Fourth End-'Elation'

The wilderness night was quiet.

Far from human cities in the real world, only rolling dunes remained in every direction.

Silver Wolf had deliberately chosen a sufficiently remote desert.

She stood in the middle of a wind-smoothed stretch of rock and raised a hand. Pale blue data streams spread from her fingertips.

The next second.

The space within nearly a kilometer changed at once. Fine blue grids emerged across the ground, as though some invisible program were rapidly overwriting reality.

Silver Wolf nodded in satisfaction. "This will do."

She raised her hand again, and a silver-blue curtain of light descended from midair, completely sealing off the entire experimental area.

This time, rather than directly trying to analyze the Ace of Spades as before, she sealed it first.

The Ace of Spades was held between two of Silver Wolf's fingers.

The card remained clean, its black spade pattern quietly printed in the center. It looked no different from an ordinary playing card.

But Silver Wolf knew perfectly well that what this card represented was anything but simple.

"Elation?" Silver Wolf suspended the Ace of Spades in the air. "Abyss?"

The card slowly rotated as Silver Wolf paced around it.

"I can understand the Abyss."

"But why is there Elation?"

"Just because you look like a card?"

She raised a hand. "Prometheus."

Silver-blue data streams gathered behind her, and a virtual projection slowly appeared.

Prometheus did not waste words. "Scan initiated."

Five minutes later.

"Detection indicates Elation is evenly distributed throughout the complete card structure. It contains a trace of Elation."

"Analysis result: the card is a vessel for the Abyss. This card is a Creation of Elation."

"Phenomenon: the Abyss and Elation have reached a balanced state."

Silver Wolf frowned as soon as she heard that. "Balanced? Why?"

"The two are corroding each other."

"Each other? Interesting." Silver Wolf immediately thought of the setting next door: Realm-Light Force and the Abyss.

But the issue was that this was Elation, not Realm-Light Force.

Silver Wolf slowly narrowed her eyes. "Could there already be some sort of connection between the Abyss and Elation?"

No one answered, because that question was already beyond the scope of the analysis.

Silver Wolf stood in the desert, staring at the Ace of Spades for a long time.

Then.

A flash of inspiration suddenly struck Silver Wolf, and a terrifying thought crossed her mind.

No way...

Silver Wolf's expression gradually became strange.

Could the Elation on this timeline really be the Elation from the Endline?!

Silver Wolf was stunned by her own thought. At the same time, she had Prometheus investigate. "Check the similarity between the Abyss and Elation inside the card."

After saying that, Silver Wolf suddenly remembered something else: Phanes had once asked her for a Creation of Elation.

At the time, Silver Wolf had not paid much attention to it.

But now, linking that matter to the Ace of Spades again...

Her gaze slowly changed. "Could it be? Had she already suspected a similarity between Elation and the Abyss?"

Silver Wolf stood to one side, staring at the card in thought for a long while.

After some time, Prometheus finally began to respond. "Similarity: 33.3333%."

Silver Wolf: "..."

She fell silent for a full three seconds.

"Haha." Silver Wolf suddenly laughed. "What a huge circle we took."

She looked up at the night sky, where starlight blanketed the black heavens.

Silver Wolf pointed up at the sky.

"Aha! Don't let me catch you!"

There was no response.

But the more Silver Wolf thought about it, the more her head hurt. If this truly was the Elation from the Endline...

Then they were practically enemies from the same source.

More troublesome still, her own Level 999 had also come from the Endline.

If this thing can resonate with Level 999... will it have any effect?

Silver Wolf fell silent for a moment before ultimately shrugging. Forget it. I'll use it when I need to. Consider it something saved for a rainy day.

She let out a long breath and looked at Prometheus. "Prometheus, stand farther away."

Prometheus walked ten paces away and watched the card and Silver Wolf.

Silver Wolf turned back to the Ace of Spades. "From here on, record all data."

"Don't miss even the smallest change."

"Understood."

Silver Wolf held out both hands as silver-blue light began gathering in her palms. "Since you're corroding each other..."

She gave a soft laugh. "Then I'll add fuel to Elation."

Power began pouring in, and the Ace of Spades trembled slightly.

Prometheus's readings immediately changed.

"Elation detected: 1.2%."

"1.3%..."

It works... Silver Wolf also opened the panel she had not checked in a long time.

[Silver Wolf]

[Cartridge Level 80]

[Hidden: Unknown Save Cartridge Level 999]

[Load: Moderate]

[Status: You are continuously outputting power.]

[Blessings: Forest Moon God, Phanes, Goddess of Life]

[Remaining Cartridge Time: 21s]

[Perhaps you really are embarking on a path of Trailblaze.]

