In the nighttime over Busalet, the black winds howled and the dust swept up to the heavens. In the sky, only the faint light of the stars and moon cast a glimmer over the land. Atop a barren boulder amidst a vast sandy expanse, Jawadin—wearing a flamboyant robe—was kneeling in reverence. Standing before him was his superior in the Longevity Church, the High Chieftain Amuyaba, who took the form of an old crone. He was here to report the latest developments in Bastis. “What? You're saying... grain merchants suddenly came and sold them food?” “Yes, a merchant claiming to be from Addus, leading a large caravan, sold a massive amount of grain to that little nun. I did a rough estimate—it's enough for her and her people to eat for at least another month. Forcing them to surrender by cutting off their food supply in the short term is no longer an option,” Jawadin reported. Hearing this, Amuyaba frowned slightly. “On Busalet’s soil, at a time like this… a normal trade caravan still dares to travel? And they just happened to find that little nun at the most critical moment? That’s clearly suspicious… Have you investigated the background of that caravan?” “I tried to monitor them with bugs, but unfortunately, the little nun seemed to have extended her security precautions to them as well. The bugs I sent out were discovered and eliminated shortly after. Regrettably, I couldn’t gather any further intel…” Jawadin kept his head lowered as he spoke. Hearing this, Amuyaba fell silent in thought. At that moment, Jawadin subtly lifted his head at an angle and asked. “Chieftain… Since we can’t pressure that nun for now, what should our next move be?” After a pause, Amuyaba slowly opened her mouth. “For now, we should—” She had barely started when Jawadin’s expression suddenly hardened. In a flash, he thrust his hand forward at high speed—aiming straight for Amuyaba. Amuyaba reacted with uncanny speed for someone of her apparent age. Her withered hand shot out and seized his arm, immediately crushing his wrist bone. Despite the fracture, Jawadin made no cry of pain. Instead, from the palm of his gripped hand, a faintly glowing red filament emerged, piercing toward Amuyaba at close range. Before she could fully react, the thread had struck the very hand she used to grab him. The filament linked with her body—then vanished. In that moment, Jawadin had already become one of Dorothy’s corpse marionettes. Using him as a conduit, Dorothy extended her manifested spiritual thread and successfully connected it to Amuyaba at point-blank range. In fact, even before becoming a corpse marionette, Jawadin had already been profiled into a marionette by Dorothy. She had gradually marionettized the attendants around him, frequently interacting with him to steadily build up her profiling progress—until she completed it. Once fully mimicked, Dorothy gained access to all the intelligence Jawadin possessed—including the existence of Amuyaba. From his memories, she learned that due to threats from the Radiance Church, Amuyaba was extremely cautious about secrecy: forbidding Jawadin from even mentioning her within Bastis, and never allowing him to contact her remotely, instead insisting on meeting face-to-face at predetermined times and locations. According to Jawadin, Amuyaba had a wide-range sensory ability involving something called “floating spores.” She believed only face-to-face contact was truly safe. This explained why Dorothy had been surveilling him for so long without gleaning useful intel. Upon learning of Amuyaba’s special detection method, Dorothy deliberately avoided sending in corpse marionettes carrying spiritual threads. Instead, after profiling Jawadin, she planted a Marionette Mark in him and had him pray to Akasha to open an information channel—before going to meet Amuyaba. Since there were no outward signs of mystical tampering, Amuyaba saw nothing unusual and conversed normally. Then, at the critical moment, Jawadin suddenly struck, allowing Dorothy to use the Marionette Mark as a gateway to link her spiritual thread to Amuyaba through him. At the moment of connection, Amuyaba abruptly sensed a powerful, invisible force spreading from the red threads across her entire body—attempting to seize full control. She reacted instantly. Her captured wrist split off automatically. The severed hand warped, then violently exploded into several massive flying insects, scattering in all directions. With that, the invasive control force instantly vanished. Amuyaba’s body was composed entirely of insects. Though they shared a single soul, each was also a distinct lifeform. By treating the infected limb as a separate entity, she prevented the influence from spreading to her whole body. By sacrificing the bugs in her wrist, Amuyaba halted the control’s spread. She then opened her mouth wide