Chapter 1611: Chapter 1611

The Hive Queen felt a deadly curse spreading through her body, resembling a black infection. Her entire form felt several times heavier.

"What did you do to me?!" Thıs text ıs hosted at nοvelfire.net

"You have been judged. Those with sinful hearts are judged by this balance. Depending on its weight, you receive a punishment, a curse that is not easily shaken off."

The Hive Queen powered up, causing the curse to tremble and slowly disintegrate, surprising Maria slightly.

However, the curse lingered, requiring more time to dispel completely.

Maria seized the opportunity and rushed forward, swinging her scythe downward, gathering darkness, phantom energies, cursed power, moonlight essence, and black void into it.

"{Abyssal Black Death Void}!"

The Hive Queen distorted space around her, forming dozens of giant arms from nowhere to resist the massive scythe.

The arms barely held, but the subsequent attack exploded and erupted in front of her face, as darkness consumed most of her psychic sea.

The Hive Queen surged through the explosion, conjuring dozens of insect scythes resembling the arms of praying mantises and swinging them at Maria from every angle.

"{Psychic Blade Storm}!"

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

Space distorted as Maria faced thousands of slashing attacks made of purple and pink psychic energies cutting through space, reaching her from all directions, slicing through her Void Barrier and other defenses.

The attacks accumulated to a tremendous degree until they triggered a massive combustion of particles and disintegrating matter, creating an explosion.

Maria sustained some damage but escaped most of the explosion using her [Void Shifting Spatial Movement] Skill, moving across space to reach the Hive Queen from behind. However, the Hive Queen's realized body quickly dispersed, transforming into thousands of ethereal energy bugs, evading Maria's claws.

"Ah, sneaky little bug, I can play the same game as you!"

Maria laughed, dividing herself into thousands of black spectral flies, chasing every piece of the Hive Queen, surprising her.

"She can turn into a swarm as well?!"

Maria caught a dozen of the Hive Queen's bugs, which chose to self-explode and deal damage. Half of them were devoured by the black void tears, which the flies shed ceaselessly, spreading Maria's Domain.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Hive Queen could recover the pieces she destroyed herself, but those eaten by Maria were lost. She was down to ninety percent of her original mass, her body and soul having merged, similar to Maria after her evolution into an L+++ Rank being.

It seemed that beyond a certain power level, entities could evolve to merge body and soul. However, Maria wasn't certain, as it could be mere coincidence. The Hive Queen's evolutionary path appeared to diverge. Other Hive Insectoids prioritized armor or physical strength, but the Queen-type excelled as powerful Espers.

Thus, the Hive Queen focused on her Psychic Powers, knowing they were her only tool to surpass mortals and perhaps even gods. Maria remained unsure if the Hive Queen possessed a Divine Ember, suggesting her race might have allowed her to grow immensely strong without divine power.

"Damn it! She's so annoying. Have I even dealt actual damage to her?"

The Hive Queen thought quickly, manifesting several pillars of psychic energy around her and Maria, interconnecting them into a gigantic formation.

"{Soul and Mind-Suppressing Array}!"

A powerful pressure weighed on Maria, slowing her significantly as intense psychic waves sought to crush her soul and mind. The Hive Queen, seeing her technique's success, unleashed another barrage of slashing attacks, repeating the same technique multiple times.

"{Psychic Blade Storm}!"

"{Psychic Blade Storm}!"

"{Psychic Blade Storm}!"

"{Psychic Blade Storm}!"

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

Maria screamed in pain as her body was relentlessly sliced apart. Her family watched from below, but the chaotic realm created by the two fighters was too dangerous for them to enter recklessly.

"Maria, what are you doing?!"

As Lucifer worried for his wife, the battle in the skies raged. Every Zodiacron could feel it, and as Quick Hare and Drakogon's battle reached its climax, so did Maria and the Hive Queen's.

"Hahaha! I got you! I finally got you, fool! You shouldn't have let me evolve! You shouldn't have let me become stronger! Now see? This is all your fault! Hahaha! HAHAHAHAHA!"

The Hive Queen, overly confident, laughed and declared victory the moment she saw Maria trapped, losing parts of her body and weakening as damage accumulated.

From each of her wounds, black tears emerged, and as Maria endured more pain, her wails grew more intense.

As she screamed in agony, shockwaves of powerful void shook the entire formation, causing cracks to appear.

The Hive Queen's face twisted in disbelief.

The formation shattered into pieces, and Maria fell silent, though black tears continued to fall from her eyes and wounds.

These tears formed a massive black ocean.

Maria had never been pushed this far, which helped her understand how to wield her abilities properly.

Now, she saw it clearly.

Her tears weren't mere miasma but a liquid fusion of miasma and void.

Moreover, these tears contained the power of small stars, essential for many of her new skills.

Most importantly, they originated from a Skill, [Void Tears of the Starless Deep].

This was not a passive skill.

Though it had a passive effect of always being active, it also possessed an active effect.

One that Maria had not explored until now.

"Do you know why I cry?"

"I have lived a pretty wretched life… no, three lives, actually."

"I've lost everyone I've loved… twice."

"I've died and been reborn twice too… And you know what stuck with me through all these lives? Strength? Pride? Joy? Determination? Haha… no."

Maria gazed at the Hive Queen, her ocean of black void trembling, forming dozens of vortexes rushing toward her.

"What remained with me was Grief."

"And why should I care about any of that, you stupid—UNGH?!"

The Hive Queen's eyes widened as her left shoulder was blasted away, a spiraling vortex of black void tears tearing it apart in a split second.

"When did that…?! How?!"

"You should care. You asked earlier what made me stronger than you, right? It isn't because I lived for a thousand years or trained for a million years or any such nonsense... It's because of my suffering."