Within the devastated underground archive of Tivian’s Hymn Cathedral, Duval suddenly and unexpectedly devoured one of his own allies. Neither Blond and the others, nor even Dorothy and Vania—who were remotely monitoring the battle—had anticipated such a move.
“E-Elder Duval…”
“That guy…”
Paying no mind to anyone else’s reactions, Duval slowly lowered his blood-soaked hand after swallowing Sander. At this moment, both eyes of his left wolf head had turned into a dim, eerie green, and a strange smile curled at the edge of his bloody jaws. It was clear that this act of devouring had triggered some strange transformation within his body.
Without pause, the gluttonous direwolf opened his left mouth. After inhaling deeply, he suddenly exhaled—a dense dark green mist burst from his gaping maw and began to rapidly spread in all directions upon contact with the air.
“That’s—”
“Move! Quickly!”
Seeing the mist, Blond and the others immediately went pale and began fleeing for their lives, scrambling up the pillars in an attempt to escape the underground archive. They knew exactly what it was: a miasma—a toxic fog teeming with disease!
Devour-Mutation—this was one of the signature abilities of the Dread Devourer Direwolf. Duval could mutate by consuming any Beyonder, creature, or object related to the Chalice spirituality, thereby gaining new corresponding abilities. As long as the entity consumed was either primary- or auxiliary-Chalice, it counted as “edible.”
Sander had been a White Ash-rank Beyonder on the Plague Path, which fell under Chalice. By devouring him, Duval could now mutate into two new forms: Plague Miasma and Toxic Claw. As long as Sander wasn’t fully digested, Duval could continue using these powers—and the more he used them, the faster the digestion would proceed. A Dread Devourer Direwolf could digest up to two different mystical entities at the same time.
This deadly miasma rapidly filling the archive was Duval’s countermeasure against the elusive assassin. The Night Demon was simply too fast—Duval couldn’t keep up. But if he filled the entire underground space with toxic fog, then no amount of speed would be enough to escape.
And Duval’s reasoning was correct: Dorothy’s Anecdotal Night Demon had indeed been constructed with Chalice spirituality in its physical form, and to some extent it did count as “living.” This meant the miasma could affect it.
“…This is a bit of a problem… to think he had such a trick…”
In her distant carriage, Dorothy murmured thoughtfully. Duval’s miasma was now spreading rapidly through the archive, and it wouldn’t be long before it engulfed the entire space. The Anecdotal Night Demon wasn’t immune—even while hidden, it was not completely removed from reality.
Faced with the expanding plague fog, Dorothy had no choice but to force the Night Demon into motion. Before the miasma reached him, the figure leapt from the shadows at high speed, dashing under the shattered ceiling. Using rapid, alternating jumps between walls and pillars, he began to climb, racing upward to escape the archive.
But the moment the Anecdotal Construct left the shadows, his concealment broke—and Duval’s sharp nose instantly caught his scent. Closing his plague-spewing mouth, Duval snapped his gaze toward the new trail. There, between the stone pillars, he saw the Night Demon scrambling up, about to escape.
“You’re not getting away!!”
With a roar, the massive direwolf lunged. He swung a giant claw with tremendous force in a sweeping arc—shattering two of the pillars the Night Demon was using to ascend. Instantly, the construct lost his foothold and began plummeting. Duval lunged, jaws wide, ready to snap him out of the air.
At that moment, it was a dire crisis for the Night Demon. Lacking flight capabilities, there was no way to dodge or recover in mid-air. All his agility was useless without a surface to leap from. He could only watch as the werewolf’s maw closed in.
In that split second, Dorothy made a decision: she had the Night Demon pull out the Crimson Holy Mother—the very item he’d stolen—and hurl it aside with all his might to distract Duval.
And it worked.
Duval immediately caught its scent and shifted his aim, snapping his jaws toward the book instead. Midair, he devoured the flying artifact whole. Meanwhile, the Night Demon used this brief distraction to twist in the air, stepping off a fragmented pillar to regain momentum and redirect his leap. With two quick jumps, he finally escaped the archive and returned to the surface.
