Above the nighttime Lake Starbind, beneath the full moon’s canopy, a colossal cathedral hovered midair under the command of some immense and mysterious power. As this mysterious force spread throughout the entire structure, the cathedral itself began to transform.
Amid rumbling and thunderous booms, the sacred edifice began to shift—countless arches gliding sideways, spires tilting, floors splitting open. Entire sections of the structure moved from one side to another. The outer facade unfolded, revealing the inner mechanisms, as if this massive building were a giant machine executing an elaborate reconfiguration.
“What… is happening!?”
“The ground’s moving? No—it’s the whole cathedral! Has some hidden function of the temple been activated? Why now?!”
On the cathedral’s front platform, Vania and the mostly incapacitated guards of the Pilgrimage Delegation stared in astonishment at the unfolding scene. With the environment shifting so violently, they held tightly to one another to avoid being thrown off. Before their eyes, the once-spacious platform retracted into the cathedral, folding and reshaping into a raised bulkhead. Because of the changing incline, the Pilgrimage Delegation slid downward, tumbling into an inverted hall—finding themselves now stuck to what used to be the ceiling.
“What the hell is this?! Stop it right now!”
Hovering above the lake surface, Gossmore grit her teeth and shouted angrily. She immediately conjured several crimson blood weapons and hurled them at the cathedral. Although deep gashes were left in the structure, they failed to halt the ongoing transformation.
After a series of complex adjustments, the transformation finally concluded. The great cathedral no longer resembled a building at all—instead, it had taken on the form of a gigantic humanoid figure.
The cathedral’s main body—the massive chapel—formed the torso; its domed roof, the head; the long corridors and side halls became arms and legs; thick stone columns turned into fingers; and exquisite carvings adorned every inch of its new body.
“You’ve got to be kidding me… that moon-bitch’s cathedral… turned humanoid?! What kind of mystical ability is this?!”
Gossmore stared in disbelief, whispering incredulously. She had never seen such a miraculous Beyonder ability before.
“This ability… likely originates from the temple itself. It may be part of the cathedral’s autonomous mystical system. Perhaps when it was built a thousand years ago… the Stone craftsmen hired for the task were simply too powerful and gave it such outrageous capabilities.
“Those Pritt-aligned vigilance factions were already able to control the temple in the present world—it proves they held some authority over the structure. It’s likely they’ve now deepened that control and activated even more formidable internal functions.”
Boade, standing beside her with a grim expression, murmured his analysis. In his eyes, this bizarre situation was still being orchestrated by those upper-echelon Pritt “Vigilist.”
“Hmph. So it’s them again? In that case, I’ll go rip them out right now! If they turned the cathedral into this, then they must be hiding inside!”
With a cold snort, Gossmore spread her enormous bat-like wings. As they flared open, she shot forward like an arrow, streaking toward the distant cathedral-turned-golem. Boade unfurled his wings as well, joining her in their assault.
“Crimson-rank of the Blood Shade Path… the Crimson Thorn Archduke. I’ve heard of her before. Now let’s see it firsthand.”
From the top of the golem’s belfry, Aldrich stood silently, watching the two fast-approaching figures. He then began to manipulate the golem beneath his feet and initiate its counterattack.
Bathed in moonlight, the Mirror Moon Golem—towering at dozens of meters—clenched its right fist and threw a mighty hook punch from the side at the approaching Gossmore and Boade. The two members of the Eight-Spired Nest barely managed to evade the colossal strike. The golem’s massive fist whooshed past, creating a fierce storm wind that destabilized them midair.
“So fast!”
“This thing is so massive… and yet it moves that quickly?!”
Just as the two Crimsons of the Eight-Spired Nest were reeling from how unexpectedly agile the giant was, the golem’s assault continued. Following the momentum of its punch, the Mirror Moon Golem spun in place and swept one leg in a high arc at its midair targets—who, from its perspective, were no bigger than flies.
The sweeping kick was even faster than the previous punch. Taken by surprise, neither of the Crimsons could fully react. Gossmore narrowly dodged the blow thanks to her superior speed. Boade, however, realized he couldn’t escape in time. At the last second, he turned into blood mist, just as the enormous leg struck, causing his body to burst into a crimson cloud.
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Something that huge is this agile?!”
Gossmore’s thoughts raced in disbelief. The Mirror Moon Golem was nearly 50 to 60 meters tall, a colossal construct by any standard. A creature or construct of that scale should’ve been slow and lumbering. But its performance defied all expectations—its attacks so fast that even two Crimson-rank Shadows were barely able to keep up.
She had seen large mystical beasts and constructs before—but never one this agile. It was almost unimaginable that such nimbleness could reside in such a monstrous form.
“So… this is the speed displayed by a temple-grade Shadow ritual field after being turned into a golem? Astonishing… It even manages to suppress Crimson-rank Shadows...”
Standing atop the belfry of the golem, Aldrich kept his hands behind his back and murmured in evaluation of the battle just now. This was also the first time he had ever golemized a temple that served as a Shadow ritual field—and its performance had clearly surpassed his expectations.
“Now, let’s try out some other functions…”
With that, Aldrich shifted his gaze toward the drifting blood mist in the sky—Boade, who had just been shattered by the golem’s kick and was now slowly reconstituting. Upon seeing this, Aldrich commanded the Mirror Moon Golem to stretch out a hand toward the mist. At his behest, a vortex suddenly began to stir before the golem’s palm.
