Northern part of the Main Continent, Frisland. At dawn, above the northern skies of Aransdel, divine might raged. The frigid giant god who had awakened from the deep sea now brandished His warhammer, sweeping across the heavens aided by radiant divine arrows. He ceaselessly froze and shattered the twisted sky tainted by the power of an evil god, crushing the ever-manifesting black mouths into fragments. Below, the still-conscious beings could only look on in horror at this unfolding scene. "That heretical dragon… has revived again… Didn’t that divine being kill Him just now?" Amanda muttered in shock and confusion as she gazed at the sky full of holes. Across from her, Kramar—equally stunned—immediately responded. "The Northern Tyrant was originally being forcibly controlled by the evil god of the Nether Realm. Now it seems He has broken free. Perhaps that divine being foresaw the initiation of the Earth Grievance Ritual and thus didn’t strike Him down completely…" Kramar analyzed solemnly. Meanwhile, the True Spirit Shaman wore a deeply worried expression. "Is it really safe to treat the Lord of Calamitous Cold as an ally? Still… against a major evil spirit, this may be the only option for now…" As he considered the possibility that the Lord of Calamitous Cold might once again invade the Starfall Continent, anxiety surfaced in the shaman’s eyes. But judging by the current situation, they had no choice but to accept Inut’s help. "Miss Dorothea… please be careful…" Vania added. … As the dragon of the north acted, the True Spirit Shaman and the two cardinals each had different concerns. Elsewhere in the distance, Rachman shook his head in disbelief as he watched. "To think… they turned a foe into an ally. Even gods can switch sides so easily?" "Hah! That’s our Miss Dorothy—taming even such a mighty dragon with ease! Go, Miss Dorothy, smash that disgusting thing to bits!" Nephthys jumped up from the ground, waving her fists and shouting excitedly after seeing Inut’s shift in allegiance. She reasoned that since Dorothy could become a dragon herself, it only made sense that she could subdue another one. Truly, Miss Dorothy never failed to impress. While everyone below reacted differently, above them, Inut, with Dorothy’s support, was efficiently purging the power manifestations of the Cursed Black Skeleton from the physical world—those countless black mouths spewing curses. With the joint efforts of the Radiance Scion and the King of the Frozen Sea, the Cursed Black Skeleton was temporarily unable to harm them at all. Any influence it tried to exert on Aransdel was swiftly wiped away. Faced with this situation, the Cursed Black Skeleton appeared to be at a disadvantage—but that didn’t mean it was powerless. As a true evil god, it now began to resort to more extreme measures. While the conflict in Aransdel raged on, the Cursed Black Skeleton shifted its gaze beyond the city, no longer fixating on this single place protected by divine powers. Instead, it cast its attention—and power—across the entirety of Frisland. At that moment, Dorothy, with the divine eye, sensed a disturbance and immediately shouted a warning to Inut fighting in the sky. "The Cursed Black Skeleton’s power is spreading across the northern continent—it’s preparing to act elsewhere!" she called out. Hearing her, Inut, in dragon-man form, froze for a moment, then quickly sprang into action as if suddenly realizing something. He swung his warhammer again, shattering another frozen spatial plane. Behind the glass-like cracks was a swirling, deep illusion of color—a rift to some inner realm. After opening the rift, Inut’s form began to change violently, wrapped in a storm of frost and snow. When the blizzard faded, what emerged was his true dragon form. Roaring fiercely into the rift, he released a deafening howl. "ROAR!!!" At the same time, high above the already-dim skies of Frisland, countless creeping word-worms began to appear. These text-shaped parasites wriggled across the heavens and gathered together. At the center of their clustering, huge black mouths started to form. The black mouths of the Cursed Black Skeleton now blanketed the entire sky over Frisland. Just as they were about to open, a tremendous, ancient power accompanied by a primordial roar swept across them. All the black mouths struck by the force froze in place, remaining tightly shut. Even the countless word-worms stopped moving. At that moment, Dorothy sensed that the Cursed Black Skeleton’s power infiltration across Frisland had been completely halted. "That thing… was probably trying to curse-kill all living beings within range, turn them into undead slaves, and use them to perform some ritual—another summoning to bring more of its power here… "But for now, I’ve frozen the boundary between the Nether Realm and the physical realm in the north, sealing its incoming power at the threshold." After finishing his roar toward the rift, Inut turned back to speak to Dorothy, who responded solemnly. "How long can you maintain that freezing?" "Not long. I’m