The Mouth-Man came straight at Alys. She remembered to raise her shield this time, but he completely bypassed it with his superior speed and struck at her head.

The axe's blade went unhindered through her helmet and reached her body. Like before, it couldn't penetrate more than a millimeter into her skin. It didn't shatter this time though.

That was deep enough for the Mouth-Man. He changed the blade's angle a bit and started scalping Alys alive. Her helmet did nothing to stop it.

She could've used a spell to do something, but the Mouth-Man was so quick with his moves, and the pain was so great that it consumed her mind entirely. She dropped her weapon and shield and put her hands on her head to protect herself. The beast laughed in cruelty and switched to skinning her hands and arms.

Alys, still unable to think, could only follow her instincts. She threw herself on the ground in fetal position.

Her cries and screams filled the floor.

The king saw that the Mouth-Man was distracted by its cruelty and shot a bolt at it. The enchanted projectile hit the beast's leg and went clear through it before falling to the ground.

The damn beast didn't even seem to notice it and kept attacking Alys, whose screams were giving him goosebumps.

That put the king in a bind. He could either take the time to reload, which was safer in the short term, or force a close-ranged battle, which was suicide. But staying safe while the Sorceress was suffering like that was an even worse type of suicide. He hadn't been lying when he had said he feared Ironblood's anger more than death itself. The lunatic had declared war on a god! What would he do to the king if he got here and saw him acting all prudent while his people suffered?

So he dropped his crossbow, took the sword from his waist, and approached.

What bothered him the most about the formations on the sixth floor was that they prevented him from using even attribute-boosting artifacts. He would have had a chance against the beast's speed otherwise, though he reckoned the beast would also be capable of using his skills if that was the case. Then they would all be dead already.

He first stepped over Alys with his shield raised. The Mouth-Man ignored him and used his high speed to go behind his back and keep hurting her.

Then he dropped to his knees above her, trying to cover as much of her body as he could with his shield. The Mouth-Man still moved too fast and found openings to exploits.

So, he did the only thing he could think of: he laid over her, protecting her body with his own, her life with his.

That's when the Mouth-Man changed targets and the king knew true pain for the first time in his fifty-three years of life.

He screamed so hard he immediately hurt his throat and tasted blood.

She was waiting for the perfect moment to attack.

Unlike the human fools, she was the perfect predator. Silent. Unseen. Lethal.

The prey didn't know where she was, for she was one—

Her brother bit her tail, and she lazily kicked him away.

Where was she? Oh, right. She was one with the surroundings.

The soul contract compelled her to act because her master was in pain, but there had never been any threat to her master's life, so she could resist it somewhat. She only had to make it clear that she would attack, but at the right time. She even meant it. She was creeping toward the master into a perfect angle to pounce.

Suddenly, the human male that smelled like human fart — the worst kind of fart — laid on her master, and she felt furious. How dare he touch her things? The soul contract was clear in saying that that was her master! Hers alone! No one could touch anything that belonged to her without her consent, and she never consented to anything!

But then he started suffering too, and all was right in the world. Perfectly unbalanced in her favor, as all things should be.

She had to admit she found kinship with the vicious, faceless beast. It didn't kill the human male despite being able to. Instead, it was chopping his upper right limb bit by bit. It was fascinating. It looked delicious too.

Her master got her bearings back and used a simple spell to stop the pain — a spell she was pretty sure her master had just created. Not a terrible master to have.

The soul contract immediately stopped compelling her to attack. So she just sat and let her brother annoy her.

Until the idiot smelled the human's blood and approached to lick it. The cruel beast didn't want interference and swung his weapon at her brother. But that was her brother! He belonged to her too! No one could kill him before she did!

The perfect moment had arrived.

She pounced.

Lana was horrified by what she was seeing. Half the king's right arm was gone, and it had been cut like a vegetable being prepared for supper, multiple times, inch by inch. It was nauseating.

Suddenly, she felt Tatou's hunger, and he started approaching the king.

"No!" she yelled.

Tatou, compelled by a direct order, stopped at once. It was too late though; the Mouth-Man had detected his approach and swung his axe.

Then Bella acted.

She launched herself straight into the beast's hood and started scratching him with a passion.

Tatou wiggled his tail and looked at Lana with his tongue out of his mouth, asking her to allow him to play too. She denied him. He whimpered but obediently laid on the ground.

"Come here!" she ordered. He whimpered again but obeyed, moving sideways to keep watching Bella "play" with the Mouth-Man.

Meanwhile, the Mouth-Man had screamed in surprise and raised his arm in quick speed to punch Bella to death. She jumped out of his face and he missed. As soon as she hit the floor, she jumped back at him, as if she had springs for paws. The Mouth-Man tried to dodge, but Bella somehow changed her path midair and got back into his hood anyway.

The Mouth-Man dropped his axe and brought his two open hands to grab Bella. She couldn't dodge that.

But she didn't need to.

She screeched loudly, and her voice was filled with power.

It was the second time Lana felt Bella release that strange energy. The first time had been when the Patriarch tried to kill her, right after he had made the soul contract between Lana and Tatou. The Patriarch had fared perfectly fine against Bella's attack back then.

