Miss Witch Doesn't Want to be a Diva

As Tilan leapt up and charged into the underground core zone, the rest of the group gradually arrived at the scene.

From a great distance, they could already see the monster, similar in size to a small hill, emitting a cold, chaotic aura that caused an internal feeling of nausea and dizziness before anyone even got close.

"Fall back!" With a rare seriousness in his expression, N loudly commanded, causing the surrounding group of students to halt their advance.

"All fall back to the entrance, Yalian, Deloris, prepare to establish satellite communication, and notify the Academy's higher-ups of the situation underground, everyone else be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice, and absolutely do not come into contact with the special substances here."

"Yes, teacher." Seeing his seriousness, the others quickly became anxious and started to follow his instructions. Your adventure continues at My Virtual Library Empire

"Then, is Tilan alright? She's still ahead." One person asked, just as they were about to turn back.

N looked at the girl in the distance who seemed unaffected by the chaos and continued to fight, shaking his head, "I don't know how she's immune to the effects, but not everyone has this ability, so stop worrying about her and take care of yourselves first."

"As for Tilan, I'll help her out of her predicament."

"Okay, Teacher N." The group took one last glance at the girl navigating and fighting through the gray, viscous magic power, then started to retreat and move back. The gang members and the elderly who had been captured also started to return with them.

Ahead.

The towering monster opened its mouth to an exaggerated extent and let out an invisible roar that spread out, the sonic waves shattering nearby buildings. Even hundreds of meters away, those preparing to withdraw felt dizzy and disoriented, as if an earthquake had struck beneath their feet, and they seemed to lose their hearing.

With this roar, the faint gray fog spreading from the monster's body began to infiltrate and taint the downed gang members and the elderly, contorting their bodies and starting to morph them.

This can't go on any longer, Tilan thought to herself, quickly retreating to momentarily avoid the area where the sonic waves were most powerful. She then brought her hands together and closed her eyes tightly, her lips moving in a low chant of ancient curses.

These curses, besides being a part of the complex process of regulated spellcasting, also serve as a powerful form of psychological self-suggestion, sinking the consciousness deeper into the magic being used and aligning the caster's mental and emotional state more closely with the status required by the secret technique. The effect of Aijeika's transcendence is to manipulate reality with the mind, while emotions, mental focus, concepts, and the like, all influence the process.

"...Exhaust the stars and the celestial paths, seek the profound and hidden ways, ascend to the azure skies above, descend to the shadowy Yellow Springs below, pluck stars and moons, to witness life and death in a fleeting instant, the brilliance of a moment." Her eyelashes trembled slightly, and then she slowly opened her eyes, revealing a deep blue glow swirling within her once black irises. Her clasped hands then slowly parted, revealing a resplendent azure longsword, its body seemingly made of transparent blue crystal, with the pattern of butterflies etched upon the blade. When swung, countless pale blue butterflies spread out from the sword.

Despite their incredible beauty, these flickering, unparalleled blue butterflies carried an extreme chill—as they simply passed by, they caused one's soul to tremble lightly.

These butterflies, the product of the concept of annihilation, destroyed consciousness and spirit, and obliterated matter. This was a secret technique exclusive to the Withering Sequence and also the signature ability of the legendary Butterfly Witch. Later, one of her inheritors refined it, and presently, it could also be embedded within a sword, reducing the difficulty of launching the technique. However, the secret technique's range of effect was not as encompassing as the original sea of butterflies.

To perform such a technique, the original version required a Necromancer Sequence of 8. Even after improvements by the inheritor, a Withering Sequence of 7 was necessary. Presently, Tilan managed to use it, albeit with considerable effort—thanks to Temisia's Talent Ability. Being two sides of the same coin, Hexia received the Healing Crystal and Temisia obtained the Obliterating Sand.

Thanks to the boost in annihilation-related fields, Tilan was able to perform the technique to some extent. Still, simply holding the sword in her hand made her feel her magic power draining rapidly. She feared that in half a minute, she wouldn't be able to maintain the sword's existence any longer.

Unlike last time in Lebyon, with the support of the full moon in the sky that allowed her to effortlessly manipulate the Aijieka Particles within dozens of miles and convert them to magic power, now she had to rely entirely on her own pool of magic power, which easily bumped against the ceiling of Sequence 4.

"Withering Secret Art: Obliterating Instant Butterfly Sword."

Holding the azure crystal sword, she descended slowly from the sky. Her speed was not swift; strands of her hair danced in the air, its colors catching the glow from the sword in her hand, also taking on a blue hue. With each foot she lowered, the blade in her hand grew sharper.

Layer upon layer of magic power brushed through the intricate patterns on the blade, illuminating it, and then more of the pale blue butterflies flew out from the blade, following in her wake.

A kilometer...

A hundred meters...

Ten meters...

As she approached closer to the howling beast below, the brilliance of the sword blade in her hand overwhelmed the view, shining intensely.

Finally, with a gentle flick of her wrist, she slashed down with the blade, cutting through the monster as if slicing through mist without resistance. Then the blade turned again, and in an instant, three arcs of the sword flashed by, slicing the remainder of its body into several pieces. The cross-sections were covered with a blue crystalline surface, which too transformed into pale blue butterflies.