much weaker in this form than before. A freeze of this scale across boundaries won’t last. If it keeps attacking full force, I can maybe hold for half an hour at most. After that, it’ll still break through." Inut, still in his dragon form, answered in a low, grave tone. Dorothy immediately pressed further. "Then do you have a plan to stop the Cursed Black Skeleton?" "I do…" As he spoke, Inut looked toward the illusory realm behind the spatial rift and said, "What we’ve been dealing with here in the physical world is just the portion of its power that seeped through—we haven’t actually harmed its true body. If we want to stop it for good, we have to strike deep into the Nether Realm and seriously wound its true form!" "What… directly confront the true body of an evil god…" Dorothy’s expression shifted in shock as she heard Inut’s words, but the dragon only laughed heartily and continued. "Hahaha! Are you scared, little Hyperion scion? If you’re afraid, I’ll just go myself—run along and save your own skin! You’ve done more than enough already. I never expected you to carry Hyperion’s full legacy anyway..." Inut chuckled at her. Hearing his words, Dorothy paused for a moment—then smiled slightly and replied. "No need to provoke me, Northern Emperor. If facing the god’s true body is the only way to stop it, then I won’t look for excuses." "Heh… You’ve got guts! Worthy of your bloodline! No time to waste—let’s go!" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦 With that, Inut flapped his wings and shot toward the void rifts he himself had opened. Seeing this, Dorothy took to the skies, transformed into a streak of golden light, and descended upon the back of the skeletal dragon. Then, in her Radiance Scion form, Dorothy rode the skeletal dragon straight into the spatial fissure, vanishing in an instant. Down below, the conscious citizens of the city could only watch in stunned silence. “Where… are they going?” “Are they… leaving this world behind?” On Requiem Plaza, the two cardinals stared at the spot in the sky where the skeletal dragon and Radiance Scion had disappeared, voicing their growing concern. Not far away, the True Spirit Shaman—eyes still closed—slowly opened his mouth to clarify. “They… are heading deep into the Nether Realm, to confront the source of all this evil. So long as we remain in the physical realm, nothing can truly be resolved…” His words echoed in the surroundings. Hearing this, both Kramar and Amanda were momentarily stunned. Amanda then spoke again, worry in her voice. “Heading deep into the Nether Realm… in other words, they’re going to face the evil god directly? Even if one is a divine skeleton and the other a descended sacred being… can they really defeat the true body of a god?” “I don’t know,” the True Spirit Shaman sighed. After a moment of contemplation, he added. “Things have progressed far beyond what we mortals can influence. All we can do now… is pray—for the courage to face the great evil, and for the fate of this world.” With that, he closed his eyes and floated mid-air, slipping into a meditative silence. Seeing the shaman's gesture, Amanda and Kramar exchanged glances and then quietly closed their eyes as well. Like Vania in the distance, they began to pray in the manner of the Radiance Church. … Following the boundary-freezing roar, the scene in the physical realm, though still bizarre, had largely settled into silence. Riding Inut, Dorothy passed directly into the inner realm. Once they left the physical world, Inut shifted from his dragon form back into his dragon-warrior form and resumed freezing and smashing through space. He used the spatial fissures to leap from one inner realm to another. At first, they traversed the shallows of the Nether Realm. After one such shattered passage, Inut brought Dorothy into a realm of endless frost and snow—the Frost Realm. It was so white and hazy that no concrete landmarks could be seen. Before Dorothy could take in the sights, Inut smashed through space again. They next arrived in a new inner realm beneath a dark red sky devoid of sun or stars. Below was a cracked wasteland stretching to the horizon, filled with twisted black mountains shaped like nightmarish sculptures. Around the peaks swirled countless howling wraiths and evil spirits, and the entire world rang with constant lamentation. This was the Wailing Prison Domain—an auxiliary domain of the Nether Realm. It served as the holding pen for wraiths and malevolent spirits. Legend held that those sent here would be tormented and purified by beings called “wardens” before they could be delivered to the Great Soul. Even here, Inut did not pause. He shattered space again, returning to the main body of the Nether Realm—only this time, far deeper than their first descent. Thus, by repeatedly breaking through space, Inut led a rapid journey across realms. Because the spatial and temporal relationships between inner realms differ, proper navigation was essential to avoid getting lost. With solid guidance, however, such travel could span great