As Elias shouted, the man walking slowly into the lobby froze in his tracks amidst the absurd and distorted modern urban illusion of the dream demon.
Then, without warning, a blinding, blazing light erupted from within him!
There was no precursor of any supernatural item being activated. In an instant, Elias’s senses were completely overwhelmed by a tidal wave of spiritual energy.
“Holy crap?!”
In his mind, Old Ed’s voice exploded in a simultaneous roar of shock and fury that nearly cracked his vocal cords.
What the hell!
Strangely, this energy—powerful enough to crush a person—wasn't the negative spirituality similar to the mountain of flesh he had encountered at the convent.
It was too clean. It was as clean as a burst of pure, primordial spiritual energy.
In the instant the man exploded, Elias’s physical reflexes outpaced his conscious thought.
He whipped his hand up, casting a full-power 【Moonlight Barrier】, thick as a solid wall, toward Ophelia nearby.
Immediately after, Elias slapped two high-level warding charms onto his own chest in rapid succession.
This was the absolute limit of what he could manage. In the remaining fraction of a second, there was no time for any further evasion.
Boom—!
There were no flames, no smoke. A terrifying wave of spiritual repulsion swept through the lobby of the Wayland Shipping Branch Office.
With the shattered body of the suicide bomber as the center, an absolute death vacuum zone formed within a three-meter radius.
Everything—even heavy solid wood desks—was sent flying by the sheer force!
The glass throughout the building shattered instantly, turning into a lethal rain of shards that sprayed wildly out onto the street.
The first to be hit was Elias, who had been lounging comfortably on the bench in the seating area.
An invisible sledgehammer slammed into his chest.
Crack!
The outermost warding charm didn't even last a second before it shattered, dissolving into countless fine points of spiritual light.
The light of the second charm dimmed sharply, barely managing to withstand the most lethal part of the shockwave.
However, terrifying cracks like spiderwebs appeared across that shield.
The immense repulsion lifted Elias off his feet. He crashed through a wooden door behind him and was sent flying into an office room in the back.
Wood splinters and dust buried him instantly.
“Cough, cough, cough...”
Elias gasped for air amidst the ruins, spitting out a mouthful of dirt.
Fortunately, he thought to himself.
While this burst of pure spiritual energy was sudden and domineering, it was still far less intense than the head-on collision with that mountain of flesh in the underground convent.
As for the outside...
Ophelia, whom he had protected with the 【Moonlight Barrier】.
Under that protection, she wasn't just slightly injured—she was essentially unscathed.
However, the others in the lobby weren't so lucky.
By now, the Wayland office had been completely transformed into a gruesome slaughterhouse.
Most of the clerks and captains who were close to the blast and caught in the merciless repulsion didn't even have time to scream.
They were pasted against the surrounding walls in a pulpy mess.
Even those further away mostly met grizzly ends. Severed limbs and broken fragments of paper were scattered everywhere.
In this world, the lives of ordinary people were as cheap as insects.
Shrinking behind the barrier, Ophelia’s face was bloodless with terror at the hellish scene. Her mind was a complete blank, and she was shaking like a leaf.
What broke her the most was the old sailor.
Just a moment ago, the bearded man had been chatting with her kindly, reminiscing about his past voyages.
The instant the explosion happened, the old sailor simply vanished from where he stood.
Now, that body lay like a pile of mud, slumped lifelessly in the corner of the wall next to her.
She had witnessed the brutal process with her own eyes.
The moment it happened, because of Elias’s timely deployment of the 【Moonlight Barrier】, the old sailor had been launched like a cannonball by the repulsion. By sheer misfortune, he had slammed violently into the resilient silver barrier in front of Ophelia.
After a dull thud, every bone in the old sailor’s body was crushed. Since the massive repulsive force hadn't stopped, his deformed body was forcibly pushed along, scraping harshly over the top of the Moonlight Barrier.
This resulted in the translucent silver barrier being smeared with a layer of shocking crimson blood that dripped down its smooth surface.
The corpse in the corner had eyes wide open in a vacant stare at the broken ceiling, seemingly dying without ever understanding what had happened.
His skull was completely caved in from the impact, shattered so badly his features were barely recognizable.
“Urgh—”
Ophelia’s tears burst forth like a dam breaking. The intense stimulus caused her stomach to cramp violently.
The raw physiological reaction surged through her senses, overriding all reason. She knelt on the dusty floor, ignoring all appearances, and dry-heaved repeatedly as if trying to vomit up her very bile.
