Chapter 496: Bombardment

Bombardment

Inside Baruch Royal Palace, the intense battle between Dorothy's group and Muhtar had reached its climax. Both sides were severely weakened, and just as Dorothy's group seemed to be gaining the upper hand, Muhtar's costly, ultimate commandment abruptly reversed the situation.

Under the enhanced backlash commandment, Vania fell unconscious immediately, and Shadi was incapacitated. Facing the two defenseless opponents collapsed on the ground, Muhtar didn't hesitate, gripping his curved blade to strike. Seeing this, Dorothy hurriedly manipulated several metal objects to carry Vania away, narrowly avoiding Muhtar's attack. However, at that moment, a deep, bloody wound inexplicably appeared on Vania’s body, making Dorothy realize that both Vania and Shadi were still bound by Muhtar's “no escape” commandment. Dorothy’s attempt to move them had triggered its penalty!

Realizing this, Dorothy quickly placed Vania next to Shadi and used her magnetic abilities to control countless metal objects to float protectively around them. Muhtar swung his curved blade repeatedly at them, but every strike was blocked by the floating metal. After suffering a series of serious injuries, Muhtar's physical capabilities had drastically diminished—even with two advanced sigils boosting him, he couldn’t penetrate the metallic defenses.

From within the hidden space of the Temple of Revelation Runes, Dorothy anxiously maintained her control. Leveraging the city defense system, she mobilized nearly every metal object in the palace. Metal plates, statues, suits of armor, and weapons flew from all directions, converging in the great hall. Under Dorothy’s meticulous manipulation, these metals formed an enormous protective dome over Vania and Shadi, rapidly thickening to a point where Muhtar couldn’t even shake it.

"She can control not just lightning… but metal as well?"

Staring at the growing metal dome, Muhtar grimly muttered. He was fully aware that these extraordinary, unprecedented abilities came from that mysterious Beyonder hiding far away. Despite having endured his own powerful backlash, she’d found some method to survive and was still obstructing him.

"Keep interfering… Go on… That's all you can do right now anyway."

Coldly observing the increasingly dense metallic barrier, Muhtar quietly muttered. He clearly understood that, at present, the mysterious Beyonder dared not strike him directly and could only safeguard her companions in this manner. For Muhtar himself, although he currently lacked the strength to breach the dome, his subordinates certainly could.

At this moment, Muhtar sensed more and more of his followers approaching from various parts of the palace after defeating their opponents. Guided by spiritual markers, they rapidly gathered around his location. With his two principal enemies incapacitated, Muhtar only had to wait briefly for his men to arrive, dismantle the metal dome, kill those inside, and then head toward the Temple of Revelation Runes to deal with that mysterious Beyonder.

While Muhtar awaited his followers’ arrival, Dorothy, still within the temple’s hidden space, was overcome by anxiety. She hadn't expected Muhtar to possess such a potent trump card under these desperate circumstances. She had underestimated the strength of a Crimson-rank Beyonder, mistakenly thinking her city defense system alone would suffice to fight him.

"This is bad… The old bastard still had a card up his sleeve—such a powerful one, too. Vania went down immediately, and even Shadi was badly wounded… What exactly is this trump card?"

"Crimson-rank Beyonders… aside from their formidable powers, they also have extraordinarily long lifespans, which grant them ample time to accumulate deep foundations. Such foundations greatly amplify their combat abilities… I definitely underestimated Muhtar’s depth."

"His no-escape commandment is still active. I can't transport Vania and Shadi away. I can only use magnetic powers to build this protective dome, but his followers are rapidly gathering. Once they deploy explosives, this dome won’t hold out for long… I must find another solution quickly!"

Seated inside the temple’s hidden chamber, Dorothy's mind raced urgently. To figure out how to counter Muhtar, she first needed to know the content of the new commandment he had issued. And to learn this, she could only ask Shadi.

Through the marionette mark on Vania’s body, Dorothy connected to her via spiritual threads. Under Dorothy’s control, the unconscious Vania slowly sat up and opened her eyes inside the darkened space beneath the metallic dome. Her gaze quickly landed on Shadi, who was lying a short distance away, breathing heavily.

"What exactly was his new commandment?" Dorothy asked Shadi through Vania.

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Hearing Vania speak, Shadi looked at her in surprise, then began to explain, still gasping for breath.

"Huff… Huff… His new commandment is an enhancement of the backlash commandment. Now, anyone who harbors even the intent to harm or attack him will trigger punishment before they can carry out their actions. The punishment is a direct lash against the soul, incredibly potent… even a White Ash-rank Shadow Beyonder like myself is reduced to this state after taking just one hit…"

Between gasps, Shadi clarified the devastating power of Muhtar’s latest commandment. Dorothy's expression turned even graver after hearing this.

