Exiled Prince: I'm the Unexpected Extra in the Novel

Chapter 197: The Crimson Night [25]

The War for The North [84]

Chapter 197: The Crimson Night [25]

When the void abruptly gave way to a scorching heat that filled his lungs, Cassian took a deep and peaceful breath.

Opening his eyes slowly, he saw Vorloth standing motionless amidst the destruction.

Cassian’s lips slowly curled upwards. In his eyes was the terrifying, unsettling joy of a man who had completely lost his mind, a man who had leaped off the edge of an abyss.

He shot a mocking, provocative look at Vorloth. He said nothing. He simply flapped his wings violently. He shot into the sky and began to fly away at full speed, not even looking back.

Vorloth showed no reaction to this mocking escape. He merely fixed his dark, bottomless eyes on the horizon where Cassian had vanished, and a second later, he too launched himself like a shadow to give chase.

Tearing through the air like a missile, Cassian could feel the suffocating, crushing aura rapidly approaching from behind. Vorloth was on his trail.

Cassian gritted his teeth and combined his wind magic with the flames of chaos, pushing his speed even further to a level the human mind could not comprehend.

As endless forests, mountains, and rivers flowed beneath him like a blur, he noticed faint beams of light on the horizon a while later. The torches illuminating the darkness of the night were the herald of a small village with peaceful smoke rising from its chimneys.

A crazed, sickly smile spread across Cassian’s lips. His pupils trembled with the thrill of madness. The counter for his *Crimson Night* skill echoed in his mind like a ticking time bomb. He needed blood, destruction, death.

He paused suddenly in the air, gliding as he cut through the wind like a knife. He turned his right palm toward that peaceful, sleeping village. There was not the slightest crumb of mercy in his eyes.

The pitch black, dense wave of chaos pouring from his palm flowed toward the village like an apocalyptic flood descending from the sky.

Within seconds, the light of the torches was swallowed by the darkness. Houses, fields, people in their sleep... They all silently turned to dust the moment they came into contact with the chaos. They did not even have the time to scream. Only black ashes scattering in the wind remained of the village.

However, before Cassian could savor this massacre, the fabric of existence tore, and Vorloth suddenly appeared right in front of Cassian, as if he had always been there.

Vorloth’s pale hand reached toward Cassian’s chest with incredible speed, aiming to pierce right through his heart. Death was only milliseconds away.

But Cassian had been waiting for this moment. His body lost its form right before the blow made contact, turning entirely into thick black smoke.

As Vorloth’s hand passed harmlessly through the smoke, Cassian glided over his shoulders and took solid form again behind him in mere seconds.

With a savage grin on his lips, he tightly grabbed Vorloth’s long, pale hair with both hands. "You are too slow!" he roared, beginning to spin wildly in the air. Bolstering the centrifugal force with chaos mana, he swung Vorloth around in the air like a rag doll and hurled him with all his might.

As Vorloth was flung away like a meteor, Cassian did not stop. Summoning the thunder, he unleashed a massive wave of black lightning upon Vorloth. As the lightning caught Vorloth in the air and detonated, Cassian turned and flapped his wings again, continuing his escape.

His mind was completely numb.

He was solely focused on the counter. Before long, he found another village on the horizon.

The same cold blooded madness again, the same motion of the palm. The massive wave of chaos descended upon the earth once more, swallowing houses, streets, and the innocent lives within.

Cassian was not stopping. He continued to destroy everything in his path, advancing like a god of destruction. A town, a village, a small farm... It did not matter at all what it was or who lived there. He merely flew, extended his palm, and turned the earth into a black hell, a graveyard made only of ash. The screams of the people and the crackling of the flames were like a muffled melody in his ears. His soul had completely blackened, leaving his humanity far behind.

But Vorloth was unstoppable. Just as Cassian set his sights on a large, crowded town and gathered his chaos energy, space bent. This time, Vorloth appeared right above him. With a single kick, he snapped Cassian’s spine in two, nailing him to the earth. Before Cassian could even feel the pain...

**"You died."**

Darkness. A system message. And the **Rebirth Flame** that followed.

The moment Cassian was reborn from his ashes, he shot into the sky letting out manic laughter and continued his unfinished massacre. The chaos flames erupting from his hands wiped the town off the map.

The cycle had begun.

Cassian would destroy a settlement, and Vorloth would kill him. Cassian would resurrect in seconds, laughing once more amidst the stench of blood and ash, picking up his slaughter right where he left off.

Death and resurrection. Destruction and slaughter.

He did not know how long this sickly cycle lasted. Cassian’s mind no longer wanted to think about anything.

That is, until he saw that colossal, familiar castle rising on the horizon.

