Boom!!

They were still weighing options when another tremor rolled in, like a drumbeat under stone. Lucimia knew at once—rats from the underground prison had broken loose, flooding the streets like a dark tide.

The adjutant couldn’t stop them. The ever‑splitting rats surged like a stampede after rain, pouring toward Lucimia and Desty like a hungry river.

Their path pointed straight at the giant worm, a beacon in the murk like a rotting mountain.

Worm ahead, rats behind, the two were pinned between jaws, caught like reeds in a narrowing channel.

“What do we do… Lucimia…” Desty’s voice quivered like a plucked string, the question worn thin.

“I… don’t know.” Lucimia’s mind went blank like frost on glass, and they stood frozen, watching chaos spill like ink.

If it came to it, she’d ignore whether Elyssus broke free and use her Devouring Authority, like throwing fire into night.

That single thought echoed, a bell in a hollow temple.

She didn’t notice Lev changing on the Blue Ringed Octopus’s tentacle, a shadow dissolving like mist over water.

Lev’s body thinned to transparency, then unraveled into layers of smoke, drifting upward like ash from a cold brazier.

The air thickened the instant he vanished. Smoke bulged like storm‑clouds in a sealed jar, gushing out denser than before, swallowing her sight like a tidal fog.

The giant worm vanished into gray, the charging rats into haze. Even Desty at her side faded to a blur, a silhouette behind gauze.

Lucimia seized Desty’s wrist, fingers tight as iron, afraid the fog would shear them apart like a silent blade.

The uncanny smoke spread outward, a slow ocean. Then, at once, the world fell silent, like snow smothering a battlefield.

No worm‑cry. No rat‑rumble. As if everything had been a painted scene, peeled away like a paper screen.

They waited. No rats pounced. At their speed, the square should’ve been a boiling tide.

“Weird…” Desty held onto Lucimia, a lifeline in the gray, mindful of her wounds like thorns beneath cloth.

“What are these fumes… doing?” Lucimia scanned the pall. The gray‑white smoke seemed born from thin air, like a hole in the sky spraying breath.

Silence held like a sealed jar. A chill rose in her chest, spreading like winter water over stone.

She felt countless unseen eyes settle on her, cold as rain on spine, crawling into limbs like ice threads.

Her heartbeat quickened, a drum under ribs. Her blood felt thick at her throat, a river dammed, breath snagging like caught silk.

“Lucimia… do you feel… someone watching us?” Desty’s whisper fluttered like a moth in a cave.

“Mm.” Lucimia searched the gray. No bodies. No shapes. Only an endless pall like ash over a lake.

The unease fermented, a sour heat. Her hair bristled like fur to wind; muscles drew tight like bowstrings.

The gazes felt sharp as knives, slipping through her soul like blades in water, leaving her small and brittle.

“This is… an attack on our mental walls?” She knew it wasn’t a mirage. Real eyes traced her, cold as stars.

She knew this taste. When she’d sent the Fuzzy Orb into a Mystic Return Smoke site, it crept into a small house where a giant Cross stood, smoke coiling like incense. The Orb sensed many eyes, and then the link snapped like a cut thread—death.

The two girls pressed together, shoulders close like stacked shields. Sword‑forms and spells gathered like thunderheads.

Smoke kept churning. Silence deepened, so empty she could hear her heartbeat, a steady drum in a hollow hall.

Every faint brush of air tugged her nerves taut. The eyes drew nearer, breathing an evil tang like rot in fog.

“Who’s playing ghost? Come out if you’ve got guts.” Desty barked into the air, voice a thrown stone to still water.

No answer came. Only the hush pressed like damp cloth.

“Maybe it really is a god…” Lucimia whispered, words thin as smoke.

“Huh?” Desty glanced over, puzzled. “What’s your black… Fuzzy Orb?”

Lucimia didn’t bite on that. She steered back like a hand on a rudder. “We figured Lev is a Sacrifice. His wound‑swapping fits the cut.”

“But that means Sacrifice is compulsory. If it’s forced, why the running? It’s not logical. And his eerie trick has no magic ripple. So what’s left?”

“Uh… you mean…” Desty’s eyes widened, a spark catching tinder.

“Right… and…” Lucimia lifted her gaze. A vast vortex had bloomed above, dragging smoke like a river toward a drain. Soon it shaped a pair of eyes—no, not shaped. It was like someone carved holes in the gray sea, eye‑shaped and pure black, staring down at her like pits.

Lucimia sighed, breath a strand in frost.

“And… a second Dark Deity.”

As her words fell, the gray smoke around them dimpled like pitted earth. Pairs of black eyes opened, all fixed on the two like nets of shadow.

No mouths. No faces. No emotion to read, only silence. Unlike Elyssus’s laughter, this chill was bone‑deep and wrong, a grave under moonlight.

“Lucimia, this—” Desty’s composure cracked like thin ice.

Lucimia knit her brows, ready to trigger Reversion. Her left arm might not return, but it beat dying in a blind fog.

With a second Dark Deity, the puzzle fit. The strange smoke, Lev’s method, the Cross—it might not be a magic‑banning tool, but a god’s instrument, cold as iron.

This smoke and these eyes might be its Evil Entity, prowling like hunters in mist.

Emongaha and Lev’s Independents could be using the Plague God’s sickness, parading its cruelty to stoke hate, then pretending Mystic Return Smoke was human‑made, when it’s that god’s Evil Entity, a siphon for power.

So it’s two Dark Deities at war, currents clashing like tides.

“What Dark Deity is this? Do you recognize it? Any Church record? What’s its Authority Power?” Lucimia asked, words quick as sparks.

“Let me think…” Desty muttered, “Smoke, eyes, Cross? Wound swap…”

“Well? Anything?”

“…Sorry. Nothing. It doesn’t seem recorded.” Desty shook her head, like a leaf refusing wind.

“Alright. No problem.” Lucimia nodded, a small stone steady in flood.