"Gurgle, gurgle... %￥#%..."

The change happening to Shenyi still wasn’t over. The deep shadow gradually fused with him, corroding his shattered flesh. And the wet, viscous gurgling sounds—halfway through—had already mutated into a shrill, disgusting noise, like the muttering of a madman, or the sobbing of a betrayer.

The candle flames along the walls flickered. Because of Hamreign’s protection, the only light this space had hadn’t been extinguished by the shock just now.

But when that dim light fell on the mass of shadow, it inexplicably turned into one bent, twisting line after another—like a child’s crude crayon scribbles, yet still tightly touching normal reality. It was so bizarre, so jarringly wrong, it made your scalp crawl.

And it wasn’t only ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) the light that was warping.

Centered on Shenyi, the ground, the stones, the dust—anything with shape—began to visibly deform. Cracks “grew” in the floor. Rocks melted, turning thick as grease. Floating dust condensed into fog, surging violently like a swarm of bees.

Maybe even things as intangible as air hadn’t escaped this change—only, distortions on that microscopic level were harder to notice.

"Still as nauseating as ever."

Hamreign obviously wasn’t going to stand by and watch this finish.

Her cold, proud voice cut through the chaotic noise like a sword. With a casual flick of the Calamity’s hand, an intense torrent of light instantly formed behind her within an incomparably complex stacked magic array. No chanting. No guiding.

And yet the spell still surpassed even ordinary Truth-Rank magic in sheer scale and grandeur.

At the same time, on another level, it was compressed into an absurdly small range. The perfectly condensed flood of light and flame swept cleanly across the distorted area, once again drowning Shenyi—silent, soundless, not even stirring a breeze anywhere else.

"So strong."

Watching all of this from her throne, An couldn’t help widening her beautiful eyes slightly.

She was a duke’s manor maid. She’d seen plenty of powerful mages who had dealings with the manor—yet not a single one of them used magic with the same effortless elegance as this Calamity, this symbol of ultimate violence and destruction.

She was clearly a dragon.

And yet she looked like she understood magic better than humans did.

"More trouble than I expected."

But even after instantly casting such a powerful spell and suppressing Shenyi’s distortion again, Hamreign’s grave expression didn’t change in the slightest.

"The noise didn’t disappear."

"I heard it."

Mela had also dropped her earlier joking mood. Her small face was serious.

"As expected... even this level still can’t do much, huh?"

The majestic river of light vanished in an instant, dazzling like a meteor.

Literally like a meteor.

In terms of raw power alone, this spell was already at an utterly terrifying level—enough to flatten an entire city in a heartbeat.

There was no grand explosion to look at, but that was precisely proof of how exquisitely Hamreign controlled her magic—so perfectly she didn’t let even a trace of that power leak.

A successful attack like that, landing head-on, was already enough to shred a true crowned one. Even thousand-year-old bones couldn’t withstand a flame-stream that melted everything.

But what they were facing right now was no longer a “simple” crowned one. It was...

"#%￥%..."

The noise continued—sharper, more piercing.

The instant the light and flame vanished, it was like a patch stuffed into a hole had been ripped out. The polluted distortion began spreading outward at an even more horrifying speed.

Hamreign withdrew her spell—because in less than a single second, she could already feel her magic itself starting to be polluted, slipping out of control. And that feeling was racing toward her true body.

Even magic could be polluted, corroded, twisted.

"Ah... everyone... do you hear it?"

Amid the rising and falling viscous sludge, Shenyi slowly opened his eyes. Filthy, bizarre things flowed in the depths of his gaze, yet his face was still intoxicated:

"Her voice... my king’s voice... it’s getting clearer and clearer!"

A huge chunk of flesh at Shenyi’s chest was completely gone. Even the heart that should’ve been pounding powerfully had vanished without a trace. That meant Hamreign’s spell—meant to stop his “transformation”—hadn’t been useless.

But in stark contrast to his ruined body, that strange sticky liquid was clearly even more active.

It felt like...

Attacking Shenyi had actually helped that “thing” seize his flesh more easily.

"..."

Hamreign was silent for a moment. Then she suddenly turned her head to look at Mela beside her.

"Is this really just Demon God pollution?"

"What do you mean?"

"I’ve handled Demon God pollution too many times. In that area, I even have more experience than you do. And I can tell you clearly—"

Hamreign stared into Mela’s eyes. Fury flickered in her red-gold vertical pupils like leaping fire.

"This is absolutely not simple pollution. Rootless pollution can’t reach this level—not even if it’s the Demon God. So whatever is inside Shenyi right now has to be something even more terrifying than ordinary pollution!"

"..."

"What did you hide from me?"

"...Sigh. Don’t stare at me like that. It’s not like I’m the one who made Shenyi end up like this."

Mela let out a helpless sigh.

"I didn’t mean to hide anything. Honestly, at the start I only had the tiniest bit of a guess. It’s just that after wandering around down there for a lap, the odds of that guess got a little higher. Just a little... who knew that ‘little’ would suddenly trigger Shenyi’s second-phase transformation."

