My Talent's Name Is Generator

Chapter 1162: The Woman

Three hours passed in silence.

By the time I finished meditating, the exhaustion from the battle had almost completely disappeared. My Soul Sea had stabilized, the violent waves of accumulated Soul Force had settled into a steady rhythm, and my body felt stronger than it had before entering the trial.

I opened my eyes and slowly rose from the air.

”It is time.”

I activated Echo Reversion, and the familiar spatial distortion wrapped around my body before carrying me back toward the others.

When I reappeared beside the expedition, everyone had already begun rising from their meditation as well. No one asked what I meant. After everything we had endured, there was only one thing left for us to do.

I looked across the group that remained.

The battlefield had been crowded with powerful Saints when we first arrived, but now only a fraction of that force stood before the enormous black door. Gerald and the surviving Ironharts remained with me, while Sue and Dream represented the Astrals. Aelion the surviving Elven King stood silently, and Kaelra remained in her humanoid form with her daughters. The rest of the expedition had perished during the trial.

The sight left a bitter taste in my mouth.

We had entered this place as a massive alliance of races, each bringing some of the strongest Saints their civilizations possessed. Now, after only two trials, the numbers had been reduced to a small group that could fit within a single battlefield.

Nobody looked happy.

There was grief in the silence, exhaustion in the way some of them carried themselves, and anger buried beneath the expressions of those who had lost companions they had known for centuries.

Yet when I looked into their eyes, I found something else as well.

Their fighting spirit remained. Not one of them had taken a step backward.

Kaelra caught my gaze and gave me a faint smile.

”So,” she said quietly, ”we’re finally going to see what all of this was for.”

I nodded.

”We are.”

My eyes moved toward the enormous door standing several hundred meters away.

The faint silver currents moving across its black surface had become brighter during our meditation, and the pressure coming from the other side was impossible to ignore. Even without opening it, I could feel something waiting beyond the barrier.

I took a slow breath and looked back at the survivors.

”We’ve lost too many people to hesitate now.”

Nobody objected.

Gerald stepped forward. ”Then let’s see what we’ve been chasing all this time.”

One by one, the others began walking forward.

I remained at the center of the group, moving with them toward the final barrier.

The black door grew larger with every step.

We stopped far from the enormous door, exactly as Macaco had instructed us. There was no complicated mechanism protecting it, no ancient seal that needed to be deciphered and no elaborate ritual waiting to be performed.

Instead, a single circular handle had been placed in the center of the door at a height that could be reached by an ordinary person. It was almost absurdly simple, and somehow that simplicity made it feel deliberate. The Ruler had apparently wanted the answer to be unmistakable: when we were ready, we only had to open the door.

I turned toward the others and slowly raised my hand. ”Prepare yourselves.”

Soul Force immediately began circulating through the surviving Saints as everyone took their positions. Domains remained suppressed for the moment, but nobody lowered their guard.

I extended my perception.

The world around me faded as my senses locked onto the circular handle. I could feel every fragment of its structure, the ancient material that formed it and the strange authority woven through the door itself. There was no resistance when I reached it with my Soul Force. The handle seemed almost eager to respond.

I closed my fingers around it through my perception and pulled. A deep groan rolled across the battlefield.

The enormous handle began turning.

Ninety degrees.

Then another ninety.

When it completed its full half-turn, the mechanism released with a thunderous sound that shook the ground beneath us. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the door exploded outward.

A wave of darkness erupted from the opening.

It wasn’t merely Soul Force.

It wasn’t an ordinary aura either.

Something profoundly evil flooded across the battlefield like an invisible ocean, spreading outward from the doorway with such overwhelming intensity that it struck us like a physical shockwave. Several Saints were pushed backward despite immediately reinforcing their bodies, while the ground beneath our feet cracked under the pressure.

I instinctively released more Soul Force around my body.

The others did the same.

The sensation crawling across my skin was unlike anything I had experienced before. The aura carried an ancient malice that seemed to seep directly into the soul, as though merely being near its source was enough to awaken something dark within the deepest parts of existence.

My eyes widened.

”That thing is evil.”

The words escaped me before I could stop them.

I had faced the Eternals.

I had stood before Verilux.

None of them had ever made me feel this way. This wasn’t simply overwhelming power. There was hatred within it. Something twisted. Something that felt fundamentally wrong.

No one spoke.

Every surviving Saint remained completely focused on the doorway.

Then we heard it.

Step.

A footstep echoed from within the darkness.

Everyone tightened their grip on their weapons.

Step.

Another followed.

The sound was slow and deliberate, as though whoever was approaching had absolutely no reason to hurry.

The darkness inside the doorway shifted.

A silhouette appeared.

Then another step brought her into view.

She was a woman.

At first glance, there was nothing monstrous about her appearance. She stood approximately six feet tall with fair skin and long black hair that flowed down her back, moving gently despite the absence of any wind. Her face was extraordinarily beautiful, almost unnaturally so, but the impression was ruined by her eyes.

They were completely black. There was no iris.

Looking into them felt like staring directly into an endless void.

Two black horns curved elegantly from the sides of her head, framing her face like a crown forged from darkness. She wore a long black gown that drifted behind her as she walked, its edges seemingly dissolving into the darkness surrounding the doorway before returning with every step.

Her hands were clasped casually behind her back.

She didn’t fly. She simply stepped forward.

One foot rose from the darkness and touched empty air.

Then another.

Each step landed upon nothing, yet the air beneath her feet seemed to solidify enough to support her weight as she gradually descended from the entrance and walked toward us.

Her expression was perhaps the most unsettling part. There was no rage.

No bloodlust or excitement.

She looked mildly annoyed.

It was the expression of someone who had opened her front door expecting nobody, only to discover an unexpected group of strangers standing outside her home.

Her black eyes slowly swept across the surviving Saints.

Finally, they settled upon me.

For several seconds, she simply stared.

The corners of her lips gradually lifted into the faintest hint of displeasure. It was almost as though she were wondering why we had come knocking on her door.

When she finally spoke, her voice was calm and elegant, but there was an unmistakably ancient cadence to it.

”Could you find no other avenue by which to court your own demise, that you have chosen to arrive at my very door?”