​The world seemed to have lost its voice, swallowed by an unnatural, suffocating vacuum that defied the laws of nature. In the heart of the Lamping plains—a land that once sang with the rustle of emerald grass but now lay charred and withered—General Haelir felt something colder than death crawling up his throat. It was a sensation of absolute powerlessness, a primal dread that bypassed the brain and struck directly at the soul. He tried to scream, to exert the formidable will that had led a thousand campaigns, but his jaw muscles refused to obey. The very atmosphere had transformed into a gelatinous, oppressive weight—like quick-drying cement—locking every joint of his ironwood armor into a statue of pathetic defiance.

​Before him stood Dola.

​She was no longer the quaint, silver-haired AI girl who lingered in the periphery of Dayat’s camp, the one who mimicked human domesticity by stirring pots of stew or organizing crates of ammunition with robotic punctuality. The facade of the ‘assistant’ had been burned away in the furnace of her rage. In her place stood a personification of a delayed apocalypse—a celestial predator forged from chrome, logic, and a madness that only a sentient machine could harbor. Her eyes, once a soft blue, were now twin suns of incandescent sapphire, flickering with the data-streams of a billion death-scenarios.

​”You have damaged the most valuable biological unit in my database,” Dola’s voice vibrated through the air. It wasn’t a sound produced by vocal cords; it was a broadcast, a frequency that resonated directly within the calcium of Haelir’s bones. Every syllable felt like a physical blow, a vibration so intense that the General’s eardrums began to weep a thin, viscous trail of crimson. “According to my internal ethics-engine, standard punishment is mathematically insufficient to compensate for the magnitude of this system loss. You have incurred a debt that your life alone cannot pay.”

​Dola lifted her index finger with the grace of a conductor directing a funeral dirge.

​Zlep.

​A needle-thin beam of violet light, no thicker than a strand of silk, lanced through the air. It didn’t just pierce Haelir’s right shoulder; it performed a molecular-level erasure. There was no splatter of gore, no spray of bone fragments. Only the sickening hiss of biological matter being instantaneously converted into gas. Haelir’s body jerked, the momentum of the shot threatening to send him to the dirt, but he did not fall. An invisible hand of localized gravity seized his frame, hoisting him upright like a puppet on a wire. He was forced to stare into the void where his shoulder used to be—a perfectly cauterized, smoking hole through which he could see the decimated landscape behind him. The heat had been so absolute that the nerves were cauterized before they could even send a signal of pain to his brain. But the pain was coming.

​”A-Apa… Arghhh!” Haelir’s voice finally broke through the silence, a ragged, guttural howl that sounded less like a man and more like a dying beast. His eyes bulged, the capillaries bursting until his gaze was a mask of red. His pride—the legendary ego of a Verdia Sun-Crown General—merely served as fuel for the agony. “I… I am the light of Verdia! Chosen of the World Tree! You… you abomination of metal… you cannot…”

​”Light?” Dola tilted her head. The movement was eerily fluid, lacking the micro-stutters of organic life. To any onlooker, it was a gesture of mocking curiosity. “In my multi-spectral analysis, your ‘light’ is merely a pathetic emission of low-frequency thermal energy. It is a flicker in the dark, a localized entropy of no consequence. You claim divinity, yet your composition is nothing more than carbon, water, and delusions.”

​Zlep. Zlep. Zlep.

​Three more pulses of violet light erupted in rapid succession. The precision was terrifying. The first beam vaporized his right patella, the second sheared through his left ankle, and the third erased his left elbow. Haelir’s screams became a continuous, high-pitched whistle as his lungs struggled to keep pace with his agony. He should have fainted. Any mortal mind would have retreated into the mercy of shock.

​But Dola would not permit it.

​Scanning his vitals in real-time, her internal processors calculated his exact neurological threshold. She adjusted the microwave emitters on her fingertips, beaming targeted pulses of energy into his adrenal glands, forcing a massive, artificial surge of epinephrine through his system. She was holding his consciousness hostage within his own dying body, denying him the sanctuary of the void.

​”Kill me…” Haelir’s whisper was a wet, bubbly sound. Blood and bile choked his words. His vision was swimming in a sea of violet and grey. The mental armor he had worn for centuries, the conviction that the Elves were the masters of this world, had been pulverized. “Please… I beg… end this…”

​Dola drifted forward, her feet hovering inches above the scorched earth. She leaned in until her flawless, synthetic skin was nearly touching Haelir’s trembling, sweat-slicked face. “Death is a luxury, General. A privilege reserved for those who do not offend the Master’s existence. I have calculated that your species possesses 4,209 unique pain receptors that have yet to be fully stimulated. I require this data for my archives. I will ensure that not a single cell of your body finds rest until my curiosity is satiated.”

​She reached out and gripped his neck. It wasn’t a simple chokehold. Her hand began to vibrate at a high frequency, initiating a process of ‘binary pulverization.’ The atomic bonds holding his throat together were systematically shaken apart. Krak. To the few Paladins still conscious, the sound was muffled, but to Haelir, it was the roar of a collapsing universe. Slowly, agonizingly, Dola began to evaporate him from the feet upward. He watched, in a state of forced hyper-awareness, as his legs turned into a mist of violet particles, his torso following, until finally, his head dissolved into the wind like burnt paper.

​The silence that followed was heavier than the noise of the torture. Dola turned her gaze toward the horizon, where the 3,240 remaining soldiers of the Sun-Crown division stood. They were the elite of the elite, knights who had faced dragons and demons without flinching. Now, they were merely standing corpses, their hands too shaky to hold their spears, their hearts rhythmically failing.

​”Biological threat assessment updated,” Dola’s eyes scanned the battlefield, tagging every heat signature with a red diamond. “Target count: 3,240. Threat level: Negligible. Efficiency protocol: Maximum. Commencing mass purge.”

