A keen edge flashed, and the bird-monster fell to the ground, hacked to pieces.
White foam writhed and stitched itself together, rebuilding his form. This time, he was somewhat shorter.
The bird-monster stared dumbly at Wayne, whose appearance had transformed drastically. His mind was a total mush. He wanted to say something but had no idea how to phrase it, muttering in bewilderment, "Blasphemer, do you wield life magic as well?"
After merging with the Book of Greed, Wayne had shot up to three meters in height. His puckered, vein-ridged skin took on a sickly, ashen-white hue. Though generally humanoid, his face had no features whatsoever; his chest bore a vertical fissure that had parted to reveal a single gigantic eye.
Several pitch-black lines stretched from the corners of the eye down to his abdomen, lending this strange, ashen body an even more soul-chilling terror and making it abundantly clear that the great eye was the core form.
The colossal eyeball rolled, focusing squarely on the bird-monster. A potent mental wave gathered into a beam and slammed violently across.
"Aaaagh—!"
The bird-monster screamed incessantly. The knightly swords of his hands broke down uncontrollably into soft muck. He raised his severed hand stumps to clutch his head; his shoulders sank, his chest melted away, and his entire person liquefied like wax over high heat.
The contrast was stark. When it came to the radiation intensity of their respective pollution sources, Wayne held the clear upper hand.
Screaming over and over, the bird-monster's spiraling, gaping black hole of a mouth spat out a cluster of white matter.
One half was brain, and the other was minced white meat, fused so tightly they were inseparable.
The pulsing brain nerves represented the monster's final scrap of reason. But he did not see it that way. In order to shed this negative state, he voluntarily discarded his last shred of sanity, even adding a stomp to crush it completely beneath his foot.
As the creature threw up his hands, his body halted its melting and gradually reverted to a humanoid mass of tentacles.
In that moment, he attained serenity.
*Holy hell, you are far too wicked!*
Wayne's hair stood on end at the sight. Brandishing the blades of his hands, he slashed forward. The bird-monster let out an eerie squawk and raised the knightly swords of both hands to meet him.
Two white horrors tangled together: on one side a humanoid tentacle monster, on the other a humanoid giant eyeball. From any angle, the spectacle was nothing short of villains tearing each other apart in an internal squabble.
The longer Wayne fought, the more energized he became, while the bird-monster grew increasingly sluggish.
Much like Archbishop Yvon, the bird-monster had cast away his brain, tethering his consciousness to a shell of tentacles. He fancied he had gained an eternal, immortal body, when in truth his mind had been assimilated by corruption, steadily eroding his sense of self until utter oblivion.
In less than five minutes, the bird-monster began headbutting trees. Ignoring Wayne's attacks entirely, it focused solely on picking a fight with the timber.
Wayne paused, perplexed, and studied it from a standstill. Facing such a bizarre live specimen for the first time, he weighed the possibility of capturing it to study in the manor's basement.
He soon abandoned the thought. The bird-monster's body began collapsing from within. At first it barely held a humanoid shape, then turned into a pile of muck, and finally dissolved into a squirming clump of white foam whose repeated attempts to thrust out tentacles collapsed for lack of form.
The bird-monster was dead. To Wayne, the creature's demise felt utterly baffling. It had clearly been a troublesome, formidable foe, yet before Wayne could even break a sweat, his opponent had crumpled.
Wayne suspected this had to do with the Lord of the Void. When a corrupted legendary mage bestowed corrupted knowledge upon his followers, it acted like cheap detergent washing through their heads. The believers' minds and judgment deteriorated; driven by desire, they hungered for greater power, marching step by step into the abyss.
Consciousness was the key to everything. Without a mind, one was nothing.
"Tsk. Whatever I do in the future, I am never becoming a cultist!"
Wayne dismissed his fusion with the Book of Greed and raised his hands, conjuring vine vipers to bury the sickening heap of rotten flesh deep underground.
Leaving such a thing untended would pollute the environment. Sterilizing it with high heat before burial was far safer!
Just as Wayne prepared to set it ablaze, the idol pendant drifted up from the sludge. Golden light coalesced into a humanoid tentacle projection of the Lord of the Void, roaring curses directly at Wayne.
Wayne stood on high alert, green light flaring in his eyes. After the minions, the elite mob, and the demon prime minister, the final boss had finally stepped onto the stage in person.
*Isabella, you disappointed me after all. I truly didn't misjudge you!*
Wayne braced himself to go all out. The Lord of the Void was no ordinary mongrel. Wayne only hoped that Isabella had managed to sink her teeth into him before dying, wounding him severely—preferably leaving him with a single drop of health.
Wayne's mind raced through a dozen battle and retreat plans, but the Lord of the Void never launched an attack. Instead, he simply howled like a shrew hurling abuses on the street for a good ten minutes.
Only then did Wayne realize that this was no demon king personally descending to strike down the hero; it was merely the frustrated howling of a sore loser.
At that thought, Wayne silently raised a middle finger.
The Lord of the Void erupted in fury. Already teetering erratically between sanity and madness, the sight drove him straight into hysterical, unbridled frenzy.
"I will come for you! I will never let you go...!"
"Just wait! I will tear you limb from limb and imprison your soul in the Void for all eternity!!"
With a loud crack, the idol pendant suspended midair shattered into fragments, dissolving into golden dust that melted into the air.