and expelled a swarm of tiny insects, which charged toward Jawadin—boring through his eyes, nose, and mouth. Jawadin began to shriek in agony as blood gushed from his orifices. His skin rippled grotesquely, then began to rupture, erupting with swarms of densely packed insects. Most of these were Amuyaba’s own, having rapidly bred by feeding on Jawadin’s flesh and spirituality. But some had been raised by Jawadin himself—and Dorothy had marked them with Marionette Marks as well. At that moment, she reconnected her spiritual threads to them. Under Dorothy’s control, countless insects flew from the dying Jawadin and swarmed toward the newly one-handed Amuyaba. Her own bugs immediately attacked and devoured Dorothy’s, shredding many in an instant. But still, several of Dorothy’s insects reached her. From them, she extended multiple spiritual threads, linking to various parts of Amuyaba’s body. This time, seven threads connected simultaneously—including one to the head. Overwhelmed by the force, Amuyaba didn’t have time to fully disassemble herself before a surge of electricity coursed through her body. “Ahhhh—!” Amid a crackling blaze of light and energy, thick smoke billowed from her body. Amuyaba screamed in agony, her mouth forced wide open as dense clouds of insects spewed forth. But before those insects could scatter, several figures could be seen flying rapidly toward the battlefield from the distance—Dorothy’s other corpse marionettes. They had been waiting just outside the “floating spores’” detection range and now launched toward the battle zone at high speed. Facing Amuyaba as she spewed dense swarms of insects atop the massive boulder, several of Dorothy’s corpse marionettes hurled iron “grenades” from their bodies. Guided by magnetic force, these grenades streaked through the air toward Amuyaba and exploded at close range. In the ensuing violent blasts, her entire body and the massive rock she stood upon were engulfed in a blinding golden blaze. These grenades were standardized explosive incendiary devices issued to the Church’s troops, embedded with spiritual storage items and sigils. Their destructive power far surpassed that of ordinary explosives, and the heat they generated was beyond anything conventional explosives could achieve. When the blaze subsided, silence fell over the entire desert rock. The whistling night winds swept through, blowing away the lingering dust and revealing what lay beneath. Where Amuyaba had once stood now knelt a charred, twisted “corpse.” Its hands were covering its face, frozen in an expression of agony as though caught in the throes of death. Dorothy’s corpse marionettes slowly landed on the rock’s platform, cautiously advancing toward the scorched body at the center. Just moments ago, the lifeform linked to Dorothy’s spiritual threads had perished. Under normal circumstances, this should have marked the complete death of Amuyaba. Yet Dorothy remained on guard, instructing her marionettes to cautiously approach. But as they drew closer, something went wrong. The marionettes suddenly began to exhibit alarming symptoms—retching, vomiting, spasming uncontrollably. They collapsed, unable to maintain balance, their skin rippling wildly as if something were crawling beneath the surface. “They’ve been infected… but when?” Dorothy furrowed her brow in thought. What she didn’t know was that among the visible insects Amuyaba had released earlier were countless microscopic eggs, invisible to the naked eye. When faced with the approaching flames, the visible insects rapidly clustered into “insect balls,” shielding those at the center. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦 Meanwhile, the eggs within them underwent spore transformation, allowing them to survive extreme conditions. After the blaze passed, the spores reverted and hatched into countless nearly invisible larvae. These tiny creatures—though unseen—could still fly, and they silently infiltrated the marionettes’ bodies through various entry points, breeding rapidly and causing a systemic infection. As Dorothy’s marionettes collapsed in agony, the charred “corpse” that had once been Amuyaba’s shell suddenly cracked open, splitting along several deep seams. From within, a deafening hum erupted as dense swarms of black insects surged out, spreading wildly in all directions. Bzzzzzz... The sheer number of insects pouring out from Amuyaba’s body was staggering. They spiraled upward, so dense that they completely blocked out the moonlight over the rock. The total mass of the swarm already vastly exceeded Amuyaba’s original body weight—but still, more kept pouring forth. Meanwhile, the marionettes lying on the ground also erupted. Their skin split apart as swarms of insects burst free. Amuyaba’s swarm had devoured them entirely—and in doing so, had gained