With the help of Prelude to Rebirth, the group of several hundred undead creatures was wiped out under five minutes.
Even since he left Dark Castle, Angor didn’t encounter that many undead creatures. It was a great pity that the cylinder of his gun was already filled with the white bullets, so killing these no longer yielded any results.
Keely was now interrogating the Duon, who was obviously knocking on death’s door. It seemed this creature with an upper body of a yellow carp and a pair of human legs was one of the weakest in their ranks.
Everyone in the group apart from Angor and Nausica knew how to use Discern Language, so they all went to Keely to learn where the exit was.
Nausica saw Angor lost in thoughts and decided to ask. “What’s wrong?”
“That woman... Is she perhaps ‘that person’ we know?”
“Which one?”
The strange woman’s attitude suggested that she knew and hated both Angor and Nausica, with Angor being the main target.
But Nausica thought and failed to remember any woman like that.
“Hookdick,” Angor said in a small voice.
Nausica was quite surprised by that name. It was true that Hookdick offended them more than once and was a dedicated hater.
“But isn’t Hookdick a dude?”
As far as she could remember, the man named “Hookdick” was a big, rough tribesman who always reeked of sweat and dirt. Meanwhile, even though the person who assaulted them hid her face behind the shadows, it was obvious that the person had a feminine body.
“Are you serious?” Nausica wasn’t sure of the reality anymore.
“It’s... likely, because Hookdick used Succubus Bloodline on himself,” Angor replied while he recreated the message he received from Saka last time.
Inside the image, Nausica saw someone with both giant breasts and buttocks as well as a flawless body shape. However, her face kind of ruined everything because there was still stubble around her cheeks.
“Hookdick? A succubus’ blood?!” Nausica yelled in surprise despite Angor’s mind manipulation effect. As a Bloodline Art apprentice, she knew better than most people what that meant.
Such a bloodline was usually favored by females. It was said to add to their beauty while having little to no side-effect.
But to males... it was basically a nightmare.
Using the bloodline could well increase one’s strength, but males would experience an “incomplete” gender shift, which meant they would all end up as she-males.
“You saw her twice, right? Do they look the same to you?” Angor asked.
Nausica checked the image carefully while thinking about the unknown assailant. The woman was wearing a wide rain hat, so she couldn’t see her face clearly. However, her body resembled what was shown by Angor.
And the current face of Hookdick would explain why he(she?) would cover her face up in front of people.
“I’d say yes...” Nausica nodded. “Then I can understand why he wants me dead.”
“Yup. Hookdick is a soul manipulator, which means he can command undead.” Angor sighed in disappointment and said, “Too bad we let him slip.”
“Well, we can’t actually kill him even if we have him. Soul manipulators. Death is only the beginning, you know?”
Angor never considered Hookdick as a big threat until now. The man just brought so many undead creatures to them. So what would happen next time? What if he could control powerful souls?
Soul spells that indirectly harmed people usually wouldn’t work on Angor. And if somehow it worked, then apart from his sequence of gravity, Angor did not have many tricks that he could use to attack the souls. It would be troublesome if Hookdick were to drag him into a battle of endurance.
Angor made up his mind again—he had to kill Hookdick at all costs.
Keely, Shiliew, and Shan returned from their job. Angor glanced their way and saw the poor Duon dead in its own blood.
“Oh no, we didn’t kill it,” Keely quickly explained. “Its scale was picked away by that woman and the other Duons will not accept it again. After answering our questions, it asked for a dagger so that it could end its own life.”
“Oh, such gallantry,” Angor commented without meaning those words for real. “So, what did you learn?”
Keely looked hesitant.
“You tell him,” she said as she looked at Shan.
Shan’s expression wasn’t any better. “There is a way, but it’s difficult.”
Shan briefly explained what they heard from the Duon creature.
Their previous assumption was right, that they were now inside a certain giant sea monster. But this was not its stomach, but the interlayer between its shell and skin.
This creature was a monstrous sea mussel called “Erdus”, which was a pet of the ancient Duon. It was awakened by “Wanderer of Wilds” Kayaso. It possessed talent in creating illusions. Since the greater ancestor of Duons fell into eternal slumber, Erdus picked somewhere near the Land of Demise to sleep. Every few months, it would open up to draw in sea creatures to nurture itself before falling asleep again.
“We stumbled upon its feeding time. The vortex you mentioned must be when Erdus opened its shell,” Shan continued. “It kept this way for two hours, and there was one single minute at the end of the feeding session that Erdus would lift the barrier in the entrance so that water and the fish it ate could enter its belly, and that’s when we can get out.
“But... we’re too late for that now.”
Immediately following her words, thick tides that contained different fishes and monsters surged into the area. Angor quickly ejected his soul and used gravity power to steady everyone so that they wouldn’t get flushed away.
Everything returned to normal after several minutes, except that they were submerged in the water again.
Angor returned to his body and looked at Shan. “Does this mean the mussel thing has closed its shell?”
Shan nodded in silence.
“We have to wait until next month for it to open again,” Keely added.
“Well, we certainly can’t wait that long. You were referring to something else when you said ‘there’s a way’, right?” Angor asked again.
“We find the core of Erdus and... kill it.”
...
There were 40 minutes left until the end of the final countdown.
Lawson left the machine tower and landed in front of another metal building that reached all the way into the sky. The building itself was mainly a single, steel pillar while there was an oval-shaped structure built on top of it.
This was the Research Department—the business core of the entire Floating Mech City.
Lawson had not even reached the building when a dozen wizards in their department uniforms came out to greet him. The current chief of the department—”The Fool” Muse was taking the lead.
Muse was wearing his usual professional smile, which usually did not mean his true feelings. But this time, Muse did mean to smile sincerely since his partner was here.
“You came already? I can take the job and save you the trouble, you know?” Muse said.
“Someone will get the wrong ideas if the two city masters move in different directions, so we’d better go together,” said Lawson. “The garden promotion is crucial to us and we ought to take extra caution.”
Muse yawned. “Is it? I can’t comprehend the sequence of purification with this average talent of mine anyway.”
Some of the other wizards rolled their eyes. If Chief Muse is “average”, are we garbage then?
“Learning the sequence is not impossible. Succeed and you’ll have a better chance at challenging the rank of legendary,” Lawson replied. “Besides, we have over a thousand wizards from major organizations waiting. We should at least make it look official.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever, let’s go.” Muse didn’t seem interested at all.
At the same time, apart from those who were in seclusions, all the wizards in the lower side of Floating Mech City began to head toward the valley where the purification garden was located.
When Lawson arrived, the valley was fully occupied by wizards from various places.
Several guards carried a number of screens to the scene and combined them into one single large screen. The screen flashed for a while before it displayed a round-shaped plaza that had a number of strange-looking statues. The eyes of the statues were shining with different colors, while the light they emitted all gathered at the center of the area.
The central point of the plaza was empty. As more light joined and gave birth to a growing light spot, the spot slowly began to pulse in rhythm like someone’s heart.
All wizards gazed at the light spot intensively, and they did not even bother to conceal their obvious desires.
This location was called the Altar of Demise, while the light spot was the embodiment of the garden’s law, the Law of Purification.