Elsewhere, after successfully swallowing the Crimson Holy Mother, Duval also leapt upward—leaving the plague-filled underground behind and emerging once more onto the plaza before the archival building.
Now back beneath the sun, Duval immediately caught the scent of the elusive assassin again. But he didn’t pursue. Instead, his gaze turned toward the direction from which he had first leapt into battle. Now that the Crimson Holy Mother was reclaimed, there was no need to continue fighting—retreat was the only priority.
“We… uh—”
BOOM!!
Just as Duval was about to give retreat orders to his two nearby subordinates, disaster struck again. Without warning, a massive fist-like impact struck his back with crushing force. A powerful shockwave drove him down into the ground, flattening him into the earth.
Amid the booming noise, Duval’s body embedded itself deep into the surface. A wide crater burst open around him, with a network of cracks radiating outward. It was as if he’d been smashed by an invisible, titanic punch, and the shockwave didn’t stop there—it erupted into a violent wind current that swept across the entire plaza.
“What… is this…?”
The direwolf struggled to lift his embedded heads out of the dirt. Then he looked skyward—and saw churning clouds torn apart by a howling storm, and in the eye of the tempest, floating above the plaza, stood a blond man.
He wore a Pritt military officer’s uniform, carried a sword of stone, and gazed down coldly at Duval from a handsome yet unfeeling face.
He was none other than Harold, Director of Tivian’s Serenity Bureau, and a royal of the Despenser family.
“Sky Render Sergeant… Pritt’s Royal Crimson-rank… How is he here so fast?! Wasn’t he supposed to have been lured away?”
Duval stared in shock at the figure in the sky. According to their original plan, Pritt’s Crimson-rank forces had been successfully diverted—Harold shouldn’t have arrived at the Hymn Cathedral this quickly!
For a moment, Duval’s mind was filled with shock and confusion. Due to the inherent traits of Crimson-rank Wind Elementalists, Duval was unable to smell them, and thus had no idea that Harold had arrived. But Harold, floating in the sky, paid no mind to Duval’s inner turmoil. With his hand already raised, he condensed a high-pressure air cannon and fired it down once more.
Harold’s air cannon was colorless and invisible, and its speed exceeded the speed of sound. Duval only realized he was under attack again when he noticed the subtle warping of the air. He scrambled out of the crater in an attempt to evade but was still grazed by the edge of the blast, sending him flying and crashing to the ground. Harold gave no pause and followed up with a sword swing in midair, launching a wind blade from the tip of his stone sword.
The wind blade, even faster than the air cannon, shot toward Duval, expanding rapidly mid-flight. Just as Duval got up, unable to dodge in time, the wind blade severed his right arm. The blade then struck the ground, carving a deep fissure over 20 meters long into the earth.
Howling in agony from the loss of his arm, Duval had no chance to retrieve it or reattach it—Harold’s relentless barrage of wind blades forced him into a desperate evasive dance.
And so, Duval could only sprint and dodge at full force as Harold’s wind blades lashed down upon him. Those that missed carved deep, narrow furrows into the earth, as though Harold were striking the ground repeatedly with a giant invisible whip, each blow leaving its mark.
“So he’s finally here… the kingdom’s Crimson-rank… Now this wolf has truly met his match…”
Seated in her carriage, Dorothy murmured as she watched the scene unfold in the cathedral district. The entire reason she had her Anecdotal Night Demon steal the Crimson Holy Mother was to stall Duval and prevent his immediate escape. And the moment she had the Night Demon toss it away as bait—was because the person she was waiting for had finally arrived.
From the moment Duval began his assault on the cathedral district, Vania had already sent out a request for reinforcements to the Serenity Bureau—summoning their stationed Crimson-rank agent. The time Night Demon spent harassing Duval had been enough for Harold to arrive.
Within the Church District, Harold continued to unleash wave after wave of attacks. His enormous wind blades were so fast that even with all his speed, Duval couldn’t dodge them all. Chunks of flesh were constantly being torn from his body, and deep scars were left in his wake. Whole sections of buildings were sliced off cleanly. Even when Duval tried hiding behind structures, they were quickly obliterated.
