Explosions and bursts of fire continued erupting throughout the forest.
Having completely lost control, the puppet began destroying everything in its path. Any living creature caught in its sight was obliterated almost instantly.
Near the center of the forest, two figures were running at full speed.
They glanced back, terror spreading across their faces, then pushed themselves even harder as they fled deeper into the woods, terrified that the thing behind them might catch up.
More and more members of the Cult of Diablos rushed toward the explosions to stop it, but before the rampaging Shadow Assassin, they fell like wheat before a scythe, wave after wave.
"Hurry up and think of something! You're the one who released that thing, aren't you?! You should have some way to stop it!"
Millia shouted at Akane Nishino in terror.
When Akane had first thrown the puppet out to stop the Seven Shadows, Millia had actually thought she was surprisingly reliable.
But only a few seconds after dealing with the Seven Shadows, the robot had turned on them.
If their reactions had been even slightly slower, they would already be dead.
Even though they had reacted in time, escaping the Shadow Assassin forced them to change their route.
Partly, this was to keep the terrifying thing from escaping the forest and going on a killing spree.
More importantly, they wanted to use the Cult of Diablos members coming to investigate as obstacles to buy themselves more time.
"How should I know?! The manual clearly said that once you throw it out and activate it, you can control it! How was I supposed to know this thing would suddenly go berserk and start attacking everyone indiscriminately?!"
Akane Nishino shouted back while constantly dodging attacks fired by the Cult of Diablos members ahead of them and the Shadow Assassin's beams from behind.
Then both of them suddenly stopped dead.
Standing on a mysterious platform ahead, watching the two of them, was a white-haired boy.
The Fifth Seat of the Cult of Diablos.
Fenrir.
Fenrir looked equally surprised to see them.
Perhaps even he hadn't expected that the two little guinea pigs he had just received orders to capture would suddenly come racing straight into his presence amid sparks and explosions.
Right into the very center of the base controlled by the Fifth Seat of the Knights of Rounds.
"What would you call this? Walking straight into the trap? Hahaha..."
Fenrir started mocking them, only to burst out laughing halfway through his own sentence.
"Run!"
Neither Millia nor Akane Nishino paid any attention to his ridicule.
They shouted a single word and immediately turned to flee.
"How pitiful. You've already come right in front of me, yet you still think you can escape. Still, I should thank you for delivering yourselves to me. You've saved me the trouble of looking for you."
Fenrir remained where he was, watching their retreating backs with a pitying shake of his head.
Then he snapped his fingers.
A red crystal no larger than a grain of rice appeared before him.
The next instant, it vanished.
The ground began to churn.
The surrounding trees twisted in unnatural ways.
Massive spikes of earth erupted from below toward the fleeing pair, while thick vines sprouted from the surrounding trees and lashed out at Akane Nishino and Millia from every direction, trying to entangle them.
Front, back, left, right, and even below.
Every direction was sealed off by earth spikes and vines.
Which meant there was only one route left.
Above.
It would make them easy targets, but with no other path available, going upward was their only chance of escaping.
Realizing this, Akane Nishino grabbed Millia's hand.
The two jumped upward together, using their Slime weapons to move quickly and freely through the air.
They successfully cleared the blockade.
Then blood-red mist began rising from the ground.
It spread with terrifying speed until it reached Akane Nishino's ankle.
Then...
The mist solidified.
It became a blood-red rope that wrapped around Akane Nishino's body.
Feeling something close around her ankle, Akane looked down and saw the crimson rope binding her.
She immediately tried to form a longsword and cut through it.
But before she could, tremendous force surged through the rope.
Akane instantly lost her balance.
The world blurred past her.
"Guh!"
She slammed heavily into the center of the platform.
Her body was already injured from Beta's earlier kick, and now it suffered another devastating impact.
Akane felt as though the entire front of her body had been crushed.
She could even hear bones breaking inside her.
Blood surged up her throat and spilled heavily onto the ground.
"Akane!"
Seeing her companion captured, Millia abandoned any thought of escaping and immediately turned back to save her.
But the instant she landed, the surrounding vines and earth spikes struck her.
Injured, she could barely remain standing.
"What a touching bond..."
Fenrir praised the two casually and stepped forward to seize Akane Nishino.
But after taking only a step, he stopped again.
The commotion outside still hadn't ended.
If anything, the explosions and flames were growing even more intense.
"Whoosh!"
A crimson beam erupted from the distance and shot straight toward Fenrir.
Every obstacle in its path was instantly vaporized by the extreme heat.
