Foreboding Storm - Chapter 123

The feeling of a woman’s soft body threw his mind into chaos. His heart pounded in his chest as he breathed heavily, the shallow gasps sounding as if he was being strangled. His head felt light and fuzzy as if he was intoxicated and when his gaze fell on the figure in his arms, he froze.

Crown Prince Lail felt like he was in a dream, the purple orbs of the woman making him doubt his own eyes. She’s back?

“Qamari…?”

If he was dreaming, then this was a dream he never wanted to wake from. A wide grin stretched across his lips and brightened his face and dark eyes. No matter how long he stared at her and fiercely pinched himself, the dream did not dissolve, nor did she disappear.

This was not a dream.

His wife was in his arms! After searching for her everywhere, she was finally in his arms…!

Wild with joy, he cupped her covered face and peppered kisses on her forehead, eyes, and nose.

“Where have you been? Do you know how worried I was? I searched everywhere for you! Where have you been?” He asked trembling with excitement and exhilaration.

The barely conscious Princess Qamari as if sensing his turbulent emotions rubbed his back in comfort. Warmth spread through his body and a feeling of weightlessness settled over him. Sighing in satisfaction, Crown Prince Lail laid his head on his wife’s shoulder and inhaled her lavender scent.

Since the day of her disappearance, his heart was never at peace, restless and unsettled as he worried about her safety and well-being. He kept himself busy and occupied with missions and training to prevent his thoughts from wandering to her.

But the task was easier said than achieved. As the days passed, he found himself thinking more and more about his wife, and no mission or training was able to prevent his mind from straying to her. Before long, even the passage of time itself seemed to crawl in the impatient Crown Prince’s eyes.

Left with no choice, he decided to take the Magical Kilin Mission to leave the academy. There were two reasons for this. One was to escape from the crowd of hoarding females and the second was to find the heirloom that would release him from the restrictions of the academy while remaining occupied until the Seven Academies Competition.

At the gathering of the Seven Academies, he would see his wife, and his wait would come to an end.

But his one-year wait was reduced to six months of separation. He met his wife before the Seven Academies Competition. Holding her tighter, Crown Prince Lail’s tensed muscles relaxed and he sank into the warmth of the hot spring and her soft body.

Out of his field of vision, in a corner he could not see, the violet eyes of the woman he considered his wife flashed with a green glow, and a vicious smile spread on her lips. As the radiance of her green orbs fell on the surrounding sea of flowers, for one brief moment the assortment of resplendent flowers transformed into a sea of skulls and bones.

Closing her eyes, the woman’s body trembled for a second and her eyes reverted back to violet when she reopened them.

Crown Prince Lail sensed his wife tremble in the midst of his stupor and drew back.

“Are you feeling cold, Qamari? The hot spring will help you warm up.”

He moved deeper into the heart of the spring with her. Once their entire bodies were submerged in the embrace of water, he wrapped his arms around her and laid his head on her covered head, rubbing her arms to provide more heat.

“Hmm…” She moaned in pleasure, racing his heartbeat.

Crown Prince Lail swallowed and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. With her unwell, he found his reaction upsetting and disappointing.

After what felt like an eternity, his wife gained the energy to stand on her, but Crown Prince Lail felt weak all over, his head spinning and his muscles aching as if he performed an arduous task.

“Qamari…I think we should get out of the spring.” Sensing something wrong, he waddled with her and bent to lift her in his armps. As he slowly made his way out of the hot spring, a fluorescent mass of Green Fireflies surrounded them and filled the place with a green glow. His wife’s warm breath fell on his neck in tantalizing short puffs, clouding his already chaotic mind and disjointed thoughts.

When Crown Prince Lail lowered his head to reproach her, he found his arms empty and tied with green veins that sucked his blood and lifeforce as they gave off faint green light.

“This…!”

The development was sudden and out of his expectations, freezing him in shock. Stunned speechless, he blankly stared at the veins.

“Qamari…”

As understanding dawned on him, a self-deprecating and loathing smile spread on his features, shrouding him in an intense aura of disgust. His murky and unfocused dark eyes slowly cleared.

Crown Prince Lail fell for an illusion, seeing his wife when in truth a Mind Fogging plant had been toying with him, a shattering and disgraceful fact that he couldn’t accept.

“How? How did I fall into the scheme of the Mind Fogging plant?” This bothered him most as he couldn’t perceive the fact that he was in an illusion. He couldn’t discern the truth and fell for a lie. If the green veins had not taken the initiative to expose themselves, he wouldn’t have come to know the truth.

The veins tightened around his body, sinking their vicious thorns deeper into his flesh as they greedily drained his blood. Crown Prince Lail remained motionless as he allowed the veins to do as they pleased.

His mind went back to the scene of when he entered the cave and he fell into a foliage’s stomach with Lail.

‘So this is the foliage’s stomach. No wonder there are so many flowers. But where is Laila?’

