The silence that followed the girl’s descent was suffocating.

The girl stood entirely naked on the pulverized concrete, her golden hair drifting around her shoulders as if suspended in water. She didn’t look like a beast. She didn’t have scales, claws, or any kind of horrific details.

Her skin was flawlessly pale, and the smirk on her lips was distinctly, horrifyingly human and beautiful too.

But it was the figure standing directly behind her that shattered any illusion of humanity.

At first glance, it looked like a tall, thin man wearing a dark, tattered trench coat. But as Hide looked a second longer, his blood ran completely cold.

It wasn’t a man.

The figure had no skin. It was composed entirely of tens of thousands of writhing, glistening black centipedes, cockroaches, and beetles, crawling continuously over each other to maintain the shape of a human body.

The insects hissed and clicked in a ceaseless, nauseating rhythm, filling out the dark trench coat.

"Mortals," the insect-man spoke.

The voice was a horrific chorus of thousands of clicking mandibles rubbing together, forming distorted, scratchy syllables that echoed through the valley.

"Lower your heads," the insect mass commanded, its voice dripping with zealous reverence. "You stand before the Great Golden Calamity. A Ruler of Estopia, who painted her conquest with the blood of millions."

The naked girl let out a soft, melodic laugh.

"You talk too much, Vermin," she said. Her voice was sweet, enchanting, and utterly terrifying. She stepped forward to the very edge of the flattened cliff, looking down at the six humans. "Though, I suppose I was quite brutal in my conquest."

Her mismatched eyes—one oceanic blue, one piercing yellow—swept over them. When her gaze landed on Claire an Hide, the smirk vanished, replaced by a sudden, chilling fury.

"You killed them," the girl said. "My precious doll and my loyal bird."

The air around them instantly grew heavy.

"Oh! so there were two of them," Claire shot back, gripping her greatsword, her red aura flaring defiantly. "Don’t worry you are next in line."

The girl tilted her head, her mismatched eyes widening in mock surprise. Then, she smiled.

"How adorable."

CRACK!

The entire valley floor around them violently caved in.

A field of apocalyptic gravitational pressure slammed down on them without a fraction of a second’s warning. The cracked asphalt beneath their feet instantly pulverized into fine powder.

Rol was driven straight to his knees, the asphalt shattering under his weight. Garret grunted in sheer agony, but he managed to stand. Elara screamed as the pressure pinned her face-first to the dirt.

Hide felt his ribs violently compress, his breath forcibly expelled from his lungs. His Abyssal Scale Carapace instantly covered his body, but even the enhanced durability barely kept his spine from snapping. The gravity was so intense it felt like a building had been dropped directly onto his shoulders.

[Abyssal Scale Carapace — Active]

Damage absorbed: 61%

Pain suppression: 30%

’Fuck... 61%. I would turn into paste without it.’

Only Claire remained standing, though her boots were buried ankle-deep in the crushed rock, her knees violently trembling under the crushing weight.

"Her range... is limited!" Rol managed to grit out, his grey eyes flaring as he looked at the ground. "It’s a circular zone! The edge is twenty meters back!"

He could see it because of the help of his talent.

"Run away!" Claire ordered, her voice strained.

Others hesitated, but Hide didn’t need to be told twice.

He violently grabbed Evelyn’s collar with one hand and Elara’s arm with the other and dragged the two girls backward, fighting through the crushing gravity with only his physical force. Every step felt like walking through wet cement.

They threw themselves backward, crossing the invisible boundary of the gravity zone.

The crushing weight instantly vanished.

Hide collapsed onto his back, gasping violently for air, dropping the two girls safely onto the tall grass. Garret rolled backward out of the zone a second later, dragging Rol with him.

Claire was the only one left inside.

The girl on the hill watched them escape her zone, her yellow eye narrowing slightly in annoyance.

"Hide and Elara!" Claire barked, not looking back. "Attack her!"

Hide didn’t hesitate. He forced himself up to one knee, pointing his palms directly at the naked girl standing on the cliff. The dark, volatile violet energy of his mana violently condensed.

BOOM!

The compressed energy shot forward like a cannonball, aiming directly for the girl’s chest.

But as the Mana Blast entered the invisible gravity zone surrounding the hill, its trajectory was violently seized. The immense gravitational pressure grabbed the projectile of pure energy and forcefully dragged it straight down.

The blast slammed harmlessly into the side of the cliff, exploding into the dirt thirty feet below the girl’s feet.

"My turn," Elara coughed, forcing herself up. She thrust her wand forward.

Three massive, jagged spikes of pale blue ice materialized and launched toward the hill. But the moment they crossed the invisible threshold, the sheer gravitational weight crushed them. The thick ice didn’t even fall—it shattered into fine, harmless snow mid-air.

"Direct attacks are useless from the front!" Garret shouted. "The gravity crushes everything!"

The girl looked at them in confusion, what were these foolish people doing? Just then she saw Claire smirking at her.

The girl didn’t notice the massive, jagged chunk of concrete bedrock floating directly behind her head.

Claire had used the distraction of Hide and Elara’s attacks to sneak her telekinetic grip entirely around the gravity zone, seizing a piece of the ruined house behind the girl.

Claire clenched her fist.

The massive rock launched forward at blinding speed, slamming directly into the back of the golden-haired girl’s head.

SQUELCH.

It was the sound of a rock hitting a puddle.

To everyone’s absolute horror, the girl’s head didn’t shatter. The moment the rock made contact, the back of her skull lost all physical solidity. It instantly turned into a thick, golden liquid. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

The rock passed completely through her head, splashing the liquid outward, before her face and hair seamlessly reformed perfectly back into place a second later.

Her body wasn’t flesh. It was fluid.

The girl turned her head very, very slowly, looking down at Claire.

"You... threw a rock at me," she whispered, her voice trembling with sudden, unhinged rage.

But before she could attack, the writhing mass of insects behind her violently convulsed.

"YOU DARE STRIKE MY MASTER?!" the insect-man screeched, the thousands of clicking mandibles reaching a deafening, hysterical pitch.

The trench coat billowed open. The massive swarm of black centipedes and beetles surged down the rocky incline like a living, horrifying landslide, rushing directly toward Claire.

Before it could reach Claire.

The giant Warrior charged forward, meeting the incoming insect swarm head-on. The creature rapidly reformed into its humanoid shape directly in front of Garret, forming a massive, jagged arm out of thousands of writhing beetles.

Garret didn’t flinch. His gauntlet glowed with dense, explosive physical mana.

He threw a devastating punch slamming his fist directly into the center of the insect-man’s "skull".

BOOM!

The concussive force of the punch was catastrophic. The insect-man’s entire upper half completely blew apart, exploding into a shower of thousands of crushed, black bugs that rained down across the grass.

Garret pulled his fist back, breathing heavily.

But the fight wasn’t over.

The crushed bugs on the ground began to twitch. The surviving insects on the lower half of the creature immediately began to multiply and rapidly crawl upward. Within two seconds, the head and torso had completely reformed, the hissing mandibles clicking louder than before.

By then... the battlefield was officially split.

At the base of the hill, Hide, Garret, Elara and the recovering Evelyn stood against the horrifying, regenerating mass of the insect-servant.

And not too far away, Claire and Rol stood staring up at the naked, golden-haired Calamity Lord, whose mismatched eyes were now burning with absolute, murderous intent.

"I am going to crush you," the girl whispered, her liquid voice echoing in their minds. "Until there is absolutely nothing left."