"Punishing attackers based solely on their intent before the action… This commandment directly targets subjective intent… Any deliberate intention to harm Muhtar triggers punishment before the action can even begin. No wonder malignant healing didn't work…"

"A commandment defense that involves subjective intent… It's basically an unbeatable ability. Since the attacker’s intent is the criterion for punishment, methods like malignant healing, previously used to exploit commandment loopholes, are now ineffective. Even Shadi’s elemental form was countered by Muhtar’s soul whip…"

Dorothy felt a heavy weight on her shoulders, struggling to find a viable solution.

Faced with a commandment judged by subjective intent, the best workaround Dorothy could imagine was self-deception or self-hypnosis, convincing oneself that harming Muhtar was actually beneficial to him. Unfortunately, Dorothy had no expertise in such self-hypnosis methods, rendering this idea impossible to implement.

Without self-hypnosis, Muhtar’s new commandment was nearly impossible to overcome. Any normal person would harbor hostility when attacking, triggering punishment before action. Unless Dorothy constructed an autonomous robot programmed specifically to kill—something she couldn’t possibly assemble right now—she saw no way around it.

Observing the increasing number of Muhtar’s followers gathering outside the palace hall, Dorothy’s anxiety intensified. In her frustration, she quickly scanned the entire city through the system’s extended perception, searching desperately for anything useful. And after only a brief glance, she discovered something rather intriguing.

“This thing… it might actually work…” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

From a high-altitude perspective, Dorothy stared at a certain location in Yadith with curious contemplation, as an idea began to form in her mind.

Then, in this moment of crisis, Dorothy decided to immediately put her idea into action. She closed her eyes and used the communication channel to contact Nephthys in the distance.

…

In the outskirts of Yadith, dressed in white robes with golden ornaments, Nephthys stood near the Temple of Revelation Runes, surrounded by the corpses of various armed members of the Savior's Advent Sect.

Not long ago, following Dorothy's orders, Nephthys had come to this temple—one of the main strongholds of the sect in Yadith—and, in her role as the Heaven’s Arbiter Priestess, openly carried out a grand purge. With support from Dorothy's lightning powers, the temple and its immediate surroundings had been fully cleared. Since this area wasn’t covered by any commandments, most of the believers and militants had fled in fear of heavenly thunder, turning the temple into an empty husk.

“I wonder how Sister Vania is doing now…”

Standing beside the temple, Nephthys looked toward the distant, smoke-filled Baruch Royal Palace and muttered with concern. At that moment, she suddenly heard Dorothy’s familiar voice. Pausing in surprise, she focused her senses and realized it was a new directive.

“You want me… to go to the camp on the right?”

Hearing Dorothy’s instruction, Nephthys didn’t hesitate and immediately turned to quickly head toward the right. Before long, she arrived at the Savior’s Advent Sect's nearby armed encampment. Most of the personnel there had already gone with Muhtar to assault the palace, and the few remaining had either been struck down or fled. The camp was now completely deserted.

Once she arrived at the camp, Dorothy issued her next instruction.

“Now, Senior Nephthys, please wait beside the artillery position ahead of you. Use your Corpse Marionette Ring to control two corpses and take them with you. In a moment, you and the two corpse marionettes will operate the largest cannon on that platform.”

“Cannon?”

Hearing this, Nephthys shifted her gaze to the camp’s defensive structure—a very conspicuous, mounted heavy cannon. Compared to standard field artillery, this one was clearly larger and seemed designed for use in fortified emplacements.

Following Dorothy’s instructions, Nephthys used the Corpse Marionette Ring she’d been given earlier to control two corpse marionettes, quickly bringing them to the artillery position. There, she observed the thick, black, heavy cannon up close. Through Nephthys’ vision, Dorothy could clearly see the Falanoan inscription explaining that this was a new model developed in recent years. During the Yadith civil war, the Baruch royal family had imported large quantities of foreign weapons—this cannon was clearly one of them.

Using Nephthys’ vision, Dorothy quickly reviewed the cannon’s specifications and learned how to operate it. She then guided Nephthys and the corpse marionettes to adjust its angle and fire two test shots into the desert. Based on the impact points, Dorothy swiftly calculated the shell’s velocity, firepower, and blast radius, gaining a clear understanding of the cannon’s capabilities.

“Miss Dorothy, what exactly do you want me to do with this cannon?”

