"Not good!"

Ariel’s pupils tightened. She grabbed the hilt of Heavenly Fire at once and, ignoring the leg wound she’d just stitched, the instant she reacted she tapped her toe against the ground—

and her whole body shot forward, nearly skimming the ground as if she were flying low, charging straight at that Corruptor.

Ariel moved unbelievably fast. Her body was clearly weaker than before, yet it was as if, in these repeated pushes to the limit, she’d broken through the limit of some technique. The Heavenly-Fire Greatsword thrust through that "rage ghoul’s" neck with effortless naturalness.

Psshk.

Blood sprayed.

Ariel slid the blade sideways. As she destroyed its voice organ, she also took its head clean off.

"Hah..."

That was close.

Ariel wiped at cold sweat.

Good thing she’d reacted in time—and good thing this freak didn’t seem very smart. Otherwise, if it had cried out...

"ROAR!"

The roar was deafening.

That outrageously abrupt, furious bellow made Ariel—who had just barely relaxed—freeze outright.

"Huh? What?" Ariel stared blankly.

It had no head. Why could it still roar?

Ariel lowered her gaze. On the "rage ghoul" that was slowly turning into black embers, she saw a chest rising and falling violently.

Ah. So that was it.

If she thought about it, a "rage ghoul" represented anger. And truly surging anger was the kind you kept bottled up—the kind like a volcano on the verge of erupting...

So it had kept its lips pressed together the whole time.

That furious roar had erupted from its chest!

"Dammit—don’t start making sense in a place this creepy, you bastard!"

Ariel twisted around again. Using the step she’d just taken as her pivot, she turned sharply—her whole body slipping like a nimble loach—and dragged Miss Muse with her as she dove into another alleyway.

And less than a second after she left that spot, a "laughing ghoul" sprang at it with savage speed!

"Hee."

"The hell you mean, ‘hee,’ you big-headed ghost!"

Ariel cursed in her heart, but she didn’t spare the "laughing ghoul" behind her even a glance. She just kept her head ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) down and weaved through the narrow alleys.

Her movements were deft. Many passages that looked like they could only fit one person didn’t slow her down at all—if anything, they blocked the "laughing ghoul," whose body was a little larger than a normal human’s.

More and more eerie sounds rose up through this slum. In the mist, one humanoid phantom after another surfaced. Corruptors—vast in number—began chasing Ariel’s back through this whole area.

But the more she ran, the more at ease Ariel became, because she was far too familiar with terrain like this!

She’d grown up in the Lower District. Relying on her agility and a frame that wasn’t too big, she didn’t even know how many pieces of trash she’d kited around—human scum who wanted revenge after she’d blackmailed and robbed them.

This place’s layout was different from the Lower District, but something already carved into your bones—once you applied a little analogy—became a weapon that fit your hand perfectly.

The labyrinth of alleys made it impossible for the Corruptors to surround her. So even when she ran head-on into one, she only had to deal with a single Corruptor at a time. And once she understood their traits, one or two of them were no longer enough to slow her down.

More importantly, that roar a moment ago had drawn a lot of Corruptors—but it also let Ariel understand something.

These freaks were still tracking her the same way—

through basic perception like the five senses.

Which meant she might be able to use this complex terrain to shake them off quickly—

Boom!

A house to her side suddenly exploded open.

It wasn’t even the first time something like this had happened. Ariel was almost numb to it by now.

But she still didn’t really understand: those Corruptors were fast, and they were strong, but they attacked with nothing but claws—so how were they directly destroying an entire house?

Ariel looked up.

In the shattered stone and dust, she didn’t see a Corruptor’s claws.

She saw—

a sword!

A black greatsword!

"No—this isn’t a Corruptor!"

Ariel raised Heavenly Fire with both hands and blocked.

Clang—

In the next instant, the ringing hum of steel colliding became the only sound in the world.

Ariel’s body sank sharply. Her knees bent. The ground beneath her feet cracked in spreading lines, and the thigh wound she’d just stitched even gave her the sensation it was about to tear open again.

So heavy!

It felt like she wasn’t blocking a sword that had come slashing out of the darkness—

it felt like a meteor falling from the sky!

But to keep Miss Muse behind her from being caught in it, Ariel had no choice but to force herself to hold it up.

Ariel clenched her teeth. Under this single strike, her face even twisted into something feral.

Her gaze crossed over that black greatsword and locked on the ambusher in the dark.

"What the hell... armor?"

That’s right. The one who’d attacked her wasn’t a Corruptor, and it wasn’t some other monster either. From the outside, it was simply a massive suit of black armor, nearly as tall as the surrounding houses. And from within that armor, Ariel couldn’t sense the slightest trace of a living creature.

Compared to it, Ariel’s slender body looked like a toy.

"No... that’s not it either."

"This isn’t armor. This is... an alchemical puppet!"

The “armor” wasn’t empty—it only looked like armor. And the reason she couldn’t sense any living presence inside was because it was a dead thing driven purely by magic power.

No wonder she hadn’t sensed it at all before it got close!

She’d been too focused on dodging the Corruptors, and she’d made a mistake like this.

"But if it’s an alchemical puppet, that makes things easy."

Ariel tilted the greatsword in her hands, forcibly shedding the terrifying pressure of the black blade bearing down on her. Then she slid along the blade itself and dashed in with agile speed.

At the same time, her eyes closed—then opened again.

The Delusion-Breaking Eye!

In an instant, the entire world became black and white in her vision. And across the alchemical puppet in front of her, dense, intricate lines of magic power appeared.