His muddied state of mind cleared and when he opened his eyes, a dark gleam flashed through them. The Black Serpent laying outside the hot spring throbbed excitedly, shredding the thorny veins restricting it, and rose into the air, flashing towards the struggling Crown Prince.

It released a powerful surge of black lighting that ruthlessly slammed onto the multitude of veins.

Boom!

Crrrrrr!

The veins wrapped and twisted in agony, screeching in a deafening manner as they tightened their hold on the Crown Prince and increased their absorption of his blood. Numerous flowers enlarged and expanded, glowing with a green light, as they rushed to join the melee.

Encircling the Crown Prince, the flowers obstructed the Black Serpent’s advance and shielded the green veins. The fluorescent fireflies landed on the flower petals and bursts of green balls shot out towards the Black Serpent.

Boom!

Boom!

The entire flower region was now on the brink of destruction as the Black Serpent relentlessly released black lighting after lighting, crushing and smashing apart the balls of green lights in single clashes. However, it wasn’t satisfied with its measly achievement, struggling fiercely to break through the blockade and rescue its master, who was on the brink of passing out from blood loss.

Crown Prince Lail sensed his dire situation and thought of his wife.

Aside from her violet eyes, he had yet to see anything else of her. He had yet to know her. His chest tightened and lips pressed into a tight grimace. He wanted to see her and talk to her. He wanted to hear her voice and get to know the real her.

He wanted to have a future with her.

Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth as he grinded his teeth, the muscles under his skin jumping at an erratic speed as violent sparks of lighting flashed across his body. His long black hair floated in the air and black-blue sparks zapped from his eyes into the spring.

The water surged around him in a whirlwind of turbulent waves, exploding and blasting apart as a black lighting snake after another burst from his body and cleaved through the green veins and blockade of flowers as cleanly as a sharp sword across soft flesh.

He unleashed his level 3 Stage 1 Elemental Drawing magic to its full extent.

Crrrrrr!

The surroundings resonated with myriad cries of anguish as the flowers twisted and spun, before exploding into a shower of ashes. Fireflies popped one after another and their ashes mixed with those of the flowers drifted into the spring water.

The green veins binding Crown Prince Lail wailed and thrashed indiscriminately at their surroundings, refusing to release their hold as they wrapped another round around him. Another black-blue spark flashed from his eyes, disintegrating the flailing limbs.

Black Serpent, free from the obstructions of the flowers and fireflies, dashed to his master’s side and throbbed in anxiety.

“Master, Master, are you okay? What happened? How did we get here?”

As it fell in slumber right after its clash with the Giant Foliage, it had no recollection of their appearance in the sea of flowers. Crown Prince Lail stretched out his hand and held the black-blue spear, the myriad sparks of black lighting receding back into his body.

Expressionlessly, he made his way out of the hot spring and slumped on the ground on his back. At a speed visible to the naked eye, the beautiful landscape of exotic flowers distorted and wrapped, before exploding into ashes.

With their disappearance, the warmth and light in the region also faded, baring a cold and desolate landscape. In the bone-chilling cold, Crown Prince Lail saw the true appearance of the sea of flowers.

Barren and bleak, various bones and skulls of beasts and men were strewn in the grim environment. The faint cries, ghostly sighs, and enraged roars drifted in the air. Crown Prince Lail indifferently retracted his gaze.

In a region occupied by a magical plant that drained the blood and lifeforce of living creatures, such an atmosphere was more fitting. On the contrary, the earlier bright and dreamy landscape was too unrealistic and unnatural in a place like the Forbidden Zone.

But since even someone like him, who was calm and collected at all times, could be tricked by the illusion of the green vein, he didn’t doubt the other individuals had died without putting up a fight.

Crown Prince Lail’s eyes teared as his body ached from the sudden explosion of power. He stared at the roof of the black cave, his mind swarming with images of his wife. His desire to see her burned inside him like a raging flame with no outlet to vent, bolting and suffocating him from inside out.

“Qamari…where are you?”

The few months of striving in her name had made her an indispensable part of him. Without his awareness, they had embedded her very essence into his heart and soul. If it hadn’t been for the Magical Foliage’s interference, he would’ve never come to know how deeply she had entered his heart and how much she meant to him.

If it hadn’t been for the Magical Foliage’s interference, he would have never felt his heart race wild and his mind cloud with joy upon seeing her violet eyes. In a corner of his heart he wasn’t aware of, there was an embedded image of Princess Qamari.

He burned with the need to see her.

As for other women, he didn’t know their importance in his life. But they would never be able to replace his wife, Princess Qamari.

At this moment, as he closed his eyes in extreme exhaustion, he thought of Laila, who fell into the giant foliage’s stomach with him.

‘I hope she is okay.’

On the other side, on a field of ancient trees and a wide lake, a white-robed female lay motionlessly on the ground, as a golden bird flapped around her in worry. The female was covered from head to toe in white, radiating a faint white halo as she lightly breathed in and out.

This was Princess Qamari who was separated from Crown Prince when they fell into the green foliage’s stomach.