The ground itself was reduced to scorched earth.
"Boom!"
The beam struck Fenrir's position and triggered a massive explosion.
But the attack didn't end there.
Across the scorched ground, the Shadow Assassin flashed forward.
The vines and earth spikes that tried to stop it were destroyed effortlessly.
"Clang!"
Steel crashed against steel.
The Shadow Assassin's blade collided with Fenrir's sword.
The two separated and opened some distance between them.
"What is that thing...?"
After landing, Fenrir stared at the puppet in alarm.
Compared to the effortless confidence with which he had handled Akane Nishino and Millia moments earlier, he now looked noticeably disheveled.
Visible wounds covered his body.
The Shadow Assassin, on the other hand, showed no sign of injury after clashing with Fenrir.
Any vines or earth spikes that approached it were instantly crushed.
The puppet stood still and scanned Fenrir several times.
Then it raised its head toward the sky.
A purple glow of Magical Power rose from its body.
Feeling the terrifying Magical Power erupting from the puppet, Fenrir's expression changed drastically.
His previous composure vanished.
A much larger blood-red crystal appeared in his hand.
He gripped it.
Crushed it.
The shattered crystal fragments scattered through the air, turning into a faint mist before disappearing completely.
As the blood-red mist vanished, the earth spikes and vines attacking the Shadow Assassin suddenly became still.
In their place, a blood-red tornado rose from the ground out of nowhere.
The crimson tornado successfully broke through the puppet's defenses and swept it into the air.
Immense pressure closed in from every direction, causing the Shadow Assassin's body to deform.
Purple light, the sign of its terrifying Magical Power, began rising inside the blood-red tornado.
But as that power surged and contracted, the force capable of sinking an island was swallowed completely.
When everything finally settled, the blood-red tornado vanished.
A twisted mass of scrap metal, barely recognizable as humanoid, fell from the sky and crashed to the ground.
"What a despicable little scheme..."
The puppet had been destroyed.
But Fenrir's expression didn't improve.
Instead, his face grew even darker.
He turned his head.
Almost the exact moment the Shadow Assassin was destroyed, two elegant figures appeared nearby.
Beta, the silver-haired Elf.
Zeta, the golden-haired Therianthrope.
"There's nothing particularly despicable about it. It was just a coincidence."
After surviving the Shadow Assassin's imitation Atomic attack, Zeta and Beta had realized Akane Nishino was deliberately leading the Shadow Assassin toward the Cult of Diablos's base.
The two had quickly discussed it and decided to hide behind the Shadow Assassin, letting it trigger any traps ahead of them.
Right now, they were extremely glad they had.
Fortunately, the Shadow Assassin had been the one to trigger that blood-red tornado.
With an omnidirectional attack like that, anyone who had approached recklessly would have died on the spot.
"Fine, let's call it a coincidence. So, aren't you coming over to fight me? Or after tricking me into revealing one trap, have you lost even the courage to face me directly?"
Fenrir spread his arms openly, fearlessly challenging the two women before him.
Zeta and Beta merely exchanged a glance.
"He looks like he's trying to lure us closer."
"I don't know. But we can test it."
As Beta answered Zeta, the Slime in her hand transformed into a longbow.
Magical Power gathered in her hand.
She drew the bowstring, formed a glowing arrow, and fired.
Fenrir's expression instantly darkened.
A sword appeared in his hand.
With one slash, he shattered Beta's Magical Power arrow.
"What's wrong? Members of Shadow Garden don't even have the courage to come down and fight me?"
Fenrir continued mocking them while slowly moving toward Beta and Zeta.
However, his movement never extended beyond a certain range.
"He seems to have lost control over the surrounding environment. Did that last attack consume too much power, or did it destroy something important?"
Zeta moved to the side and freed Millia from the vines binding her.
She looked around at the forest and ground, neither of which showed any reaction to stop her, and made her guess.
"Seriously..."
Getting no response, Zeta turned her head.
Beta was happily firing arrow after arrow at Fenrir.
Zeta sighed helplessly.
Then the corner of her mouth curled upward.
"I'll join in too. Thousand Blades!"
With Zeta joining the attack, Fenrir found it increasingly difficult to block or parry everything.
He occasionally fired several streaks of sword energy toward Beta and Zeta, but compared to Fenrir, who was confined to a limited area and wasn't skilled at long-range combat, the two women could circle around freely and dodge with ease.
"How despicable. Don't you even have the courage to fight me openly and fairly?"
