She went straight to where the demonic miasma was thickest, the innermost room of the ancient ruin, and blasted the floor like cracking a frozen lake.
A chill climbed her spine first, a stormcloud of bad omens pooling behind her ribs.
The stair mouth yawned below, black as a road to hell, while a sickly yellow lamp flickered like a dying firefly over piles of grinning skulls.
“Go,” she told herself, voice steady like a drawn blade.
Yumigawa Senki shook off stray thoughts like dust, wrapped herself in a light-law barrier that shimmered like dawn mist, and stepped onto blue-green stone steps.
…
Time smeared like wet ink; she walked and walked, yet no bottom appeared, only weak undead and demons crumbling like rotten leaves beneath casual strikes.
With each step, the demonic scent thickened like tar, and a mournful requiem seeped into her ears, thin as wind under a door.
If Littlesky had followed, she’d be bawling already, Senki thought, a wicked little smile flashing like a cat in the dark.
Her holy light orb drifted ahead like a pale moon, revealing bizarre murals on the walls, cruel fables painted in strokes both lifelike and abstract.
They crawled under the skin like ants; the longer she looked, the colder her heart felt.
“These… are disgusting,” she muttered, as a demon devouring humans bared its teeth, so real she could almost taste iron on the air.
Blood. The thought struck as she reached the bottom; that man-eating demon was the final panel, its blood-smeared grin and crooked eyes whispering a secret like a riddle.
She lifted the orb and lit a corridor that stretched like a throat into night, a passage with no visible end.
“What is this horror-story set,” she grumbled, gaze catching on heaps of corpses sprawled like broken puppets on either side.
“…living… flesh…” The words rasped ahead like nails on old wood, and a tide of rotting zombies shambled closer, ribs open like birdcages picked clean.
No hesitation. Senki cut with a Light-law Sword Aura, a white arc like a falling moon, and the path cleared in a breath.
But the air behind her rippled, a wrong note in a dead song; she wheeled and loosed several slashes that snapped like lightning.
Clang!
Her blades bit metal, bright sparks ringing down the corridor like sleet.
“What is it?”
A suit of empty armor strode from the dark with a spear, a blood-red soul-fire floating inside its helm like a hateful star.
An undead knight. It started at Divine Novice, then the black fog poured in like ink into water, and its power surged to the Divine Realm peak.
“Black fog here?” she frowned. “Purer than the haze outside.”
Its weakness blazed like a lantern; before it could lunge, she pierced the soul-fire, and the armor fell like a shed skin.
She quickened her pace, feet tapping like rain, and in just over ten minutes left the corridor for a broad stone chamber.
The demonic reek hit like a storm wave, trying to drown her breath; luckily, her law barrier held like a quiet shore.
“Wind Sword: Gale.” Her blade whooshed, a cutting wind that scattered much of the miasma like chaff before a harvest.
Each step toward the source felt like wading through wet clay; she forced her legs onward and reached the chamber’s heart.
An ancient, chipped stone table waited like a tomb altar, and from a shard atop it, black fog and demonic scent bled like smoke.
“A shard?” Disbelief pricked her skin like cold rain. What shard births fog that devours and even formed an Overdeity Level black knight?
Not even a top-grade artifact shard could do that, she thought, eyes narrowing like a hunter’s at dusk.
A Demon treasure, then? What else breathes this thick demonic air like a volcano?
“Dark Demon has five branches on the Eastern Moon Continent, and this hunt was ordered by Xinuo Miss herself,” she thought, the pieces lining up like stones. “She already knew their game.”
A bold guess flared like tinder: each branch holds a shard; gather the five, and its true body will surface like a leviathan.
Treasures of that tier grow minds like ancient trees; Dark Demon likely split it to bind that will, making the five branches its chains.
“Enough. Guessing is smoke without fire,” she decided, breath settling like still water. “Collect the five shards, restore it, then talk.”
She reached out, fingers steady, and the shard erupted, black fog blasting forth like a ruptured geyser, forcing her two steps back.
“Suppress it.” Her resolve clicked into place like ice. She poured ice-law into the Sacred Life Sword, and one sweeping cut froze the shard solid.
The fog thinned like a fading storm, and she extended her hand again, calm as frost.
“Damn the Mizumi Clan! Don’t even think about it!”
The voice boomed out of empty air, a drumbeat across stone, and a colossal force slammed her like a falling wall, stripping her barrier to tatters.
She drew the Sacred Life Sword close, healing light flowing like spring water over shallow wounds, and stared at the black-robed man who appeared like a shadow.
His robe gleamed with runes like constellations, a high-grade artifact’s weave, far above any branch master’s trappings in Dark Demon.
His pressure rolled like a mountain range, and a rare thought chilled her—unwinnable.
Only Overdeity Level peak ever pressed on her bones like that.
She didn’t strike. She watched, blade low, eyes bright as flint.
He didn’t mean to fight. He scooped up the frozen shard with a cold snort like snapping ice, and vanished like smoke in wind.
Too sudden, too vast the gap—her space-lock spell was a net cast after the fish fled, and she could only watch him go.
