The tower's sixth floor was eerily dark. It had no windows, and the Patriarch's spatial ring only contained about twenty torches, not near enough to illuminate the whole place. They had spread it around them, but it only made the darkness beyond feel extra oppressive.

Lana was wearing armor too big for her, crouching close to the wall, holding a loaded crossbow. A short sword hung from a belt on her waist, and both a kite shield and a second loaded crossbow were resting on the floor beside her. She had never used any of those things before.

The king was standing nearby, also wearing armor and holding a crossbow. He had brought his own equipment, so it was all enchanted. Lana guessed it also had an enchantment for extra shining because the torches' reflection on his armor made it glow.

Alys stood between them and the closest stairs, which were about a hundred feet from them. She wore similar equipment to Lana, though she had opted for a short bow instead of crossbows. Compared to the king, she looked almost dimmed out.

And the Divine beasts were between Alys and Lana. Tatou was biting Bella's paws playfully and jumping back to dodge her absentminded slaps of retribution.

"How do these formations work?" the king asked while tracing the inscriptions on the walls.

The formations affected the entire sixth floor, and their energy absorption effect felt terrible, which only made the dark floor extra disconcerting. Lana could barely feel her dantian, making it a chore to move One Star Qi through her body. It was still possible though, and doing so reassured her. Qi was the only energy she had now, and she didn't think she could stand losing it.

"Shush," Alys replied. "I think I hear something."

The king obeyed. Lana stood up and pointed her crossbow at the stairs.

A moment later, footsteps broke the silence. They were distant, but running fast, and Lana got tenser the more they approached. The king cursed low and clenched his crossbow tightly. Alys' haggard breathing became audible. The beasts ignored it all.

The hood of a white robe appeared on the edge of the stairs, revealing a drawn golden eye. When they could see what was inside the hood, a white head with no facial features, the king gasped.

"No," he whispered.

Lana took it better, maybe because she had helped the Patriarch kill a Mouth-Man not long ago. However, when she used the Heavenly Skill Check Level and saw that it was a Champion Entropomancer, her hope disappeared. It was one thing to fight a Four Star Mouth-Man like the last one, but a Champion was something else entirely.

The Mouth-Man finished climbing the stairs, looked at the king, and a mouth appeared on his face, showing a terrifying smile. The way the shadows filled the inside of his hood with shadows made it extra dreadful. "Found you!" he said.

Alys didn't waste any time with banter. She aimed with her bow and let an arrow fly. The Mouth-Man's arm turned into a blur and picked the incoming arrow from the air. He broke it easily and let the parts fall to the ground.

Lana's heart clenched. Indeed, as the Patriarch had taught, Entropomancers could increase their speed from the Five Star level onwards. She and the others were as good as dead.

"You think these sticks can harm me?" He laughed. "Bring your fighter forth. I want to see who thinks they can fight a Champion Entropomancer in close quarters."

Lana bit her lip. There was no fighter. The Patriarch had told her that he wanted the guard from Red City to become the head of his guard, and that he would start recruit soon after the man's arrival. But until then, the Patriarch was the only hand-to-hand specialist in the clan.

So it was a great surprise when she saw the king step up and stop in front of Alys.

The Mouth-Man's smile widened. "You?" He laughed again. "A mere One Star Qi Manipulator? Playing hero, are we?"

"I'm no hero," the king said with a sad, trembling voice. Lana had never realized how old he was. He always had an air of power to him, even when he had been paying penance outside the Temple of Darkness. "But what choice do I have? If I just watch passively as you kill Ironblood's women and live to tell the tale, I bet I would suffer a fate worse than death. I'd rather face you."

The beast's smile slowly died until it turned into a thin line. "You fear a human more than me?" He deadpanned.

"Yes," the king replied with no hesitation, pointed his crossbow at the Mouth-Man, and raised his shield with his other arm. "Come."

The Mouth-Man... didn't. He stood still for a moment before simply turning back and going down the stairs. They all looked at each other confused for a while, until he came back, this time holding a double-headed small axe in his hand.

Spatial artifacts didn't work under the influence of the formations. Any object that attempted to influence the environment outside itself required the external usage of energy, and the formations absorbed that energy.

"Alright," the Mouth-Man said — as if there hadn't been an awkward pause — and attacked.

He was incredibly fast. Lana saw his movements better than when the Patriarch moved, but it was still just a blur. Even that much was thanks to her understanding of the Light Laws, but things still felt weird. Unlike the Patriarch's movements, the Mouth-Man's felt... unnatural. As if he wasn't supposed to be moving the way he did, but he was forcing the world to accept his speed.

Was that how Time Laws worked when applied to a limited area? The Mouth-Man was only speeding himself up, and the world was fighting him — and failing. As the Patriarch had said, power was a kind of freedom; the freedom to do whatever you wanted, even when it went against the world itself.

Lana suddenly felt jealous.

She had given herself to the Goddess of Light when she had believed Light to be even stronger than Time. Of course, Entropomancers were stronger at lower levels, but she always held the conviction that at higher levels, both could fight toe to toe.

The Patriarch had been the first to disabuse her of that notion. He had said that Darkness, of all things, was as strong as the Light. She resisted such a heretic notion at first, and ironically, it had been the skill Alys had used to destroy the Temple of Darkness that had finally opened her eyes to the truth.