"Enough crap. Talk seriously."

"Seriously..."

The corners of Mela’s mouth tugged once—without even a trace of humor.

"...Do you remember that battle?"

"Of course I remember."

Hamreign’s face was expressionless.

"Like it was yesterday."

A battle Mela would bring up at a time like this could only be one.

The war from a thousand years ago—the one that decided whether the world lived or died.

A thousand years was enough to erase many things.

But some things couldn’t be erased no matter what.

For her—and even for Mela—the day the Demon God descended was a nightmare carved into the soul.

Another thousand years. Ten thousand years. Even the moment she lay down in her grave—she would never forget it.

"Do you remember why, even after we fought with everything we had to defeat the Demon God—and even after the world itself was grievously damaged by that battle—we still couldn’t truly kill the Demon God?" Mela asked.

"Because the Demon God can’t be killed," Hamreign said.

"Right. The Demon God has immortality. We gambled everything and only managed to defeat them—dismember them—and seal their incomplete body."

Mela’s tone was heavy with loss.

It was a simple truth.

If the Demon God could be killed—if everything could’ve ended—then the world wouldn’t still be dying on the edge of collapse, and the Church wouldn’t still be counting down the doomsday clock.

Reality proved that in that catastrophe, the Demon God’s descent was only a beginning. And that terrifying chaos still hadn’t ended even now.

It had simply changed forms, hiding in the world’s shadows.

And one day, it would return.

"What does that have to do with this? Don’t tell me a piece of the body escaped," Hamreign’s gaze grew colder and colder.

"..."

Mela’s expression stiffened.

"Well... you’ll have to ask the Church of Life about that. Of course, realistically, one or two pieces breaking their seal isn’t a big deal—we prepared backup measures back then."

"Then what are you trying to say?"

"What I mean is: we dismembered them, sealed them... but it seems like back then, we missed something very important."

"Something important?"

"Yeah. I used to think... they wouldn’t bleed."

"..."

Hamreign paused—clearly not expecting an answer like that.

Because she’d never thought about that question, either.

And she almost wanted to demand, You’re saying they can bleed? They were the Demon God—an exalted deity. Humans had fought Evil Gods for so long—when had anyone ever heard of a god bleeding?

The very nature of a 【God】 was supposed to mean they did not bleed.

But after a brief moment of thought, Hamreign suddenly felt a kind of clarity—like it wasn’t actually that surprising.

Because it was the Demon God.

Those two words stood for endless weirdness, unspeakable distortion, and aberration that couldn’t be explained.

For something that was the absolute opposite of rules and order, it was hard to even comprehend them through reason. A thousand years ago, the ones who believed they understood them... had all gone completely mad.

"So... what turned Shenyi into this is the Demon God’s blood?"

"Who knows?"

Mela gave a self-mocking smile.

"Maybe it’s the Demon God’s blood. Maybe it’s something conceptually similar to their blood. You know how it is—with ‘them,’ we can barely even define anything."

Her gaze fell back onto Shenyi.

"But there’s one thing I’m sure of now."

"What?"

"Compared to you—the one who’s basically killed him twice—Shenyi right now is still more interested in reviving that ‘her.’"

Mela’s voice was almost gentle.

"It’s just... who knows what that ‘her’ will actually be after he revives her. I wonder if she’ll give Shenyi that familiar, sweet smile."

"That sounds like some kind of hell joke that was popular a thousand years ago..."

Amid the writhing, flowing viscous sludge, Shenyi slowly stood up.

He lifted his head. His pale face was still devout and yearning, as if the two grievous wounds he’d taken meant nothing at all. And in his eyes there was no trace of Hamreign.

Only a spreading madness.

Horrific pollution surged violently around him. He had already fused completely with it. Only half his body still maintained a human shape—like some abyssal beast in the deep sea poking out a lure.

"Don’t worry, my king... I’ll... bring you back."

Shenyi slowly extended his hand.

And the place his palm reached toward—

Was the Myriad-Age Cycle.

Clatter—

Countless chains crashed down. Shenyi still had authority to control the Myriad-Age Cycle. Under his command, those chains whipped and stretched—

And at their ends...

Were the countless souls about to return.

"Shit!"

Hamreign flashed forward. Blinding magic light lit the throne space again. Countless chains snapped, and even the entire space was cut off by her. She still didn’t forget to protect An on the other throne.

But when Hamreign reappeared, several scales that had been tainted by pollution—already warped with fanged mouths that wanted to gnaw on her—came rustling down, annihilated in the scorching river of light.

"We’ve wasted enough words. You should think of a solution already."

Hamreign blocked Shenyi’s movements while speaking to Mela without expression.

"Otherwise what we’ll be facing next is Demon God blood that’s swallowed several million demonfolk souls... and like you said, nobody knows what kind of freak that will give birth to."