Above the dark waters of Lake Starbind, the battle between Aldrich’s Mirror Moon Golem and the two Crimson-rank members of the Eight-Spired Nest continued.
After much effort and strategy, Gossmore finally forced the golem to relinquish its hold on the storm prison. Successfully rescuing her comrade Boade, she wasted no time—flying once more toward the Mirror Moon Golem.
Seeing her approaching at high speed, Boade, still panting heavily from his escape, froze momentarily. But upon realizing what she was calling for, his expression turned grim.
“Arm you…? Understood.”
As he spoke, Boade activated his spirituality, forcing his weakened body to return to its mist form. This time, however, he didn’t disperse into a wide cloud. Instead, the blood mist retracted inward, concentrating into a long, slender rod. Once fully condensed, it solidified into a crimson halberd.
The moment he completed his transformation, the crimson halberd flew of its own accord toward the charging Gossmore. As the two converged, Gossmore reached out and tightly grasped the weapon. At her touch, a dark red hue spread rapidly from her grip, enveloping her entire body. The strange substance morphed around her form, transforming into blood-forged armor, adorning her like a noble knight wielding a mighty weapon.
Aldrich had already anticipated such a move. He first unleashed another invisible rain of wind blades from the Mirror Moon Golem, then hurled a colossal punch toward Gossmore like a wall of stone.
But the wind blades did nothing—Boade’s blood armor shielded her perfectly. This level of attack was completely absorbed. And as the massive golem’s fist came crashing toward her again, Gossmore performed a daring maneuver, narrowly evading the blow. Seizing the moment, she swung the crimson halberd—Boade himself—at the outstretched arm of the golem.
In her hands, the halberd rapidly extended. Its blade expanded even further, becoming larger than Gossmore herself. Wielding the oversized weapon, she brought it down with full force, carving a deep wound into the golem’s stone arm with a thunderous crash and a cloud of dust.
“To fully arm another and amplify their power—that’s the Crimson Thorn Archduke’s strategy in cooperative combat? Not only can it magnify conventional strikes, but it brings such devastating Shadow erosion... Color me impressed.”
Seeing this, Aldrich quickly infused more of his Stone spirituality to reinforce the structural integrity of the golem’s arm. Only then did the spread of the cracks slow. With one swift motion, he made the golem’s massive arm swing backward, slamming Gossmore away at close range.
Though the impact was tremendous, Gossmore’s body wasn’t smashed to pulp. Boade’s blood armor absorbed the brunt of the blow. While the armor was shattered into fragments, the pieces hovered briefly in the air before reassembling themselves into a fresh set of armor. Regaining her posture in midair, Gossmore—now fully rearmed—charged again with her crimson halberd.
The battle between her and the golem became a fierce melee. Now fully equipped with Boade’s blood mist gear, Gossmore turned the tide. The blood armor dramatically boosted her defenses—not only negating wind blade damage, but even absorbing most of the force from the golem’s physical strikes. And with her weapon enlarged and enhanced, she could now inflict real damage, breaking through the golem’s defenses. Combined with her innate agility, Gossmore was clearly in a much stronger position.
Aldrich fought hard to maintain control. The golem’s attacks were no longer fatal threats to Gossmore, and her every swing now struck with enough corrosive power to demand large amounts of Aldrich’s spirituality just to suppress it. Without constant intervention, the golem wouldn’t last long.
Aldrich furrowed his brow as he fought, slipping a hand into his coat pocket. He pulled something out and opened his fist. Fine grains of drifting sand slipped through his fingers, becoming dust that floated into the air. What remained in his palm were three stone-carved chess pieces—a knight, a rook, and a bishop.
The knight and rook had each lost about two-thirds of their mass, crumbled into dust. Only the bishop piece remained mostly intact, though even it was covered in fine cracks.
