Shut Up, I'm a Germaphobe

At the villa manor. Wayne reclined on a lounge chair, spyglass in hand, keeping constant watch over the developments in Enrold Town. On the long table beside him sat exquisite pastries and black tea. Wayne had no habit of taking afternoon tea, but Fra had still prepared everything with meticulous care, attempting to mold him into an elegant gentleman favored by high society. As for how he was doing now... Slouching whether standing or sitting, never standing if he could sit, and never sitting if he could lie down, leaning entirely into an uninhibited, down-to-earth style. "The magic array has vanished..." Wayne rose to his feet with the spyglass, his face lighting up with delight. "Isabella did it! As expected of me—what an eye I have. I knew she wouldn't let me down." "Young Master Wayne, Ms. Isabella hasn't returned yet," Fra said with a smile. Understood: don't jump to conclusions before the final moment; popping the champagne at halftime was asking for trouble. Wayne nodded, showing he had learned another lesson. With such a reliable butler by his side, he had bypassed quite a few detours in life. He continued observing through the spyglass. The hexagram above the town had vanished, and the giant tentacles had dispersed a step ahead of it. Looking on the bright side, the sacrifice had failed and the townsfolk were saved. Looking on the dark side, the sacrificial ritual had concluded successfully, the townsfolk had collectively mutated into infected aberrations, and Isabella had already been carved up and divided among them. Well, she was on the heavier side. If she were a curvaceous beauty, there might very well be a line forming over there right now! Wayne dearly wanted to do something, but he was simply too weak. He had the will, but lacked the strength to help. Although he was on his home turf at the villa, he had ended up passively watching the show the entire time. Strategically speaking, it was undeniably a failure. At the thought, Wayne shook his head inwardly. The transcendent path was long and arduous, and his modest goals were far from achieved. He couldn't afford to grow complacent over a sliver of progress. If he wanted to grow quickly into an independent mage capable of standing on his own and surpassing those academic prodigies, he had to grind harder than anyone else. Grind hard, grind to the absolute limit! Inside Wayne's body, the spatial passage continuously channeled the four elements into him, replenishing his life essence at high speed without the need for meditation. He was growing stronger every passing second. Satisfaction? That was impossible. Human desire was bottomless—once gained, one only craved more. He felt the progress bar was moving too slowly, wishing desperately that he could find a VIP top-up button to max out his download speed instantly. "Why can't my golden finger take microtransactions?" Wayne was filled with regret. He had been cursed to fall for Jose's nonsense, listening to that rascal's slander that crafting games with heart made for a good product, while paying to win was a dead end. When writing the code, he had focused solely on grinding experience, play time, and mechanical skill, completely forgetting that paying whales were the true masters of the universe! Who made games these days without a top-up interface? Without microtransactions, could you even call it a game?! Wayne beat his chest and stamped his feet, kicking himself for his own shortsightedness. Bang! A gunshot rang through the air, followed by a piercing alarm. The two maids instantly entered combat mode, setting up their machine guns, ready for action. Wayne looked around, sensing no fluctuation of magic power. Forget people—he couldn't even detect a ghostly shadow. The gunshot sounded again. Wayne looked high into the sky and caught sight of a massive grayish-white bird flapping its wings as it flew toward the manor. An aerial unit! The two maids swung their barrels around, aiming at the bizarrely shaped white bird. The target was outside their effective range, and firing at high-altitude targets was far less accurate than striking ground targets; hitting it with two machine guns was an uphill battle. The sniper rifle faced the same issue—the bird was moving too fast. Swoosh! The giant white bird spat out an arrow of white foam, targeting the sniper maid on the roof. Wayne waved his hand to stir up a gale, blowing the projectile far off course. Her position exposed, the sniper maid swiftly evacuated to find a new vantage point. The bird did not pursue. Beating its wings to accelerate, it swooped down in a dive straight toward Wayne. The various traps and gadgets buried in the lawn were only meant for ground troops. Against the air force, only machine-gun fire could be brought to bear. The two maids held their posts, repelling the bird with sharp, practiced gunplay. The white bird-monster opened its maw and unleashed a shrill, mournful screech. Chaotic disorder battered the eardrums of the maids and the butler, inducing nausea and splitting headaches that made aiming and shooting impossible. Fra fared somewhat better. Having undergone targeted training, he could still hold out for a short while, but the three maids, subjected to the sonic bombardment, dropped to their knees, dry-heaving. The bird spread its wings mid-air. Its foamy wings transformed into sharp quills, and dozens of razor-sharp darts rained straight down from the sky, ripping through the air