Standing next to the weapon, Nephthys—still puzzled after launching a shell—asked Dorothy curiously. She wondered why she had been summoned out of nowhere to fire artillery. Dorothy, with her powerful marionette abilities, could clearly operate it faster and more efficiently herself. Why not do it directly?

“You don’t need to worry about that, Senior Nephthys. Just do as I say. In a moment, I’ll give you a set of firing parameters. Adjust the cannon as instructed. Once you’ve adjusted them all, fire immediately—don’t hesitate or question anything, understood?”

“…Okay.”

Dorothy responded firmly, and although Nephthys still looked confused, she nodded with determination.

Having briefed Nephthys, Dorothy shifted her attention back to the distant palace. By now, the main hall of the palace was swarming with armed members of the Savior’s Advent Sect. They stared at the battered and burnt Muhtar with surprise, but under his grim expression, no one dared say a word.

“So, can you get this thing open?”

In the hall, Muhtar asked the gasping militants who were busy struggling in front of the massive metallic sphere. The men turned their heads and replied with frustration.

“Hah… hah… No good, Lord Muhtar. This mass of iron is stuck together way too tightly. We can’t pry it open at all. And any iron tools we use just get pulled in, adding more metal. If we want to break it, we’ll have to bring in some explosives to blast it…”

“Then go find them, quickly! Don’t make me wait here!”

“Y-yes, sir!!”

Obeying Muhtar’s instructions, several members of the Savior’s Advent Sect raced off to find explosives. Muhtar then shifted his gaze back to the towering metal sphere in the center of the hall. After a long period of magnetic gathering, the original metal dome had turned into a metal orb, easily twice its former size. More than half the palace’s metal had aggregated here, creating a sphere with an average thickness of half a meter.

“Hmph, no matter how thick you make your turtle shell, I’ll pry it open.”

He let out a cold snort at the metal orb before him. Meanwhile, inside the orb, Dorothy—through her control of Vania—was talking to Shadi.

“What? You want me to freeze our surroundings?”

Hearing Vania’s words, the weakened Shadi spoke in surprise. Under Dorothy’s control, Vania nodded.

“Yes. Can you still use your ability? If so, please freeze all the metal around us, seal every gap with ice, and add an extra layer of ice for protection in here!”

“An extra layer of ice… cough, cough… I can’t manage the same output I had before. I’ll try, but I doubt it’ll hold up against Muhtar.”

Shadi replied pessimistically, and Vania responded.

“It doesn’t matter. The ice isn’t meant to stop Muhtar anyway. Hurry, time’s short. Start from this side—freeze as much as you can…”

…

After taking care of matters at the palace for the moment, Dorothy turned her attention back to the artillery platform. Calculating the time, she spoke to Nephthys in a serious tone.

“All right, Senior Neph, let’s begin. I’ll calculate the firing parameters, and you operate the cannon. I’ll call them out one by one, and as soon as you’re done adjusting, fire immediately. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Nephthys, now fully prepared beside the cannon, replied to Dorothy. Hearing Nephthys’s response, Dorothy took a deep breath and closed her eyes, calculating the necessary ballistic data. Normally, Dorothy’s computational ability made such a task trivial, but she deliberately complicated the math far beyond normal.

A once-simple equation was twisted by Dorothy’s advanced knowledge, weighed down with countless exacting conditions and high-precision decimals. Dorothy turned a standard ballistic problem into multiple complex ones requiring almost all of her mental capacity to solve quickly.

By burying herself in such heavy calculations, Dorothy suppressed her conscious awareness of why she was doing them—thus muddling her motive with pure “problem-solving.”

“Range… 386… Angle… 467…”

Quietly she murmured the solutions. Standing at the artillery post, Nephthys adjusted the cannon as Dorothy dictated each figure. Gradually, the once-inward-facing cannon, meant for city defense, was re-aimed toward the distant palace in Yadith. To this point, Nephthys still had no idea whom she was about to bombard.

Boom!!

Once all the parameters were set, Nephthys yanked the firing cord. With a thunderous roar, the shell blasted from the muzzle and shot toward the distant palace. In an instant it streaked through the sky above the palace, aided by a lightning bolt that punched a hole in the roof, letting the shell plummet into a lavish hall inside.

Within the hall, Muhtar and numerous Savior’s Advent Sect fighters looked up toward the lightning-scorched ceiling. They had no time to register the high-speed artillery round before their vision was flooded with fire. Amid the shockwave and raging flames, countless bodies were torn apart—including Muhtar’s. His soul, seized by horror, finally gave way alongside his body, collapsing into oblivion.