No sooner had they agreed than they got to work.
The two began clearing away the flesh-and-blood roots tangled around the real oil pipe.
As the roots were sliced away, a dull, hollow echo vibrated through the previously blocked pipe as it cleared.
Phosphor whale oil finally flowed unobstructed into the base of the real wick.
The black cotton thread was instantly saturated with the oil.
However, before they could even light it,
the flesh-and-blood construct that had been lurking in the shadows sensed the danger.
The mass of flesh went completely berserk.
The tumors on the walls writhed frantically, and countless dark-red tentacles shot out like spears from the blind spots in the shadows.
“Just clear the oil line!”
“Leave the rest to me!”
Bloodsong snorted coldly, and the dark-red infernal flames on her hands erupted in an instant.
A flash of violence crossed her valiant and cold face. Stepping right to the front, she burned every single flesh spear trying to re-contaminate the pipes into ash.
With every palm strike, she forcefully held back massive waves of rampaging flesh behind the safety line.
Elias didn't idle either, pushing his hand speed to its absolute limit.
Completely ignoring the fleshy tendrils that were practically brushing against his face, he gripped the lamp-aligning pin in a reverse hold, lined it up with the rusted slot of the old lamp base, and slammed it down.
Click.
The mechanism locked completely in place.
The real oil line was fully stabilized.
“Now!”
Elias shouted at the top of his lungs to Bloodsong, who was locked in a fierce, chaotic clash with countless fleshy tendrils.
Bloodsong's eyes narrowed.
Without a shred of hesitation, she flicked her right hand toward the air. A long-accumulated spark of crimson infernal flame instantly condensed into a straight line of fire, shooting precisely into the center of the lamp base.
Boom!
The moment the crimson devilish fire touched the real wick saturated with phosphor whale oil,
a blinding, almost surreal white flame erupted from the lamp base.
It was pure, unadulterated radiant energy.
The moment this white primal fire flared to life, the small space at the top of the tower was completely rewritten within a hundredth of a second.
“Holy crap!”
Before Elias could even express his awe, he heard a low groan of pain from behind him.
As a Dvorin, the devil bloodline within Bloodsong reacted to this holy light the same way a normal person would react to touching a branding iron.
A burning pain instantly flared across her pale skin.
“I'm taking cover!”
Bloodsong was extremely decisive.
She swiftly slipped behind Elias.
Elias was tall and broad-shouldered, perfectly serving as a human light shield.
Huddled in his tall shadow, Bloodsong felt the burning sensation subside and finally let out a long sigh of relief.
“I say, you're not using me as a sunshade, are you?”
Elias raised a hand to shield his eyes.
Even his own eyes stung painfully from the intense glare.
As the primal fire spread, all the mutated tissues at the top of the tower met their deserved judgment.
“Screeech—!!!”
Hundreds of fake wicks and the fleshy roots burrowed into the stone crevices let out high-pitched, baby-like wails all at once.
Under the brilliance of the white light, the mutated flesh couldn't even last a single second.
The negative spirituality inside them was instantly purified.
All the protruding flesh roots withered and carbonized rapidly in the air, crumbling into black ash that showered onto the floor.
Squinting against the white light, Elias peered toward the blind spot behind the wick.
Without the camouflage of the writhing flesh,
the “flesh-and-blood core” that had been hiding beneath the lamp base was finally exposed.
It was a fleshy tumor, its surface covered in purplish-black veins.
Grown right in the center of a cluster of gears, it pulsed like a still-beating heart, sending out dull, weak thumps.
This was the very reason Sarah had been able to maintain infinite energy and endless self-healing.
But before the primal fire of the Dawn Lady, it began to rapidly lose its vitality.
The disgusting veins on its surface ruptured one after another.
“Since we're already here, might as well put in some overtime.”
A ruthless glint flashed in Elias's eyes.
He had no intention of leaving any loose ends.
He extended his right hand, the cool, silver spirituality flowing through his palm as his Rational Circuit clicked seamlessly into place in his mind.
【Moonfire】.
A burst of blue-and-white cold flame rose from beneath the tumor.
At this moment, a wondrous resonance occurred between the two fires. The primal fire did not seem to reject the addition of the moonlight.
Attracted to each other in the void, the blue-and-white cold flame and the blinding white fire merged into an unprecedented torrent of destruction.
Pincer-attacked by the two flames, the hideous, disgusting flesh-and-blood core was completely incinerated before it could even let out a shriek.
With the destruction of the core,
the pipes, oil valves, and countless twisted fleshy constructs that had blanketed the top of the tower
suddenly dissolved into thin air.
The brightly lit lamp room returned to its original state of dusty, precise mechanics.
Whew...
Holding onto the edge of the lens, Elias looked at the pristine surroundings and let out a long sigh of relief.
“Tsk.”
He grumbled under his breath:
“Looks like a certain purple titan just snapped his fingers.”