Evershade Castle stood before him with its broad walls, majestic towers reaching into the sky, and banners fluttering atop its ramparts.

He knew this place very well. It was the home of his allies who trusted him, who had fought shoulder to shoulder beside him against the Obsidian Dawn to protect the North. There were women, children, knights, and thousands of people there.

Cassian’s mind, clouded with madness, hesitated for a brief moment. His wingbeats slowed down. To destroy this place... It was the same as turning his allies to ash with his own hands...

But then, he looked at his hands. The invisible blood dripping from his hands was so abundant that it would paint even the oceans red. He had already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents. He had sold his soul to the devil to fill that counter. There was no return from this. His hands were already irreversibly stained with blood. There was no salvation, no forgiveness.

That momentary hesitation in his eyes vanished, replaced once again by that bottomless darkness and absolute madness. Biting his lips, he smiled.

Right at the moment he flapped his wings and reached his hand out toward Evershade Castle, the air suddenly grew heavy.

Vorloth appeared right in front of him, hovering in the air.

This time, he did not attack instantly. He stood his ground. His eyes were on Cassian’s exhausted face, which was brimming with madness.

Vorloth tilted his head slightly to the side, almost like a curious bird. This was a strange, eerie movement, highly unexpected from a completely soulless being like him.

"What are you trying to do?" Vorloth asked. He could not comprehend why Cassian was massacring without reason.

Ignoring this question, Cassian hurled the chaos flames he had gathered in his hand toward Vorloth in a haphazard, unbalanced manner.

Yet Vorloth merely raised his hand slightly. The moment those terrifying flames of chaos struck Vorloth’s palm, they evaporated and vanished like a drop of water. He had blocked the attack completely and effortlessly.

Vorloth asked once more, without even the slightest change in emphasis in his voice: "What is it you aim to achieve?"

All the hatred, all the oppression and despair inside Cassian erupted like a volcano. Spitting as he shouted, his eyes bloodshot, he roared at the top of his lungs:

"FUCK OFF!!!!"

Cassian’s body suddenly transformed into thousands of small black crows. As these crows passed around Vorloth in swarms, Vorloth swiped his hand and turned hundreds of them to dust. However, the remaining ones bypassed Vorloth and arrived directly above Evershade Castle.

In the sky, right above the highest tower of the castle, the crows merged and reformed Cassian’s body once again.

Cassian had no time. He only had milliseconds left.

He spread his arms wide and raised his head to the sky.

And the explosion occurred.

The wave of chaos swallowed the castle entirely. There was no sound. The sheer force of the blast was so tremendous that even the sound waves had been shattered. The explosion gave way to a pitch black darkness, a massive, expanding sphere that devoured everything around it.

The majestic walls of Evershade Castle, its high towers, the people inside, the knights, the weapons... The moment they entered this sphere of chaos spreading outward from the center, they were torn into molecules and vaporized.

The blast wave advanced, expanding hundreds of meters per second. Everything that existed within a radius of several kilometers faced absolute erasure.

Not even debris was left behind. The earth became a massive, smooth crater. Only the black ashes drifting in the air and the absolute silence of death remained.

However, at the very center of this monumental explosion, the final, satisfied smile on Cassian’s face froze.

While the explosion was still expanding outward, Vorloth’s hand had entered through Cassian’s back, tearing through his ribcage and protruding from his chest. Trapped between Vorloth’s bloody fingers was Cassian’s Dragon Heart.

Vorloth slowly squeezed his hand. The heart burst with a sickening squelching sound.

The light in Cassian’s eyes instantly faded. A flood of black blood poured from his mouth. As all the strength drained from his body, his head fell forward lifelessly. When Vorloth pulled his arm back, Cassian’s empty body fell slowly toward the floor of the crater, plunging into the sea of ash he had created.

**"You died."**

Darkness fell. But this time it was different. The familiar, scorching warmth of the flame was absent from his mind.

Vorloth just hung there in the air, right in the middle of the smooth crater covered in black ash created by the massive explosion.

There was no sign of life, no sound around. Only the black ashes gliding heavily in the air drifted down to the earth like a snowfall.

Vorloth looked with empty eyes at the spot where Cassian’s lifeless body had fallen. He waited.

Time passed. Minutes, perhaps hours.

As usual, he waited for that maddening boy to be reborn from his ashes with a laugh. But nothing happened. Cassian did not return. The pieces of his body just laid there among the ashes, lifeless and motionless.

Vorloth slowly raised his head upwards, to the sky.

Behind the clouds scattered by the explosion, the night sky had emerged. And in the sky, the only thing he saw was the Moon, slowly turning crimson, taking on a blood red color as if it were absorbing all the spilled blood, looking down at him almost like a giant, judging eye.