The sunset glow inside the ancient cathedral was gorgeous, but it felt entirely unearned.
Roxanne stood atop the cracked stone altar, her hands still pressed against the Core Earth Stone.
The crystal hummed beneath her palms, a deep, resonant vibration that felt like a purring cat the size of a building.
The toxic green rot was gone, replaced by a warm, rich orange that blended with her own residual pink sparkles, casting long, dramatic shadows across the black stone floor.
She let out a long, shaky breath, her shoulders sagging.
The adrenaline was draining out of her boots, leaving her knees feeling like wet cardboard.
[OMG, HOST!
THAT WAS A MASTERPIECE!] the System squeaked in her ear, its pink text box virtually throwing a handful of glitter across her retinas.
[You just literally slapped a high-tier ancient evil!
Do you know how high your ‘Tsundere Dominance’ rating is right now?
It’s breaking my internal thermometer!
You’ve unlocked the ‘Unbreakable Queen’ title!
Here is your reward!] SYSTEM: 2,000 Bimbo Points added.
Sweet Rose Smell upgraded to Level 3 (Warning: Scent may now cause mild lightheadedness in targets within a five-meter radius).
‘Kiss of Life’ emergency potion added to inventory.
“Keep the potion, lose the perfume,” Roxanne muttered internally, wiping a smear of grey soot from her cheek.
“I already fucking smell like a walking bath bomb.” Slowly, she stepped down from the altar, her ruined purple skirt swishing around her ankles.
The four men were still standing in the wreckage of the entrance, completely frozen.
The neon pink subtitles floating above their heads were still flashing that highly embarrassing [100% UTTERLY SMITTEN] warning, but the actual thoughts scrolling beneath the numbers had shifted from panicked awe to a strange, heavy quiet.
Julian was the first to lower his sword.
The golden flame on his blade sputtered and died, leaving the metal looking dull and scarred.
He took a step toward her, his heavy plate armor clanking, but stopped just outside the warm orange light of the altar.
“Roxanne,” he began, his voice surprisingly quiet.
The arrogant, righteous Crown Prince who had tried to execute her a few hours ago looked entirely lost.
He looked at his own hand, then at her.
“You…
you saved the core.
If you hadn’t…” “If I hadn’t, we’d all be flat pancakes at the bottom of a sinkhole,” Roxanne interrupted, her voice dry as dust.
She crossed her arms, trying to ignore the way her scraped palms stung.
“So spare me the royal speech, Goldie.
I didn’t do it for your kingdom.
I did it because I look terrible in neon green hair.” Julian blinked, his brow furrowing.
Above his head, the neon text box flickered: Neon green hair?
Is that a peasant metaphor for death?
Why does she always speak in riddles?
But her eyes…
they are so clear.
“She is right,” Alistair said, stepping up beside the Prince.
The giant Knight Commander sheathed his broadsword with a heavy, metallic click.
His face was pale beneath the dirt and sweat, his grey eyes fixed on Roxanne with an intensity that made her want to step back onto the altar.
“We owed you our lives in the plaza, Lady Roxanne.
Now we owe you the entire capital.
My earlier accusations…
my failure to see the truth…
I cannot apologize enough.” “Then don’t,” Roxanne said flatly.
“Apologies don’t buy bread, Alistair.
Just help me figure out how we get out of this damp basement.” “Actually,” Malakai’s voice drifted from the shadows near the collapsed wall.
He didn’t drop down this time, he simply walked out of the darkness, his amber eyes scanning the massive chamber.
The playful, smug grin he usually wore was entirely gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating look.
“Getting out might be the easy part.
It’s what’s waiting for us upstairs that I’m worried about.” He pointed a slender, pale finger toward the ceiling.
Roxanne looked up.
The thick, green veins of magic that had been choking the pillars were dead, turned to ash by her pink blast, but the cavern ceiling was still vibrating.
A deep, rhythmic hum, different from the dragon’s roar, was echoing through the stone.
It sounded like a massive, ancient machine slowly turning gears that hadn’t moved in centuries.
“The seal is stable,” Ethan spoke up, his voice tight.
He was kneeling near the base of the altar, his silver staff resting across his knees.
He wasn’t looking at Roxanne; he was staring at the floor, where the cracks in the black stone were glowing with a faint, pale blue light.
“But the activation of the Royal Key…
it did not just restore the core.
It triggered the secondary defensive protocols of the First King.” “Secondary protocols?” Julian demanded, turning to the priest.
“What are you talking about, Ethan?
The texts never mentioned a secondary protocol.” “Because the texts were written by survivors who didn’t have the key,” Ethan said, finally rising to his feet.
He looked at Roxanne, his pale eyes dark with a mixture of fear and academic obsession.
Above his head, his neon thoughts read: She is the catalyst.
Everything is shifting around her.
The prophecy is breaking.
“The Western Hill was not built to protect the guest palace, Julian.
The guest palace was built to hide what lies beneath it.
An ancient seal of this magnitude requires a massive anchor.
And that anchor just woke up.” Before anyone could ask what that meant, the stone floor beneath their feet didn’t just tremble, it tilted.
With a loud, grinding screech of stone against stone, the entire circular platform they were standing on began to rise.
Roxanne gasped, her balance failing as the ground lurched upward.