“Can we please get down from here already?!”
Behind him,
Bloodsong, still hiding in his shadow, was gritting her teeth, her voice trembling with suppressed frustration.
“Can't you save your commentary for when we're downstairs?!”
The devil lady wanted nothing more than to immediately flee this blindingly bright paradise.
“Oh, right!”
“Let's go, let's go!”
Knowing he was in the wrong, Elias quickly dropped his pose and scrambled down the spiral staircase with Bloodsong hot on his heels.
Because Bloodsong's half-demon physiology genuinely couldn't handle prolonged exposure to the primal fire, their retreat looked like a frantic escape.
Consequently, they completely failed to notice
that as the true tower lamp at the top of the lighthouse was fully lit,
its light pierced the dark night and swept across the ocean.
From a higher vantage point,
as this lighthouse reef situated at a critical node blazed with light, the thick fog that had enveloped the entire bay began to melt like snow under a blazing sun.
It was instantly dispersed across a vast area.
And not just around the lighthouse.
The heavy mist shrouding all of Hastings Port was cleared in an incredibly short span of time due to the lighthouse being lit.
Hastings Port, Central Street.
Xia'an and Dabu, who were in the middle of fighting off sea-folk monsters on the streets, stopped their movements almost simultaneously.
“Is that a breeze?”
Dabu rubbed his aching arms.
But soon, he noticed something was off.
The mutated monsters around them, whose skin had been as hard as iron, suddenly seemed to weaken.
Their movements grew sluggish, and the frenzied crimson in their eyes rapidly faded.
Previously, the gun in Dabu's hand was only effective at instantly killing low-level fish-men.
But just now,
when facing a carapace husk, Dabu had merely fired a shot to push it back.
Yet, to his utter shock, the carapace husk was blown into tiny pieces by that single shot.
Dabu was completely dumbfounded.
Not only that,
Xia'an also keenly noticed that the sizes of the monsters rampaging through the streets were visibly shrinking.
The mutated sea monsters, which had been four to five meters long and covered in tentacles, collapsed rapidly like deflated balloons within a dozen seconds of the fog dispersing.
If Elias, far up at the top of the tower, had witnessed this,
he would undoubtedly have stood on the sidewalk pointing and laughing, offering some colorful commentary on these suddenly “deflated” fish-men and sea monsters.
Of course, the most significant change lay in the spiritual reactions of these creatures.
Within the underlying logic of the Origin Web, those mutated mini-bosses that originally possessed Scale Three strength saw their spirituality take a nose-dive straight down to Scale One due to the loss of the resonance tower's core projection.
And those grunts that were only at Scale One in the first place reverted entirely into ordinary sea-folk creatures.
The most absurd scene occurred at a street corner.
A massive fish monster with three rows of sharp teeth—large enough to swallow a grown adult whole—had its jaws wide open, about to bite a collapsed civilian in half.
As the heavy fog vanished,
the fish monster suddenly twitched violently in mid-air.
Its bodily structure began to warp and split frantically.
Under the utterly terrified gaze of the mortal,
the deep-sea horror, fit to star in a horror movie, split with a wet splat into two completely harmless, ordinary pieces of seafood.
A massive cod.
And a plump, juicy herring.
The two fish flopped onto the dry cobblestone road, their tails slapping against the ground as they stared at each other with wide, glassy eyes, exuding a bizarre aura.
The mortal, who had been bracing for death, patted his perfectly intact head, then looked at the two fish on the ground that were worth a few pennies at best for dinner.
For a moment, he genuinely didn't know whether he should head to a clinic or go home and fetch a frying pan.
Meanwhile, out on the shingle beach battlefield near the lighthouse.
The destruction of the core brought the entire battle to its final phase.
Old Crowley's pirate cutlass had sunk deep into the mutated flesh of the Missionary cultist.
The blade shredded the creature's organs, pinning him firmly to the dark reef.
Lao-Deng was covered in blood as he spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
His other hand, holding a flintlock pistol, pressed hard against the cultist's unrecognizable face.
In contrast, the cultist priest—who had previously flaunted his endless regeneration, sprouting more and more parts the more he was beaten—
was now completely broken.
The mutated limbs he had grafted onto himself from fish-men corpses were shattered by Crowley's brutal assault.
The spirituality within him was no longer sufficient to sustain his regeneration.
Pale white bones protruded from various parts of his body.
“Still healing?”
Crowley stared at the mangled, barely human opponent before him, his eyes filled with mockery.
He cocked the hammer of his flintlock pistol with a crisp click.
“Your boss ran off when she crossed paths with the Dawn Lady.”
The cultist half-opened his eyes, staring up at the shining lighthouse lamp. Instead of showing fear, he let out a strange, twisted smile.
“It doesn't matter.”
He wheezed out a muffled laugh.
“Our goal has already been achieved!”
“Hahaha...”
Bang!
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