cliff face was covered with countless gray-white figures, like a swarm of ants crawling out of the ground, endlessly.

The blazing white orb at the tip of the spear stopped expanding; all the energy condensed and converged at that moment... and then fell.

Lynn didn't have time to see the complete trajectory of the shot.

He only saw a ray of light.

The light descended from the sky and poured straight into the center of the canyon.

The beam of light exploded the moment it touched the ground at the bottom of the valley.

The dazzling holy light spread in all directions like a tsunami, instantly engulfing the entire valley floor.

The grayish-purple mist evaporated and vanished in the face of the holy light, like snow meeting boiling water.

The countless dead spirits vanished into nothingness at that moment.

The holy light does not remain only on the ground.

It seeped deeper into the earth along the cracks in the rock.

Every corpse buried underground, every wisp of remaining abyssal contamination, was annihilated by this force.

The cliff face began to crack.

The entire Dry Bone Canyon is collapsing.

The cliffs on both sides lost their support under the holy light and collapsed inward like building blocks, with tens of tons of rocks crashing into the valley floor, raising clouds of dust that blotted out the sky.

At the heart of the collapse, the golden giant still stands.

Its outline gradually blurred amidst the flying stones, turning into tiny golden specks of light that drifted in the air.

Its time has come.

Even as its body disintegrated, it maintained the posture of plunging its spear into the earth, channeling its last bit of strength into the ground beneath its feet.

The canyon collapse lasted for nearly three minutes.

Then, everything stopped.

The dust settled slowly.

Lynn stared blankly at the scene before her.

The Valley of Dry Bones has disappeared.

What was once a rift valley has now become a ravine filled with rubble.

The cliffs, the valley floor, the countless undead, and the plague core hidden within them were all destroyed beneath hundreds of thousands of tons of rock.

The remaining holy light seeped out from the cracks in the rubble, making the ruins look as if they were edged with a faint gold.

The holy light purified all defilement completely.

Including that plague core.

Chapter 113 Annihilation Zone (Part 2)

Lynn stood on the edge of the cliff and watched for a long time.

The Plague Core is dead; that is an undeniable fact.

Because his available sanity on his panel is slowly recovering after disengaging from the battle.

"Let's go."

Anna's voice came from behind.

Lynn turned around and saw Anna already sitting on the unicorn's back, with Lisa standing beside her holding the reins, both of them looking at him.

“This makes crossing the canyon much easier.” Lisa glanced at the filled-in ravine, her tone unusually relaxed. “Before, we had to take a long detour, but now we can just walk across it.”

"Are you fit to ride a horse right now?" Lisa asked.

"can."

"Really?"

Help me up.

Lisa rolled her eyes, but still reached out and pulled him up.

Lynn climbed onto the unicorn, sat behind Anna, and reached out to support her waist to steady her.

Anna didn't speak or turn around; she simply patted the unicorn's neck gently.

The white unicorn strode forward, stepping onto the gravel ground that still radiated a faint holy light.

It took the three of them about twenty minutes to cross the ruins.

When the unicorn's hooves once again trod on the normal muddy ground, Lynn clearly felt Anna breathe a sigh of relief.

“Next,” Anna began, “follow the route Vera gave us. After crossing the canyon, head southwest. It should take about three days to reach Holy Song City.”

“Three days,” Lynn repeated the number.

A three-day journey isn't far for a group of only three people and one unicorn, but they absolutely cannot let their guard down. They are all well aware of the current state of the Duchy of Toussaint.

"Let's go." Lynn pulled himself out of his thoughts and wrapped his arms around Anna's waist.

The unicorn quickened its pace and headed south along the forest at the edge of the mountain range.

This stretch of road was surprisingly peaceful.

There were no monsters, no refugees, and even wild beasts were rare.

If you ignore the occasional plumes of black smoke rising from the distant horizon, this place looks like a peaceful forest.

They walked for about two hours.

Then Lynn noticed something was wrong.

It started with trees.

The trees along the roadside began to thin out. First, the leaves decreased, then the branches began to dry up, and finally even the bark turned dark gray, as if something had sucked away their vitality.

After walking a little further, the trees completely disappeared.

The ground looked as if it had been scorched by a fire; all the soil had turned a charred color, and there wasn't a single weed on the cracked surface.

A dry, ashes-like smell filled the air.

The unicorn stopped.

It lowered its head, sniffed the ground, snorted, and took two steps back.

Lynn frowned.

What's going on?

Anna stared at the dark earth in front of her for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled.

"The Annihilation Zone".

"The Annihilation Zone?" Lisa frowned. "How could it appear here?"

"I don't know," Anna said softly.

"Can you explain?" Lynn jumped off the unicorn's back, walked to the edge of the black ground, and squatted down to examine it carefully.

The ground did look like it had been scorched, but not entirely.

The marks left by flames are usually irregular, but the boundary of this black area is unusually neat, almost a straight line separating the normal soil from the scorched ground.

"The earliest record of the annihilation zone dates back more than two thousand years."

"At that time, several barren areas suddenly appeared on the mainland, where everything withered and any life that tried to grow there would quickly wither away."

She paused for a moment.

"But that's not what really gives all scholars and monks a headache."

Lynn turned her head.

"Within the annihilation zone, all magic cannot be mobilized."

"What do you mean?" Lynn stood up. "Spells can't be used?"

“Yes,” Anna answered crisply. “Elemental magic, holy spells, or any other means that require magic power are all rendered ineffective within the Obliteration Zone, including magical items, enchanted weapons, and any form of supernatural power.”

"Anyone who enters this area is a complete mortal."

"For two thousand years, the annihilation zone has been slowly expanding. Initially, there were only a few places, and the area was not large, so it did not affect normal life. Scholars and monks from various countries have studied it for a long time, but they have never been able to find the reason or a way to stop its expansion."

"And then?" Lynn asked.

“People eventually got used to it,” Anna said calmly. “They treated it as a natural phenomenon, marked it on a map, and just avoided it. In two thousand years, the area it expanded by didn’t even exceed one percent of the continent. Most people will never encounter it in their lifetime.”

“But…” Anna looked at the dark earth, her voice lowering, “In recent years, the expansion of the Annihilation Zone has suddenly accelerated.”

"How much faster?"

“I don’t know the specific data, but I saw relevant records in church documents three years ago. In the past two thousand years, a total of seventeen annihilation zones have appeared on the continent, and eight new ones have been added in the last five years alone.”

"After the gods disappeared, many things that were originally stable began to collapse. Some people speculate that the expansion of the annihilation zone is related to this, but there is no evidence."