The Invincible Full-Moon System

Chapter 2014: Aylith the Goddess of the Greater Moon

A voice crawled into his ears like a gentle melody.

It has an effect on him.

Not the comforting effect—when a woman he loved whispered in his ears. Not the calming effect when a mother’s voice stroked his ears. This effect was more like the irresistible pull that wrapped around his body, insinuating that he belonged to it.

Rex rose to his feet again after making sure that Davina would be fine.

And then, he slowly turned like he was afraid to see what lay behind him.

Once he finally turned around and looked at what lay behind, his breath was caught in his throat.

He fixed on a circular platform behind him. Seconds ago, it wasn’t there. Rex was quite sure about that, and yet it was there now. Its surface glowed with the same pale light as the moon beneath him. It rose only slightly from the ground, but high enough to need five to six stairs to reach.

And the pale light it cast was pure and deliberate, as if the stone had been shaped for one sacred purpose.

At the center of that platform, there was someone.

Initially, all Rex could see was brilliant moonlight. A shine so absolute—it burned past the sharpness of his crimson eyes, turning the figure into a silhouette of radiance. Rex narrowed his gaze, trying to peer through the light, but his vision refused to adjust.

It was like staring into the heart of a star and expecting to find a face.

But slowly, gradually, the light began to dim in the way the sun gentles as it slips toward the horizon.

And from that dimming, a shape finally began to take form.

Is... this the Goddess?

Rex questioned inside as his eyes slowly widened.

He had seen many things on his road to power, on his climb to absolute invincibility. He had seen gnarly monsters and uncanny races that chilled the spine. He had stared into the eyes of beasts or other things that should not exist in the world of the living and felt nothing but the urge to kill.

He also had seen beauty, too.

Landscapes that could stop the breath of anyone who glimpsed it, women who turned heads and were capable of causing wars, and the raw, intoxicating stroke of power that fed the part of him that hungered for the height of strength.

But the figure before him surpassed them all.

As the light receded, his pupils dilated.

A woman sat at the center of the platform, suspended on a crescent-shaped, glittering moon—an artifact that floated without support, hovering with a slow, dreamlike grace. She was really slender to the point of almost being fragile, moonlit-pale, and her hair was the color of starlight on fresh snow.

It fell in long, impossibly straight sheets that spilled over the edge of the crescent moon and then pooled beneath her like liquid silver. Her hair was so long it gathered on the platform floor—and glowed with a soft, diffuse light.

Her body was draped in a translucent white silk robe that hung loosely over her form.

Its fabric flowed and shifted as milk poured into still water.

Over her head, a pale white mantilla with edges of soft blue and gold cascaded down, merging with her hair on the floor until the two factors became a single, undulating ocean of white. The combination was seamless, a wave of silver and silk that seemed to breathe with her.

Across her eyes, a white-silvery blindfold rested like a final veil between her and the world.

Her build was frail. Slender. There was a fragility to her that seemed at odds with the sheer scale of her presence—like a figure carved from moonstone and old sorrow. But even then—she was far larger than any normal being.

Rex could see it in the length of her limbs, the span of her shoulders, the way she filled the space around her with an authority that needed no muscle. She was eleven, maybe twelve feet tall. Her height wasn’t menacing, but monumental.

As if she had been shaped by something that measured existence on a grander scale.

And on her lips, faint and knowing, rested a smile.

She was looking at Rex through the blindfold, and somehow, he knew she could see him.

But she knew that what she was seeing was wrong.

”Come...” the Goddess of the Greater Moon, Aylith, spread her arms and gestured for Rex to come to her.

It was the first time Rex had seen Aylith in the flesh, yet for some reason, that wasn’t the case for Aylith. She gestured for him to come as if she knew him. Rex glanced at Lilliana, and she answered with a nod, telling him that she would stay by Davina’s side so he could go to Aylith without even uttering a single word.

Rex looked forward again and approached.

As he approached, the smile on Aylith’s lips only stretched wider.

Rex ascended the staircase slowly—his footsteps soundless on the pale, moonlit stone. Each step carried him closer to the platform’s center, where Aylith sat elegantly suspended upon her crescent artifact, still as a statue of moonlight and silk.

He stopped a few paces away, uncertain.

Frankly, he didn’t know what to do, as he expected to be greeted with hostility.

Perhaps even needing to go through traps as he did in the Sundial Arch.

So, the situation he was in right now was completely different from his expectations.

Aylith had not moved. She had not spoken. Her blindfolded face remained tilted toward him—and both her arms raised, gesturing for him to come to her—as if she had been waiting for him to arrive like this for centuries.

And when she made no move to acknowledge him further, he stepped closer.

Then, at last, her arms unfolded. They closed in a slow, trembling grace.

And before Rex could react, she reached for him. She pulled him into a gentle embrace—her long arms wrapping around his frame with a desperate, aching tenderness. Her head bowed against the top of his head, and she rubbed his back in soft, soothing circles, the way one might comfort a lost child who had finally found their way home.

