As the crimson gas filled the sealed arcade, vision became incredibly blurred, nearly useless.

  The ground was covered with toxic liquid that flowed slowly but persistently, corrupting and dissolving everything it touched.

  Monica floated within the haze, her weightless form the only thing keeping her from the corrosive pool below.

  The emergency signal from Tiger’s talisman pulsed against her hand—she knew exactly what it meant.

  The main office was under attack. Tiger was in mortal danger.

  But she was also trapped within Renda’s toxic domain.

  Monica couldn’t see her through the dense crimson gas, but she could feel the corrosive tingle at the edges of her eyes, a warning of just how poisonous the environment had become.

  The air itself was turning lethal. Her repulsion field kept the gas from touching her skin, but to repel the air entirely would mean suffocation.

  Breathing it in, meant inhaling toxins. She could hold her breath, but not indefinitely.

  Under these conditions, finishing Renda quickly would be difficult. The other option—dropping the arcade-wide seal to clear the gas—was even worse.

  It would release the toxic liquid and vapor into the streets of Pipra, causing untold civilian casualties.

  Monica was also certain Renda was planning something more sinister. The woman was willing to push this to the brink.

  If it came to that, Monica was prepared to use one of her most powerful, equally destructive spells.

  She had already positioned her two officers within barriers.

  If she had to unleash that spell, it could shatter their cages. At that moment, She would use a precisely directed kinetic wave to launch Sera and Aers high and far—most likely toward the main office, where they would be desperately needed.

  Renda, on the other hand, had already moved beyond a direct confrontation.

  Using her corrupted liquid, she had sculpted several false figures—lumpy, humanoid shapes of toxic mud, each containing a core of flesh.

  Each was a trap, imbued with volatile explosion spells. Their purpose was not to kill, but to confuse, distract, and misdirect.

  When Monica moved to strike what she thought was Renda, one would detonate. The blast wouldn't breach her defenses, but it would demand her attention, her focus, her power to deflect.

  If she ignored them, attacks would come from another direction, from another mud-folk, in a relentless, draining cycle. And if she destroyed all of them? It didn't matter.

  In this environment, Renda could create as many as she needed. The raw materials were everywhere.

  While Monica would be occupied with this puppet theater, Renda was weaving her true attack.

  Throughout the arcade, hidden within the roiling gas and submerged beneath the liquid, several Green Pillar spell circles began to form. Their activation was delayed.

  She would unleash them at the moment Monica was most distracted and drained, again and again, until she fell.

  Her other plan was even more brutal, hidden and elegantly cruel.

  She knew the arcade's magical barrier did not block internal magic. It only contained physical matter.

  Projecting power outward was difficult, but not impossible. With enough focus, a spell could be forced through the barrier, at least for a short time.

  She was preparing a single concentrated spell; Toxic Mana Surge.

  She would cast it at the ground just outside the barrier. The spell did not need distance. It only needed a point of infection.

  A single meter outside would be enough. Once the corrupting mana touched the earth, it would take root like a seed.

  It would spread on its own, seeping through the soil, tainting the groundwater, releasing a slow and invisible miasma into the city’s air.

  The horror would move quietly, a creeping death Monica could not stop from within her sealed prison.

  Lucien observed the crimson hellscape with a detached gaze. He inhaled the toxic air as if it were a summer breeze, to his body these lethal toxins were meaningless.

  His eyes scanned the gas-blurred arcade, the shimmering barriers, the distant, tense aura of Monica locked in her invisible struggle.

  In a low, almost inaudible voice, he spoke to the empty air beside him. "This is becoming dangerous for them. And for the town. If a catastrophe occurs in my presence, that officer will not fulfill his end of our deal." He let out a soft, unamused breath. "Well. I suppose I have to end this show now."

  With those words, he stepped off the rooftop ledge.

  He descended into the river of toxic liquid as if stepping into a shallow puddle.

  Yet, a hair-thin barrier of his own aura instantly formed between the soles of his boots and the corrosive fluid, and between his cloak and the clinging gas.

