A low rumble of thunder rolled through the sky, streak after streak of silver-white lightning leaping and coiling into a bucket-thick tree of thunder, striking down at Panatia in a sudden burst of blinding silver-white light that swallowed her whole.
Under a disaster of this magnitude, even a demigod would struggle to withstand it head-on.
But she was a witch — whether through her mirror stand-in or her wand stand-in, she could halt any "prosecution" penalty by simply "dying": since the target was already dead.
From this angle, both the Witch Pathway and the Fortune Teller Pathway, with its paper-doll stand-ins, held a natural advantage against a "Prosecutor."
But "stand-ins" weren't unlimited.
Once she'd burned through both the wand on her and any nearby mirrors, she'd no longer be able to escape death.
Crack!
Before Panatia's true self could even steady itself, a jewel-encrusted sword suddenly dropped from directly above her head.
Ordinary-looking as it was, falling at an unremarkable speed, that sword still chilled Panatia to the bone — it was the very ability her opponent had used the first time they'd met. Terrifying. Lethal.
An instant later, the sword pierced clean through her skull, and Panatia dissolved into a broken wand — "dying" once again!
Panatia was furious and afraid in equal measure. Ever since ascending to Despair Witch, she'd never once faced a battle like this — in under a minute, her opponent had already forced her to "die" multiple times through relentless attacks, while she'd only managed to release her spider silk a single time so far.
She retreated hastily, her form vanishing abruptly, and quietly pulled out a mirror, biting into her finger and pressing the wound firmly against its surface.
A witch's curse normally required the target's hair or flesh, but in a face-to-face confrontation like this, that step could be skipped entirely — the curse could be cast directly through the mirror's reflection of the scene.
Feeling black flame igniting all around him, Vincent moved to use his own item's mirror stand-in to absorb the damage — but Bernadette said immediately, "Use the Emperor's New Clothes."
Vincent didn't question it, immediately letting his body slip back into a state of nonexistence.
Bernadette explained, "A demigod witch's curse — if you don't swap yourself out with a stand-in before you're locked on, you lose the ability to use any stand-in at all, to transfer or absorb the damage."
She paused, then continued, "There's far too much glass and mirrored surface on this street. Unless we destroy it all, this witch can use her mirror stand-in more or less without limit."
"Understood."
Vincent's eyes narrowed. As he threw down a Nation of Disorder stone, he spoke the Words of Order once more:
"You are hiding."
"You are guilty."
"The punishment: solitary confinement."
The moment the words left his mouth, the space around them froze solid, congealing into layer upon layer of amber, closing in around the hidden Panatia — a "cage" that not even "teleportation" could escape.
Vincent then snapped his fingers, and the scenery around them blurred and dissolved. Peach trees sprang up from the ground, rapidly sprouting green leaves, bursting into peach blossoms, bearing fruit — transforming the surroundings into a vast Peach Blossom Spring, a space cut off entirely from the rest of the world.
Panatia's expression, trapped inside, changed drastically. She could clearly see what "Mr. A" was planning: without access to any surrounding mirrors, relying only on the mirror she carried on her, she could use her mirror stand-in at most three more times.
On the fourth, real death would be waiting for her.
Which meant she had to either finish him off, or shatter this space, before she burned through those three stand-ins.
She stopped holding back her spirituality, letting it surge through her, unleashing a massive wave of lethal plague to spread rapidly around her, weaving her spider silk into a suffocating net across the entire space, igniting it with black flame, and sending it all sweeping toward Mr. A.
Within this confined space, she might not be able to borrow the surrounding mirrors anymore, but the tight quarters actually suited many of the Witch Pathway's abilities even better.
She knew he could enter an "illusory" state to avoid damage — but she refused to believe that state had no limits. Once the entire space was saturated with virus, silk, and black flame, she was confident she could take him down even if he turned out to be Sequence 3.
As for a Sequence 2 Angel... ha, if "Mr. A" really were one, she'd already be dead.
In fact, before the virus and black flame had even fully spread, Vincent was already starting to feel the effects. His throat felt like it had been scorched by fire, and breathing was growing noticeably harder.
He held his breath quickly, tossing out a coin pouch, forcing a friendly smile as he said, his voice strained. "Panatia, would you mind stopping the plague and black flame, please?"
"???"
Panatia caught the pouch reflexively. She blinked, then slowly nodded. "Sure."
And then she actually stopped.
Her face was full of confusion and bewilderment, but somewhere deep down, a voice was urging her to follow the "suggestion."
This was the effect of the "Black Box" ability.
But that sense of being controlled faded as quickly as it had come — Panatia was, after all, a Sequence 4 demigod. The instant clarity returned, she moved to attack again.
