"Can't... stop it... anymore...?"

A veil of shadow crawled over her heart. Lucimia grit her teeth. If she couldn't stop it, she'd run.

She spun and poured everything into her flight spell.

The sky above inked darker and darker—

BOOM!

A thunderclap exploded.

Darkness slammed her vision, then she rammed an unseen wall.

"Ow..." She rubbed her brow. Pain throbbed like a drum.

She looked around; blackness pooled on all sides, with no landmark. She reached out. Her palm met an air-wall blocking the path.

Up, down, front, back, left, right—nothing but that unseen glass.

She realized she wasn't flying anymore. She stood as if on ground, yet underfoot lay only unreadable dark, not stone or soil.

Yet in that sea of black, she could see her own body clearly—and the pink-haired girl clutching her, Yuna.

It wasn't the pitch of a night where even your hand vanishes.

Soon the darkness warped, congealing into chaos, like those universe photos she once scrolled past online in her last life.

"Where is this?" Even if no one would answer, she asked anyway.

Woooo—

A high, resonant whistle and a scream wrapped her from every side, whale-like and keening. Listen close, and a sobbing moan threaded through it.

Like a call from some ancient deep-sea being, it raised her hackles.

She turned on instinct. What she saw froze the blood.

On that canvas of chaotic black, a colossal eye snapped open.

The eye was milky and foul, yet it lured like a siren; Lucimia couldn't look away.

She tried to raise a hand, and found even her fingers were stone.

Her whole body locked up, rigid as a corpse.

"Urgh...!"

At the same time, drowning seized her; water seemed to flood trachea, stomach, lungs. Her chest tightened. Air wouldn't come.

So suffocating. So suffocating.

Can't breathe. Am I dying?

Damn it, death was cleaner in my last life; no torment at all. Is this life really this cruel?

The harder breathing became, the more her body clawed for air; the more she gasped, the more phantom water forced its way in.

No water anywhere, no wet on her skin, yet water bored in from nowhere.

Hypoxia hit fast.

Dizziness spun her. Weakness drained her limbs.

Soon blood-tinged mucus seeped from nose and lips. Hearing peeled away. Her ears felt plugged. Her mind sank like a stone.

Then lightning struck her brain. A brutal blow wiped thought clean. Her eyes glazed. Emotion drained. She only stared into that cloudy eye.

Huh? It... doesn't hurt?

Oh. Stare at that eye, and the pain fades. Right?

So that's it. Keep looking, and I'm safe. Try to look away, and it hurts. Of course—it's here to save me.

Strange thoughts coiled around her mind like smoke.

"Octopus. Strong, yes?"

A deep, ancient voice rang in her mind.

"S... strong." She answered without a single thought.

"Right? You've tasted an octopus's power yourself. Interested in becoming one of its own?"

"Strong... interested... become..."

Before Lucimia could yield, the trance shattered.

Crack!

At the brink of surrender, a sharp crack rang out. The world split like smashed glass, a web of fractures spreading.

"Hah!"

Lucimia gulped air like a newborn. Her mind snapped back. Her body obeyed again.

The water in her body vanished, as if the sea had been a lie.

A beat later, memory flooded in—the thoughts she'd had, the exchange with Elyssus—and fear rippled through her chest.

A Dark Deity had tried to bewitch her.

"Hm?" The eye spoke, puzzled, as if asking why its charm had failed.

Lucimia lifted her head and stared at the fractured scene.

She saw it. An octopus. A colossal octopus. An octopus so vast it swallowed horizons.

Only its head fit in view. Two cloudy eyes stared inches from her. Countless tendrils thrashed from the back of its skull. Its face was riddled with holes, a nightmare mask.

Before she could look longer, the image shattered fully. Weightlessness grabbed her.

She was back over the Town of Tranquility, plummeting fast.

Her mana ran thin; flight wouldn't hold.

No choice. She flipped their positions—Yuna above, herself below.

With her last wisp of power, she stirred wind to soften the fall.

Pray we don't die.

The prayer left, and they hit at once; the ground rose and kissed them hard.

They slammed down. Crack. Pain flared from her shoulder—fractured.

She swallowed the scream.

Push the pain aside. She looked back to read the field.

Bazeroth still held the ritual. The chaotic sphere swelled larger and larger. The octopus she saw earlier now surfaced upon it.

Only the head emerged.

Its maw yawned wide, saw-teeth gleaming in air. It inhaled. Every octopus below flew into that mouth—Bazeroth included.

One swallow. All gone.

No more doubt. One hundred percent—this gargantuan octopus was Elyssus's true body.

The Deceiver—Elyssus.

That very monstrous, terrifying octopus.

Bazeroth's rite was a summoning?!

By some unknown means, Elyssus had dragged Lucimia into that secret space and tried to ensnare her with a crooked charm. She didn't know its aim, but it failed.

That was the strange part.

Even Elyssus seemed baffled, voicing that confusion at the end.

After all, Exemption, as a Blessing-tier ability, shouldn't counter a Dark Deity at the Authority Power level.

Was that her own Authority Power? She still couldn't grasp what her Authority truly was.

Maybe it wasn't Exemption, but Immunity? Yet other attacks still hurt her.

She couldn't solve it. She chalked it up to Dark Deities carrying some inborn resistance to each other's powers.

After finishing every octopus, Elyssus turned its gaze to Lucimia and Yuna on the ground.

"Hee-hee-hee." It laughed, and the sound crawled like centipedes.

Lucimia stared in dread. She knew it then—her escape wasn't over. The final boss had arrived.

She staggered up. Her legs weren't broken, just blazing with pain. She took silent Yuna's hand and limped away.

Yuna hadn't said a word from the start, only shadowed her in silence.