Arthania stepped forward, passing by hundreds of bodies lying on the ground without life.
Some had already decayed, and some were still in the stage of withering.
She was very fast, so she reached the white streets in just a few moments, staring at those familiar buildings of beautiful white stone.
At the same time, the line in the sky grew wider while the Overlord of Puppets began to raise the curtain and reveal himself.
Even Arthania, who was almost beyond the limits of Rank 5, felt some intimidation from his overwhelming presence.
She knew she would not be able to fight this thing... even if it was a beast that used manipulation and hiding, the difference between them was still far too great.
Arthania looked around at the sprawled bodies and the white streets one last time before lifting her head toward the sky.
There, the fabric of the world warped, and a vast void formed in the sky in the shape of an open eyelid several kilometers long.
From that dark void, an immense pressure seeped out and terrified all life inside this maze.
Even Caius Astroweild and the others, who were already several kilometers away, felt fear gnawing at their bodies.
So they ran faster along the path that had become devoid of any beasts blocking their way.
All that remained were those annoying turns... but with Caius’s senses having expanded several times, he was able to keep track of their path and move away as quickly as possible.
Staring at that void, Arthania smiled.
"This is far uglier than what I saw last time... or maybe I did not see well because of all the circumstances at that time," her words were mocking.
She did not look like someone staring directly at an ancient being.
And from inside that void, hundreds of eyes opened, each one larger than an adult man, with black veins filling the whites.
"Arthania... Arthania."
Her name echoed from everywhere, in a voice seeming to come from the depths of hell.
In response, essence surged through her body, condensing onto the head of her spear in an instant.
Then, as she had done before, the essence became even brighter, as if on the verge of exploding, while the spear trembled in her hand, threatening to shatter at any moment.
Without delay, she swung it, tearing the air above her.
That motion was enough to shatter the buildings around her and turn them into a pile of ruins even without touching them, while an arc several hundred meters long formed and sped toward the Overlord of Puppets hidden behind the darkness.
"Stop repeating my name," Arthania’s words spread coldly, filled with a pure intent to kill this being.
In an instant, the enormous arc several hundred meters long reached beneath the black void, but the Overlord of Puppets was not a Rank 6 beast in name only.
From that void, a hand emerged... or at least, that was what it looked like.
With hundreds of fingers growing chaotically from rotten black flesh, while black veins pulsed and sometimes dripped with ink-like blood, the Overlord of Puppets extended its hand toward Arthania’s attack, and the hundreds of fingers wrapped around it and blocked it... but not without damage.
Arthania’s attack faded, while black blood droplets fell through the wound left by the strike.
Although the wound looked enormous, for an ancient beast it was nothing.
The air trembled again, and the vile sound spread farther than Asfaria.
"Humans... humans... strange creatures."
Arthania frowned, preparing to launch another attack, but the Overlord of Puppets did not care and continued its strange words.
"But they are stupid... very stupid."
"You are weak... yet you stand there to face me."
The pressure seeping from inside the void intensified while hundreds of black-bloodshot eyes stared at Arthania.
Hundreds... no, thousands of threads formed over those fingers as they descended toward Arthania... and far more than that.
They moved in the same direction Caius and the others were fleeing.
At the same time, the voice of the Overlord of Puppets boomed through the stone maze and filled everything there.
"You will not win... and you will achieve nothing."
"You ruined my ascension... but that is fine... you will make up for it now."
It was true that the Overlord of Puppets had lost hundreds of puppets because of Arthania, but thousands still remained, and now, after waking and after some of the burden had been lifted from him, he would consume Arthania herself and that interesting group.
"I will become you... and we will continue... until I reach it."
His words were broken and distorted as they echoed in Caius’s ears, who shouted to the others.
"Circulate the essence in your body and do not stop. Try to ignore his voice as if it does not exist."
But saying it was easier than doing it; those simple words were wreaking havoc on their minds while sending pain into their ears.
’Focus... focus...’ Izel Ashvil thought inside her head, her vision beginning to blur slightly.
Leona Starlin bit her lip, blood flowing down her chin and scattering with the wind created by their running.
Kyle Astro’s eyes had become bloodshot as he ran, ignoring everything. ’I will succeed... I must succeed.’
For some reason, Leona felt like she wanted to close her eyes and stop, but she forced herself not to do so... perhaps because of the fear this existence was instilling in them.
’Damn... damn all of this,’ Elliot Sivrax’s thoughts were chaotic as he remembered what had happened with the Fallen Star Fragment.
"To the right!" Caius shouted, mapping the maze in his mind using his sense, which had reached a full kilometer ahead of him.
Even as they felt that presence pressing on their minds, they kept running without stopping and without slowing down.
No one dared to turn around, so no one saw the fissure that opened in the sky, or that enormous hand and the threads that formed upon it as they moved toward them.
Even though they were kilometers away, that meant nothing to the Overlord of Puppets, who had fully awakened and emerged from his hundreds-of-years-long immersion.
So now he could consume Caius and the others in a single moment.
This time even Arthania herself was not safe from his threads.
But she also did not remain idle.
"What an arrogant creature."
With those simple words, a massive arc tore through the sky, burning all the threads descending toward her before colliding with the gigantic hand and exploding in a wave of blinding brilliance, lighting up Asfaria for a few moments like a small sun.
The brilliance devoured the threads heading toward Caius and the others and unraveled them.
Arthania stared at those threads as they vanished while her thoughts were elsewhere. ’I think they are far enough away now.’
All this time, she was not really fighting... only wasting time and making this thing focus on her instead of the others.
"...Annoying... annoying."
The distorted voice echoed again, but this time sharper, as the light faded from the sky.
Space around the edge of the void hiding this being distorted, hanging down like a curtain of transparent cloth.
In a single moment, Arthania was surrounded by that curtain while darkness flooded the area around her.
At the same time, two hands of twisted black flesh stretched toward her from the depths of the darkness itself, while hundreds of rotten eyes opened above her, each one larger than she was.
’Did he bring me into his domain, or did he bring his domain to me?’ Arthania did not panic even after realizing she had been trapped inside the void created by this creature.
"Let us end this, Arthania, and start again... with you finished, and with that group I will finally achieve what I want," his voice echoed from the depths of the darkness.
At the same time, hundreds of threads extended toward Caius and the others.
But contrary to what the Overlord of Puppets expected, Arthania did nothing.
Instead, she let go of her spear and allowed it to slip from her hand, while a small smile rested on her lips.
The Overlord of Puppets understood what she wanted.
"...You surrendered... at last."
Arthania raised her head, staring directly into those eyes.
"What a trivial beast that likes to talk. Even after all those years, you still have not understood anything," her voice filled the void... a voice full of mockery.
"Surrender?... Hah..."
A laugh almost escaped her lips.
"You do not understand... and you will never understand."
At that moment, something began happening inside her body, and at the same time, for the first time in centuries, the Overlord of Puppets felt threatened.
But Arthania did not give him any chance to think, her voice echoing through the void itself as her amber eyes stared at this beast that had already wrapped its hands around her, while thousands of threads formed on those rotten fingers.
"I am Arthania..."
Thousands of threads wrapped around her body, but she did not care about any of it...
"I am the ember born among the burned ashes."
At that moment, all voices in the world fell silent while the Overlord of Puppets tried to release Arthania and flee.
But it was already too late.
"If I cannot protect anything..."
"Then I will burn everything..."
In the next instant, a white brilliance devoured everything.
The hands and the threads that had wrapped around her, and the eyes that had looked at her, and even the black void... everything.
It was drowned in white brilliance while the maze itself trembled.