All Duval could do was regenerate continuously and dodge. He had no way to strike back. Harold flew too high for Duval to reach with his claws, and even his plague breath would be scattered by the wind before reaching its target.
But Duval was not passively waiting for death. He was waiting for his moment—the moment his severed arm could fully regenerate.
That moment came quickly. Once a fresh, hairless claw sprouted from the torn stump, Duval took cover behind a building. There, he coughed up a large metal canister about half a meter wide. Opening it revealed raw meat, which Duval immediately swallowed without hesitation.
Right as he finished eating, Harold destroyed half the building with another air cannon, revealing Duval again. Harold wasted no time and continued the assault.
This time, after a few more evasive maneuvers, Duval finally launched a counterattack. He leapt onto the rooftops of the cathedral district and bounded across the buildings. When he found the perfect angle, he exploded with all four limbs and launched himself like a giant arrow toward Harold hundreds of meters in the sky.
But Harold was ready.
He transformed into a gust of wind, effortlessly dodging Duval’s leap. Then, as Duval began to fall, Harold struck. He raised his sword and slashed down, sending a vertical wind blade at the airborne werewolf. Duval, helpless midair, had no way to avoid it.
The wind blade cleaved Duval vertically in two—left and right halves separated midair. Both pieces, each with its own wolf head, fell to the ground in a torrent of blood, crashing into the rubble with a thunderous impact and kicking up a vast cloud of dust.
“That should do it… Even if he survives, he’s out of the fight for now…”
Harold murmured as he looked down at the dust cloud. Just as he prepared to summon a strong gust to blow the dust away—a black projectile shot out, headed straight for him.
“Already recovered…?”
Another clawed arrow flew toward him. Harold once again turned into wind, dodging at high speed. Then he raised his sword again, ready to strike this beast down once more.
But when he got a clear look at the black blur, his eyes widened.
The figure flying at him was not the ten-meter tall twin-headed direwolf from before. It was a smaller direwolf—only about five or six meters tall, with a single head and a full set of limbs. A scaled-down version.
While Harold’s attention was drawn to this smaller wolf, another black projectile shot at him from his blind spot, from within the still-lingering dust. As it slowed, it revealed another single-headed, five-to-six-meter-tall direwolf, silently watching Harold from behind.
The wolf in front of Harold was Duval. The wolf behind Harold was also Duval.
The explanation: the canister of flesh Duval ate earlier had been the meat of a White Ash-rank Vampire. Upon consuming it, Duval had mutated a new ability: division.
This ability, derived from the vampiric power of bat-like separation and recombination, had allowed Duval to split himself into two halves. When Harold sliced him in two, Duval simply embraced it, using the dust cloud to mask his movement—one body to feint, the other to ambush.
Harold hadn’t anticipated this new power. Now, Duval’s other half had successfully flanked him.
With no hesitation, the flanking half swung its claw at Harold’s back. At the critical moment, Harold sensed the attack through a disruption in the wind behind him. He abandoned his assault on the decoy and transformed into a gust of wind to escape.
But the ambushing wolf had anticipated even that.
It ceased its claw attack and opened its mouth—spewing out a wave of green plague miasma. Harold, in wind form, inadvertently swept up the fog, mixing it into his body as he reassembled further away.
When Harold rematerialized, his face had gone ashen—clearly showing signs of poisoning.
…
Meanwhile, as Duval and Harold clashed, reducing the cathedral district to ruins, atop the main tower of the Hymn Cathedral, Vania stood upon a spire, gazing toward the battlefield. As she watched her once-familiar home fall into devastation, a sorrow welled up in her heart.
“Oh Lord… the sinful desire of gluttony is ravaging Your sacred domain… These atrocities must be stopped… Please, grant me the power to pass judgment upon this evil…”
Clad in white robes, the nun prayed solemnly beneath the distant howling winds and dreadful roars. Listening from her carriage, Dorothy couldn’t help but murmur to herself.
“It’s about time to end this…”