distances quickly. At first, Inut navigated by sensing the Cursed Black Skeleton’s power spreading through the inner realm. But after watching his technique twice, Dorothy quickly grasped the method and began giving directions herself. With her Divine Eye offering expert calibration, their progress accelerated sharply. The bizarre kaleidoscope of scenes flashing past Dorothy’s eyes began changing ever more rapidly. Finally, in the depths of the Nether Realm, Inut broke open space one more time and brought Dorothy to their destination: a deeply hidden auxiliary domain. This place… resembled the cosmos itself—utter blackness, void of orientation, stretching into infinite, undifferentiated nothingness in all directions. Floating amid the dark void were countless pale bones—of all shapes and sizes, from humans to beasts to unidentifiable creatures. Some drifted alone, others clustered like stardust forming planetoids through gravity. These bone clusters had varying scales. Some are only dozens or hundreds of meters wide, others thousands or even tens of thousands. The largest were so vast their curvature wasn’t even visible, stretching for thousands of kilometers. From the surface, they looked like infinite hills of bone—unnervingly immense. And there was more than one such skeletal "planet" in this void. “So many bones… It’s terrifying… Even if every creature in the world were killed and stripped to the bone, it might only make up a tiny fraction of what’s here. Where did all this come from…?” Gazing at the surreal sight of these massive white bone-planets drifting through the void, Dorothy spoke in awe. She also noticed something unsettling: these bone-planets weren’t static—they were slowly moving, revolving like real celestial bodies around a central point. Dorothy followed their orbital motion and spotted their “sun”—the center of their gravitational spiral. There, floating at the heart of it all, was a massive irregular black mass, vertically shaped and five or six kilometers long. Upon closer inspection, it became clear. That shape… was a giant, pitch-black skeletal figure, shriveled and emaciated like a dying elder. The giant was curled up like a fetus, limbs tucked inward, bald head bowed into its clasped hands as if weeping silently. Countless shards of black metal floated around its body like debris from something shattered. Around the giant’s wrists were thick black shackles made of the same metal. “That… is the Cursed Black Skeleton?” Dorothy whispered from Inut’s shoulder as she stared at the giant. Inut responded in a low, grim voice. “Looks like it… That feeling—it’s disgusting, but unmistakable. That’s it…” Staring into the distance, Inut gripped his warhammer tighter. “This thing’s curse has seeped into every corner of this domain. Even the barriers between realms are warping near it. I’m not good at spatial manipulation—getting closer by phasing in directly could be risky. Let’s just charge in from this distance!” “It’s time… Hyper’s little cub! Never thought I’d fight side by side with the Flame of Light herself… Hahaha!!” Laughing heartily, Inut spread his wings and shot forward at full speed toward that skeletal “sun”—toward the curled, shriveled black giant. In that very instant, the giant stirred slightly. In the blink of an eye, throughout the boundless black void, in every direction, countless densely packed black mouths materialized and opened all at once—each speaking the same word, aiming straight at the charging god-warrior. “Perish…” The word echoed as a soul-shattering roar, shaking the realm. In response, Inut let out a furious roar of his own. While sprinting through space, he unleashed torrents of blue-black dragon breath in all directions, freezing the curses and the mouths themselves in place. With a mighty swing of his warhammer, he shattered the frozen space and obliterated large swathes of the black mouths along with it. As Inut froze and shattered the endless black mouths, he continued charging toward the curled, emaciated black giant. However, in this space, the black mouths were forming far faster and more abundantly than elsewhere, and Inut’s pace at clearing them couldn’t keep up. Occasionally, a few of these mouths managed to slip through and utter curses at Inut and Dorothy. But before the curse-formed word-worms could fully manifest on their bodies, Inut would freeze them in place, nullifying their effects. Under the Northern Dragon’s assault, the countless white bone “planets” drifting in the black void began to stir. Glowing green eyes lit up in the skulls of the dead, and with anguished howls, they broke free from the planetary surfaces. The skeletal remains assembled into towering bone beasts and lunged at Inut—only to be swiftly frozen or destroyed by him. As he charged forward, more black mouths grew directly from Inut’s body, but Dorothy responded quickly, destroying them precisely with divine arrows of light. While she couldn’t manage the swarm of distant black mouths, she was more than capable of defending Inut from close-range