Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2542

A distant, rumbling roar washed over the world, making it seem as if everything had gone still for a moment. It sounded like an enormous beast was stirring awake somewhere far away, rising from its slumber as forests and mountains rolled off its broad shoulders.

There was a flash of lightning. Half-blinded by the rain, Sunny unconsciously took a step toward the parapet. The others did the same, all looking in a single direction with tense, confused expressions — toward the source of the rumbling sound.

They were facing north.

"What..."

Effie's voice drowned in a deafening thunderclap.

Sunny inhaled sharply.

Somehow, he knew what had happened... and what was going to happen, as well.

The world was dark, obscured by the heavy storm clouds. Still, some light penetrated their thick barrier, and Mirage City was enveloped in a dim twilight. The restless surface of the Mirror Lake was stirring in front of them, and beyond it, the great mass of the drowning city sprawled on the distant shore.

Beyond the city were the mountains... and the ancient barrier of the Northern Dam. That dam was breaking apart now, unable to endure the crushing weight of the artificial lake hidden behind it. It had held proud for thousands of years, withstanding the ruthless tyranny of time and the fierce assaults of natural forces... but it had not been able to withstand human corruption. The subpar renovation works perpetrated by the Valor Group on Madoc's orders had compromised its integrity, and the disastrously persistent rains had caused the great reservoir contained by the dam to swell uncontrollably, pushing it to and over the limit.

And now, it could not hold any longer. Sunny's eyes widened as he watched the calamity unfold.

At first, it was a single crack that appeared on the great dam. The floodgates had already been opened to relieve the pressure, with foaming torrents of water pouring down from a vast height; however, that was not enough. The crack split the dam from top to bottom, spreading across its surface with the speed of lightning...

It was narrow and barely noticeable, almost impossible to see. However, a second later, that small crack became a devastating breach.

The still water of the reservoir had become an unstoppable monster, wielding power so awful that millions of tons of stone and concrete were flung outward as if shot from a cannon. The entire middle section of the dam exploded, with giant chunks of stone flying into the outskirts of the city below and crushing residential buildings as if they were paper boxes.

What followed the annihilating debris was much worse, though.

Sunny froze, enthralled by the distressing visage and unable to move. His companions were motionless, as well, witnessing the scene of utter destruction in a deafening silence.

The water roared as it escaped its prison. It rushed through the wide breach in the damaged dam like a living being, hungering for human souls. The titanic torrent was too vast for its scale to be fathomed, or for its force to be measured — looking at it, Sunny felt something that he had not felt in a long time.

The utter, frightening awe that mortals felt in the face of the insurmountable power that dwarfed their very existence — the terrifying power of hostile, untamed nature. The torrent of water hit the outskirts of Mirage City and swallowed them whole, flowing far and wide to consume everything in sight. The buildings, the streets, the rushing PTVs, the tiny figures of the terrified people — all of it was washed away in an instant, crushed and broken, ground into nothingness and drowned in the foaming expanse of raging water.

Of course, the flood did not stop there.

The powerful current rushing through the breach in the dam did not weaken — on the contrary, as more of the dam collapsed, it became more potent. The great tidal wave that had swallowed the outskirts continued south, devastating the northern areas of Mirage City. The rivers running toward the Mirror Lake swelled and overflowed, escaping their beds.

Something like that must have happened in the True Bastion, as well, thousands of years ago.

Soon enough, the Mirror Lake seemed to have expanded greatly, growing to cover the entire area where Mirage City had once stood. Here and there, the edifices of skyscrapers rose from the water like orphaned towers, but most of the city was hidden under the mass of water.

At the heart of the great lake, the Castle stood lonesomely among the waves.

The Other Mordret swayed as he took a step back. His expression at the moment was hard to describe, even if someone was in a state to pay attention to such details. Everyone seemed stunned and petrified by what they had just witnessed.

..Except for Sunny.

Sunny, on the contrary, was restless.

‘I missed it. I missed it. Damn it! How could I have been so foolish?! How could I have been fooled again?"

While everyone stood still, he suddenly spun around and raised his revolver.

Aiming it at Mordret's head, Sunny then gritted his teeth and pressed the trigger.