This clearly indicated that Aldrich’s spirituality was running low. As a severely incomplete Gold-rank, he could not match the spiritual reserves of two full Crimson-rank enemies. His mastery over Stone gave him exceptional efficiency, but even so, maintaining a golem of this size—one that embodied an entire temple—was a massive drain. Now, with Gossmore’s constant assault, Aldrich had to spend even more energy just to maintain the golem’s defenses.
Though he could tap into some of the temple’s internal spiritual reserves, they were primarily Shadow. The Stone reserves had already been depleted during the golemization. Now the golem was sustained mostly by Aldrich’s personal power.
Although the battle appeared even, with Aldrich holding a slight edge, it wouldn’t last. His reserves were approaching the safety threshold he had set for himself. Once crossed, he’d be forced to stop controlling the Mirror Moon Golem.
At the current rate, he couldn’t guarantee he’d hold out until Dorothy completed her ritual.
To conserve strength, Aldrich began dialing back the golem’s functions, shifting from offense to defense. This change didn’t go unnoticed.
“Hah! He’s slowing down! Keep going, Boade—don’t let up!”
With a triumphant laugh, Gossmore intensified her assault, swinging the massive halberd repeatedly against the golem’s body. As the tides turned, her laughter grew more arrogant, and Aldrich’s spirituality drained faster than ever.
Then, without warning—a sudden anomaly struck the battlefield.
In the black night sky, a streak of orange-gold light appeared—a blazing star. It grew brighter and brighter until, in a flash, it transformed into a massive pillar of flame and plummeted from the heavens, headed directly toward Gossmore.
Mid-swing, she felt something was off and swerved in the nick of time. The blazing fire pillar, several meters wide, grazed past her and crashed into Lake Starbind with a deafening roar, boiling the water around it. Even from a near-miss, the intense heat seared her skin.
“What?! What is—?!”
Before she could finish, more pillars of flame began raining down from the sky. Though Gossmore managed to evade the direct strikes, the fire pillars did not disappear—they remained suspended in place, slowly forming a cage of flame around her, attempting to trap her within.
Seeing the situation, Gossmore immediately realized this was no place to linger. Without hesitation, she shot toward the largest gap in the yet-unfinished cage of flame pillars. Just as she was about to escape, a massive stone fist—like a towering wall—came crashing toward her. Caught off guard, she twisted away and narrowly dodged the golem’s blow, but in doing so, she missed her final chance to escape the cage. As the last pillar of fire descended, Gossmore was trapped inside.
“Spiritual fire of this intensity… how could it appear here…?”
Staring at the cage of blazing flame that now surrounded her, Gossmore murmured in disbelief. And just then, an even greater danger began to descend.
Above her, at the very top of the flame prison, an orange-yellow star ignited in the sky. Its light grew stronger and stronger—as though another pillar of flame was preparing to descend from above.
But in the end, what fell was not a flame pillar, but a meteor—a meteor far larger and more intense than the previous fire pillars, blazing with furious flame. Within the confined space of the flame prison, it came plummeting straight down, dragging a long tail of fire as it descended directly toward the trapped Gossmore.
Her eyes widened in alarm.
“Heavenly Flame… a Saint?!”
Gritting her teeth, Gossmore growled in realization. Staring down the meteor descending right into her face, she cast a vicious glare toward the nearby wall of the flame cage. Then, gripping her blood-formed halberd tightly, she transformed it into a shield, and charged it straight at the wall of flame.
Rather than take a full hit from the Heavenly Flame meteor, Gossmore chose to crash through the flame barrier herself—at least that would only expose her to burning, not to direct impact.
Acting with decisive resolve, she braced her shield and crashed through the blazing wall. Her entire body was scorched by the flame, but at great cost, she broke through.
Just as she staggered through the other side, enveloped in fire and releasing blood mist to smother the flames, the meteor in the sky above adjusted course—as if it had a will of its own. Seeing her escape, it twisted in midair, changing trajectory to continue pursuing her, tail flame streaming as it hurtled after her once more.