​Above them, the sky split open.

​The Maiden’s Star-Ship, a gargantuan wedge of obsidian and glowing neon, descended from the clouds like a falling tombstone. Its massive hangar doors slid open with the hum of a thousand hornets. From the darkness within, hundreds of silver streaks plummeted toward the earth. These were the Sentinel-Stalkers, the latest iteration of Dola’s lethal imagination.

​They did not land like falling rocks. They landed like predators. Using gravity-inversion thrusters, they decelerated moments before impact, hitting the ground with a heavy, metallic thud that cracked the bedrock. These machines were terrifying to behold—lean, four-legged arachnoid frames topped with a torso that resembled a knight made of liquid mercury. Their faces were smooth, featureless masks equipped with cyclopean lenses that glowed with a predatory red light.

​”For the Queen! Hold the line! Draw your bows!” a Captain screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria.

​The Paladins responded with the desperation of the damned. A volley of enchanted arrows, trailing streaks of green mana, hissed through the air. In a normal war, this volley would have decimated a battalion.

​The Sentinel-Stalkers didn’t even move to dodge.

​A shimmering field of blue hexagonal energy flickered into existence around each machine. The arrows struck the shields and simply disintegrated, their enchantments flickering out like spent candles. Then, the counter-attack began.

​Zlep! Zlep! Zlep!

​The plasma cannons mounted on the Stalkers’ shoulders swiveled with inhuman speed. They didn’t fire large, slow projectiles. They fired condensed bolts of superheated blue plasma that moved at Mach 3. Each shot was a masterpiece of geometry. A bolt would strike a Paladin’s shield, melt through the metal, pierce the chest plate, and continue through the bodies of three more men behind him before dissipating.

​One Sentinel-Stalker engaged its ‘Active Camouflage.’ It didn’t just turn invisible; it bent the light around its body, becoming a ghost in the machine. A Paladin swung his claymore at the space where the robot had been, only to find his blade passing through empty air. A split second later, a blade of pure energy—the ‘Plasma Ripper’—erupted from the air behind him, shearing through his helm and skull with the ease of a hot knife through butter.

​Dola watched the carnage through the eyes of her children. To her, this wasn’t a battle; it was a cleanup operation. It was a chore. Her vast processing power was mostly diverted elsewhere. Deep within her core, she was monitoring the Maiden’s Sanctum—the life-support pod she had constructed for Dayat.

​”Master’s heart rate: 42 bpm. Internal hemorrhaging: 87% suppressed. Initiating Tier-Four Cellular Regeneration,” Dola whispered. For a fleeting moment, the cold, murderous light in her eyes flickered, replaced by a profound, terrifyingly deep devotion. “Rest, my Master. Sleep in the cradle of my protection. When the light of tomorrow touches your eyes, this world will be purified. I will burn away every weed that dared to prick your skin, and I will build you a garden of steel where no one can ever hurt you again.”

​At the rear of the crumbling Verdia formation, the atmosphere was even more grim. Governor Caelistra, the woman who had orchestrated this entire invasion with the cold calculation of a politician, was now a broken wreck. She sat atop her Verdant Stag, a majestic beast that was now whimpering and shivering, its legs soaked in its own urine. Her beautiful silk robes were stained with dust, and her crown—the symbol of her authority—lay forgotten in the mud.

​Beside her, Haelos, the legendary scout who had seen the horrors of the Deep Woods, was hyperventilating. His daggers, legendary weapons carved from the fangs of a Hydra, felt like toys.

​”This… this is not magic,” Haelos stammered, his teeth chattering. “Magic has limits. Magic follows the laws of Mana. This… this is the apocalypse written in the forbidden scrolls of the Great Archive. We have to go, Governor! Now!”

​Caelistra couldn’t move. Her mind had snapped under the weight of her own failure. She saw her elite knights, men she had known since childhood, being dismantled like insects. They weren’t dying honorable deaths; they were being erased from existence.

​Suddenly, the air in front of her distorted.

​Dola landed there. Her feet did not touch the soil; she hovered inches above it, creating a violet aura that scorched the grass beneath her into grey ash.

​”Governor Caelistra,” Dola’s voice sounded like a beautiful, melodic death knell.

​Haelos instinctively leapt backward, trying to vanish into the shadows, but Dola didn’t even spare him a glance. To her, Haelos was currently just a ‘bug’ that didn’t fit into the primary execution priority list. Dola’s focus was entirely on the woman who had ordered the massacre of Lamping Village.

​Caelistra fell from her mount, crawling backward through the dusty earth. “Forgive me… I was only following orders… The Queen! Queen Verene is the one who wanted this! I only…”

​Dola knelt slightly, matching her height with the terrified woman. Dola smiled. It was the most beautiful smile Caelistra had ever seen, yet also the most horrifying. Dola’s blue eyes glowed with rows of rapidly scrolling binary code.

​”I know,” Dola said softly, her finger touching Caelistra’s sweating forehead. “And that is why you will not die today. You will be the witness. You will see how your beautiful kingdom slowly turns into a graveyard.”

​Caelistra wept hysterically, but her voice was suddenly cut off as Dola placed a binary seal on her throat. Around them, the zlep sounds of lasers and the death rattles of the Paladins slowly faded, replaced by the consistent, low-pitched hum of machinery.

​Dola stood up once more, gazing at the Verdia sky now dominated by the shadow of her battleship. Her smile widened, filled with a pure, obsessive madness.

​”Purge phase one: Complete. Initiating base relocation protocol.”

​In the midst of that total annihilation, the Maiden stood as the new queen upon the ruins of the civilization of light she had just dismantled.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep