The suffocating pressure abruptly vanished.
Elias gasped for air, the pungent stench of the sewer now feeling as sweet as mountain air in his lungs.
He realized that everyone present, including himself, was now enveloped in a pale white halo of spirituality.
"I'm quite the friend, aren't I? The moment I sensed the situation had stabilized, I reconnected immediately."
Old Ed spoke without a hint of shame, his voice carrying a trace of relief from having survived a near-death experience.
"Heh."
Elias responded with a cold sneer in his mind.
Old Ed was clearly immune to such sarcastic responses; he did not offer a single word in self-defense, instead having the gall to speak again.
"If that stout fellow who got whipped away hadn't been a believer of the Dawn, every single one of you would have been finished in this sewer today."
"That man's strength is at least Scale Four."
"Look at that orb of light in the air; that is a Scale Four 【Daylight Spell】."
"Only such an extremely pure light attribute could barely disperse this pure darkness originating from the abyss."
"I always thought the 【Daylight Spell】 was at the very bottom of the Scale Four spell list."
"But now it seems there truly are no useless spells in this world."
Hearing this, Elias shrugged.
He struggled to lift his head from the sewage-soaked stone slabs, his gaze passing the front line to look at the siren that was still emitting piercing murmurs.
Elias could still feel the pressure from that high-level entity, but it was currently being blocked by the layer of 【Mental Barrier】 on his body.
"Cough... cough cough..."
A series of violent coughs, sounding as if they would tear his lungs apart, came from beside him.
Minister Guardian stumbled over, supported by Ms. Ryan.
The stout man was now as pale as paper, with bright red blood constantly oozing from the corner of his mouth; evidently, he had been targeted by the spiritual pollution when the siren murmured.
However, it did not seem too severe.
He curled his bloody lips and cursed.
"This thing... is damn powerful..."
Guardian snapped his head up, his remaining eye like that of an enraged beast, staring fixedly at the dense swarms of semi-transparent dream demons in the air trying to charge the light wall again.
"Blaine!"
Guardian's rough voice echoed through the cavernous sewer.
"Disperse those small fry!"
Blaine, lying in the foul-smelling water on the ground, finally managed to squeeze a weak "Okay" from deep in his throat.
The dead-gray layer of hard coral on his body was slowly receding, and large patches of skin were being torn away as the coral fell off, revealing the blood-soaked red meat beneath.
It had been so close; if Guardian's support had arrived even a few seconds later, Blaine's sanity would have been completely stripped away, and his physical body would have been entirely transformed into some indescribable xeno species.
He gritted his teeth, tremulously extending his mangled right hand and forcefully squeezing out the remaining spirituality in his body.
Soon, an extremely pure, white spiritual light without any impurities began to painfully condense in his palm.
The moment the light flared up, the surrounding dream demons acted like snow meeting boiling water, letting out silent, shrill screams before immediately turning around and fleeing desperately into the rifts they had come from.
"It's 【Spiritual Dispelling】, a spell specifically used to forcibly drive away low-level spiritual creatures."
Old Ed acted as a timely narrator in Elias's mind.
However, this brief tactical success did not bring a turning point.
As the dream demon swarm receded like a tide into the spirit world rifts, the space around the siren actually began to crack.
Elias clearly felt an extremely terrifying gaze slowly peering out from within that fractured, pitch-black void.
"Pfft!"
A spray of thick blood erupted from Guardian's nostrils as he knelt heavily onto the dirty stone slabs.
That gaze from the depths of the rift merely swept across the space, and the defensive line Guardian had been struggling to maintain suffered a devastating blow.
Wherever the gaze landed, the 【Mental Barrier】 on several low-level investigators shattered like fragile glass.
"Hold on!"
Guardian roared, blood vessels even bursting in the corners of his eyes as he desperately squeezed his spirituality to the limit, frantically restoring the broken barriers.
Yet, all this resistance appeared utterly laughable in the face of an absolute high-level entity.
Finally, that gaze passed through the crowd and landed precisely on Elias.
Elias, who had just managed to stand straight, felt as if he had been struck in the chest by an invisible, ten-thousand-ton hammer, instantly slammed back into the ground by that irresistible pressure.
Sewage splashed onto his face, but he didn't even have the strength to wipe it away.
That gaze easily penetrated the 【Mental Barrier】 Guardian had placed on him, completely ignoring all resistance to lock onto Elias.
"Damn it..."
Elias gritted his teeth so hard they nearly broke, his muscles trembling violently from overexertion.
An icy power was spreading frantically through his limbs and bones.
His vision began to undergo severe distortion, the image before him stretching and warping.
Immediately after, the physiological mutation began.
He watched in horror as fine, black patterns, winding like tree roots, began to surface on the back of his hand pressed against the ground.
These patterns were like living things, spreading and climbing rapidly along his blood vessels.
Those black patterns emitted a nauseating stench of decay; wherever they passed, the once-warm skin instantly lost all color, becoming gray and shriveled, just like a dried corpse left in a morgue for months.
Cold—an extreme chill emanating from the depths of his marrow—was replacing the temperature of his blood.
"This is..."
Old Ed's voice in his head completely lost its previous composure, replaced by absolute terror.
"It's converting you! This isn't ordinary pollution erosion; this is a deep conversion!"
"Damn it! Damn it! I'm afraid even I won't be able to escape this time!"
Old Ed roared in despair.
Forcibly converted by an evil god?
Screw that!
"In your dreams..."
A low growl, like that of a dying beast, escaped Elias's throat.
He desperately circulated the meager spirituality in his body, trying to build a defense within his meridians to resist the invasion of that icy power.
But that power was simply too massive.
So massive that his resistance was like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.
The black patterns had already spread to his forearm, and the muscles they passed over completely lost all sensation.
He couldn't just wait to die!
He tried angrily to reach into his pocket for the bone flute that could turn the tide.
If he could just blow it, there might be a slim chance of survival.
However, the pressure firmly pinned his movements; his right hand felt as if it were cast in concrete, unable to be pulled from his trench coat pocket even an inch.
There was no other way!
A flash of ruthlessness crossed Elias's eyes as he settled for the next best thing, turning his shoulder with extreme difficulty to reach for the elemental revolver holstered at his waist with his rapidly shriveling, graying left hand.
Even if it meant suicide!
He was a fine young man with a modern soul and two lifetimes under his belt; was he really going to have his consciousness erased by an evil god and become a walking corpse in this dark, damp sewer of another world?
As long as he pressed the barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger, he wouldn't live to spend those Soren notes printed with gold crowns, but he absolutely wouldn't let this bullshit evil god get what it wanted!
Worst case, we both go down together!
Chaos and violent murmurs of information crashed against and disrupted his thoughts, making it nearly impossible to concentrate.
But relying on his survival instinct and raw grit, the cold, heavy metal gun body was finally drawn out of his holster bit by bit.
"It's useless..."
Old Ed's voice was utterly despondent, as if he had already given up resistance.
"Under the absolute spiritual control of such a high-level entity, you won't even have the chance to pull the trigger!"
As if to confirm Old Ed's words, although Elias's left index finger was resting on the trigger, that finger had already turned completely gray-black and withered, unable to exert even a shred of force to pull back.
However, amidst Old Ed's despairing sigh, Elias's already drifting eyes suddenly flared with a spark of madness.
Spirituality?
The spiritual control of a high-level entity?
His gaze fixed intensely on the elemental revolver in his hand.
What was the characteristic of this gun?
Wasn't it the greedy absorption of the user's spirituality to convert it into bullet power?
Since it absorbed any spirituality, what if he let it directly absorb this negative spirituality belonging to the evil god that was currently rampaging through his body?
This was no different from drinking poison to quench his thirst.
This power was too massive and violent; the material of the gun might not be able to withstand it and could very well shatter the moment it began to absorb.
But so what?
As long as it could briefly tear open the shackles of this mental pressure, as long as it could buy him even a second, or even half a second of a gap to pull out his right hand and blow the bone flute... that would be enough!
A gamble!
Elias did not hesitate; using his nearly necrotic left thumb, he painfully touched the small gems in the eyes of the owl carvings on the side of the gun grip.
"Eat! Eat your fill!"
In the next moment.
Without any warning, Elias felt the icy negative spirituality in his left arm, which had been wantonly destroying his muscle tissue, suddenly find a massive vent and begin to pour uncontrollably into the metal pistol.
In just an instant.
The tiny gem eyes of the owl carvings erupted with an extremely blinding light.
Accompanied by the ear-grating sound of metal tearing, dense cracks quickly began to surface on the gun's body, appearing as if it would completely shatter into a pile of scrap metal in the next second.
"Is it really going to break because it can't handle it?"
A deep sense of disappointment flashed in Elias's eyes.
This gun was his only bargaining chip.
What made him even more despairing was that even though the elemental revolver had absorbed a large amount of negative spirituality, the terrifying pressure he was enduring had not decreased in the slightest.
That gaze from the depths of the rift still stared at him coldly, as if looking at a dying ant.
It seemed he really was going to die in the filth today.
Without even a dignified way to go out.
Just as Elias was about to find a way to end his own life.
The nearly shattered elemental revolver suddenly began to slowly ooze an extremely eerie substance.
It was a black, viscous, mud-like substance resembling rotting flesh.
They spread rapidly across the surface of the gun, actually beginning to firmly fuse the cracked and warped metal components back together.
"Hmm?"
Rate on N.U.
