No—!!

He stares at the shattered lantern in his hand, and at the tide of rats lunging like starved tigers.

"Don't come closer! Don't—!" He swings his longsword, hacking at the surge.

However, after a while, he realizes the rats aren't pouncing; they're converging, a black river pooling around him.

He turns and looks at the lantern.

The glass is smashed, yet the Purifying Light inside remains intact.

It hovers where the lamp used to be.

It shifts as his arm shifts, refusing to die.

"Ha... haha..." He exhales, fear leaking away. He laughs with trembling relief. "Hahaha—worthy of my Lord's power—hahaha..."

"Pfsh!"

Mid-laugh, his hand flies off. Blood sprays like a red fountain.

"Uh..." His smile freezes, brittle as ice.

The drifting lantern and severed forearm vault into the grass. The slowest rats vanish in an instant, purified to nothing.

With the light cast away, night folds around him like a wet shroud. A hundred crimson eyes stare from the dark.

The swarm had been waiting, jaws ready. Without the Purifying Light, they rush him like a breaking wave.

"Uh... no... no... no! I need to reach the light!"

Panic first, then motion. He bolts. But the rats are too fast.

Two steps, and a cluster clamps on his calves. His legs lock. He goes down. The mass crawls over his body, creeps toward his brow like a living hood.

"No! Help me! Help me!" He screams to his comrades not far away. Terror spikes when he sees they act like he doesn't exist. They stand their posts, silent, like statues in fog.

"No!!!"

His cries curdle into a raw wail, and the rats eat him, bite by bite, until nothing is left.

Only then does Lucimia slip out from the first thicket. She looks at the man gnawed to white bone, and guilt blooms cold in her chest.

He was a Holy Knight of the Purification Church. But he was only a misled foot soldier, ignorant as fresh snow. He had no evil in mind. Yet he had to die. If he lived, he would bring trouble to Lucimia.

She had to do it.

"Lucimia..." Desty steps behind her and pats her shoulder, a steady hand in winter rain. "It wasn't you alone. It was the two of us."

"No..." Lucimia shakes her head, heaviness first, then words. "Objectively, it was all me."

She used Invisibility Magic to slip to the shrub.

She dropped it in a blink and raised it again.

The swarm rushed the bush, then halted, like a tide tugged by the moon.

The man pushed it open in curiosity and found only a dead beast Lucimia had planted there ahead of time.

When he turned away, she cast a spell, trying to shatter the lantern and snuff the light. She hadn't expected the Purifying Light to be that stubborn. The glass broke, and her magic was purified to ash.

Then she realized—severing his hand was the cleaner cut.

When the rats devoured him and he cried for help, she used her Disguise Power. In other soldiers' eyes, the scene became a different play entirely.

So his pleading met no reply.

As the rats ate, she sent the Fuzzy Orb in to take its share, to Devour his memories. That was how she learned he was just a bottom-rank knight, green as spring, with a wife and a newborn. He didn't even know where the Cross was hidden.

That's why guilt seeded itself in Lucimia's heart.

"It seems none of these knights know anything about the Cross. But they do carry maps of their posts." Lucimia steadies herself and speaks to Desty. "Next, we follow the route. We move by the lights on their bodies, then dive for the deep woods. On the way, we cut down as many as we can. Fewer eyes for them means fewer problems for us."

"Alright." Desty can only nod, quiet as dusk.

Lucimia thinks. She knows every enemy she cuts drains her energy. But it's still less than what she'd spend if Nat hunted her and she ran.

Either way, she'll burn through power. Maybe that's exactly their plan. Maybe... the idea that she'd thin their ranks is already inside their script...

"Are all these knights and soldiers just sacrifices?" Lucimia's mood sinks like a stone in rain.

The Church and Ment are using them as bait. If Lucimia refuses to kill, her risk of being spotted rises. Then the chase begins. She fights and runs, spending oceans of power. If she kills, she also spends power. Then the Church tells the world those knights died by her hands and drags her name through mud.

It's an open trap. Lucimia hates open traps—the kind that stink of rot—even though she's used them too.

After that, she repeats the method. She kills the remaining six knights. She uses the other outposts, rides the light on their gear, and wipes out "enemies" along the path like a storm clearing leaves.

She moves fast, clean, without a drop of hesitation. She knows Nat in the sky could spot her at any moment. She cloaks the scene with her Disguise Power, to make it look like the knights were never attacked.

She doesn't know how far the Purification Deity's borrowed gift reaches. Whether he'll see through it.

—

"No! Damn it—ahhhh—don't eat me!"

When the last black-armored soldier is devoured by rats, Lucimia and Desty slump against a tree, lungs burning like bellows.

"H-how is it?" Desty recovers quickly, breath steadying like a pond after wind.

"N-no... nothing. None of the soldiers have memories of the Cross's location. Hah..." Lucimia pants, the words hitching, the mind still turning.

They haven't been ambushed along the way. Can they really not pierce her Disguise Power? That doesn't add up. Would the Church miss something so basic?

The more she thinks, the more it feels like a snare tightening.

If she stands still and gets found, she runs a chase, spending energy.

If she strikes first and trims their numbers, she also spends energy.

Maybe they've known all along. Maybe they're just letting her finish the loop, then...

"Tch... being calculated this completely..." She presses her temple, pain flaring. "Aside from Elyssus, this makes twice, doesn't it?"

A mocking laugh drifts down from the sky, thin as winter wind.

"Hahahahahahaha—Lucimia, do you know? Nach Valley will be your grave."

Nat appears from the high air, wearing a smile like a knife.

Lucimia lifts her face to the man in the sky. In a voice only she can hear, she says, "So it's like this, after all..."