After finishing, she ended his life quickly and bit her fingernail in thought. If his power was genuine, then her situation was extremely dangerous. Most of the believers had gone to the ritual hall, which was why security here was so light.
Based on what she knew from religious texts, if an Evil God incarnation manifested here, the result would be catastrophic. At the very least, the entire area around Cathedral City would become uninhabitable. The thought left her numb.
It was supposed to be something that happened once every hundreds or thousands of years. Yet she had run into it. Regardless of how unlucky that was, only one path remained open to her.
She had to try to disrupt the ritual, or at least gather enough information to stop it. Perhaps whatever was coming could even interfere with the version of herself inside the Simulator. It had been about three days since the simulation started, judging by her hunger.
This was no longer just a problem inside the Simulator. Either she stopped it now and passed the information to Elvin afterward, or the ritual would complete in three days and everything would be destroyed. Either way led to death, so there was no real choice.
As she hesitated, a thunderous roar like an earthquake shook the chamber. Shard stones and dust rained down, and her face went pale. The ritual had already started.
Blood-red runes crawled across the walls, twisting the surrounding objects. A crushing pressure like deep-sea water pressed against her body, making her nauseous. Something terrifying was emerging, and she knew instinctively that it had to be stopped.
Everyone would die, and death would not even describe the outcome. The Fate awaiting them was worse than that. Not just people, but the world itself would perish.
"I have to stop it."
She followed the pull in her heart toward the center of the disturbance. A powerful urge drove her forward, telling her she must prevent what was about to happen. She did not hear the distorted warnings or broken system messages echoing around her.
Chanting and mad cries grew louder as she ran. The sacrificial hall came into view, a massive stone chamber larger than a stadium. What awaited her was a scene of flesh and blood covering the ground like hell itself.
In the center was a warped Rift that did not belong to this world, glowing with ominous red light. Countless runes formed the outline of a massive, twisted shape, its shadow thick like tentacles from some deep-sea creature, each covered in closed eyes.
On the altar, cultists danced in madness. Some ran until their flesh tore away from their bones, while others burst as their own blood ruptured through their skin. Common sense no longer applied, and objects floated or froze in midair under distortion.
Alba pushed forward regardless, her mind already blurred. The pressure made breathing difficult, and her feet stepped through living, sticky flesh. She swung her hammer instinctively.
The impact restored movement to what had been frozen, and she felt slightly better. She swung again, smashing massive tentacles formed of flesh and Magic back into inert meat. Corpses became just corpses again.
At the center stood a gaunt figure holding a scripture. From that book poured the black Rift. That was the source.
She raised her hammer for the final strike. Before she could swing, her blank expression shifted, and confusion flickered through her eyes.
"What just happened?"
She was sent flying by a blood-red tentacle. A layer of Holy Light flared around her in time to block the worst of the blow, but the impact still shattered her body. blockbuster light and Shard fragments scattered as her ribs broke and her organs shifted.
Barely conscious, Alba forced her eyes open. In the twisted black and red light, a massive bloodshot eye with a murky Gold Rank pupil opened and stared back at her.
What was that, what was that, what was that thing? Alba found it hard to even form a thought, her body slack and her mind blank from the moment it appeared. A dark red substance, thick like flesh and blood, flowed down from the Rift, and from that single eye more eyes were torn open by Rend, spreading countless tentacles.
It looked like rotten mud, or a swamp given form, but even those words were wrong. No matter how many ordinary descriptions were piled together, they could not clearly explain its appearance. Between the eyes and tentacles were more tendrils, sharp teeth, and claws, and the instant it appeared, everything around it stopped.
No, it was not truly stopped, but slowed to a point no different from time itself being frozen. Shard stones collapsing because of the Rift, cheering masses of flesh and bone shaped like people, and even blood flowing backward all halted at once because of it. Even thought itself and the travel of light were bound equally, making even crawling speed feel like a generous exaggeration.
The Rift continued to spread, unable to bear the load as more of it forced its way in, carrying scorching heat. Bubbling blisters constantly boiled and burst across its surface. Something of terrifying mass squeezed into this narrow space, and the result was that all other matter was pushed out, while space itself and its very concept began to collapse.
It had only barely forced in a corner of itself, yet only Alba remained. All other believers were crushed at another level by that overwhelming mass the instant it arrived, ground into shards, absorbed, and turned into trivial fuel. Not only here, but across Cathedral City, from nobles above to laborers below, people turned into black sludge amid bursts of Maniacal Laughter, and the phenomenon spread like a disease, rotting into vast, formless black monsters.
Filthy black waves mixed with nearly solid blood-red mist surged in all directions. Fortunately, only a small part had forced its way in, and the space barely managed to contain it without collapsing on a large scale. A small stone struck Alba on the head, barely pulling her back to her senses as her lips trembled and her pupils shook in deep shock.
Even having read science fiction before, she could not find words to describe what she had just seen. That thing did not lure you into madness, it shattered perception and understanding outright. You knew it should be impossible, yet it happened anyway, like forcing an elephant into a refrigerator.
The absurdity and the clash with reason tore at her soul, and Alba did her best not to look at it, fearing she would vomit. "This is that… Evil God projection?" "Something like this can really exist?"
She could hardly believe it. She had seen many supernatural powers before, and read plenty of descriptions, but those were only words and surface destruction, nothing compared to the shock this existence brought. She also realized that the scale written in books was likely understated, because if this monster were unleashed and no one stopped it, destroying the world would only be a matter of time.
"Do I really have to stop it?" Even saying that made Alba feel ridiculous. A normal person would collapse and wait for death, yet she was thinking about solutions.
Maybe she had been abnormal from the start. Even knowing this was a simulation, the pain and death felt real, and she kept throwing herself into danger as if her life were expendable. She glanced at the upper right corner where the Simulator interface should be, and as expected, the logo was blurred and flickering like a bad signal.
"So this absurd thing is the reason the Simulator started acting up." "If I die here, I am probably dead for real. Maybe there is a small chance the Simulator holds, but I should not gamble."
Her instinct told her that being killed by something like that would not just mean physical death, but her soul being erased as well. Before, at worst, she only died in body, but if her mind were destroyed too, she did not know what would be left. Even so, she had no choice.
The reason she still had the delusion of fighting instead of lying down to die was simple. The thing in front of her, likely the Evil God projection, was too busy to deal with her. It looked like a newborn struggling to crawl out, as if something terrifying were chasing it from behind.
Its condition was poor, heat pouring off its body as the internal temperature quickly rose above fifty degrees. More importantly, the one who had conducted the ritual, seemingly in the name of the Lord, was already gone, reduced to nothing by the entrance alone. Yet the black-covered book still floated in the air, emitting the same ominous glow.
If that book mattered, then destroying it might interrupt this nightmare. "I have to run. Now." "If I do not, even my soul will be scattered."
It crawled along the narrow Rift, desperately forcing its soul inside. The sensation was awful, and even if it escaped, its combat power would be weak and it might be torn apart by methods prepared by a Companion. Still, not escaping meant certain death, as it had already sensed the terrifying Black Dragon searching for its soul.