breaches. All the while, Dorothy observed the distant Cursed Black Skeleton. At this range, her Divine Eye allowed her to see more clearly into the essence of the curled black giant. Through Lantern perspective, Dorothy nearly saw through its entire nature. The black giant wasn’t merely a god. It was a vessel. Cradled in its arms, buried within its curse-laden divine essence, was a darker, higher-level divine presence. To that lurking divinity, the black giant was nothing more than a shell—one that enveloped, suppressed, and simultaneously was dominated by the god within. “I see it… I see it clearly… the evil god… the true nature of the Cursed Black Skeleton… it’s not a real god at all. It’s just the crude reconstruction of a divine corpse—nothing but a pitiable puppet... I see it—Evil Spirit King, King of the Underworld… Takaoma… inside the Cursed Black Skeleton, clutched within its embrace…” With radiant candlelight shining in her eyes, Dorothy murmured aloud. Hearing her, Inut grunted mid-battle. “What? That loser is hiding in there? Hmph... And he dares call himself King of the Underworld?” Inut scoffed. Dorothy continued, her voice steady as she analyzed. “Yes… Back then, the divine remnant of the Wordbearer Nab was turned into the Black Coffin to seal the King of the Underworld. But over thousands of years of battering the seal, the King of the Underworld nearly destroyed it. The Black Coffin is now broken beyond repair—only the faintest trace of its binding still barely holds. “The King of the Underworld must’ve absorbed the coffin’s remains, forcibly poured his divinity into them, and reconstructed a puppet. That puppet usurped Nab’s divine seat and used his name to interfere with the physical world… “This Cursed Black Skeleton is nothing more than a vessel. Its essence is just like yours—a divine corpse. But it’s filled with the King of the Underworld’s power and forcibly elevated to a true god’s level. It has major flaws, yes—but its rank is real. We’re not just here to wound the Cursed Black Skeleton—we need to strike the King of the Underworld inside!” Fixing her gaze forward, Dorothy spoke gravely. Inut, hearing her, replied again. “The Soul Tongue, huh? Hmph… I fought him once. He was a decent opponent. To see him reduced to this pathetic state… let me end your suffering. Let me free you from your defeat.” As he spoke, Inut accelerated, surging toward the curled black giant with renewed speed. But just then, the Cursed Black Skeleton changed tactics. In the surrounding space, it wasn’t just endless black mouths anymore—enormous, flat, dried black hands suddenly materialized out of thin air. Each finger stretched over a kilometer, capable of seizing Inut in a single grip. They lunged toward him from all directions. Inut opened his maw and unleashed dragon breath to freeze them—but these hands weren’t like the mouths. Though slowed by the breath, they weren’t instantly frozen. With no other option, Inut began evasive maneuvers, narrowly dodging their grasp. These hands were the solidified manifestation of extremely condensed curse power. They had transcended normal curse mechanics and now acted as physical attacks that could erode both soul and flesh. Unlike dispersed curses that activated upon contact, these needed to grab their target to trigger. But due to their density, they were far more resistant to Inut’s freezing powers—able to push through where dispersed curses failed. Thus, alongside the constant barrage of black mouths, the Cursed Black Skeleton now summoned these corporeal curse-hands to seize Inut. While clearing away mouths with his ice, Inut now also had to dodge these enormous hands from all sides. The battle was quickly becoming difficult. The endless mouths and hands soon overwhelmed Inut’s rhythm. His advance toward the black giant slowed—he was clearly being bogged down. “Persistent wretch…” Seeing Inut falter, the Cursed Black Skeleton intensified its assault. From the curled, desiccated form of the black giant, countless cracks began to open—on arms, legs, back… all over. Within these fissures, massive black mouths appeared. The mouths on the Cursed Black Skeleton’s own body wriggled violently, unleashing a sound that shook the entire realm. “Perish… perish… perish… perish…” As they opened and shut, these mouth-born utterances were so sharp and ear-piercing that the curse-word-worms on Inut’s body multiplied rapidly—at a rate hundreds of times faster than from ordinary black mouths. The curses of the Cursed Black Skeleton echoed across the realm and spilled into neighboring inner realms. In the Wailing Prison Domain of the Nether Realm, countless wraiths, spirits, and creatures—upon hearing even a trace of these utterances—twisted and howled in agony before vanishing completely. Faced with this exponentially amplified curse, Inut froze the curse-worms on his body at extraordinary speed, suppressing the effects. But this came at a cost—his movements grew noticeably slower. His freezing power couldn’t be used on himself forever. If he kept this