Chapter 90: [Chapter 90 ● The Silent Erasure]

The final objective was the easiest: finish everything before anyone noticed. The deaths inside the auction house would not remain hidden forever, nor would the countless casualties outside. Sooner or later, someone would discover the massacre and the entire area would be sealed for investigation.

Fortunately, she had no intention of giving them that opportunity. Aphryne estimated she had roughly ten to fifteen minutes before the first investigators arrived.

She only needed three.

Immediately, Aphryne moved, taking a seat on the sofa. Leaning back comfortably, she crossed her legs as a faint smile appeared on her lips. Then she activated Nytherion.

The first thing to spread was the Veil of Misrecognition together with the Oblivion Hunting Ecology. The darkwind flowed silently throughout the auction house and beyond, carrying with it a subtle distortion that attacked understanding itself.

Nothing visibly changed. The shattered ceiling remained shattered, the corpses remained where they had fallen, and the blood remained exactly where it had been spilled. Yet something far more important began changing.

The ability to properly understand what had happened slowly started unraveling. Witnesses would still remember seeing something. Survivors would still recall fragments of the massacre. Investigators would still discover evidence.

However, transforming those fragments into a coherent sequence of events became increasingly difficult, no—impossible.

The more one attempted to reconstruct the truth, the more uncertain that truth became. At the same time, the auction house itself grew strangely difficult to process.

Environmental details lost clarity, and observations became unreliable. The entire area felt mentally distant, as though a thin veil had settled over reality itself. The battlefield was no longer cooperating with those attempting to understand it; instead, it had begun favoring the predator.

Only then did Aphryne invoke the Unified Oblivion Collapse.

Unlike its use in battle, where it attacked the stability of existence itself, Aphryne directed the trait toward memory, continuity, and recollection.

The survivors still possessed their memories, yet those memories no longer connected together as neatly as before. Faces became harder to remember, voices became less distinct, sequences grew fragmented, names slipped away, and certainty dissolved.

The identities of Aphryne, Clementine, Auguszta, and Aezaleon—the unknown voice—gradually lost stability within the minds of every witness who had encountered them. People would remember fear, violence, and death, yet the identities of those responsible became increasingly difficult to grasp.

The third step was expanding Nytherion’s reach completely. Through Voidstride Instantaneous Propagation, the darkwind spread through every room, corridor, vault, hidden chamber, underground passage, storage area, and sealed location within the auction house and those outside.

Physical barriers offered no meaningful resistance, energy barriers offered no meaningful resistance, and even specially isolated locations failed to impede its spread.

The darkwind moved wherever it was required, establishing Nytherion’s influence throughout the entire thousand-meter radius. No corner remained untouched, no witness remained outside its reach, and no trace remained beyond its influence.

The final step was the true cleanup.

Aphryne deepened the effects already in motion, allowing Nytherion to work upon every remaining loose end. Witness recognition continued deteriorating, memory continuity weakened further, and connections between events became increasingly unstable. Any traces that remained—physical, energetic, spiritual, informational, or otherwise—gradually lost their value as evidence because the understanding required to interpret them correctly was being quietly eroded.

Ordinarily, such a process would require time.

Nytherion performed best against targets that had already been weakened, destabilized, or pushed into a compromised state. Fortunately, that requirement had already been fulfilled.

Everyone who had survived Aezaleon’s outburst had already suffered severe mental, spiritual, and existential shock. Their minds were fractured, their stability had been shaken, and their ability to resist was greatly diminished.

As a result, Nytherion encountered almost no meaningful opposition.

The invisible darkwind completed its work in less than two minutes.

When the inevitable investigation began, the investigators would find evidence of a massacre. They would find corpses and destruction. Yet beyond that, very little would remain. Memories would be incomplete, witness accounts would contradict one another, energy signatures would provide no useful answers, movement trails would end abruptly, and identities would be absent. No reliable chain of evidence would survive.

The event itself would remain undeniable, but the truth behind it would already have been swallowed by Nytherion.

After all, an investigation could only succeed if there was something coherent left to investigate.

"Let’s collect the bodies now, shall we?" Taking another bite from the slice of cake in her hand, Aphryne spoke to herself in amusement.

A thought had suddenly crossed her mind.

Since Aezaleon had already annihilated nearly everything within five hundred meters of the auction house, there was little reason to leave the remaining outsiders alive. They had seen too much, sensed too much, and more importantly, they had already begun gathering. Adventurers, mercenaries, students, curious onlookers, and investigation teams—one after another, they were converging upon the area after noticing the sudden deaths occurring throughout the district.

To Aphryne, however, their actions seemed almost laughable.

By this point, Nytherion had already spread throughout the entire thousand-meter radius. Every street, alleyway, rooftop, corridor, and hidden corner rested within its silent influence.

Anyone inside that domain was already standing within the jaws of the predator without realizing it. With a casual wave of her hand, she issued a single command.

The invisible darkwind moved. No sound accompanied its passage, and no warning announced its arrival. Thin currents of severing force slipped through the battlefield like silent phantoms, crossing streets, passing through buildings, and weaving effortlessly between the crowds.

Then heads began falling.

One after another.

Regardless of status, age, or gender, the darkwind held no preferences and offered no mercy. It simply carried out the will of its master with absolute precision.

Outside, the situation descended into complete chaos. Some adventurers were attempting to investigate the deaths already occurring around them. Others were moving further inwards, hoping to discover the source of the disturbance.

Yet all of it was meaningless.

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Intrinsic Order Four: Nytherion — Abyssal Gale of Unwritten End || (simplified short summary)

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Trait I — Voidstride Instantaneous Propagation

[Nytherion governs its own movement through Darkwind, bypassing normal locomotion resistance, interception, barriers, and unfavorable engagement paths. It does not simply move quickly—it moves according to predatory movement authority.]

[In short: Nytherion moves where and how ordinary movement should struggle.]

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Trait III — Veil of Misrecognition

[Nytherion corrupts correct interpretation. Others may see, sense, or detect it—but properly understanding what they perceived becomes unreliable, causing threat misclassification, hesitation, false conclusions, and uncertain recognition.]

[In short: Nytherion may be noticed, but correctly understood only with difficulty.]

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Trait IV — Oblivion Hunting Ecology

[Nytherion turns the battlefield into hostile predatory territory. The environment becomes subtly oppressive, coordination weakens, safe positioning degrades, environmental certainty erodes, and the battlefield increasingly favors predator logic over prey logic.]

[In short: inside Nytherion, the battlefield helps the hunt.]

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Trait V — Unified Oblivion Collapse

[Nytherion applies Oblivion directly to persistence itself. Matter forgets cohesion, energy forgets function, identity forgets itself, memory loses continuity, and existence becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Weaker systems eventually collapse beneath that destabilization.] 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

[In short: inside Nytherion, existence can begin forgetting how to remain itself.]