"Why aren't you telling me to stay weak anymore?" Silver Wolf noticed that the previous message telling her to remain weak had disappeared. "Did you realize I had noticed the truth, so now you're encouraging me to grow stronger?"

Silver Wolf grinned. "Where's Akivili? Trailblaze and Elation always intersect, so where is she? You've ended up like this, and you still need a half-baked amateur like me to give you rehabilitation training?"

Silver Wolf continued feeding Elation into the card while constantly complaining about Aha's behavior.

"Or why don't you go find your Troupe Master? Why come looking for a Stellaron Hunter like me?"

"Or did the God of Games ultimately decide..."

The moment Silver Wolf got distracted by her rant, the Abyss tried to coil around her arm.

She flung her arm hard, and Wolf Venerable instantly threw that sticky mass of Abyss onto the ground.

"Ugh, disgusting."

The black liquid splashed outward but did not disperse. As though it possessed a will of its own, it kept writhing across the sand, always moving toward Silver Wolf.

Silver Wolf watched it for two seconds. "You're pretty persistent."

She raised a finger.

A small bomb appeared out of thin air above the Abyss liquid. "Bang."

The sand was blasted into a shallow crater. The black liquid was blown apart, but it quickly gathered together again.

Prometheus's voice rang out. "Abyss activity has decreased. Current pollution discharge rate: 12%."

Silver Wolf suddenly stopped and looked at the black liquid on the ground. "Oh?"

She seemed to think of something. "Since you like running out so much..."

Silver Wolf raised a hand, and a huge blue data palm appeared out of thin air.

It gently grabbed the Abyss liquid from the ground and lifted it up. "Then I'll use you as bait."

Silver Wolf slowly brought it closer to the Ace of Spades.

At the same time, she once again injected Elation power into the card.

The Ace of Spades began to shake violently. More black liquid was slowly squeezed out from within the card's surface, like some living creature being forcibly stripped away.

"So disgusting, just like..."

Silver Wolf found it difficult to describe, but after she was done, she definitely needed to wash her hands and take a proper shower.

There was no smell at all, but it was still incredibly disgusting to look at.

Over a long and tedious half hour, Silver Wolf slowly used fine control to draw out all the Abyss from inside the card.

Prometheus said, "100%."

But that massive clump of black Abyss liquid kept slamming against the pair of giant hands Silver Wolf had created.

"I need to get rid of this..."

Silver Wolf put away the card, then quickly confirmed that the surrounding kilometer had been completely sealed off.

Now she did not have to worry about it escaping. Of course, that was assuming it could escape at all.

With a flick of Silver Wolf's finger, a Diamond Sword instantly appeared, following the path of her finger.

With one slash, the Abyss was cut in half.

But it was liquid in the end. Without a physical body, no amount of slashing would do any good.

After some thought, Silver Wolf created a small Herta doll and used Herta as a container to hold the Abyss.

"Mm, not bad."

Silver Wolf clapped her hands, signaling that the job was done, then walked toward Prometheus.

Prometheus understood immediately and took out a bottle of mineral water. She slowly walked over to Silver Wolf, opened it, and poured the water.

Silver Wolf began washing her hands without any guard up...

Bang!

Herta burst apart from the pressure!!

The once-pure black rapidly began to fade.

Black, gray, white, then gradually shifting into a bizarre shade of white tinged with deep purple.

A few drops even splashed onto Silver Wolf's lower back.

At the instant it exploded, the liquid paused in midair. The black, white, and deep purple substances rapidly compressed together.

In the end, they formed a humanoid figure.

A familiar face stood in the desert, but her eyes had turned murky, as though something incomprehensible had sunk into the depths of her pupils.

Silver Wolf's expression changed visibly for the first time. "Xu Zhao?"

Silver Wolf found it extremely strange that the Abyss had taken Xu Zhao's form. Isn't Teacher Ma still only the unconfirmed Troupe Master?

Silver Wolf raised her right hand high, and a Diamond Sword appeared in her hand. "Who cares who you are? I'll cut you down first."

Silver Wolf accelerated, instantly cutting "Xu Zhao" in half. During that brief period of weakness after she materialized, Silver Wolf raised her other hand.

After a snap of her fingers, data light poured down, and that figure seemed to be directly erased from the world.

Silver Wolf touched her lower back. "Tsk... I think some got on me just now. No, I need to take a shower."

She took out her phone and sent Kawaba Mutsumi a message. "Can I borrow your bathroom?"

"No problem. I'm not home, but I'll let the servants know. Remember to use the front door."

She and Prometheus conducted one final inspection of the surroundings, sweeping across the entire desert.

After confirming that no Abyss residue remained.

"Job done."

The next moment.

Silver-blue light flashed, and her figure vanished from the desert.