up, he would eventually entomb himself in eternal ice. Recognizing the dire situation, Inut dodged yet another grasp from a black hand and fired a burst of blue-black dragon breath toward the distant giant. But before it could reach, two more black mouths emerged from the giant and joined the chorus. With that, even the divine dragon breath was annihilated mid-flight—erased without a trace. “Hmph… impressive…” Inut muttered coldly. At this moment, Dorothy was frozen together with him in a crystalline block of ice—just like how he had shielded Fabrizio once before. Now, Inut bore the brunt of the curse to protect her. “The situation’s getting tricky, Northern Emperor… We may not be able to press in any farther. We might need to change strategy…” From within the icy shell, Dorothy spoke while watching the battlefield. Inut responded amidst his grueling effort. “Change strategy? Hah… What plan could you possibly have now?” “I do have one. Risky, yes, but at this point, we have no other choice. “Honored Northern Emperor, could you allow me to take command from here? And have you support me instead…” Dorothy made her request. Inut, surprised by her words, paused for a moment and asked bluntly. “You? That scrawny frame wants to lead a divine battle? You want me to assist you? And what power do you think you have to resist these cursed words?” “Explaining would take too long. Just—please trust me, for the sake of the journey you once shared with my grandfather. Let me observe for just a little longer, and then, in the spirit of Northern Sea tradition, let us cast everything aside for one final gamble!” Dorothy spoke calmly. Hearing her, Inut paused, then chuckled. “Ha… amusing. You’re just like Hyper, girl… If you’re not afraid, then neither am I. Let’s do it!” As they continued speaking, Inut dodged more grasping curse-hands. But with the black giant’s mouth-born curses increasing, the curse build-up on Inut’s body was growing severe. The ice sealing to suppress it grew thicker—his movements slowed further, and he struggled to keep up. Eventually, Inut could no longer evade effectively. As a massive curse-hand lunged, he froze in place—and the colossal black hand seized his massive body entirely. With Inut caught, the battle seemed over. Even the Cursed Black Skeleton itself relaxed, its many mouths beginning to close. But then—an upheaval. Light. A flash of golden radiance pierced the darkness—splitting open the black hand’s little finger. From that breach, a figure wrapped in divine light burst forth at high speed. Inut’s massive body was nowhere to be seen. It was Dorothy who had emerged! She now appeared in an entirely new form. Over her Radiance Scion body, she wore a heavy suit of armor! This armor was made entirely of bone, adorned with black icy jade. Northern Sea in style, the armor was ornate yet battle-worn, covered in cracks and scars from past battles. Flying through the dark void, her black cape billowed behind her. A dragon-headed helmet covered her entire head, and in her claw-like gauntlets she gripped a radiant, gold-glimmering longsword with clear markings of Radiance Church craftsmanship. Seeing armored Dorothy break free, the curled black giant immediately reacted—the mouths on its body, which had just started closing, all opened again and spewed forth venomous curses. Just like how the Cursed Black Skeleton had previously concentrated its curses on Inut, it now shifted its full focus onto Dorothy, attempting to curse her to death. But unlike Inut, Dorothy didn’t possess the ability to manipulate divine ice—she couldn’t freeze the curse’s effects away. Faced with such overwhelming malice, Dorothy should have been instantly annihilated… “Perish… perish… perish… perish…” The voices of the curses echoed in unison throughout the realm, all targeting the armored warrior flying in radiant light. And yet—contrary to the expectations of the Cursed Black Skeleton… and even the King of the Underworld himself—these curses had no effect! Amid the resounding chants, Dorothy continued flying toward the shadowed giant at high speed—her mobility completely unimpeded. There were none of the drawbacks Inut had suffered from self-freezing. No delay, no side effects. What was going on? Even the mind of the King of the Underworld, ancient and twisted though it was, briefly flickered with shock. But upon closely observing Dorothy’s condition, he quickly realized what had happened. Sensory freezing. Dorothy had used Inut—transformed into her armor—to freeze and insulate herself from all external sensory input. She had made herself completely incapable of perceiving the curse in any form. A curse, at its essence, was a word of power, a spiritual utterance. And a “word” required not just to be spoken—but to be perceived. For a curse to take effect, someone had to hear it, see it, feel it. If no living being perceived it—then it held no meaning. And now, Dorothy—by fusing with Inut’s corpse armor—had sealed off her five traditional senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Even