Within the small forest beside Lake Starbind, when Gossmore followed the spiritual threads and discovered one of Dorothy’s marionettes stationed there, she decisively impaled it with her blood blade. But that was precisely what Dorothy had been waiting for. Once again enduring a wave of transmitted agony through her dragon mimicry and Moon Crown shard, she acted—controlling the spiritual thread connected to the marionette and manifesting it as it shot from the marionette’s body toward Gossmore. Manifested Spiritual Thread—this was a new ability Dorothy gained after advancing to the Crimson rank of the Spiritual Threads Path. It allowed her to transform normally invisible threads into thin, red strands visible in the physical world. She could release these threads directly from her body or channel them through a marionette that was already linked. While Dorothy could emit many threads herself, each marionette could only extend one—effectively repurposing its existing link. Any living being touched by a manifested spiritual thread would be considered linked to Dorothy. Right now, Dorothy aimed to link Gossmore using the thread from the impaled marionette. Beyond that, several more threads emerged from the soil, attempting to entangle Gossmore as well—these were connected to micro marionettes Dorothy had buried earlier, forming a complete trap of spiritual threads using the bait marionette as the trigger. From the marionette and the earth alike, red spiritual threads surged toward Gossmore. While Dorothy’s threads weren’t exactly slow, they weren’t fast enough to catch a higher-rank Shadow Beyonder, much less an apostolized Crimson-rank Shadow like Gossmore. So while the threads were numerous, they weren’t sufficient to entrap her by speed alone—Dorothy had planned for this. At that moment, the Moonlit Water Hag that had been recovering in Lake Starbind suddenly raised its head from the water and once more unleashed its power, casting another hallucination upon Gossmore. The demon’s power made people see what they expected to see, which was perfect for making a target overlook sudden changes in the environment. Gossmore never imagined she was walking into a trap. Having never seen manifested spiritual threads before, she couldn’t anticipate being ambushed by them. So under the influence of the Water Demon’s power, she didn’t even perceive the threads coming for her—because in her subconscious expectation, no such trap existed. As a result, it wasn’t until the threads were nearly upon her that her instincts finally registered danger. She tried to dodge, but it was too late. “What the—ugh!” Several threads touched her and immediately sank into her body, establishing a direct link. Dorothy infused them with her spirituality, arresting Gossmore’s movements and causing her to momentarily lag. “What the hell is this?!” Feeling an overwhelming constraint, Gossmore roared in fury and began to struggle wildly. Dorothy immediately sensed intense resistance through the connection. Gossmore’s powerful defiance made her extremely difficult to control—Dorothy gritted her teeth and activated damage transfer. She commanded a hidden marionette elsewhere to inflict self-harm, transferring the pain and injury directly to Gossmore’s body. Suddenly, wounds exploded across Gossmore’s form. Blood sprayed from fresh lacerations; her flesh tore open; her spine cracked in several places. Even her skull was pierced in multiple spots. Any one of these would have killed most Chalice Werewolves multiple times over—yet Gossmore didn’t die. Despite these mortally severe wounds, she continued thrashing and howling, fighting the control. Dorothy responded by conducting high-voltage electricity through the threads. Gossmore convulsed violently, her skin rapidly burning and cracking. Her muscles carbonized under the onslaught, but still—she did not perish. Though her resistance weakened, it remained unbroken. “Let me go, you wretched insect!!” Even after pushing the damage transfer technique to the limit of what her spirituality could sustain, Dorothy was still unable to kill the apostolized Gossmore. In her desperation, Gossmore even deepened her transformation into an apostle to reinforce her body’s resilience—ensuring she wouldn’t be crushed to death by Dorothy’s control. In such a moment, Dorothy had only one guaranteed method left: using the Heaven Decree Envoy’s Judgment Thunder, an advanced Crimson-rank version of the Thunder Summoner’s “thunder strike.” If it hit, it could reduce Gossmore to nothing in an instant. But like all thunder-type incantations, it required time and spirituality to charge within cloud cover, and the noise it created during that charge-up was too loud to be masked, even by the Water Demon’s illusions. Never mind that Dorothy had just advanced and was low on all spiritual reserves—even if she had the spirituality, Gossmore’s intense resistance meant there wasn’t enough time to charge Judgment Thunder before the threads were broken. By her calculations, Gossmore would escape before the decree could be completed. But that didn’t mean Dorothy hadn’t prepared another finisher. In the dark sky above, an orange-yellow star suddenly flared to life, rapidly brightening with violent intensity. High in the heavens over Lake Starbind, a flaming meteor trailing a long tail blazed across the sky and plunged toward the ground. At its center was a figure—a knight in heavy armor—none other than Francesco! Once again, he had transformed into a meteor, hurling himself straight toward the corrupted enemy. Dorothy had long anticipated that even after successfully ensnaring Gossmore, she wouldn’t have enough firepower to finish her. So after luring Gossmore into chasing the bait marionette, she sent another marionette to notify Francesco, asking him to seize the moment and unleash his ultimate move. To Francesco, Gossmore was an unambiguous threat—a clear heretic of the Eight-Spired Nest. Not only had they ambushed the advance party, they even schemed against the holy relic pilgrimage group. Now she was even visibly blessed by an evil god—this was the height of sacrilege. Though Dorothy’s side was mysterious, it likely included the so-called “Pritt Guardians” who had helped the advance team. As a Pritt Archbishop, Francesco was familiar with Pritt’s history, and seeing the Mirror Moon Golem’s auto-defense system, he had his own suspicions about these mysterious allies. In any case, faced with such a dangerous foe, Francesco