“So that’s what they’re afraid of…” The thought shocked Lucimia, a spark catching dry straw.

Cold ran down her spine, goosebumps bloomed like frost on bark.

She’d turned the idea over and over; only this one reason fit, a lone key in a stubborn lock.

She wanted to ride that new thread deeper, but Holy Knight soldiers closed from every side like an iron tide, while Nat in the distance and Lev in the shadows stirred like wolves in brush.

“Hmph. No time for me? Fine.” Lucimia pressed her small hand to the ground; the slabs of earth were Devoured like bread in a maw. She dropped, wind magic coiling beneath like a rising gust, and ice gathered above her fall like a closing lid.

At last, she triggered Reversion.

“Ten seconds… that should stall them…”

White light flooded her sight, needles of snow stabbing her eyes until they watered.

—

She’d lost count of how many Reversions this made.

Lev and Nat, using Vosh’s Purification Power, kept their memories from resetting. They traded wounds with Desty like blows at a whetstone, then hunted Lucimia, trying to drag things out until the prison finished, or until Lucimia burned out like a guttering lamp.

That was their plan, clean and cruel as a blade.

But when Lucimia Devoured the ground, slipped below, and used Reversion—this time—the thread kinked, a knot in the weave.

As usual, they traded wounds with Desty and moved in for the kill, wolves on a hot scent.

They judged her Reversion point near the outer edge of the deep woods. Nat went first. He found Lucimia sitting under a tree, catching her breath like a fox in shade, and smirked.

“Heh. Still in the mood to rest? Not happening.”

Nat drew, aimed, and loosed; the arrow streaked blue, lightning over water.

Whoosh!

Thunk!

Lucimia neither dodged nor blocked. The arrow punched through her head; a heartbeat later, she sifted into powder, dust to wind.

Nat stared, dumbstruck. That shaft carried the Purification Deity’s Authority Power; a hit meant Purification. Did he just finish Lucimia that easily?

He didn’t buy it. His Holy Knights flared alarm magic, and the same message pulsed to him like drumbeats through fog—

“I’ve got Lucimia here!”

Nat jolted. He climbed higher and opened his Magic Eye, staring down. The whole valley—river flats, rolling hills, deep woods—was full of Lucimias, reflections in broken water.

“What is this? Fuzzy Orbs and disguises? Trying to fool our sight?” He rubbed his eyes and looked again; the mirage held like heat-haze over stone.

Strange. Why didn’t the Purification Deity’s Authority Power strip the disguise? Did she choose to keep pouring energy, forcing a stalemate tug-of-war? Since when is she willing to spend this much? Her state should be awful… No, wait. She’s seen the problem, but time’s too tight. She’s trying to delay…

“Tch. Let’s see you dodge AoE magic.”

Nat lifted one hand. The sky over the valley sank darker, and dense magic pooled above like stormwater heavy to burst.

But below, the many Lucimias just raised their hands. Fuzzy Orbs budded like fruit and Devoured his spell before it fully formed.

“…”

Nat fell silent.

A bad premonition seeped in, cold water in his boots. Faintly, he felt Lucimia had found a way to crack the game. This might be the moment for her counterattack.

Truth be told, it wasn’t a full counterattack. Lucimia was buying time, stealing breaths between waves.

Did they think her earlier Reversions were wasted? By habit, she planted a Teleportation Array wherever she went. Each Reversion fell at a different time and place. She made that work: with every jump, she dropped a Fuzzy Orb and an array, seeding the ground with bright breadcrumbs.

Then she slipped through arrays, back and forth, weaving a net and replenishing any Fuzzy Orbs that died.

Just because the tiger hasn’t roared, did they really think Lucimia was a tame kitten?

With time, she could finally pick the knots clean.

Here’s what the board showed—

First: the Purification Deity hasn’t broken her seal. To keep outputting power, she has to borrow Ment’s energy, and Ment’s storage sits in the Cross, a leaky dam tapping a reservoir.

So the question: how does Ment lend energy to Purification? Summoning? Sacrifice? Or possession? Invasion? A link? That’s the fog we still can’t see through.

Second: the enemy is terrified of Desty alive; they’d love her dead, like thorns yanked from a boot.

And Lucimia had already traced the reason— It’s not Desty they fear. They fear Desty dying not by their hands, but by Lucimia’s, a tilt that flips the scale.

Weird at first glance, right?

Think it through, and it clicks.

Lucimia, afraid of corruption running wild, chose not to absorb energy and rationed every spark, a candle cupped in wind.

But what if she chose to absorb?

That’s the point the Purification Deity fears most—and why goosebumps crawled over Lucimia.

We all know energy comes in five tiers, rungs on a ladder.

First: Dark Deity.

Second: human souls bearing Blessings.

Third: ordinary human life-souls.

Fourth: magical beasts.

Fifth: common animals.

Desty is clearly the second kind. Alone, she could match the energy of thousands. And her Blessing was given by a Dark Deity—meaning, in a sense, it’s torn fire from that deity’s own star.

That energy is rich, thick as syrup, enough to let Lucimia’s Devouring run rampant.

Absorption isn’t the same as Devouring to steal. To absorb, Lucimia only needs to take Desty’s life, her soul, the fact of her being. The Purification Deity’s guard against the Blessing being Devoured does nothing here, a lock on the wrong door.

Why not shield Desty with Purification itself? Simple: she’s sealed.

Sealed, she can only use the Blessing as a medium to steer Desty, or tweak the Blessing itself. She can’t use Authority Power on Desty directly. Same as Elyssus back then.

Elyssus could possess someone and use a sliver of Authority Power only when he was close to breaking his seal. Purification is nowhere near that; if she were, she wouldn’t need these workarounds against Lucimia.

Besides, from the books in Olivya’s altar, Lucimia knew breaking Purification’s seal isn’t easy. Olivya even put an extra lock on her, chains over chains.

So unless Desty herself opens a summoning or sacrifice Magic Array, Authority Power can’t touch her out of thin air. No bridge, no crossing.

And yet—another knot.

Granted, Desty’s energy is extremely dense. Lucimia remembered when Elyssus absorbed some of it; that put him with his hand on the doorknob of his seal.

Even so, it’s still not enough for Lucimia to break Ment’s ever-fed barrier and Vosh’s prison, two millstones fed by a river.

It only lets her hold out longer, borrowed breaths in a storm.

Yet this same extra-minutes energy has them hawk-eyed, circling a single spark…

“Why?” Lucimia wondered. She lifted her head to the far rim of sky. A wall of smoke loomed there, and lances of Purification light fell like spears of rain.

She felt it… a shape in the fog… she might already have guessed…