"You'd better hurry up, then. If you take too long, there's no telling who will be tearing whom limb from limb," Wayne retorted with a cold sneer, flicking another middle finger at the empty sky.
"Young Master Wayne!"
The butler's call echoed from afar as he rushed over to reinforce him, accompanied by three maids armed to the teeth.
Wayne waved his hand to clear the scene, restoring the disorderly grove to its original state before turning to walk toward the butler and maids, directing everyone to fall back and hold the manor.
It was hard to tell whether the Lord of the Void had more tricks up his sleeve, or what state the town was in now. To be safe, returning to home turf and preparing for battle was the best course.
***
Evening gradually fell, and Enrold Town was terrifyingly quiet. Not a single light shone across the entire settlement; it resembled a gate of dread crouching low, quietly awaiting reckless intruders.
Wayne felt uneasy. He rejected the butler's offer to send a maid into town to scout, calling Xifei instead. Her office assistant reported that Xifei's whereabouts were unknown, and that she could not be reached in the short term.
"Strange. Doesn't Teacher work overtime late into the night every day? Why did she leave so early today...?"
Wayne set the receiver down. An hour later, a call came through from the maid tasked with ferrying the intelligence Isabella had gathered back to Londan. Driving at breakneck speed, she had met with Xifei two hours prior and had only just found time to contact Wayne.
Wayne nodded. The intelligence had to be of the utmost importance; otherwise, his mature beauty of a teacher wouldn't have abruptly skipped work. She had always been fiercely career-driven.
Unable to reach Xifei personally, Wayne knew nothing of Isabella's condition, nor could he convey the situation in Enrold Town. He paced about on pins and needles, longing to rush into town at once to investigate, but caution prevailed, and he decided to wait a little longer.
The night passed without incident, yielding to dawn.
Wayne had laid low all night, facing no attacks in the calm waters, yet he still could not reach Xifei the following morning. Unable to hold back any longer, he ordered the butler and maids to fetch handy weapons and take the underground passage into the town's sewers.
This particular drainage line served only members of the Landau family. It was dry and devoid of foul odors. Wayne followed behind Fra, releasing a white carrier pigeon at the exit to survey the scene outside.
What met his eyes were townsfolk collapsed across the ground, lining the streets.
*All dead, every last one!*
Wayne was horrified, cursing the damned Church of the Earth's Core. From this day forth, he swore irreconcilable enmity against evil cults, gambling, and drugs.
The misjudgment lasted only a moment. Realizing the townsfolk were not dead, merely snoring away in deep slumber, Wayne let out a sigh of relief. He scrambled out of the sewer and shook a lady who was leaning against a wall, sleeping soundly.
She slept deeply, impossible to shout awake. He raised a hand, preparing to deliver a stinging slap...
He didn't bring it down.
Instead, he hauled up the gentleman beside her, delivering a crisp forehand and backhand—*crack, crack*—to awaken the slumbering soul.
"Young Master Wayne, you are a gentleman," Fra praised.
"You have a keen eye, Butler."
Wayne waved a hand modestly. Seeing that the bystander remained dead to the world even after two of his favorite face-slaps, Wayne realized the townsfolk had been plunged into deep slumber by magic; physical means would hardly wake them.
Only magic could counter magic!
Wayne abandoned the idea of rousing the townsfolk and cautiously made his way toward the headquarters of the Church of the Earth's Core. Five external mage recruits were draped in the white robes of the cult's followers; having never seen them before, Wayne simply ignored them.
Because he wasn't looking, he carelessly stepped directly onto one man's face.
Wayne refused to apologize. They had it coming.
The town was eerily silent, with peacefully sleeping townsfolk scattered everywhere. Wayne's supernatural senses tripped no alarms, and he reached the chicken farm without encountering any trouble.
Wayne had pieced together a rough idea of how the battle had played out. The Church of the Earth's Core possessed formidable power, enough to summon the Lord of the Void to holler in the open air. Isabella had fought valiantly against overwhelming odds, ultimately sacrificing herself to take down the evil forces in order to protect the townsfolk.
*A good person.* Wayne prepared to head down and recover her corpse.
He instructed the butler to wait outside and strictly avoid touching the eggs, then followed the previous path back down into the underground plaza.
The underground plaza was a scene of utter devastation from the savage battle. Wayne picked his way laboriously across the rubble, finally locating Isabella in a near-collapsed corner.
The scent was right, and she was alive, having fallen unconscious from sheer exhaustion.
Except...
Her figure had changed immensely. Whether from violent diarrhea or starvation, she had grown so slender that she had stunning looks, long legs, a narrow waist, and full curves—she had practically slimmed down out of recognition.
By now, the divine arts had long faded. The faint markings on Isabella's face and her elongated elven ears had vanished, leaving behind only a dyed streak of ink-black hair. Her figure was so dramatically different that she looked like an entirely different person from when they first met.
Wayne hardly knew how to describe it. He revised his assessment from their first meeting: viewed from the front a ridge, from the side a peak—one could only wish to dwell within these mountains.
"Wake up. It's dawn."
Isabella did not wake. Wayne frowned, patted her cheeks, and tried another tactic. "Dinner's ready! Lots of delicious food!"
Isabella vaulted straight up like a leaping carp, staring unblinkingly at Wayne as she swallowed hard. "What are we eating?!"
Bolting upright on death's door, desperate for calories—she truly was on the brink of starving to death.
Chapter 56