her sixth sense—spiritual intuition—had been locked away. She had cut herself off entirely from the world. She could no longer perceive anything. The curse-words of the black mouths could be transmitted in any form—not just sound. They could appear visually as words, be smelled, tasted, felt—detected by soul. Even those stripped of all physical senses could still “hear” the curse through the soul. That was the strength of a divine curse. Lower-rank curse casters usually required a medium, leveraging the occult connection between the medium and the target to transmit the curse. With a strong enough medium, they could “reach” the target’s spiritual sense from afar. In fact, for mid-level casters, using a medium was more effective than speaking the curse aloud. But Dorothy now had no senses, no channel through which any curse could affect her. Even Inut, now fused as armor, had sealed off his own senses. And in that void of sensation—no form of curse could reach them. If there is no one to hear a word, then there is no word. “Heh…” Having realized their trick, the King of the Underworld Takaoma released a derisive chuckle. Not because it didn’t work—but because he found the method foolish. Yes, sealing all senses could nullify the curse—but then how could she defend herself from anything else? With a mere thought, Takaoma summoned a massive black hand in Dorothy’s path. It reached out to grab her head-on. This hand was no curse—it was pure eroding force, and thus could affect even a fully insulated Dorothy. And since she had no senses, she shouldn’t even know the hand was coming—much less dodge it. Or so logic would suggest. In reality, as the hand lunged, Dorothy made a swift, agile maneuver, evading the grasp with ease and continuing her advance toward the black giant. Seeing this, Takaoma froze in disbelief. He immediately ordered hordes of skeletal horrors to swarm from all directions. Dorothy, undeterred, swung her blade—the radiant sword extended with a golden edge over a hundred meters long. With precise sweeps, she sliced through the charging skeleton fiends, scattering them effortlessly. As Dorothy pressed on, Takaoma hurled more black hands at her and summoned waves of cursed monsters. But even without sensory input, Dorothy responded perfectly—dodging, countering, slicing through with flawless movement. She acted as if she could see everything, even though she should have been blind and deaf to the world. Takaoma was stunned. Even as the so-called King of the Underworld, he couldn’t comprehend it. How could one fight so perfectly—so fluidly—while being utterly cut off from all sensation? Was it possible that this world held other senses beyond the ones he knew? That thought consumed him, shook him to the core. But the truth was far simpler. Dorothy was not “interacting” with the world without perceiving it. She was merely repeating the results of her own divine-level simulations. Yes… simulation. The reason Dorothy could counter every assault with precision was because she had already predicted everything. In her Radiance Scion mode, Dorothy possessed the Divine Eye—able to observe all things, from the mundane to the mystical, from the microscopic to the cosmic. So long as no deity-level Shadow interference occurred, she could observe everything. While supporting Inut earlier, Dorothy had barely needed to exert combat strength. Thus, she had lowered the Radiance Scion output, and temporarily retracted part of her Heaven’s Arbiter divinity—just like how Fabrizio had once reclaimed his curse-divinity. With that retracted power, she poured it into enhancing her own cognition—elevating her thinking into the realm of gods. With her Divine Eye, Dorothy could observe everything in this battlefield: energy, matter, divine factors, mystical principles. Down to the molecules and cells. She remembered it all—astronomical quantities of data—and used divine thought to simulate every outcome, accounting for the countless variables of the battlefield, studying the fight between Inut and the Cursed Black Skeleton in exhaustive detail. Divine perception + divine thought allowed Dorothy to become, within this limited space, a lesser Laplace’s Demon—calculating the future with precision. She selected the most probable scenarios and formed a perfect battle plan. Once done, she returned the divine cognition to the Radiance Scion power core and restored her combat capacity. Now, moving in complete sensory void, Dorothy was executing that plan exactly, step by step—reenacting a sequence she had already lived through in her mind. She had never seen the Cursed Black Skeleton’s attack. She had simply anticipated it. Through pure calculation, Dorothy flawlessly dodged all obstacles—rapidly closing in on the curled black giant. Faced with an opponent who could counter all ordinary attacks, Takaoma changed tactics. He ordered the Cursed Black Skeleton to grow black mouths across its body at maximum density. Disgusting and innumerable, they all opened at once and shrieked. “AAAAAHHHHH—!!!” These were