"There's no need to talk about justice or fairness when dealing with the Cult of Diablos. If you refuse to come out, then die where you stand."
Beta and Zeta increased the intensity of their attacks.
They didn't know whether Fenrir had another trap beneath him or some other reason preventing him from moving.
But since he clearly didn't want to leave the platform, forcing him to move was the obvious choice.
"Tsk... How about we talk?"
"We don't take prisoners."
Fenrir tried to negotiate.
Zeta answered with a single sentence that made their intention to kill him perfectly clear.
"Then you might as well give up. I can't move because I need to maintain the ritual. You won't be able to exhaust me before the sun rises tomorrow, because the ritual will be complete before then."
"But I have no interest in standing here and letting you attack me without fighting back, so let's talk. I can tell you things you don't know."
Fenrir cut down another attack with his sword, his expression ugly.
For thousands of years, he had never fought such a humiliating battle.
To control the ritual, he had to remain here.
Yet the outer defensive arrangements had already been completely destroyed by the blood-red tornado.
Now all he could do was stand in one place and endure their attacks.
What he had just told Zeta and Beta wasn't exactly a lie.
He had merely exaggerated the amount of time remaining.
The ritual wouldn't finish when the sun rose tomorrow.
It would finish very soon.
If the plan succeeded, there would be no harm in revealing it afterward anyway.
So Fenrir didn't mind telling Shadow Garden some information they didn't know if it bought him more time.
More than anything, he simply didn't want to continue fighting such a suffocating battle.
Just as Fenrir expected, Zeta and Beta stopped attacking after hearing his words.
"Why should we believe you?"
"All I can tell you is that once the ritual beneath my feet is complete, the only thing you'll gain from this encounter is the little humiliation you've already inflicted on me."
"...Then talk."
After a moment of silence, Zeta and Beta lowered their attacks.
They remained at a safe distance, watching Fenrir cautiously.
If anything went wrong, they would immediately retreat and resume their assault.
"So, what do you want to know?"
"Where did the people you kidnapped from different countries go? The ones who disappeared."
Zeta stopped Beta and asked the question that had originally brought her all the way from the Therianthrope Kingdom to the Kingdom of Midgar.
"They're... right here."
Fenrir smiled when he heard the question.
He took out another blood-red crystal like the ones he had displayed earlier.
"The Philosopher's Stone. The supreme masterpiece of alchemy across countless nations. A miraculous treasure created through alchemy from the flesh, blood, and souls of living people, possessing the power to grant any wish."
"A certain greedy thief took an enormous amount of our property before agreeing to give us a simplified version of the refinement method."
"So those people are all dead now, correct?"
"Yes."
Zeta took a slow breath.
She remembered the enormous piles of old clothing she had found during her investigation.
At last, everything made sense.
"You bastard..."
"Don't."
Zeta stopped the furious Beta beside her and fixed Fenrir with an icy stare.
"To be honest, I'm curious about something too. How exactly did you manage to destroy every one of our refining facilities in a single night?"
"If you hadn't done that, I wouldn't have needed to destroy an entire city to fill the remaining gap."
"The remaining... gap?"
Under Beta's shocked gaze, the white-haired boy nodded smugly.
"After you destroyed the Philosopher's Stone production facilities, our plan still required the lives and souls of tens of millions of people."
"But this simplified version has far too many flaws. It actually requires the subjects to offer no resistance, or to give themselves willingly, before they can be refined."
"So we had no choice."
"We sealed off a city with a population of one million and began distributing free food laced with Beads of Diablos and the Body-Limiter Release Potion."
At this point, Fenrir stopped trying to conceal the intense excitement spreading across his face.
"Such enormous quantities of Beads of Diablos and the potion will strengthen the bodies and souls of the city's inhabitants by more than ten times, bringing their total value to the equivalent of tens of millions."
"The Body-Limiter Release Potion prevents them from simply dying as masses of flesh under the effects of the Beads of Diablos."
"Instead, they retain human form while losing their reason. Their own life force is converted into Magical Power, which they willingly release into the air, where the underground refining array absorbs it."
"Once they can no longer endure the drain and finally die, their flesh and souls will be absorbed as well."
"And because they need to sustain the enormous consumption caused by losing their body protection, the people who have lost their minds will desperately attack and devour anyone who didn't consume the drug, using them to prolong their own lives."
"In the end, everyone will become part of a Philosopher's Stone."
"How wonderful."
"You really are... insane."
Staring at the blood-red crystal steeped in countless lives, Beta could no longer restrain herself.
She attacked.
***
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