After a long while, she managed to catch her breath. She looked up with confusion and terror at the Moonlight Barrier that had yet to dissipate.
She reached out a trembling hand to touch the incredible curtain of light.
It felt cool and resilient. But the thick blood smeared on it was still warm—hot, even.
It was the temperature of a life that had only just faded.
...
In the back of the lobby, Elias struggled to push the heavy objects off him and climbed out from the pile of shattered wooden shelves and documents.
He brushed the dust off his trench coat and looked at the wooden door he had smashed through.
He couldn't help but marvel in his heart. If he were an ordinary person, a hit like that would have turned his internal organs to mush! Only a body reinforced by potions like his could have tanked it.
“Hiss...”
Elias sucked in a breath of cold air and massaged his temples vigorously, as if the pressure could soothe the soul that was aching once again from the spiritual oscillation.
He stood in the office and looked around.
Under the influence of the dream demon curse’s illusions, he still saw various absurd modern objects: a water dispenser, a photocopy machine, and A4 paper and keyboards scattered all over the floor.
This eerie filter made him uncertain about what this room was actually used for. Was it the accounting office of Wayland Shipping? Or an executive office? He couldn't tell.
So, he could only walk out through the large hole in the wooden door he had crashed through to check the situation in the lobby.
“I hope that little journalist isn't dead.”
As Elias walked out, he prayed silently. He was still counting on this girl to live a few more days and act as a mine-clearing vanguard to dig up useful information for him.
With his current identity, it was indeed inconvenient for him to go around asking questions in Hastings Port. Showing his face even slightly would make it extremely easy for the Mist Veil Society to target him.
During the chaotic battle at the cemetery, they had taken the faking-dead Herm. It wouldn't be long before Herm’s loose tongue let the high-level members of the Mist Veil Society know that he, the “lighthouse keeper,” was the one who had destroyed the soul coin factory they had so painstakingly built.
That was a blood feud—cutting off their wealth and destroying their foundation! If it were Elias, he wouldn't be able to stand it either; he’d have to scatter the other person’s ashes to the wind.
Therefore, at this juncture, he had to lay as low as possible.
He really was counting on this stubborn journalist to be his front person for a couple of days to fish for intel.
When Elias stepped over the shattered glass and fleshy remains and found Ophelia in a corner of the empty lobby, the girl’s mental state had completely collapsed.
She was holding her head, curled up behind the barrier, letting out hysterical, meaningless screams and sobs. The sound echoed in the empty lobby, sounding exceptionally piercing.
Elias frowned. He found it annoying.
So, he walked straight up to her without wasting a single word of comfort.
He simply waved his hand.
A precise 【Sleep Spell】 hit her. Ophelia’s screaming stopped abruptly, her eyes closed, and she collapsed directly onto the dusty floor, falling fast asleep.
The world was finally quiet.
Elias withdrew his hand and only then had the chance to examine this sudden, bizarre attack.
“Old man, what do you think? This guy who came in seems very abnormal.”
What that thing used just now was genuine, pure spirituality!
“It is indeed quite strange.”
Old Ed’s voice was uncharacteristically solemn, as if he were still savoring that terrifying wave. “That spirituality was too pure, without any of the inherent attribute biases of the faith pathways.”
“I don't think it was a transcendent self-destructing. This spirituality was too refined—so pure it lacked any direction.”
Elias didn't say another word. He drew The Roaring Cane from his waist.
The world he saw was still covered by a layer of hallucinatory filters, which severely hindered his accuracy in investigating the scene.
Without any hesitation, he activated one resonance stack.
Boom!
Violent thunderous energy roared within him, exploding instantly. Pale purple electric arcs surged wildly along his meridians.
The intense pain, accompanied by numbness, pierced through his cerebral cortex like a shot of adrenaline.
Fortunately, the intensity of just one resonance stack was something his current body and will could withstand.
Under the roar of the thunderous energy, the absurd illusions created by the dream demon curse vanished without a trace, like snow under a scorching sun.
The original lobby, the people, and the objects lying in pools of blood were once again presented realistically and bloodily before his eyes.
The illusion was broken.
Elias took a deep breath and immediately activated 【Moon Vision】, carefully scanning the entire lobby.
Enduring the pungent smell of blood, he walked to the center of the lobby and used the base of his cane to flip over a few relatively intact pieces of limbs.
He performed a difficult visual reconstruction in his mind.
Finally, on a patch of skin that seemed to belong to the back of the suicide bomber’s neck, Elias discovered a familiar mark.
—The Chalas Spiral.
Rate on N.U.