She started to slip backward toward the edge of the platform, where a dark, bottomless chasm was opening up as the center of the room separated from the walls.
“Roxanne!” Two hands grabbed her at the exact same time.
Julian had her right wrist, his gloved hand tight and secure.
Alistair had her left upper arm, his massive grip steadying her instantly.
For a second, she was suspended between the two of them, the warm orange light of the core reflecting off Julian’s gold armor and Alistair’s silver chest plate.
[KYAAAAAA!
DOUBLE HEROIC SAVE!] the System screamed, throwing virtual rose petals across her eyes so thick she could barely see their faces.
[The Prince and the Knight!
Left and right!
Their hearts are beating at a combined 340 beats per minute!
This is the peak of reverse-harem physical contact!
Quick, lean your head back and sigh softly!] “I am going to throw both of them into the crevice if you don’t shut up,” Roxanne growled under her breath.
“Hold on!” Alistair rumbled, pulling her easily back onto the solid stone of the rising platform.
Julian didn’t let go of her wrist until she was firmly on her feet, his fingers lingering on her skin for a fraction of a second before he pulled back, his face flushing a light pink beneath the dirt.
The platform was moving fast now, shooting upward through the hollow center of the mountain like a giant, stone elevator.
The black cavern walls blurred past them in the dim light.
The wind rushed through the space, blowing Roxanne’s dark, tangled hair across her face and carrying away the suffocating scent of roses, replacing it with the clean, cold air of the upper world.
“Where is this taking us?” Malakai asked, his daggers drawn again as he stood near the edge, looking upward.
“We’re past the basement level of the guest palace.
We’re going higher.” “The peak,” Ethan said, his hand gripping his staff as the platform vibrated.
“The very top of the Western Slope.
Where the first king built his observatory.” The grinding sound slowly died down as the platform began to decelerate.
The darkness of the mountain shaft began to thin, replaced by a pale, blue-grey light.
A second later, the platform clicked into place with a heavy, booming thud that vibrated through Roxanne’s teeth.
They were outside.
The air was freezing.
The peak of the Western Slope was a flat, barren plateau of dark obsidian rock, surrounded by a low, ruined stone wall.
The sky above was no longer green, but a heavy, bruised purple, filled with thick snow clouds that were just beginning to drop tiny, icy flakes onto the dark stone.
Below them, the imperial capital looked like a glowing grid of orange embers and dark, smoking ruins.
The green eye in the sky was gone, but the air still felt heavy, like the silence right before a massive thunderstorm.
“We’re out,” Julian breathed, walking toward the edge of the ruins.
He looked down at the burning city, his chest heaving under his armor.
“The dragon…
the green magic…
it’s gone.” “It’s not gone,” Malakai said, pointing toward the far side of the plateau.
“It just moved.” Roxanne turned her head, her Piercing Truth Eye instantly zooming in on the center of the obsidian courtyard.
Standing there, completely silent in the falling snow, was a massive structure that hadn’t been there before.
It looked like a giant, twisted spear made of black glass, easily thirty feet high, pointing directly toward the heavy clouds.
But it wasn’t empty.
Encased inside the black glass of the spear was a figure.
It was a woman.
She was dressed in ancient, flowing white robes that looked completely untouched by time, her long, silver hair floating around her in the dark glass as if she were underwater.
Her eyes were closed, her pale hands folded over her chest.
But what made Roxanne’s blood run cold was the massive, glowing green crystal embedded directly into the woman’s forehead, identical to the green rot they had just fought in the basement.
“What is that?” Alistair whispered, his hand trembling on his sword hilt.
“Is that…
a tomb?” “No,” Ethan said, his voice dropping into a whisper of pure horror as he stared at the woman in the glass.
His staff fell from his fingers, clattering loudly against the obsidian stone.
Above his head, his neon screen was completely blank, the pink light fading into a dull, terrified grey.
“That…
that is not a tomb.
That is the Goddess Althea.” “The Goddess?” Julian turned to him, his face pale.
“Ethan, that’s impossible.
The Goddess ascended three thousand years ago.
She is a myth.” “She is not a myth,” a cold, smooth voice echoed from the shadows behind the black spear.
Out of the darkness of the ruined walls stepped a man.
He wasn’t wearing a snake mask, nor was he a giant monster.
He was dressed in the simple, elegant robes of an imperial scholar, his neat grey hair pulled back into a perfect ponytail.
He looked like an administrator, a quiet noble who spent his days reading tax reports.
But in his right hand, he was holding a small, glowing glass vial filled with a thick, swirling pink liquid.
Roxanne’s heart stopped.
She recognized that liquid.
It was the exact same color as her system magic.
“The Duke’s daughter was indeed a useful tool,” the scholar said, his lips curling into a polite, terrifying smile as he looked directly at Roxanne.
“She brought the key.
She activated the core.
And now, she has provided the final ingredient we needed to wake her.” He raised the vial of pink liquid, holding it up toward the black spear.
“Roxanne,” the scholar murmured, his eyes locking onto hers with a cold, predatory gleam.
“Thank you for bringing my sister’s soul back to me.” Before Julian or Alistair could move, the black spear cracked.
A single, spiderweb fracture ran down the center of the glass, and from the opening, a bright, blinding beam of pink and green light shot directly into the sky, tearing the snow clouds apart.