The shattered remains were washed away by the dancing butterflies in the sky, then gradually obliterated until nothing was left. The ground itself became impeccably clean.

Watching this scene from a short distance, N, who had been ready for combat, slowly relaxed his grip on the hilt of his sword at his waist. Then, seeing the girl land back on the ground and the crystal longsword in her hand disappear without a trace.

"It truly refreshes my understanding time and again, how many wonders do you still hold that await discovery?"

In the time that followed, he stepped forward and worked with Tilan to handle the remaining situation, gathering the fleeing gang members while rescuing the elderly caught in the attack and calming them down.

"It's the young mistress, you've come back to save us." These elderly knelt on the ground to express their gratitude, a scene which made the young lady quite uncomfortable, prompting her to hurriedly help them up.

"Stop kneeling, I don't like this old-fashioned display." Seeing more people joining in kneeling, she stopped offering support and her tone turned cold.

Perhaps it was the lingering intimidation from earlier that made these elderly apprehensive, after hesitating for a moment and looking at each other, they slowly stood up. Yet once they did, they felt out of place, not knowing what to do next, simply repeating words of thanks to express their gratitude.

Understanding the plight of these poor and lonely elderly, the young lady shook her head and then spoke.

"Listen to my command, that is the best thanks you could give. Now I want to know what has happened around Jielou City since the relocation, and how this gang found you, what they were asking you to do."

"Of course, young mistress, we'll tell you right now." Upon hearing her command, the elderly breathed a sigh of relief, escaping the helplessness of the recent situation, then they began to explain the events that had happened not long ago.

While Jielou City had no intention of abandoning its kinspeople, there were still some elderly who did not want to leave, because they were very old, and even if they moved away, they wouldn't live for many more years; moreover, leaving this familiar area, they would find it difficult to adapt to a new environment, so they stayed behind.

"At first, it was fine, as the city had plenty of leftover supplies, enough for our group of people for many years, but soon, some wandering power-holders were drawn, probing the old site of Jielou City, hoping to uncover something valuable." Shaking his head, he indicated how greedy those people were.

"There were leftover Autonomous Units for protection in the city, but without enough Transcendents and the able-bodied to maintain patrols, the defenses were gradually destroyed by those gang members."

"So we gradually retreated into the depths underground, using the original defensive facilities of Jielou City to achieve balance again, and then things were peaceful for a while, as those wanderers slowly realized there was really nothing of value here."

"Later, we heard that these wandering folks started fighting on the surface, gradually forming some factions and beginning to occupy this place. Although we were concerned, it seemed not so important anymore since we didn't have many years left to live."

"However, just this month, a particularly unusual gang specifically came looking for us. They captured us elders and interrogated us whether we had methods to decrypt certain ancient secret tomes."

"What kind of secret tomes were they?" Tilan was curious.

"It's difficult to explain the specifics, let me just show it to you instead." Saying this, the elderly retrieved a dark brown box from the chaos of the recent battlefield, engraved with a long string of alphanumeric codes, and with several ports on its side.

"This should be a memory storage device from the Fifth Epoch, but the port model and decoding methods have been lost to time and are no longer used. However, according to the documents and other materials unearthed alongside this storage device, this should be a secret research project of some nation in the late Fifth Epoch."

Unlike the broadly covered Star Domain of today, the human civilization during the Fifth Epoch was fragmented and shattered into hundreds of large and small nations, often in conflict with each other.

"They utilized some illegal AI assistance to decipher the decoding method, extracting some data from this storage device. Because the documentation's author intentionally encrypted it twice for secrecy, replacing common professional terms with special jargon, even if hackers stole it, they would struggle to comprehend the details and replicate it."

"It's an ancient but straightforward method," the young lady commented as she shook her head.

"Because most of these terms originate from the Eastern Continent, our Eastern habits, they figured we might be able to understand some of it, so they came looking for us."

"So did you help translate and decipher it?" Tilan asked again.

"We couldn't decrypt it. Despite being descendants of Easterners, such convoluted material is difficult for us to comprehend; we can only roughly guess what it means. It seems that during the late Fifth Epoch, as the Aijieka Sea gradually froze over, the number of Transcendents within the Milky Way started to drastically reduce. To break through this situation, some nations began looking for a way out."

"And looking at the results, it seems they may have used some remnant Chaos Phantoms to infect and corrode the frozen Aijieka Sea, thus loosening certain restrictions and allowing Transcendents to progress."

"That is undoubtedly a remedy as toxic as the malady itself." If left unchecked, the spread of Chaos Phantoms could replicate past tragedies.

"Let's end the discussion here for now," Tilan raised her hand, motioning the elderly to gather the materials and set them aside, and then consulted with Teacher N standing beside her.

"When might the Academy or the Federal Government's teams arrive?" She was aware that the incident here couldn't have escaped the Academy's supervision.

"Tilan is quite smart, rest assured, they'll be here in half an hour. At this point, they've probably landed already," N said, pointing upwards.

Above ground, three massive shuttles roared down in a dive, then white Mechas descended. Compared to Lebyon's antiquated old models, these Mechas were remarkably advanced, with blue indicator lights twinkling on their surfaces, constantly scanning and securing the surroundings before swiftly heading toward the underground entrance.