no longer curses. They were pure divine soul-screams, violent enough to shake the realm. The screeches cracked space itself. This unguardable shockwave, capable of tearing both body and soul, struck Dorothy at close range. But it didn’t shatter her. The corpse armor formed from Inut took the full brunt of the blow, shielding Dorothy’s body—and though it began to fracture, it held. For now. Though the divine soul-screech was incredibly powerful, Dorothy—shielded by Inut—continued pressing forward without pause! Seeing that even the soul-screech was ineffective, the Cursed Black Skeleton, under the control of the King of the Underworld, activated its final resort. The curled black giant began to slowly stir. Its bare, emaciated head lifted from between its hands, revealing its face for the first time. That face was completely flat—where its eyes, ears, and nose should have been, there was only a twisting cluster of cursed script. And in the center of that black face was a single, tightly sewn-shut black mouth, stitched together with thick dark lines. That mouth… was the true mouth of the Cursed Black Skeleton. When opened, it could unleash its final utterance, the ultimate curse. Under the dominion of the King of the Underworld, the black stitches sealing the giant’s mouth began to stretch taut, as the mouth slowly opened. The threads looked ready to snap. But just then, Dorothy, still following her meticulously calculated plan, raised her hand and emitted a strange signal using the power of the Lantern. When that invisible signal rippled out across space, something unexpected happened. Between the black giant’s hands, the strange metal shackles it wore suddenly glowed eerily in response. A triangular Stone sigil lit up on the cuffs, and a wave of complex patterns began to spread from them, extending across the giant’s entire body. In an instant, the black giant’s soul-scream stopped. The stitches sealing its mouth shimmered with a metallic luster and abruptly tightened—snapping shut the mouth just as it was about to open. The unexpected reaction caught Takaoma off guard. “Craftsman!!!” Yes… this was the failsafe left behind by the God of Craftsman, the original creator of the Black Coffin. Though most of the coffin had been destroyed, a tiny remnant of its structure still remained: the black shackles and the stitching that sealed the giant’s mouth. These were the most durable, unyielding parts of the Black Coffin—still retaining a trace of the Craftsman God’s divinity, an immovable, eternally enduring, incorruptible power of Stone. Dorothy, with her divine eye, had long since identified the lingering “Stone” divinity hidden in the shackles—and had also discovered a latent program encoded into it. It was likely a safeguard left behind by the Craftsman and the King of Light. By simulating the power of the Lantern, Dorothy could emit the signal needed to trigger the Stone divinity’s embedded protocol, temporarily binding the Cursed Black Skeleton—this forcibly reconstructed husk of the Black Coffin. With the Craftsman God’s final trap activated, Dorothy successfully suppressed the Cursed Black Skeleton’s last counterattack. Everything now seemed to be turning in her favor… Dorothy had reached the black giant. The battle appeared decided… If the Cursed Black Skeleton had been their only enemy, this might have been the end. But from the very beginning, Dorothy and Inut were not just fighting this puppet giant. Their true enemy had always been the far more malevolent force controlling it… “Do not rejoice too soon… pitiful usurper!!” With a thunderous roar, the black giant began to move again. Its curled-up body slowly uncoiled, limbs spreading apart. And cradled within its chest… emerged a second form. It was… a massive skull—wreathed in roaring, ghostly blue flames, lighting up the dark void. As it surfaced from within the black giant’s chest, it swelled rapidly, expanding at unnatural speed. Upon closer look, this skull was not a single object—it was composed of countless smaller skulls, compacted into one colossal shape. This… was the true evil god imprisoned within the Black Coffin! The greatest evil spirit in all of Shamanism! The highest object of worship in the Nether Coffin Order! The usurper of the Great Soul… The King of the Underworld—Takaoma. Now that the Cursed Black Skeleton had failed, the King of the Underworld finally began to reveal his true form. And now—he would deal with these blasphemous intruders personally. His power… was immeasurable. But Dorothy had been waiting for exactly this. As the spectral skull began expanding within the chest of the black giant, Dorothy had already reconfigured her radiant longsword back into the shape of a bow. She had anticipated this moment. But what formed on her radiant sacred bow was not the golden light of Lantern. It was a deep, spectral violet… a color not of Lantern. She loosed the arrow. The violet light shot forth—piercing the air—and landed directly in the gaping, arrogant mouth of the just-emerged King of the Underworld.