A whirlwind—rotating tightly—arose before the golem’s hand and rapidly intensified. Instead of expanding outward, the wind condensed into a sphere, spiraling wildly within a confined area to form a massive storm prison.
Immediately, the blood mist that composed Boade was caught in the violent turbulence. The whirlwind’s fierce current blew his essence apart, making it impossible for him to recondense. The blood mist was bound within the confines of the storm sphere—unable to reform, and unable to disperse. Trapped within the whirlwind, Boade’s blood essence would be worn thinner and thinner by the spiritual winds. Once it thinned beyond a certain threshold, he would permanently lose control of it. In other words, if Boade didn’t find a way to escape soon, he would be worn away to death within this wind prison.
This kind of battlefield golemization based on a temple-grade ritual field was one aspect of Aldrich’s power as an incomplete Gold-rank Golem User. Golems created through this method could inherit unique attributes from the original ritual field’s mystical defense system—even integrating its extraordinary subsystems.
For instance, the current Mirror Moon Golem was a prime example. The temple’s Shadow-attribute mystical defense granted it extraordinary agility and speed for its size. Its storm manipulation ability was also inherited from the temple’s built-in systems. While the Mirror Moon Temple had other defensive powers beyond wind control, Aldrich, being a Stone Beyonder, found wind elements more intuitive and efficient to control. The others were too secondary or incompatible for immediate use in this scenario.
With just the first exchange, Aldrich’s Mirror Moon Golem had already captured one Crimson-rank enemy from the Eight-Spired Nest and was fully capable of slowly grinding him down. Seeing the unfavorable tide, Gossmore grit her teeth in frustration. After casting a glance toward the wind prison in the distance, she dove straight at the Mirror Moon Golem once more.
In response, Aldrich had the golem split its attention—its left hand maintaining the wind prison to bind Boade, and its right hand shifting to intercept Gossmore.
The Mirror Moon Golem swept its hand and launched a storm of wind blades toward her, then clenched its right fist and struck again.
Gossmore charged directly into the barrage of wind blades, taking slash after slash across her body without pausing. When the golem’s fist came flying at her once more, she narrowly dodged at full speed. Spinning in midair, she conjured a barrage of blood thorns and hurled them at the golem’s arm. They left only shallow pits—unable to cause any real damage. The golem counterattacked once more, forcing her to retreat again.
As a Crimson-rank of the Blood Shade Path, the Crimson Thorn Archduke possessed the ability to transform into blood mist for stealth reconnaissance and to erode biological targets. That same blood mist could also be shaped into a wide variety of weaponry. Any living creature wounded by these weapons—no matter how small the injury—would suffer unbearable, magnified pain.
Pain inflicted by the Archduke’s blood-formed armaments could be amplified dozens or even hundreds of times. Even elephants—or colossal sea beasts—couldn’t endure the agony. The Archduke needed only a small scratch to incapacitate creatures hundreds of times its size. But that only worked on living beings. Against constructs or beings that lacked a sense of pain—like this golem—the ability was useless.
The blood mist’s special effects were nullified. With wind abilities suppressing her mist form, and no clear speed advantage, Gossmore found herself increasingly suppressed by the Mirror Moon Golem. Still, she refused to concede. Eyes flashing with determination, she made a bold decision.
As another punch from the golem came flying in, Gossmore didn’t fully dodge. Instead, she let part of the attack strike her. Her body shattered under the impact—then immediately transformed into several large bats, which swarmed toward the golem’s arm. Aldrich conjured a powerful wind to blow them away, but these were not mist nor small creatures—they were physically robust and highly resistant to storm winds. With tremendous effort, Gossmore’s bat avatars clung tightly to the golem’s arm.
Having successfully landed on its arm, Gossmore didn’t hesitate. She sprinted along the limb toward the golem’s body—her intent clear: she was aiming to break inside the Mirror Moon Golem and eliminate its controller.
Once an ant has climbed onto a giant, things get difficult.
Faced with this, Aldrich conjured another gale on the golem’s arm to try and blow her off. But with every step, Gossmore used her strength to punch through the golem’s outer shell, embedding her limbs like climbing picks into the stone—firmly anchoring herself. She could not be shaken off.
To prevent her from infiltrating the golem, Aldrich had no choice but to divert the left hand that had been maintaining the wind prison. He released Boade and swung the arm toward the right—attempting to swat Gossmore like an insect. Seeing the danger, Gossmore launched off the arm and spread her wings, soaring through the night sky toward the now-free Boade.
Facing her freed companion, Gossmore shouted in a commanding tone.
“Arm me—Boade!”
…
While the battle raged above Lake Starbind, inside the rapidly shifting and maneuvering Mirror Moon Golem, at the heart of the structure—in the chapel that formed its core—a massive assembly of interlocking stone rings and a great stone gyroscope revolved steadily. At the center of that gyroscope floated a stable, spherical chamber.
Within that chamber stood the towering statue of the Mirror Moon Goddess—or rather, the divine image of Akasha. And before it lay a ceremonial field.
Dorothy sat silently in the center of that ritual field, eyes closed in deep concentration. Placed before her was one of her most familiar mystical tools: the Literary Sea Logbook.