The Mouth-Man didn't. Hells, the tower didn't.

The entire floor trembled as if struck by a giant, and the metal directly above and below Bella even bent a little. And since the screech was powerful enough to damage even metal, the Mouth-Man fared much worse.

His head and upper body caved in, with multiple lacerations throughout them. Blood sprayed out, bathing Bella in it.

She wasn't done. She kept scratching and biting. The Mouth-Man wasn't done either. He used a skill to heal himself to pristine condition in an instant and tried to grab Bella with both hands again.

However, she just jumped from his face as soon as he healed himself. He also jumping away from her and prepared to fight more, but she became completely uninterested in the fight. Instead, she sat on the now unconscious king and started happily licking the blood in her paws.

It was clear that king and Alys had become her territory though. The way she was sitting on the old man had a very possessive quality to it.

Tatou, still waving his head, sent Lana the desire to approach Bella. At first, Lana wanted to deny him. However, the Mouth-Man found himself afraid of approaching Bella and looked around until he saw Lana. He took his axe from the ground and came for her. Then, all she wanted was for Tatou to get away from her.

"Go to Bella and don't come close no matter what!" she ordered. Tatou, oblivious of what was about to happen, ran happily at the panther.

The Mouth-Man looked at the wolf but didn't attack. He had learned his lesson the last time he tried. Instead, he ran faster at Lana.

He was about to grab her when the soul contract told Tatou something was wrong. The compulsion to protect Lana's life had a higher priority than the one to obey her orders. So he became almost a light streak as he shot at the Mouth-Man and bit his arm deeply. The wolf's tiny fangs somehow went through the protective robe and drew blood from the Mouth-Man.

There was also something else in play that Lana couldn't see, for the Mouth-Man let out a shrill of absolute pain while shaking his arm. Tatou kept clinging to it for a while, but the Mouth-Man's speed was too great, and he eventually was sent flying.

With the wolf out of the way, the Mouth-Man grabbed Lana, removed her helmet, and touched his axe's blade to her neck.

"I just want the king!" he shouted at Lana, almost desperately so. "Order the cat to kill him for me and I'll leave." Lana froze in fear. He pressured the blade on her neck. "Now!"

She forced herself to talk. "I can't! She doesn't listen to me! I can only control Tatou."

"Who is Tatou?!"

"The wolf!"

"Then tell him to distract her for me! I'll kill the king and leave! Do it, now!"

Lana started crying. She wasn't a Priestess of Light anymore, and she had to admit most of the morals she had learned to value in the temple were rapidly eroding away. But she couldn't sacrifice another human being to save herself.

In Red City, she had killed an invader who deserved it, and that had felt terrible. How could she kill an innocent man now? An innocent man who was doing his best to save Alys despite his own suffering to boot?

She just couldn't.

So she closed her eyes to wait for the inevitable. Death had come for her, as it came for all.

In the face of certain death, she found her feelings going in two different directions. She felt frustration, and then she felt hope.

The frustration was there because suddenly, she felt a hint of the Time Laws inside the Mouth-Man. That meant she had an affinity to it. Which, in turn, meant she would die so very close to real power.

The realization crushed her.

But then, the hope came from the power she had felt on Bella's screech. But it wasn't coming from Bella. Instead, it came from her soul, from her connection to Tatou. He was giving it to her to protect herself and begged her to use it.

She did it. Oh, she did it. And it felt magnificent.

She screamed in frustrated hope and infused her voice with that strange power, like Bella had done.

And then it felt painful, and terrible, and cold.

She fell unconscious.

Aaron felt a second peak of Divine Energy when he was climbing the stairs to the fifth floor. A moment later, he reached the sixth and took everything in.

He first checked the structural damage caused by the two streams of Divine Energy he had felt. His Physical Horizon Formations couldn't deal with that higher form of energy, and if they had been damaged, the ensuing destruction would kill everyone in there.

Thankfully, the streams of energy hadn't been directed at the formations, though the metal showed the consequence of being indirectly hit by it.

One place had small bents to the floor and ceiling, while the other had pushed a corner of the room into an almost perfect sphere. The first had missed any inscription, while the second had touched on the edges of another one, and the formation was malfunctioning.

It would explode any time now.

Now aware that the situation was urgent, Aaron checked the people in the room.

Alys was in fetal position, crying, doing nothing. Probably in shock. Not in immediate danger.

The king above her had been tortured into unconsciousness, was missing half an arm, and was bleeding to death. He had about two minutes of life remaining. So also not in immediate danger.

Lana was also lying unconscious on the floor, in a pool of her own blood. Her face had caved in almost lethally, and so had her upper body. Her spine looked broken just below the neck if the weird angle of her head was at was any sign. She required urgent healing, or she would die.

Tatou was the last of the unconscious beings. He was right beside Lana. Aaron barely felt any energy inside him.

Bella was sitting on the king, licking what Aaron guessed was the Mouth-Man's blood on her pawns.

And the Mouth-Man was dead.

What remained of his corpse had been stomped by the same sphere of power that had deformed the metal, like an inconvenient bug. He had been crushed into a pulp. Aaron could only see the formless mix of skin, flesh, and blood coming out from the openings of his ruined robe.