Chapter 129 The Reset

In the instant, a dozen guards teleported into the throne room, putting themselves between the intruders and the throne. However, the irate Draecath ignored them as she strode forward, force rippling from her, leaving gashes in the once pristine polished stone. Her blazing eyes drilled into one person, uncaring about everyone else.

Aya’s head snapped up as she sensed a familiar person. Tears gathered in her eyes when they landed on Evernya. A resigned expression took hold as she realized what her mate had heard. She gave Evernya apologetic smile before dropping her head awaiting her fate.

Evernya faltered for a moment, anger deflating. In her moment of hesitation, the rest of the room recognized the intruder. With the demeanor of professionals, the guards followed her every movement, awaiting orders from their king.

Assuming Evernya was as strong as she used to be, the king of Sespina sent his guards forward with a hand signal to surround and capture Evernya, who was standing in the center of the throne room with a conflicted expression, staring at Aya.

Meanwhile, Avonya stood in the shadows while holding back Kya, using her magic to conceal them.

In unison, the circling guards pulled out spherical devices before pumping mana into them. Like a vacuum, the devices sucked the mana surrounding Evernya.

Contrary to their expectations, Evernya appeared unaffected other than drawing her ire. Without taking her eyes off Aya, Evernya released an explosion of force. A deafening crack sounded as the force instantly broke the sound barrier as it slammed into the surrounding guards.

Blood splattered on the once pristine polished floor upon impact, killing them all instantly. As if hit by a supersonic baseball bat, the bodies shot off. The bodies flew dozens of meters before impacting the walls, splattering them red.

After launching the guards, her explosion of force continued unimpeded, tearing up the floor and ceiling as it blasted through the room. Just before it reached the throne, Avonya teleported the four men away to places unknown.

From the unconscious desire to protect her mate despite the collar blocking their bond, Evernya dissipated the wave of force just before reaching the two Kitsune.

Evernya blinked, finally returning to the present as she surveyed the destruction with wide eyes. The room was unrecognizable, no longer the gaudy gold and gem encrusted polished stone but instead rough stone.

Avonya finally made her presence known, stepping forward with a satisfied smile, having just collected a fortune in gems to gift her daughter later.

Recognition instantly flashed in the matriarch’s eyes when they landed on Avonya, causing a scowl to form.

“Why hello there, little fox. Long time no see. How long has it been? A few millennia?” Said Avonya without letting her smile break.

The matriarch’s blank expression instantly morphed into rage. She raised all nine tails before releasing a torrent of flames at Avonya. The room turned blinding bright, forcing everyone to close their eyes but the sender and recipient of the flames. Unable to handle the following explosion, the room rumbled as it collapsed.

Evernya’s eyes shot open as the floor beneath her vanished. On instinct, she shifted her wings, performing a powerful flap to send her upward. She flew through the now missing ceiling, bathing the remains of the throne room below in sunlight.

Once free of the collapsing building, Evernya’s eyes scanned below in panic. She breathed a sigh of relief upon spotting her mother on a hovering piece of floor with Kya hiding behind her. A dozen meters away, the two Kitsune stood in the only intact section of the room, having been spared from Evernya’s explosion of force and the fireball.

Against her will, her eyes gravitated towards Aya, who was also staring up at her with longing and deep sadness in her ruby eyes. The younger Kitsune made no move to help her grandmother as the matriarch wound up her tail to release another fireball, only to freeze on the spot as Avonya solidified the space surrounding her.

Avonya floated her stone platform toward the frozen Kitsune matriarch. “If only you spent as much time improving yourself magically as you did scheming, maybe you would have a chance, but alas, it’s too late now. I know it hurt when I rejected you for my beloved, but you went too far this time. Our feud was between us, not our descendants. I can’t believe you sunk so low as to use your poor granddaughter to get back at me. You should have encouraged your granddaughter when the seers prophesies her mating with my daughter, not use her as a weapon.”

Suddenly, Avonya’s eyes widened before she vanished, taking Kya and Aya with her. She reappeared floating in the sky near Evernya while levitating her passengers next to her.

Everyone stared down at the platform where Avonya used to stand to find the matriarch glowing.

With a saddened expression, Avonya commented, “what a shame she had so much talent yet she wasted it on petty schemes. She could have joined us in ascension, but she let her jealousy get the better of her. No wonder her mother and grandmother abandoned the clan long ago after their ascension.”

Evernya opened her mouth to ask a question, only for a massive fireball to interrupt her. The remains of the palace melted away as the matriarch went supernova in a last-ditch effort to beat Avonya.

Aya gasped upon recognizing the magic but otherwise remained silent. Her hand gravitated toward the ruby encrusted collar locked around her neck with a tinge of hope drawing Avonya’s attention.

Avonya glanced at her daughter, who was staring down at the smoldering crater that was once the palace before speaking into Aya’s mind. “Your thoughts are correct, but I forbid you from removing it until you gain my daughter’s forgiveness. Besides, reactivating the bond will lead to your death until after your transition. And no, I refuse to let you take the easy way out.”

Aya’s hand fell away from the collar. “Aya doesn’t deserve Nya after what she did.” A pained expression settled on Aya’s face as she continued. “Aya will fuse the collar as punishment for her actions.”