  The poison had no effect on him, but he would not allow it to stain his attire or leave trace evidence of his passage. Appearances mattered; mystery was a tool.

  He walked forward, his movements effortless. His dark cloak flowed around him, obscuring most of his form.

  In the swirling crimson mist, he was little more than a deeper shadow—a hooded figure moving with a presence that felt dense and immeasurable, like an elephant strolling with utter unconcern between two circling lions.

  He made directly for the barrier containing Aers and K17, his passage through the toxic domain as natural as walking through an empty field.

  He reached the amber-tinted barrier. Without a flicker of amusement or any discernible expression, he raised a hand and placed his palm flat against the humming wall of solidified force.

  Bang.

  A sound like a great bell being struck once, low and final, echoed through the arcade. He didn't punch. He didn't claw. He simply pushed.

  The barrier, designed to contain knights and officers, strained against a pressure it was never meant to withstand.

  It didn't shatter. It parted. The surface rippled like thick gelatin, and he pushed his hand through.

  Then his left arm. Then, with a slow, inexorable forward step, his head and shoulders, and finally his entire body passed into the contained space.

  He was inside.

  He could have collapsed the barrier entirely or simply opened a temporary hole.

  But that would have allowed the toxic liquid and gas to flood the interior, poisoning the air Aers needed to breathe. This method was more... precise.

  From inside the barrier, the view was stark.

  Aers and K17 had been locked in a tense stalemate. K17, aware of Aers's reversal ability, avoided committing to any single lethal blow, instead wearing him down with relentless, precise strikes under the increased gravity.

  Aers, using his knowledge of the weighted field to his advantage, had been dodging fluidly and landing sharper counter-blows, poised to turn the tide.

  Then the sudden arrival froze them both.

  The hooded figure radiated no overt threat, no blazing aura. Yet an instinct deeper than thought seized them.

  It was the paralyzing fear of prey sensing an apex predator in their cage. Movement felt forbidden. Breathing felt like a risk.

  Lucien's hidden gaze turned to K17. His voice was flat, permitting no question. "Give me your sword."

  K17’s hand moved without conscious thought. She unsheathed the blade and offered it hilt-first, her eyes wide, unblinking, her breath held.

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  Lucien took it, then looked at Aers. "You are blending in with humans quite well." The words hung in the air as Aers froze.

  Lucien continued, gesturing with the captured sword. "I will be taking this one. Once I finish the matter outside, do not kill her." He pointed the tip at K17, then moved.

  He was beside her in a blur she couldn't track. One touch—a precise, mana-infused strike to her skull—and she crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

  "Do not utter a word to anyone about my existence," he stated, the command settling into the silent air like a law.

  He turned and walked back toward the barrier wall. It parted for him as easily as it had before, and he was gone, swallowed by the crimson mist.

  The sword felt weightless in his hand, a tool of mundane steel in a world of toxic magic. The calculations ran through Lucien’s mind with sterile speed.

  Kill the woman first? Unnecessary. Her spell matrix is the immediate threat. The corruption must be contained before it seeds the city.

  I could erase the forming spells with True Perception. Break their rhythm before they manifest. But that would leave a signature—a perfect, inexplicable nullification. Any competent investigator would flag it as an anomaly, drawing unwanted attention.

  Rhythm disruption is the same. A technique unknown to this world. Its signature, while just dispersed mana, would point to a power outside established understanding. Revealing a trump card now is not strategic.

  Concealment is paramount. The solution must be effective yet plausible within the known spectrum of magic.

  The answer presented itself: Purgatory Flame.

  It was a recorded, if rare, high-tier fire-affinity art. It could perform all the functions of normal flame, but it possessed an intrinsic trait of purification. To an observer, it would look like a powerful mage using a known, if advanced, counter-spell to cleanse corruption. It was a believable cover. The level of control required was extreme, but that in itself could be attributed to skill.

  Good enough. This is the way.

  He leveled the sword forward. The blade was already corroding, its steel flaking with rust from the toxic environment.