didn’t hesitate to accept Dorothy’s request. While Gossmore chased the decoy, he ascended and began charging his finisher—a precious window of several seconds in a chaotic battlefield. Francesco’s ultimate move involved soaring to great height, wrapping himself in scorching flames, and using his Stone ability to massively increase his own mass—before slamming down like a hammer of divine judgment. It was the same move he’d used upon his arrival: Heavenly Flame Meteor, the signature destructive technique of a Heavenly Flame Saint. If it hit directly, it would reduce Gossmore to ash. And so, trailing a long, fiery tail, Francesco plummeted from the sky, blazing toward the spot where Gossmore remained bound by spiritual threads. Sensing something unnatural, Gossmore instinctively looked upward—only to see a giant fireball rapidly descending toward her. “That damned old zealot… how dare he—now of all times…” Gossmore ground her teeth and appeared to prepare some kind of countermeasure. But at that moment, the six blood blades in her hands—as if sensing danger—began to tremble violently, seemingly trying to break away into blood mist and escape. Gossmore quickly realized what was happening. “You’re not going anywhere, Boade…” At that moment, Gossmore barked out an authoritative command. As soon as her words rang out, the six blood blades immediately stopped trembling—but in their place came a pleading, mournful voice. “Let me go, Gossmore… I beg you… If this goes on, both of us will die!” Hearing that voice, Gossmore let out a sneer and replied coldly. “No… it won’t be both. At least one of us will live… “I command you in the name of the Queen of the Deepweb—Boade, you will obey me absolutely!” She invoked the effect of The Queen’s Procession, using her Witch Regent status to issue a divine-command level order in the name of her god, compelling Boade to execute her will without question. Boade’s body instantly stiffened, his will overridden. Realizing what was happening, he cried out in panic. “No! Gossmore, you can’t do this!” “Why not? You should feel honored by your sacrifice. The Nest will remember your merit.” Ignoring Boade’s pleas, Gossmore continued her actions. She gave up struggling against the spiritual threads binding her limbs and the constant damage being transmitted through them. Instead, she focused entirely on freeing just one arm. She gathered the six blood blades into that sole liberated arm, fusing them into a single massive blood spear radiating a red-black light of ominous power. Then, she took aim at the fire meteor plummeting from the heavens. Realizing what Gossmore intended to do, Dorothy immediately began transmitting damage to Gossmore’s arm via her corpse marionette—so severe it included severing the entire limb, hoping to disable her grip and ruin the attack. But because Gossmore’s body had diverged so far from normal human biology after her apostle transformation, the transferred damage could not precisely match. The injuries instead manifested on other parts of Gossmore’s body—mainly her five other arms. This was a known flaw of the Spiritual Threads Path’s damage transfer ability: when the two linked targets differ too greatly in biological structure or species, precision becomes impossible. A wound inflicted on a human hand won’t accurately map to an animal’s limb. And Gossmore, by this point, was no longer biologically human. Dorothy failed to stop her. Gossmore hurled the blood spear. The weapon, containing the entire power and spirituality of a Crimson-rank being, was thrown with all her might at the descending meteor. A flash of dark red light streaked across the sky—the blood spear met the falling meteor at low altitude. A violent crimson mist exploded outward as the two forces collided, and the meteor’s flames burst forth with even greater ferocity, engulfing the blood mist. A massive explosion erupted over the surface of Lake Starbind. A howling shockwave swept across the battlefield. Waves surged across the lake, trees bent or fell from the blast. In the wake of the blast, a dim ember of fire fell from the sky, crashing to the ground and carving out a moderate-sized crater. A knight clad in heavy armor stumbled forth from the pit, barely managing to rise. His armor was cracked and ruptured in many places, and stained heavily with dried, dark-red blood—Boade’s blood. Boade was dead—sacrificed by Gossmore and transformed into the devastating blood spear meant to stop Francesco. In a head-on collision with the Heavenly Flame Saint, Boade’s death was inevitable. His body didn’t even remain. But the explosive force of his death had greatly injured Francesco, while simultaneously dulling the impact of his meteor strike. When Francesco finally landed, the effect was no longer devastating enough to finish off Gossmore. Staggering out of the crater, Francesco knew an enemy was nearby and immediately began searching for them—but he didn’t realize the danger had already crept up behind him. “Ungh!!!” Suddenly, an excruciating, soul-rending pain tore through him from behind—nearly enough to make him faint. As he collapsed under the unbearable agony, he turned his head and saw a cold-eyed Gossmore standing behind him. His chest had been pierced by a thin blood spike. Gossmore had used the time bought by Boade’s death to escape her restraints, and now struck down Francesco with a lethal blow. And so, overwhelmed by pain, Francesco lost consciousness, falling heavily to the ground. His armor crashed into the dirt with a dull thud. Seeing him fall, Gossmore snorted coldly and, drenched in blood, turned toward the distant Mirror Moon Golem, then shot through the sky toward it. “I know… I know you’re there. You won’t fool me again. I’m coming to finish this…” Muttering to herself, Gossmore’s face darkened with barely restrained fury as she flew with terrible speed toward her final target. Inside the golem, Dorothy frowned deeply. All her spirituality except for Shadow and Silence was nearly depleted. “…Looks like in the end, I can only rely on this.” Standing within the golem, she looked up at the full moon in the sky and its reflection shimmering across the lake, murmuring softly. “Remnant of the Night Sky… legend within the lake… you are now my last hope. “O Moon… are you watching this now, just like that spider was?” As she spoke, Dorothy’s gaze fell upon the moon-shaped ring on her finger. Then, she slowly closed her eyes—and began to channel her remaining spirituality.