Avonya’s expression turned stern as she snapped, “no you will not. Despite your actions, you are still soul bonded her mate. I will not allow you to condemn my daughter, to never feel the love of her mate again. I lost my mate forever. My daughter will not suffer the same fate. Think of it as a penance for your actions. I commanded you to earn my daughter’s forgiveness, no matter what. I’m sure your ancestors will agree with me.”

Aya sent a hesitant glance toward Evernya, who looked up, but she averted her gaze before Evernya saw her. “Aya will try, but Aya doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”

Refusing to back down, Avonya asserted, “My Evernya deserves to live a happy life after all she’s been through. It doesn’t matter what you think, but as her mate, I want you to be happy, too. You were a pawn in the schemes of your jealous and bitter grandmother.”

Despite a hesitant expression, Aya nodded her head in acceptance as Avonya turned her attention to Evernya. “With that done with, would you like to visit your self-proclaimed big sister?”

Evernya perked up at the mention of Meira only to frown as she remembered her big sister’s last actions to her.

Predicting her former host’s thoughts, Kya butted in. “Don’t blame Meira. She had no choice but to seal your magic.”

Suddenly Evernya scanned the melted crater below before asking, “what happened to those bastards? Did I accidentally kill them?”

A vicious smile formed on Avonya’s face as she replied, “oh they are alive, though they probably wish they weren’t by now. No one harms my little princess without paying the price.”

Evernya pouted as she looked into her mother’s eyes. “What about me? I wanted to make them suffer myself.”

Avonya broke eye contact, unable to withstand her daughter as she muttered, “scum like them don’t deserve to be in my little princesses presence.”

As her powerful wings flapped to keep herself airborne, Evernya rested her scaled hands on her hips as she drilled her shining gaze into her mother. “I’m a grown a Draecath. You don’t get to decide what I do with my prey.”

As if hit by an arrow through her heart, Avonya flinched back as Kya and Aya smiled fondly. After recovering, Avonya’s expression hardened. “No, you have suffered enough. I’ll take care of their punishment, but don’t worry, you will see the end result soon. I have something special planned for them at all surviving Sespinian nobles.” Avonya’s expression lightened as she added, “besides after what you did to ascend, you punished them already. You pretty much single-handedly destroyed Sespina.”

Evernya opened her mouth to complain, only to pause, then give her mother a questioning look. “I destroyed Sespina? How? I mean, I damaged the throne room, but the Kitsune matriarch finished it off. Even then, I would hardly call that destroying Sespina.”

Instead of answering out loud, Avonya pointed across the lake they were hovering over toward the ring of tier 1 cities.

Evernya followed her mother’s finger, only to glance back at her, confused. “Use those fancy eyes of yours and sense the mana.”

“Fancy eyes?”

In response, Avonya’s eyes shifted to green scaly flowers of similar shape to Evernya’s. “These are divine eyes. Every ascended has them, but some unlock them early, like you. They should activate when you feed mana to your eyes.”

Curious, Evernya fed mana to her eyes. Her eyes shifted to mirror her mother’s only blue instead of green. Her vision suddenly expanded to give her 360° vision as well as in-depth mana vision. She turned them across the lake, only to gasp. While the lake blazed in her vision as well as the three other women, the cities beyond were dark. The only light she saw were the mana veins running through the ground under the cities.

Evernya turned back to Avonya in shock. “What happened? Did everyone die? It’s like the city is abandoned.”

While staring out at the ring of cities, Avonya replied, “They didn’t die. Well, not all of them, some who relied on mana to survive, may have. Instead of me explaining, let’s go investigate. Truthfully, I’m curious about the effects of your ascension too.”

Avonya shifted her wings before tightening her hold on Aya and Kya with her telekinetic magic, worried her daughter would crush the girls with her increased power. With a single flap, Avonya shot off, followed by Evernya. They reached Buran a few seconds later.

While staring below, they glided over the city to find devastation. The piles of mana powered items laid in heaps in the streets as people wandered aimlessly.

Evernya focused on a balding, middle-aged man limping down a sidewalk. She released a gasp upon finding his mana system shattered. With growing unease, Evernya focused on several more people but found everyone in a similar state. After scanning for several minutes in silence, she spotted a flicker of mana from a teenage boy, causing her to focus deeper. Unlike the rest, his mana system wasn’t fully developed, but appeared to be actively absorbing the changed mana in preparation for what she assumed was an awakening.

Done with her observations, she returned her focus to Avonya with a questioning expression and a hint of remorse.

Before she could ask a question, Avonya spoke. “As I expected, these humans couldn’t handle the changed mana. Your ascension reset all humans. Probably for the best, the corrupted mana was smothering their potential in the long run. Now they can rebuild the way they should have before the Sespina family pulled their stunt.”

“I turned everyone mundane?”

“Not quite. Focus on the younger humans.”

Evernya followed Avonya’s direction and zeroed in on everyone who appeared in their twenties and younger, breathing a sigh of relief to find traces of mana in each and every one of them.

A moment later, her relief vanished as she paled. She turned in to the northwest before shooting off with a crack.