Alys was a Shaper, and Space was stronger than Light. She felt it right then, and that, also ironically, only because the Patriarch had somehow forcibly increased her understanding of Light Laws. Light was incredible, both wave and particle, but it still required Spacetime to exist. Spacetime, however, existed with Light or not, proof enough of its superiority.

Such a simple concept, yet she had been so blind to it.

And now the Mouth-Man used Time, which was also stronger than the Light, to for his will on the world! The enlightened races had the privilege of versatility, given classes and allowed to learn any energy. But Beasts were born with natural affinity to some elements and learned how to use them instinctively.

She didn't care for versatility! From birth, that Mouth-Man had been stronger than she would ever have been as a Priestess! She wanted that! That! Why couldn't she have that?!

A wave of comfort and care came from her bond with Tatou, calming her fury and quelling her feelings of inferiority. Part of her wanted to just drown herself in them, but the overwhelming love and worry that came from her link with Tatou made her feel bad for behaving so childishly.

He had been fundamental in her recovery. His sense of wonder and curiosity about the world spilled through their soul contract and seemed to infect her. He didn't care about staying sad for long; he had the entire life ahead of himself and wanted to learn and do stuff!

Likewise, Lana wouldn't allow herself to just drown in despair.

She felt jealous, but she also found self-worth in the fact that the most amazing man she had ever known had invited her on a date and talked about having a relationship with her! That also made her feel silly, for her self-esteem shouldn't depend on some mortal, no matter how amazing he was. But after being abandoned by all she loved, including the goddess who should be better than that mortal, that was all she had, and she would rather cling to it than feel worthless.

And if she was good enough for Aaron Ironblood, she was good enough for the Time Laws.

She watched the beating the Mouth-Man was giving the king with a dispassionate detachment.

The former Priestess didn't care about the human's suffering. Instead, she focused on the feeling of oppression she felt from the beast's Time Energy.

Alys watched in horror as the Mouth-Man's axe danced around the king's shield and bit deeply into his Lesser Mystic armor. The equipment the Patriarch had given them was all common things. If a Lesser Mystic Artifact could do nothing against the axe, her armor was hopeless.

The king's arm was almost cut off in a single attack. The man let out a scream of sheer pain and shot his crossbow at blank range. The Mouth-Man dodged it easily.

He didn't dodge Alys' arrow though.

She had nocked an arrow on her bow as soon as the first projectile had been intercepted and kept it pointed the Mouth-Man's way. Now, she let her arrow fly at the same time the king shot the crossbow.

She didn't know how Mouth-Men detected their surroundings, as they had no eyes or ears, but she expected it to be related to Time Energy somehow. And if that was the case, his senses should be limited on that floor.

Her guess proved true when he didn't even try to dodge her arrow. It pierced the robe, though it lost a lot of momentum in the process, and half the arrowhead bit into the beast's flesh.

It was a minor injury alright, the arrow even fell off by itself, but it gave Alys hope. She nocked another arrow.

The Mouth-Man cried in surprise and jumped to the side. It messed with his attack, which hit the king's armor at a bad angle and bounced off harmlessly. The king dropped his crossbow and took his short sword from his sheath. The sword didn't even get one quarter out before the Mouth-Man turned and attacked Alys instead.

She fared a lot better than the king.

Not in the fight itself. She didn't even have the presence of mind to raise her shield; the enemy was just too fast and she too inexperienced. Her armor did a terrible job of protecting her too, and the axe went through it almost with no resistance.

But she protected herself internally.

Alys had learned a lot of Concepts from Space Laws from the Patriarch, and kindling the formations made her also have a lot of ideas on how to apply them in different ways. Since she was usually meditating close to the formations after kindling them, and thus incapable of using energy externally, she couldn't just test some ideas at will. Even walking out of the range of the formations might make her forget what she was thinking about, as the Concepts she was understanding were so abstract and beyond her. So, she had only one way to experiment: inside herself.

She had also capitalized on her recent understanding that any energy could fight other energies. It gave her a lot of motivation to improve her internal defenses. And so, she had developed a skill all by herself.

Fifth Grade Space Skill: Spatial Anchoring!

The system had classified the skill as fifth-grade, which was one grade higher than her level. Thus, the energy consumption increased like crazy, and the effects weren't as good as they should.

Despite not reaching its full potential, the skill was still amazing. Suddenly, her body felt more solid, though its composition hadn't changed. It was simply standing firmly in spacetime. Nothing could move it, nothing could shake it, nothing could destroy it, for affecting it was affecting space itself.

A person might move through space, but directly touching the walls of reality required a lot more than a mere axe. An axe that came with a lot of speed at a perfectly perpendicular angle.

The blade bit a millimeter into her skin and shattered.

The Mouth-Man lost his balance at that, and Alys realized she should counterattack. She stepped back and let her arrow fly, but the Mouth-Man had already got his bearings back and fled to the stairs.

He went down, and the king took the chance to produce a white pill from some hidden place in his armor. He consumed it, and a moment later, she saw him work on reloading his crossbow with a healed arm.

The beast returned as soon as the king was done. This time, he had a black and golden axe with him. It was big and incredibly beautiful, with engravings both artistic and magical.

'Check Item,' Alys thought, and a Heavenly Message appeared above the weapon he was holding.

[Majestic Edge]

Quality: Greater Mystic

She couldn't see more information about the item because he was holding it, but that was enough. The axe was a Greater Mystic weapon, and by its name, it specialized in cutting.

The Mouth-Man had turned serious.