Klein quickly looked away, his mind racing for a plan. He actually had a fair number of abilities he could use right now — several that could help him escape — but against a demigod, how much would any of them really accomplish?
Even if he managed to catch her off guard and slip out of the house using fire-jump or shadow-jump, he had zero confidence he could actually outrun a demigod's pursuit — not unless he could teleport outright.
His mind drifted to his bodyguard, Stephen:
Stephen, Stephen — you took my money, the least you could do is actually earn it. That was 1,500 pounds I scraped together penny by penny.
And besides — if you really are being controlled by an evil god and deliberately getting close to me, like "Lovers" said, then you must have some goal in mind for getting close to me in the first place, right? If I die here, what happens to that goal of yours?
The moment the thought crossed his mind, Klein felt the spirituality inside him surge wildly, as if it were trying to flee his body entirely — fleeing from some danger closing in.
At the same moment, a searing pain tore through his skull, as if someone had cracked it open and was forcing something inside by brute force.
Is this... the Primordial Witch's consciousness taking me over?
Klein, terrified, fought with everything he had to resist the intrusion, and, no longer caring about anything else, snapped his fingers, meaning to fire-jump away.
But his body was still trapped within the altar — this whole space had already been sealed off, cut away from the outside world.
He tried to slip into the "Ambitionist" state and shadow-jump instead, but his consciousness was growing hazy, distant, unreal. He was gradually losing any sense of his own existence, replaced by an inexplicable wave of pleasure — a euphoria hundreds, thousands of times more intense than any physical release he'd known.
The resolve to resist that had just flared up inside him vanished in an instant. If anything, some part of him now craved more of that "pleasure," wanted it faster, wanted it more intense.
His face flushed red, his expression twisting into something like ecstasy.
And it was right then that Klein's shape and features began to shift — the Faceless item's effect lost its hold in that instant.
Klein reverted to his true form.
"???"
Katerina sat bolt upright, staring at Klein in shock.
A few seconds later, her figure flickered, appearing directly in front of him. She reached down, touching his groin, her seductive eyes narrowing slightly — and then, unexpectedly, breaking into a smile.
Clarisse had actually brought back a man, disguised as a witch with the Faceless, to serve as the Primordial Witch's vessel?
Sure — the Witch cult's deity had transformed from a man into a woman; even using a man as the vessel for her descent, she could easily convert him into a woman upon arrival — the Primordial Witch likely wouldn't even care about a detail that small.
But that wasn't the real issue. The real issue was this man disguised as a witch — had someone dug this pit specifically for the Witch cult to fall into?
Was it Mr. A?
Katerina landed on that thought immediately — but what she couldn't figure out was how Mr. A had gotten Clarisse to abandon Trellis, whom she'd already handpicked, and switch to this man midway through instead.
And to what end?
Was it purely to swap in someone to sabotage the descent ritual?
But Clarisse wasn't a fool. There was no way she wouldn't have known whether her own chosen vessel was suitable for the descent.
Which meant that Mr. A, or whoever was pulling strings behind this, had likely deliberately delivered a perfectly suitable replacement vessel to take Trellis's place — all in service of some unknown goal.
Clarisse must have realized all this already — and simply hadn't cared. Or... had she, for some reason, overlooked it entirely? And if it was the latter...
A chill crept down Katerina's spine.
She pulled her hand back from Klein, stepped back quickly, several paces, and then vanished on the spot. Katerina had lived over a thousand years, passing up countless chances to advance to Sequence 2, all for the sake of staying safe, staying secure.
In this world, her own life was the one thing she truly cared about — everything else came second.
"Interesting."
Amon's (Stephen's) figure surfaced, one hand reaching up to adjust the monocle over his right eye, the corner of his mouth curling. "Well now... this really is unexpected."
He'd always assumed the secrecy Amenisis had wrapped around "Cleya" was meant to guard against him — or even deliberately set as a trap for him.
Now, though, it looked like that scheming woman might have been aiming at someone else entirely, right from the start.
Of course, if Amon had acted rashly, Amenisis probably wouldn't have minded that either — kill two birds with one stone.
That woman's mind really is filthy.
"BOOM!!!"
A vast, overwhelming presence poured down from above, flooding into Klein from the crown of his head.
His body rose, floating into the air, his hair rapidly growing out, transforming into venomous snakes flicking their tongues. His features grew more and more alluring, more and more beautiful by the second.
Then came his body, his skin — every inch of him transforming, from the inside out.
A presence belonging to a true god erupted outward.
Amon's brow arched slightly, watching, calm, as Klein completed what was unmistakably a divine descent. He murmured, "Amenisis. Surely you're not just going to sit back and watch this happen?"
"What... exactly are you playing at?"
...
Near the tomb on Backlund's outskirts.
Vincent's exchange with Bernadette, and his gamble on "Black Box" in the Nation of Disorder that had pulled out the strange sword — all of it had actually taken place in the span of mere seconds.
The Sequence 1s from three different families were still fighting over him like a prize.
If they'd simply wanted to kill a Sequence 3 like him, Vincent would already have died more times than he could count by now — but the Augustus grandfather-and-grandson pair, chasing after intel on the Nation of Disorder, obviously wanted him alive.
And the two Angels from Castia and Tamara, seeing how much the Augustus family clearly valued him, held back from delivering a killing blow as well.
The four Angels repeatedly clashed over the rules and order governing this stretch of space, using, destroying, twisting them back and forth. If not for Adam's presence, the tomb here would have been obliterated long ago.
In fact, the only reason William Augustus I and George III had dared use this tomb as bait to lure out the Castia and Tamara Angels in the first place was precisely because Adam was here.
Vincent's body, under a massive repulsive force, was hurled once more in the opposite direction from the four Angels. William Augustus I swept his silver rapier again, splitting the battlefield into separate regions, dropping all four combatants into four different spaces, while keeping himself in the same space as Vincent.
But that only held off the Castia and Tamara Angels for a few seconds. As fellow Sequence 1 "Hands of Order," having lived for thousands of years themselves, the two of them were every bit as skilled at applying their own abilities as William Augustus I.
One threw a punch, the other hurled a spear, easily shattering the divided "battlefield spaces." Then one of them spoke a decree: "Confine!"
The other raised a hand, curling fingers loosely toward George III: "Exile!"
William Augustus I found himself wrapped instantly in translucent amber, while George III was exiled into some unknown void.
Crack!
William Augustus I broke free of the amber almost immediately, glancing at the two closing in on him, and said, cold, "In this place, mystery weakens, reality strengthens."
Instantly, all three Angels hovering in midair dropped, as if their planes had suddenly crashed, plummeting downward.
But with extraordinary abilities forbidden by the decree, it became a contest of raw physical strength between the three of them — not much difference between them there. But William Augustus I was closest to Vincent, and the instant he touched ground, he kicked off with a speed too fast to track, shooting straight for him.
His plan was simple: once he had Vincent in hand, he'd retreat from here immediately.
George III wasn't actually ascending to Black Emperor today anyway — even if the tomb got destroyed, worst case, it'd just cost extra time to rebuild.
But the Nation of Disorder — if he let this chance slip by, it really would be gone for good!
The apocalypse was less than fifteen or twenty years out now. Ascending to true godhood, at best, only improved his odds of survival when the end came — only pushing further, beyond true godhood itself, would grant real initiative against the outer gods closing in.
The instant his right hand closed around Vincent's throat, William Augustus I didn't hesitate, accelerating further, tearing away from the battlefield, and, at the same moment, lifting the decree, letting mystery's power flood back into the area:
"Finally. Got him!"
To be continued…
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