  First, he reinforced it. A dense sheath of his own aura wrapped around the metal, a necessary insulator. A normal blade would vaporize under what came next.

  With a flick of will, white-gold fire kindled in his palm. It raced down the aura-clad blade, transforming it into a searing lance of Purgatory Flame.

  He drove the glowing sword, point-first into the toxic-laden ground.

  The effect was instantaneous and overwhelming.

  The purifying flame flooded. A wave of white-gold energy erupted from the point of impact, rippling across the entire surface of the arcade floor within the barrier.

  Where it touched, the crimson liquid didn’t burn—it sublimated, vanishing into brief, hissing plumes of sterile steam. The corruption was being erased at a cellular level.

  Renda’s spell circles were scorched into nothingness, overwritten by the purging flame. The corruption was mostly gone. But the cost was a roaring furnace where a battlefield had been.

  The arcade was now burning. Stone cracked under intense heat, wood ignited, and the air filled not with poison, but with choking, black smoke.

  The crimson gas was broken apart, its toxicity overwritten and dispersed by the sheer thermal cataclysm.

  Lucien realized his error at the same moment.

  The Purgatory Flame possessed a purifying trait, but it did not negate the fundamental properties of flame—heat, combustion, the violent release of energy.

  A sharp, unfamiliar pang—shame—struck him. It was the same mistake from the Stellar Mountain: overconfidence, a failure to account for all variables.

  He had originally intended for the Purgatory Flame to act with precision.

  As it spread, he would control its attributes, directing its purifying essence to seek out and consume only the corruption—leaving everything else untouched.

  It would have been a test of his fine control over this newly integrated ability.

  It failed.

  He had overestimated himself. He attempted a delicate, surgical procedure with a power he had never wielded before, without prior experience or calibration.

  The result was not a focused cleanse, but a rampant conflagration. The arcade was now burning, the fire consuming everything in its path, not just the poison.

  The physical damage did not trouble him. The outcome—the neutralization of the toxic threat—was acceptable.

  What struck him was the failure of execution. The gap between his intention and the result. It was a stark reminder of his own limitation at that moment: overconfidence.

  This is a controlled situation. The cost is negligible. But what if it were a dire one? A miscalculation of this magnitude could lead to catastrophic, irrecoverable failure.

  The burning arcade served as a clear, unforgiving lesson.

  It opened his eyes once more to a fundamental principle: he could not assume mastery.

  He must account for every variable. He must continuously test, learn, and improve.

  With this thought solidifying in his mind, he extinguished the flame.

  One moment, the arcade was a roaring crucible of white-gold fire. The next, it was gone—vanished as if it had never been, leaving only the grim aftermath: scorched stone, smoldering wood, and drifting ash.

  Monica, who had been floating in a desperate holding pattern, was utterly shocked.

  One instant, she was battling a toxic nightmare, dodging explosive mud puppets and fending off attacks from a hidden foe, the certain dread of an impending city-wide catastrophe tightening around her.

  The next, a wave of ethereal, purifying flame had consumed everything.

  It had risen so fast, she was engulfed. Her repulsion field hardened on instinct, but the flames felt… gentle.

  They carried no aggressive heat toward her; only a profound warmth that flushed the lingering toxins from her lungs and soothed the corrosive ache in her body.

  She felt the corruption being erased around her, a miraculous cleansing, yet her mind raced.

  Who is this powerful? Who possesses this level of control—to nullify the destructive aspect of fire while maintaining its sanctifying power? She was, despite the chaos, momentarily arrested by the terrifying beauty of it.

  While wrapped in that paradoxical inferno, her senses, hyper-attuned to her own magic, felt it—a corrosive pressure testing the outer barrier of the arcade.

  Renda’s poison was trying to bleed through, to seed the city. The flame had eaten that attempt whole.

  Renda, hidden within her own domain, had been poised to unleash her plague.

  The sudden eruption of purifying fire incinerated her preparations and her environment in a single, breathtaking stroke. Shock gave way to a sharp, intense curiosity.

  Then, as suddenly as it came, the flame vanished.

