Just as everyone stood there dazed, Coles's somewhat hoarse voice rang out.
"Give me back my big guy! Give me back my big guy!"
Roaring, he raised the broken wooden stump in his hand and stabbed it into the alchemist's body.
The alchemist who had previously been incomparably powerful and brought endless disaster to Hui Dun City was so easily stabbed to death by Coles, using nothing more than a rotten broken stick. No one had expected this.
No matter how useless this alchemist was, he could not possibly have been stabbed to death by a piece of broken wood, could he?
Perhaps this was not the real alchemist, but merely one of his little attendants?
That was all anyone could think. After all, he had died far too casually. He had none of the imposing air of a great villain pulling strings from behind the scenes.
When Isabel arrived beside Coles, she saw that he was covered in dust and grime.
Tears mixed with dirt streamed down his face, while the alchemist beneath him had been stabbed so badly with the wooden stump that there was not a single piece of intact flesh left.
Yet not a drop of blood flowed from the wounds on that terrifying body, with its chicken skin and crane hair.
Isabel sensed the strangeness of the body. At the same time, she feared that the alchemist might have placed some unknown potion inside it. If Coles became contaminated, that would be troublesome.
She grabbed Coles, who was still weeping and roaring, and hauled him up. Though she was worried about him, remembering what he had done earlier made her voice turn cold and stern.
"What use is crying here now? Your big guy's death was your own doing. You knew it was dangerous outside, yet you still dared to run out alone."
Having said that, Isabel mercilessly hurled him back toward the academy.
Truthfully, Isabel really wanted to give Coles a fierce lesson. If he had not run out of the academy for no reason, the alchemist would never have found the chance to turn his big guy into that monster.
Now, because of his big guy, everything in its path—whether houses or streets—had become ruins.
It could be said that during this crisis, the greatest damage to Hui Dun City had been caused by his big guy.
The next moment, she carried the corpse away from the collapsed house as well. By then, Pembez and the little giant had fought their way to this place.
When Pembez saw that the giant monster no longer possessed its previous obsession and now contained only boundless brutality and killing intent, he knew that whoever controlled it from behind the scenes had either died or given up controlling it.
At this time, the giant monster that had appeared in the city also caught Adolf's attention. Earlier, because of the undead army outside, they could only leave everything here to Pembez.
Now that the shield had been activated, it was time to find the alchemist behind it all and bring him to justice.
At this moment, Adolf had no idea that the alchemist had already been stabbed to death by Coles with a rotten stick.
Using short-range spatial leap magic, Adolf arrived at Pembez's side within a few fleeting moments.
He looked at the big guy before him and immediately knew that it was a giant monster created by forcibly stimulating its bloodline with an extremely vicious potion.
Seeing the uncontrolled giant about to wreak havoc throughout the city, Adolf and Pembez exchanged a glance.
Then everyone saw faint light begin to gleam from their bodies. One Magic Rune after another spread outward from the two of them like ripples on water.
The instant the Magic Runes released by the two met in the air, they did not repel each other. Instead, they merged perfectly.
Anyone knowledgeable about magic could tell at a glance that the two were resonating their magic domains. The Magic Runes spreading outward were all the magic inscribed within their bodies, and these runes formed the foundation of their domains.
When two Platinum Rank mages formed a true resonance of magic domains, even an Epic Rank mage would find the magic they unleashed extremely difficult to handle.
This was not merely a case of one plus one being greater than two. It was the perfect fusion of their understanding and attainments in magic.
At that moment, it could be said that the two had become one.
This method differed from using Super-class Magic. It was a fusion of domains.
It was like one person cultivating two entirely different systems of magic, cultivating a unique domain in both, and then being able to fuse those two domains together in battle.
No such person had ever appeared among mages. Though some geniuses could cultivate several different systems and form domains in each of them, they could not fuse two domains together.
Moreover, the stronger the genius, the more difficult fusion became.
Take Legendary Mages, for example. They could no longer simply be called geniuses. After cultivating one element to Legendary Rank, most of them would also cultivate magic of other systems and could rapidly reach Platinum Rank.
Yet even beings as powerful as them had never been known to possess the ability to fuse domains.
The reason for this was that the human brain had limited ability to calculate and process information. For a mage who had cultivated to Legendary Rank, the magical knowledge belonging to their own system was beyond merely vast—it was as boundless as the sea.
Trying to integrate everything one had learned into another system, or integrate another system into one's own, involved such enormous and tangled information that the brain simply could not process it.