But right then, Vincent's back arched slightly, and white, illusory feathers began condensing across his form — the Mystery Reenactment: "The Ugly Duckling" transforming into a "Swan," a powerful spell that let a "Mystic Scholar" safely reveal their Mythical Creature Form — once per day, for ten seconds each time.
Crack after crack split open across Vincent's skin, flesh and blood coalescing within them into black-and-white eyeballs.
Countless eyes swept coldly, indifferently, across everything around them — as if they were the physical manifestation of some vast, sprawling body of knowledge, so immense that the silhouette carrying them dissolved into a higher-dimensional, abstract black mass.
The instant she saw that dense mass of eyes, Panatia felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, a storm of knowledge crashing through her mind. Her skin writhed and twisted, agony tearing through her entire body, and she couldn't hold back a shrill, agonized scream.
If the "Swan" state could be sustained, Panatia would soon lose control entirely — either transforming into a monster or meeting death outright. Unfortunately, it only lasted ten seconds.
Vincent knew this well. He immediately raised his right hand, condensing a dark, ancient horn in his palm, then puffed out his cheeks and blew into it with all his strength.
Wooooo—
The low, humming note carried destructive power that rippled through the entire Peach Blossom Spring space. Under the overlapping sound waves, the space cracked apart, the ground split open, the peach trees and blossoms crumbled to dust, the spider silk snapped into countless pieces, the black flames extinguished, and even the microscopic plague was annihilated within the sound waves themselves.
Panatia, caught facing the horn's blast head-on, took the worst of it.
Instinct drove her to trigger one more mirror stand-in — but in this confined, sealed space, her true self had nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide.
She never got the chance to use a second stand-in. Amid the horn's roar, her flesh was torn apart, her beautiful visage disintegrating in an instant, leaving nothing but a blood-red skeleton behind.
That skeleton didn't hold on much longer either — with one more low blast of the horn, it too was ripped into fragments, scattered by the storm winds kicked up by the sound waves.
The Despair Witch, Panatia, was dead. Completely, permanently dead.
"Phew."
Vincent let out a low breath, letting the ancient horn dissolve from his hand. His footing wavered, his body trembling uncontrollably — this was the side effect of the Ambitionist state: the longer he stayed in it, the greater the backlash on himself afterward.
Just like last time, when he'd exited the Ambitionist state, his body and soul had suffered massive damage, leaving him unconscious for several days before he'd barely recovered.
But last time he'd pushed himself to the limit while still only Sequence 6. Now that he'd advanced to Sequence 5, every aspect of him had strengthened considerably. If he exited the state now, the impact should be far less severe.
But would this "Great Fog" really come to an end just because the Despair Witch was dead?
"Don't overthink it for now — that plague fog isn't going to just vanish because the Despair Witch died."
"Right."
The thought crossed his mind, and the already-shattered Peach Blossom Spring — cracked apart by the horn's blast — dissolved completely, returning him to the East District street. At a glance, the fog Panatia had left in her wake as she walked was still spreading outward — though far more slowly now, and thinning as it went.
But this was still a demigod-level plague. Even diluted, it remained lethal to ordinary people.
Plop.
A shriveled, blackened, translucent heart, shrunken down to a fraction of its size, dropped to the ground with a crisp, crystal-like sound — this was the Despair Witch's Beyonder Characteristic, crystallized out after Panatia's death.
Vincent bent down and picked it up, tossing it into the Secret Door, then dissolved into shadow, leaping repeatedly, racing toward the heart of the fog.
He threw down another scroll, and it dissolved into a sky full of falling droplets, dragging the plague suspended in the air down with them, pooling on the ground and flowing off toward lower ground in streams.
This was, admittedly, a stopgap rather than a real solution — it would likely end up contaminating the local water supply — but compared to letting everyone inhale the plague and die where they stood, it was the best option they could come up with.
In fact, in the original story, the way the Church of Storms had ultimately dealt with the fog was exactly this — whipping up a storm to sweep the plague out of the air entirely.
Vincent and Bernadette obviously had no way to summon a storm themselves, but fortunately, Panatia had only just begun — the area the plague fog covered wasn't too large yet. As long as they had enough scrolls, they could still get it under control.
But right then, an invisible force suddenly erupted through the empty air, and the flowing tide of water abruptly stopped moving forward. A moment later, it looked as if something had torn a rift straight through the air itself, and the blocked water surged into it all at once, vanishing in an instant.
A few seconds later, a faint, weighty glow gathered together, coalescing into a rather haughty-looking old man — Derek Augustus, the very one who had shown up when the Psychic Alchemy Society and MI9 had hunted Vincent before.
This was a Sequence 2 "Balancer" —
A powerful Angel!
To be continued…
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