Seeing this, Gossmore didn’t even bother trying to extinguish the flames on her body. She immediately began evasive maneuvers, frantically dodging the meteor that was now almost upon her.
In the end, she managed to avoid a direct hit—dodging the fate of being obliterated by that overwhelming fire. But the meteor still grazed her, and even that was enough to send her hurtling far across the battlefield. She was thrown all the way to the opposite shore of Lake Starbind, slamming into the ground with a heavy impact.
The meteor itself crashed at an angle into a nearby hillside beside the lake.
BOOM!!
A thunderous explosion erupted. Fire surged skyward. The ground quaked. In an instant, the struck mountaintop was annihilated. In its place, amid a rising cloud of ash and dust, was a scorched, molten crater glowing red with heat.
And at the center of that crater… a figure slowly rose to its feet.
Clad in full Church-style plate armor, bearing winged and sunwheel insignia on a fully enclosed helm, and gripping a longsword wreathed in crimson flame, stood a towering and imposing heavily-armored knight. Behind him flowed a cloak made of special fabric, embroidered with sacred, intricate patterns—the kind only seen on the vestments of the Church’s highest-ranking clergy.
This was the former commander of the Holy War Knights and current Archbishop of the Pritt Diocese: Francesco. After receiving an urgent report from the forward reconnaissance team investigating the heretical ruins, he had rushed to Glamorne without pause using his abilities—and had now arrived on the scene.
On the opposite end of Lake Starbind, at the lakeshore, Gossmore staggered to her feet from the crater she’d smashed into. Her blood mist armor was nearly destroyed, her body scorched black in large patches, and half her clothing burned away. She stared in shock and fury at the distant burning mountaintop and at the towering golem still standing upon the lake’s surface.
“Why… Why is a Heavenly Flame Saint here!? Did that little nun report to her superiors? Even then—how could they have arrived so quickly!?”
“Fine… fine… One wasn’t enough—now another one jumps in. So even the old zealots are stepping in personally now, huh? You… you people really think I’m someone you can just push around?!”
By the end, the confusion in her voice gave way to pure rage. Despite now facing at least two Crimson-rank enemies, Gossmore had no intention of retreating. She was confident in her ability to settle the score—because she wasn’t just any Crimson.
She was a Witch Regent, the Witch Regent of the Spider Queen.
That identity alone meant she wouldn’t even fear two more Crimson-rank enemies joining the fight!
“I was planning to resolve this with just my own powers… but it seems that’s no longer viable. Damn you all… you brought this upon yourselves!”
So thinking, Gossmore slowly closed her eyes and began to pray in silence.
“O Deep Web Queen, whom all life fears…
Goddess of Shadows and Murder…
Sovereign of Torture and Pain…
Lady of Blood…
I, Gossmore Achik, Your most faithful servant,
Your Witch Regent, Your gate to this realm,
now offer this prayer.
Open me—I shall become the passage to Your nest.
Let Your power flow through me…”
…
Within the Mirror Moon statue, inside the stable gyroscope chamber, Dorothy continued to sit in silent meditation before the image—whether it was hers or the Mirror Moon Goddess’s, it no longer mattered.
At last, as the ritual candles around the formation flickered, a ring of violet light pulsed and faded on the ritual array of Revelation. A faint glow skimmed across the cover of the Literary Sea Logbook placed at the array’s center. Something within it had subtly changed.
Dorothy, still seated at the ritual’s edge, picked up the book and brushed her fingers over its surface. Sensing the transformation within, she whispered.
“It worked…”
Another ritual was complete. By her own promise, and in the name of Akasha, Dorothy had now consecrated the Literary Sea Logbook into a divine artifact—a Revelation-aligned deity-blessed artifact.
With that, Dorothy had now successfully completed her second ritual. She had at last gathered all six deity-blessed artifacts required for her advancement to the Crimson rank.
Now… it was time to begin the final ritual.