And with even the slightest mistake, even a Legendary Rank powerhouse could suffer irreversible damage to their spiritual power from a failed fusion.
It could be said that this fusion technique was useless to many powerhouses. Yet once it truly succeeded, it would become their strongest trump card.
Then everyone heard the two chant a tongue-twisting resonance spell.
"Karasu Kekun—Space Storm."
Under their domains, space shattered. A gale as though the heavens had collapsed blew forth from within and swept toward the big guy.
The big guy's monstrous regenerative power could not repair its body in time beneath that gale. Without any surprise, its ten-meter-tall body was instantly ground into dust before everyone's eyes.
Inside the academy, Coles, who was squatting beside Isabel, saw his big guy reduced to dust, and his tears once again poured down like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
After dealing with the big guy, the two immediately withdrew from their resonant state.
After all, two old men being so in tune with each other was truly a little strange.
Just as the two were preparing to join forces and use tracking magic to find the alchemist behind everything, Isabel carried the corpse over to them and said:
"Principal, Professor, don't be hasty. This fellow suddenly appeared earlier and attacked Brown. I think he may be the alchemist's accomplice. Perhaps using him will save us a great deal of effort."
Adolf and Pembez considered this, then took the corpse from her. Yet the next instant, both their expressions changed, and they cried out in unison:
"This is a puppet."
Their words stunned everyone. The instructors who had just returned from killing the walking corpses also revealed looks of shock upon hearing them.
Because no one who saw this corpse would think it was a puppet.
Although no obvious blood flowed from its wounds, the flesh and blood inside them could be seen clearly.
Moreover, Isabel had personally touched this body. She could distinctly feel that it was a corpse that had already died. It could never be a magically created puppet.
Yet everyone also knew that before Platinum mages who had formed domains, life and death, puppet and corpse, were clearly distinct.
Adolf and Pembez did not explain much, because at this moment, they had already realized that the matter was serious.
If the Magic Runes inside this puppet had not been completely damaged, even they would not have noticed anything wrong.
An alchemist capable of such brilliant puppet-making techniques was absolutely not someone to be underestimated.
Suppressing their other thoughts, the two began using this puppet as a medium, along with the flesh cut from the big guy's body, to search for the person behind all this disaster.
However, when their combined tracking magic all pointed toward the puppet before them, the two truly could not remain calm. Terrified, they staggered backward repeatedly, distancing themselves from the puppet.
Then they exchanged a glance, knowing that the matter behind this was far from simple and might very well draw out an ancient monster.
The two steadied themselves and suppressed the fear in their hearts. For now, they had to act as though nothing had happened.
Then the two carried the puppet and put on a show of heading out of the city. Not long afterward, an earth-shattering explosion sounded from outside the city, after which the two flew back looking somewhat bedraggled.
Seeing everyone looking at them nervously, Adolf and Pembez merely chuckled and said:
"The alchemist behind this was hiding in the mountain forest outside the city. The two of us have already dealt with him. Now let's see when Jamir can take care of that Undead Knight outside the city."
What had truly happened was that the two had merely destroyed the Headless Knight Adolf had dismembered and moved outside the city earlier. As for the puppet, they naturally put it away, intending to study it carefully afterward.
After all, this might involve an existence of terrifying magnitude. If they publicized it so carelessly, they might provoke the person behind it.
Yet Adolf and the others did not see the strange smile that appeared on the face of Coles, who was squatting there and crying. Soon afterward, he continued mourning his tragically slain big guy.
Meanwhile, on the front lines of Hui Dun City, the Undead Knight had become utterly unrestrained after losing the alchemist's control.
Not only did he order the undead to assault the shield, he also deliberately slaughtered the undead from behind, using their souls to increase his own strength.
Freed from the restraint of defending the city, Bishop Jamir finally brought out his true strength.
A boundless radiance descended, and the undead charging the shield instantly turned into dust. Even the souls that the Undead Knight sought to seize were heavily annihilated beneath that light.
Another cage of holy light followed. Then Jamir began chanting an exceedingly long incantation. After he finished, a meteor of holy light appeared in the heavens, and he shouted:
"Holy Light Flowing Clouds."
The meteor of holy light fell toward the Undead Knight, whose strength had already neared Platinum Rank. Then the entire meteor exploded. Beneath the setting sun, the bursting holy light was like the auspicious clouds in the celestial palace of legend that destroyed every calamity, grinding the endless Undead Skeletons away into nothingness.