with piercing whistles. The target wasn't Wayne, but the butler and the maids. Damn it, you dare touch my people! A flash of green light flickered in Wayne's eyes. Raising his hand once more, his surging magic power levered reality, drawing open an unbroken curtain of dense wind needles like a sheet of rain. With his own pure magic power alone, he couldn't cast this foundational wind spell due to an error in the magical expression. But by drawing deep green from the Nature eyeball and tinting his magic power green, he could easily supply the correct solution. The rain curtain surged upward! Needles as fine as ox hair collided with the foamy quills. Defeating strength with weakness and triumphing through sheer numbers, they scattered the volley of darts after a brief standoff, the remaining force swallowing the giant white bird whole. Punctured by thousands of needles, the bird's physical body proved immune to physical strikes, regenerating completely in the blink of an eye as it stretched its neck to continue its piercing wail. It attempted to stimulate and disrupt Wayne's thoughts, but the effect was thoroughly underwhelming; to Wayne, it was merely noisy. The butler and maids suffered worse agony. The two maids foamed at the mouth and passed out, their limbs twitching intermittently. Predictably, the sniper maid inside the house had collapsed as well. Fra's face was grim as he gripped the edge of the table, struggling to maintain his elegance and his master's dignity while raising his pistol to fire skyward. Every shot missed by a mile, straying over ten meters wide. Wayne had no choice. He knew the giant white bird had come for him. Setting aside who would win, if the battle continued in front of the manor house, the butler and maids would almost certainly go mad. Even if cured, they'd end up depressed. He voluntarily abandoned his home ground, waving his arms to turn blades of grass into flying daggers, hurling them headlong at the bird to herd it eastward bit by bit. Wayne often practiced magic there and knew the terrain well—especially that patch of woods, which offered him an immense advantage. Nature magic had that perk: materials were always at hand. As long as it wasn't a concrete jungle or a sewer, anywhere counted as fighting on home turf. The white bird-monster saw through Wayne's intentions and went along with him into the woods. Folding its wings, it touched down on the ground, its plumage shifting back into arms and tentacles. Standing roughly three meters tall, it bore a passing resemblance to the form of the Lord of the Void. The pale white face bore no recognizable features, only a spiraling, protruding orifice that might have been a mouth or an eye. "Blasphemer, become one with me, and return the divine artifact to the Lord of the Void!" "Shut up. I'm a germaphobe." When had Wayne ever seen such an ugly monstrosity? A wave of revulsion washed over him. He wasn't afraid of mental pollution, but having a toad crawl onto your foot didn't bite, it just grossed you out—and looking at it was sickening enough! What was it with these Church of the Earth's Core cultists? Each was more freakish than the last, talking with that Lovecraftian flavor—wasn't there a single normal human among them? Wayne wasn't about to waste words on the bird-monster. Green light flared in his eyes. The branches in the woods shook with rustling whooshes. Dark cavities resembling eyes and mouths opened along the trunks, and boughs stretched and twisted, growing wildly under the nourishment of magic power. For a moment, it was a carnival of demons. Distracted by the surrounding commotion, the bird-monster failed to notice vines coiling around its feet. By the time it realized, Wayne had repeated his old trick, encasing it within a massive sphere of vines and burying it deep underground. Boom! Wayne clenched his fist with force, turning around to head back toward the manor... Two steps in, he looked back over his shoulder. Wisps of white foam bubbled out of the ground, reassembling into the grotesque figure with tentacles winding around its arms, though it was noticeably shorter now, standing at only about two point three meters. A bit troublesome! Wayne unleashed gales and flames, even employing his tried-and-true concrete wall-building technique, yet none could halt the bird-monster's advance. The creature's flesh differed from the four-element matter commonly found in nature; ordinary magic struggled to inflict effective damage upon it. The monster raised both arms horizontally. The two limbs dissolved into white foam and reconstituted into a pair of glinting, chilling knightly swords. The blades cleaved the air, humming with vibration. Wayne blinked. The scene felt strikingly familiar. If he remembered correctly, he knew this move too. Squelch! A knightly sword pierced straight through his chest. The bird-monster cackled harshly, lifting its arm to impale Wayne and hoist him high into the air. The spiral black hole on its face parted, revealing a mouth packed with writhing tentacles, as if eager to drink its fill of blood. Not a single drop came. Wayne's eyes were dull and dim. In the split second of the bird-monster's confusion, he crossed and slashed his arms. Pale flesh squirmed as his five fingers melted together, his arms elongating into gleaming, metallic blades that cleaved downward. At Wayne's chest, a sunburn mark tore open the skin and flesh, and a gigantic, single eye thrust its way out. "Jiejiejie—!"