At the center where those lines converged—

was the alchemical puppet’s core.

In the corner of her vision, Miss Muse’s hands seemed to become much more solid and strong, but Ariel—locked in combat—didn’t notice at all. She rushed in close. This huge alchemical puppet was clumsy, unable to recover in time.

Ariel stuck close with ease, and then—

the Heavenly-Fire Greatsword, wreathed in searing heat, forcibly pierced through the puppet’s hard shell and plunged into its core!

The alchemical puppet’s movements abruptly stopped. Then, as if it had lost all support, its enormous body slowly toppled into the house that had nearly become rubble.

Dust and smoke billowed.

Ariel hopped down from the puppet’s chest, limping.

"Hiss—damn, that hurts."

She clutched her thigh, looking at the blood seeping out between her fingers, her brows knitting.

She’d stitched it specifically to keep it from splitting open again... and it still tore?

Seriously—had she been too miserable lately? Couldn’t she even let a wound heal properly?

"But there’s no choice. I still have to move. Even if the alchemical puppet’s down, I have to leave before the other Corruptors surround me..."

Looking at the path ahead that was temporarily blocked by rubble, Ariel let out a thin, wretched smile.

Nothing else should go wrong now, right?

She was already this miserable—if something else happened, she really wouldn’t be able to take it...

Screeech—

From the dust and smoke behind her came a sharp metallic grinding sound. At the same time, the entire ground began to tremble faintly, as if some enormous thing were rolling its body around in there.

"Hey, hey..."

The wretched smile Ariel had just shown stiffened again. Her cheek even twitched twice against her will.

"Don’t be ridiculous, okay? The Corruptors roaring out of their chests—I’ll accept that. But you, an alchemical puppet—your core that powers you is gone. How the hell can you still—"

"Gurgle, gurgle..."

As if answering her, besides the scraping metal, an eerie sound of something squirming also came from within the dust.

Ah...

So that’s how it is...

That alchemical puppet...

was a Corruptor too.

Ariel understood at last—and didn’t feel happy about it at all.

After letting out a tired sigh, she turned to face it again, moving fast.

Now the alchemical puppet—black, viscous matter leaking from the hole in its chest—had already lifted its greatsword. Its movements were even faster than before, giving Ariel no chance to recover.

Ariel didn’t even have room to dodge anymore. Between her badly injured leg and the cramped environment, nothing supported evasion.

In that case...

"Then I won’t dodge."

Ariel’s eyes hardened.

This alchemical puppet clearly couldn’t be paralyzed by piercing its core.

Then she’d have to use another method.

A stupid method—

but always the most effective one.

Destroy it head-on.

Ariel steadied her breath and focused her mind, gathering every last shred of the battle qi she had left.

Gather.

Gather.

Gather.

Gathering it onto the Heavenly-Fire Greatsword in her hands, and then—

"Heavenly Fire—un—eh?"

In an instant, the momentum she’d built abruptly leaked away.

Ariel’s determined gaze turned blank and dazed, suddenly becoming clear and empty.

Because at the very moment she was about to unleash her most familiar technique—

the Heavenly-Fire Greatsword slipped out of her hands.

Why?

"Ah."

After less than a second of confusion, Ariel realized—

the hand holding the sword was trembling uncontrollably.

Was it the aftereffect of taking that hit head-on earlier?

Her body had been weak to begin with, and she’d forced herself to eat that kind of blow, until her arm went numb and lost strength?

"Shit. I forgot to strap the sword to my palm," Ariel murmured.

Wounds this severe didn’t just affect movement. Prolonged pain and the flood of adrenaline also dulled the nerves.

That was why she hadn’t realized the old tear in her thigh had reopened until she entered this slum.

That was why she hadn’t realized she couldn’t even hold her sword anymore until Heavenly Fire slipped free.

And losing your sword in battle was a huge taboo.

Even if Heavenly Fire had a living spirit, relying on the living spirit alone—

you couldn’t execute martial techniques.

She should’ve anticipated this. Before the last slaughter, she’d carefully wrapped the sword to her hand in advance...

Was it because she’d been too happy chatting with Miss Muse earlier that she’d forgotten something this important?

"It’s over..."

In her pupils, the black greatsword drew nearer and nearer. Exhaustion and weakness surged like a tide, beginning to drown Ariel.

She could only take it with her flesh now.

She didn’t know whether this body of hers could still—

"It’s not over yet."

Suddenly, perhaps because she’d endured too many accidents, the Goddess finally decided to tilt the scales of luck toward her—someone who had always been lucky.

The tide was held back for a moment. The cold that covered her body was driven away by warmth.

Ariel felt herself wrapped in a solid body. Then a slender—yet extremely strong—hand reached out, caught Heavenly Fire as it flew toward Ariel, and gripped it firmly.

The Heavenly-Fire Greatsword trembled slightly, then, as if it understood something, gave up resisting.

So the red-gold greatsword was raised once more, and the power already infused into it began to mix with a new power.

The two forces fused rapidly, then gathered—gathered—gathered again.

Gathering, compressing, compressing, compressing—until it reached a single point.

At last, the power compressed to the extreme erupted violently—

like a blade that had hidden its edge for a long time finally being drawn from its sheath—

fearlessly meeting the descending black greatsword head-on!

"Eh?"

As Ariel slipped toward unconsciousness, watching this final scene, a question flashed through her mind—more baffling than anything she’d encountered so far.

"This is..."

Her...

Heavenly Fire unsheathed?