Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 150: They had arrived

Chapter 150: They had arrived

After watching the ruined city bathe in the morning light, Alex and Nyxara decided to take their time exploring it. The beasts had long since abandoned the central zones, and the air, though filled with dust and decay, felt still, even peaceful. It was a haunting kind of peace, but peace nonetheless.

The two wandered from broken skyscrapers to shattered highways, from train stations now home to overgrown weeds, to what used to be shopping malls where mutated vines sprouted through escalators.

Now and then, Nyxara—still in her small, curled form—would make a sarcastic comment, lying lazily on Alex’s shoulder like a spoiled queen.

"Hey, Alex," she purred, sniffing the air exaggeratedly, "I think I just caught a whiff of a coffee shop. Want to go in and pretend society here hasn’t crumbled?"

Alex, hands in his coat pockets, gave her a flat look. "Unless that coffee comes with a side of mutated rats, I’m good."

Nyxara squinted at a shattered billboard nearby. "It says, ’Every Cup Starts With Hope.’" She tilted her head dramatically. "How poetic. Maybe they should’ve served bullets instead."

"They’d have lasted longer," Alex replied dryly, stepping over the remnants of a skeleton with a clawed mark embedded on its back. "Looks like Hope didn’t protect this guy."

Nyxara huffed. "Ugh, always so bleak. Can’t you pretend to be normal for once?"

"I am normal," Alex said. "It’s the world that’s gone nuts."

She leaned closer, her cold nose brushing his ear. "Normal people don’t smile when imagining a city burning."

"Normal people don’t have talking tigers lying on their shoulders either," he countered.

"Touché," Nyxara muttered, then promptly yawned, curling up more tightly around his neck.

By the time they reached the edge of the city, the atmosphere had already shifted. The air grew warmer—not gently, like morning sun on stone, but sharp and biting, as if a furnace had been left open somewhere nearby.

Nyxara’s tail twitched in irritation. "That damn bird..."

Alex glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

"that fucking flaming feathered furnace of Mount Blanc," she snapped. "Can she not roast the entire countryside while she’s at it?"

"She’s supposed to be a phoenix, I think, Nyx," Alex reminded her. "It’s kinda in the job description."

Nyxara scoffed. "Still. This is environmental terrorism. Do you know how many plants have spontaneously combustion because of her? And don’t get me started on the poor non-fire beasts!"

Alex gave her a lazy smirk. "You talk like you care about the other beasts."

"Of course I don’t care about those weaklings," she said matter-of-factly. "But if it’s this hot here, I dread what it’s going to be like at Mount Blanc. I’ll probably have to lick ice off rocks just to stay sane, and we are going there."

Alex chuckled. "Do cats even sweat?"

Nyxara bared her fangs playfully. "Want to find out?"

"No thanks. I like having a face."

Even though Alex chuckled, what Nyxara just said had been in the back of his mind; they were barely anywhere near Mount Blanc, and the heat was at a level where novice and intermediate humans would be already sweating buckets.

As they moved further out, the land transitioned from urban ruins to wilderness scorched in patches by heat waves and volcanic flares. Buildings gave way to cracked roads, and then to molten soil mixed with thick, dry underbrush that crunched beneath their boots or paws.

They’d made it a routine by then: some days Alex would walk or jog, and Nyxara would stretch out lazily on his shoulder like an overgrown scarf. Other days, she shifted into her massive tigress form and carried him across crumbling cities and long-abandoned fields.

Whenever Nyxara took on her full size, Alex rode her in silence—sometimes in thought, sometimes watching the sky. He rarely spoke during those moments, and Nyxara never asked what was on his mind.

On the third day, they passed a city overrun by creeping vines and mushroom-covered buildings, almost like nature had declared war on civilization and won by a landslide.

Nyxara narrowed her eyes. "This place smells like feet. Wet feet."

Alex gave her a sideways glance. "You’ve smelled a lot of feet in your life, have you?"

"I’ve been around humans longer than you," she sniffed. "I’ve seen things."

"Like what? You are barely a year older than I am."

"Hmmp, doesn’t mean a thing, I’m still older than you."

Alex blinked. "...okay, grandma ?"

"What did you just call me?" said Nyxara as she stood on all fours on Alex’s shoulders.

That earned a laugh from Alex.

As they passed through yet another scorched zone filled with ash and cracked roads, Alex stopped. The sweat on his brow had long since evaporated the moment it appeared, thanks to the increasingly brutal heat.

"Alright, now I’m feeling it," he muttered, wiping his neck.

Nyxara sighed. "Hey Alex, guess what I’m craving right now?

"Alex looked at her. "What?"

"Bird meat."

Alex rolled his eyes.

"Because I’m sure I would make that bird pay."

"What sane person likes the heat?"

Alex remained silent as Nyxara threw a tantrum.

As they continued their journey.

The landscape had grown more desolate, the kind of barren that made even magic feel thin in the air. And still, the temperature kept rising, dry heat pressing against them like invisible hands.

They passed through one final abandoned town—a place whose name had been burned off the road signs—and walked through what was once a garden square. The only sign of its past life was a crumbling fountain, now half-melted and covered in red moss.

A rogue Knight-ranked beast tried to leap out from under some rubble, but before it could roar, Nyxara casually extended a claw, still in her small form, and flicked it across the jaw with enough force to send it crashing into a pile of stones, unconscious.

"Do you mind?" she hissed. "I’m trying to suffer gracefully here."

Alex gave a small chuckle, still scanning the area. "You could’ve let me handle that."

"You move too slow when you’re thinking. I was doing you a favor."

"Is that what you call it?"

"That, and a demonstration. If you can’t look graceful while killing something, are you even trying?"

Alex shrugged. "I don’t think elegance was ever part of my training."

Nyxara clicked her tongue. "Tragic."

Finally, after nearly a week of constant travel, dozens of minor beast skirmishes, and at least three arguments over whether they should’ve taken a detour, they arrived at the outer range of Mount Blanc.

The towering mountains loomed before them like sleeping giants, their jagged peaks crowned with ash, glowing cinders, and faint streams of lava that flowed like bleeding veins. Smoke curled from the base of one of the larger peaks, and even from here, the heat shimmered in waves across the landscape.

Nyxara sighed heavily. "And here we are. The Oven of the Gods."

Alex narrowed his eyes toward the horizon. "Looks peaceful. In a ’try not to die’ kind of way."

"You know, you’re way too calm for someone heading straight into a volcanic deathtrap," Nyxara muttered.

Alex smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "Better to burn moving forward than rot standing still."

Nyxara blinked. "That was almost poetic."

"Almost."

She stretched out across his shoulders. "Still weird that you’re the dramatic one."

Alex took a deep breath, feeling the pressure in the air, the thick magical presence that only Mount Blanc radiated.

"It begins," he whispered.

"Hopefully not the dying part," Nyxara muttered.

Alex chuckled. "No promises."

They stood in silence for a while longer, wind tugging at their clothes and fur, ash beginning to drift down like snow.

They had arrived.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.