Rex went rigid.

Every instinct that had gone through pain screamed at him to push her away, to prepare for an attack.

But she did nothing. She only held him. Her touch was light and warm, and her breaths were slow and steady against his chest. Her grip was firm but not threatening—an embrace born of loneliness so deep it had carved itself into the very air around her.

It was then that Rex saw the cracks.

Faint, hairline fractures running along the porcelain surface of her face, like the first cracks of a shattered moon. Subtle, yes—but unmistakable. She was wounded. Severely. The kind of wound that no amount of moonlight could mend.

One that she suffered because of what the Lunirich Gods did to her.

”I know you would all return to me one by one,” Aylith whispered with love. ”I believe it deeply inside my heart that you would all see the wrong in all of this. Just that, I never would’ve expected that you’d be the first one to return, Kaiser...

”My naughty but loving Kaiser.” She mumbled as she pulled Rex deeper into her embrace.

Only then did Rex realize that she thought he was Kaiser.

Perhaps because his main power was sourced from the Blood Moon that had confused her. And though he had no desire to be one to shatter this touching reunion, he had no choice. ”As much as I pity you, I am not Kaiser.” He let the word settle. ”See me again.”

As if waking from a long and painful dream, Aylith froze.

Her hands stilled against his back, and the rhythm of her breathing changed.

Aylith pulled away, slowly, her head tilting as if listening for something.

Something that her blindfolded eyes couldn’t see.

Her frown deepened as she lifted her hands and began to see him again. Her palms passed over Rex’s hands, rough and firm from the countless battles he had gone through. Then, they climbed to his strong shoulders, broad and unfamiliar. And lastly, she reached to his face.

Aylith felt the hard line of his face, the coarse texture of his skin—and the shape of features she did not recognize. Her slender and ice-cold fingers traced every inch with growing urgency, and the truth finally settled over her like a cold tide.

A stranger.

It was clear to her now that this man before her was a stranger.

Not the one she had been waiting for. Not one of her children who had returned after realizing that they had made a mistake. And not the face she had held in her memory through centuries of silence. He had entered the Great Pale Court uninvited, and she had embraced him as if he belonged here.

In an instant, her demeanor shifted.

She pushed away—her body language coiling into wary stillness.

The crescent moon artifact behind her hovered, then drifted backward, carrying her out of his immediate reach. Her head tilted, no longer soft with longing but sharp with caution, and though her blindfold hid her eyes, the weight of her attention pressed against him like a blade.

This man had come into a collapsing Sovereign Realm.

Anyone who entered a place like this would most certainly only have bad intentions.

”Who are you? And why do you have Kaiser’s presence?” Aylith asked, her voice colder now.

No longer the mother who longed for her son.

”My name is Rex Silverstar...” Rex introduced himself, deciding that he would be truthful to this Goddess—as he came here to gain her help. To make her be on his side. ”Though I may not be one of your children, one of them had sent me here.”

”Do not lie to me and cause me displeasure.”

”I only speak the truth.”

”Who sent you here? If you lie, I will feed you to oblivion.”

”Feed me to oblivion?” Rex paused—and then took a look around the supposedly Great Pale Court that was now in shambles. A fraction of what it once was. She sensed his mockery from the way her brows furrowed together. ”I apologize. I am sent here by the Countess of the Dark Lunirich.”

”You lie!” Aylith exclaimed, pointing her index finger at Rex. ”You dare lie to me?”

”Lie?” Rex frowned.

He was quite sure that Nivellen was a part of the main Lunirich Gods.

Before she was imprisoned in that muted realm through the Lunirich Edict and replaced by another, she was the Lunirich Goddess of the Dark Moon. However, Aylith would certainly not mistake her children with any other.

Just then, Rex realized something.

The title Countess of the Dark Lunirich existed only after Aylith was betrayed, not before.

”Yes! I have no children with that title! Leave my realm, now!”

”I meant Nivellen.”

”Nivellen?”

As soon as she heard the name, she calmed down again as she recognized that name.

”It was my mistake,” Rex admitted. ”Nivellen is now known as the Countess of the Dark Lunirich. She was the Goddess of the Dark Moon.”

”Was?” Aylith looked down to think, and then raised her gaze again. ”What do you mean?”

”She was the Goddess of the Dark Moon, but due to her mistake, she was sealed in the Banished Realm and became the Goddess of the Banished Dark Moon,” Rex explained. There were many things Aylith wasn’t aware of about her children. ”And now she favoured me.”

”And what is your purpose for coming here?” Aylith finally asked.

Even though Rex hadn’t told her what he wanted, she knew that this was trouble.

”I came here to offer you something you might find... interesting.” Rex raised his hand, and in the space of a breath, his fingers became claws of black steel. A devious smirk curled at the corner of his lips. ”How would you like to take revenge on the children who betrayed you?”