something vital: the discovery of Dorothy’s spiritual threads. Having located the threads inside the corpse marionettes, Amuyaba immediately infected them. In an instant, countless pathogens surged through the threads toward their source. Elsewhere in the surrounding desert, several figures collapsed—blisters and pustules spreading rapidly across their skin. These new victims were also Dorothy’s marionettes. At present, Dorothy did not control her combat units directly; instead, she layered her control through successive proxy marionettes, each relaying control through spiritual threads in a networked system. Amuyaba’s infection followed that structure—initially only reaching the lowest-level relay nodes. But after infecting several of these low-level marionettes, Amuyaba realized they weren’t the true controller. So she continued climbing—sending her pathogens higher through the network, infecting more advanced relay nodes. Soon, marionettes stationed throughout the desert and linked to the spiritual thread network began collapsing in sequence. Seeing this, Dorothy severed the upper links—unable to cut the already-infected threads, but still able to protect the uninfected ones. Even with those links cut, Amuyaba didn’t stop. In the moment before the final link was severed, she had sensed a convergence point within the complex network—a singular destination to which all operational threads ultimately led. Just as she initiated the final infection, the thread snapped—but not before she confirmed the direction of the signal. Amuyaba was certain that the entity connected to all spiritual threads—the true controller behind all the corpse marionettes—was nearby. She would not let her escape. With a thunderous hum, the massive insect swarm spiraling above the rock moved as one. Guided by Amuyaba’s revelation, they surged in a single direction. The swarm moved like a black, living wall—a terrifying sandstorm composed entirely of writhing, vile insects. Anything alive caught in its path would be devoured to feed its exponential growth. With such a swarm, Amuyaba could easily consume every living being in an entire city. Her locust-like swarm tore through the desert toward its target. After flying for some time, it finally caught sight of a fleeing figure in the distance. Upon spotting the target, the entire swarm surged forward like a tidal wave. The helpless, retreating silhouette was engulfed in an instant—an ocean of insects burrowing into flesh, devouring from the inside out. But even as the swarm shredded its prey, high above the desert, beyond the clouds several kilometers in the sky—something immense floated silently. It was a gargantuan steel vessel, far larger than any standard airship of the current era. Over 400 meters long, it had the elongated form of a noble’s coffin. Countless complex steel structures clung to its sides and top, bristling with sharp angles and thick spikes. It looked monstrous and dreadful beneath the cold moonlight. Sacred symbols glowed across its hull. If this floating titan were a ship, its flanks bristled with over a dozen turret mounts of varying size. Atop its coffin-like deck stood two four-barreled heavy cannons, stacked at staggered heights. Behind them rose a gothic cathedral-like bridge. Scrolls covered in densely packed scripture hung from the bridge’s rigging, fluttering solemnly in the night wind. At the ship’s prow, the armored ram had opened to reveal a gaping maw like a beast’s mouth. Within, a blazing golden orb of condensed energy hovered—its radiance intensifying as it charged, steeped in mounting spirituality. At the cathedral's peak, atop the spire, a ghostly white figure stood motionless, gazing coldly downward. “Holy Steel Vessel – Annihilation Nun, Sin-Purging Radiant Light primed. Mode: Scorch. Fire.” Spoken with frigid calm, the nun known as Ivy whispered these words. Then, the golden energy orb at the ship’s prow exploded into light. The radiance was so intense it illuminated the entire desert night as if turning it into day. The vessel became the sun itself, transforming the surrounding wasteland into a bright, glowing landscape. Beneath the searing heat, the once-cold desert floor skyrocketed in temperature—surpassing even the harshest daytime heat in seconds, and still climbing, breaking all historical records. Any creature caught in the light—regardless of size—was instantly annihilated, turned to ash in a flash of flame. The vast swarm of insects, previously surging like a tsunami, vaporized in an instant, consumed by smoke and erased in the blinding blaze. The fallen marionettes' exposed skin incinerated, and their bones crumbled into dust. Even the sand began to melt, transforming into pools of molten glass. Within that blinding, inescapable light—all traces of life were effortlessly obliterated.