  Monica’s gaze dropped to the ruined arcade floor. There stood a hooded figure holding a sword.

  He looked toward a collapsed section of a burned-out shop, seemed to find what he was looking for, and then simply disappeared.

  Monica descended immediately. The ground was hot, seared clean of the liquid poison, and far preferable to what had been there.

  She released her personal weight and repulsion spells, her boots meeting the charred stone with a soft crunch.

  She moved to the spot the hooded man had regarded. There, half-buried in ash and collapsed beams, was a body.

  It was burned horribly, but in a way that seemed meticulous—as if the flames had focused on it with extra care. Yet, what was more disturbing than the burns was the body itself.

  Black, congealed blood seeped from cracks in the charred flesh. Where muscle should have been, burned, maggot-like shapes writhed in a final, fossilized agony.

  The skull, visible in patches, was etched with intricate, foul symbols that seemed to pulse faintly even in death.

  The eyes were not eyes, but crimson crystals that now smoldered with a dying inner heat.

  A stench of profound rot—of a months-old corpse baked in an oven—clung to it.

  The whole form hissed softly, as if something trapped inside was still struggling against bonds that had just been permanently severed.

  Monica didn't fully understand what she was looking at, but she understood she was somewhat alive. She stepped forward, her voice flat and authoritative.

  “You are under arrest.”

  A tiny, incredibly dense barrier of force snapped into existence around the ruined body, sealing it in a bubble of absolute stasis that permitted no movement, not even a tremor.

  “I will deal with you later.”

  Monica moved toward the two force barriers she had erected. Reaching the first, she paused, a flicker of shock passing through her analytical mind.

  Hmm. A flame that could burn through all that corrupted magic and reduce the arcade to this state… There is no way my barriers held against such power for long.

  That’s not possible. Her suspicion sharpened. Unless more attention is paid to the flame's nature.

  She dissected the facts, My barrier does not block magic, heat, or air. I can filter certain particles, but not raw energy on that scale.

  This barrier was designed for containment—to keep those inside from leaving. It was not a protective shield.

  I have that capability, but it’s more taxing and I didn’t use it here.

  The logic was irrefutable. The flame should have washed over the barriers like water over a sieve, incinerating everything inside. Yet, the barriers stood.

  The flame had an effect… but it didn't break through. I was right. Was this some kind of specialized flame? One with a condition attached?

  She released the first barrier. The amber walls dissolved, revealing Sera sitting atop the lifeless body of K33.

  Sera was sweating, her face flushed, but otherwise unharmed. She, too, had felt the overwhelming warmth, but not the burn.

  Confirmed, Monica noted. The flame interacted with the environment, but its destructive principle was conditional.

  She moved to the second barrier and released it. Inside was only Aers, standing alone.

  The knight, K17, was gone. Aers was also sweating, but his tension felt different—less from heat, more from a deep, adrenalized fear he was trying to master.

  Sera glanced over, her sharp eyes missing little. “What happened to your opponent?”

  Aers, to save his honor and avoid a line of questioning he desperately wanted to evade, forced a grim, confident smile. He met Sera’s gaze, his voice dropping to a tone of manufactured finality. “She simply ceased to exist.”

  The implication was clear: his attacks had been so absolute they left no trace.

  It was a bluff, but a convincing one from a man who had just survived an encounter with the inexplicable.

  Monica looked at them both, her expression giving nothing away. The mysteries—the hooded man, the conditional flame, the missing knight—were cataloged for later investigation.

  A more immediate signal pulsed in her mind.

  “We don’t have time for debriefing,” she stated, her voice cutting through the lingering haze. “We must answer Tiger’s emergency call. Now.”

  The other two nodded, their professional demeanors snapping back into place.

  Aers let out a silent sigh of relief. Thank whatever gods are watching. I’m not being questioned. For now.

  The three of them left the smoldering ruins of the arcade with only a few backward glances.

  The cost—a few shops and a plaza—felt negligible compared to the catastrophe that had been averted.

  They moved as one unit toward the next stop, the atmosphere heavy with the knowledge that the night’s true doom might still be ahead.