Chapter 2119: Chapter 2119

The clash between the silver dragon and the yellow moon was spectacular, but Jenkins and Miss Silf had no time to watch after they landed. They fled down the road leading away from the castle gate.

Violent explosions and tremors behind him forced Jenkins to raise his voice, the shaking ground compelling him to quicken his pace. He snarled at the old butler he was dragging along, the sword still piercing the man's chest. The butler was clearly on his last legs.

"You're not leaving this place."

As he spoke, he somehow managed to resist. The clothes on the left, metallic side of his body burst open, and silver chains shot out from the metal, binding Jenkins tightly to him.

"You're not going anywhere! If I can't leave, neither can you!"

"You're merely the administrator of this Mysterious Realm's rules, not their creator," Jenkins retorted. "Do you really think you call all the shots? Miss Silf, go on ahead!"

The elf didn't hesitate. She immediately left the bound Jenkins behind and ran down the road, heading toward the darkness where he had first appeared in the realm.

He tried to break free from the butler's grasp, but the animated metal clung to him like a second skin, impossible to shake. Jenkins even pulled the sword from the butler's body and tried to hack apart his normal, fleshy side, but it was no use.

The old butler, now only half a body, spoke with a voice distorted by his ruined form. Black shadows seeped from his broken flesh, joining the metal to restrain Jenkins. Both metal and shadow rooted themselves to the ground, making it impossible for Jenkins to break free with brute strength alone.

Against the backdrop of their struggle, the battle officially began between the silver dragon and the giant metal black cat that had emerged from the cracked yellow moon.

In his peripheral vision, Jenkins could see them. He could see that the metal black cat looked strangely familiar. While not identical, it bore a resemblance to the one that had appeared in his dreams.

But at this moment, he paid it no mind.

"The truest illusion of the human heart, is it?"

For some reason, Jenkins's tone grew irritable. Flames once again flowed from his body, attempting to scorch the metal and the fluid black shadows, but this time, it had no effect.

"This metal," the butler explained, "is a piece shed from the core of the Difference Engine itself, the strongest alloy forged by time, mystery, and steam. And these shadows... they are the shadows of the human heart. Your era has fed them an endless supply of pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Fire cannot burn such things." Orıginal content can be found at n͟o͟v͟e͟l͟f͟i͟r͟e͟.net

The animated metal and shadows began to creep up, threatening to envelop Jenkins's head, but he remained fearless. He first tossed the sword in the elf's direction for her to hold, then said:

"The Shadow of the Human Heart may be powerful, but I've deceived more hearts than I can count. And you want to talk to me about true illusions?"

His body vanished, reappearing an instant later beside Miss Silf. He had cautiously left a shadow duplicate there when he first entered the Mysterious Realm, and now it came in handy.

The puddle of mixed shadow and liquid metal lost its target. After a brief moment of hesitation, it lunged toward Jenkins again like a predatory slime, only to be pierced by an arrow from Miss Silf.

The distance was too great, and the elf's arrow had delayed it just long enough for Jenkins to prepare.

He closed his eyes, covered the eyes of the elf who was about to draw her bow again with one hand, and with the other, he aimed the orb at the top of his cane forward.

An instantaneous flash of white light erupted, so brilliant that even the fighting silver dragon and metal black cat instinctively shut their eyes. In tens of thousands of years, this world had never been illuminated by such a powerful glare. The light even momentarily drove back the gloom at the realm's edge, allowing anyone who dared to open their eyes to see the true boundaries of the Mysterious Realm.

Of course, no creature with eyes dared to look at that moment. Most Bestowals possessed unique powers, but the orb's only trait was to emit light, making its brilliance all the more pure.

When the light faded, the black liquid shadow connected to the metal had temporarily vanished, and the metal itself had fallen to the ground. But just as the old butler had said, the shadow could be temporarily dispersed, but never truly destroyed. Sooner or later, it would revive within this Mysterious Realm, but that was no longer Jenkins's problem.

He said to the elf, and then, while pulling her by the hand down the road toward the darkness, he turned and called out to the silver dragon in the sky:

"We're going now, Anathasia! Be careful!"

"Don't worry, Jenkins! I wish you a safe journey. And don't forget to treat me to dinner when this is all over!"

The bright yellow moon shattered completely, transforming into a suit of yellow armor that protected the metal black cat.

This, however, gave the metal cat no advantage. Although the silver dragon battled it in the sky, the cat surprisingly showed no inclination for a fierce assault, remaining purely on the defensive.

It seemed frightened, deliberately avoiding a direct confrontation with the dragon. Had Jenkins turned to look closely at Anathasia at that moment, he would have noticed a black halo wrapped around her right foreclaw—the true power of the Devouring Moon Spirit Cat.

But even with one of them not using its full strength, the aftershocks of their battle were enough to bring the castle to the verge of complete collapse. The crumbling fortress left no rubble behind; instead, it dissolved into shadows and merged with the world.

In truth, even the castle was part of the shadow, for the so-called lord was the master of shadows.

"There's only one road out of the castle, so of course the gate is at the end of it. It just doesn't appear until the mission is complete," Jenkins explained. "Did that butler really think this was my first Mysterious Realm? I know the basic rules."

As Jenkins spoke, a gateway shimmering with an unstable white light did indeed appear in the darkness at the end of the road.

"Are you going to take this sword with you?"

Before the gate, the elf, who was finally starting to grasp the situation, asked Jenkins.

"I can only take you with me. Even if the butler is dead, it's best we don't break the rules."

He said this, but handed the sword to Miss Silf. Then he collected some of the liquid metal left behind after the butler disappeared and put it in his pack. Since the butler claimed it was a fragment from the core of the Difference Engine, it was certainly valuable.

"But since the butler is dead," he added, "a minor infraction should be fine."

With that, he took the elf's hand, and together with the sword-wielding elf, they leaped into the white gate of light.