Groaning, Dia rubbed her eyes and waited for her vision to recover. The acrid taste of soil in her mouth had gelled together with the sickly-sweet taste of her blood, and she spent the next ten seconds speaking out the stomach-churning mix from her mouth.

The only reason why she dared to do that was due to the seven-coloured boxes that were burning in her vision, despite the fact that she couldn’t see anything else in high definition.

Spitting out the last of the soil, Dia looked at the seven-coloured proclamation, unsure of what to feel. The Red God’s Bearer of Destiny deserved to die, this much she knew. Her instincts, however, warned her that something had gone wrong with the process of killing him. In the first place, that thing with how maggots and other insects were growing and falling from his body was enough to strike fear in her to begin with.

She didn’t know anything about this Limbo or negative mana reactions — terms that Nero had spat out in his panic — but Dia had a feeling that the way Mendas died would leave behind lasting repercussions.

Rubbing her eyes again, Dia squinted and made odd faces until her vision cleared up. The others were behaving the same way too; either they were spitting out soil and blood, or rubbing their eyes with a vacant, stunned expression on her face.

Shaking her head again, Dia got up slowly. Her legs were still soft and wobbly, but it was better than just lying down on the ground.

A ruined landscape entered her eyes. What had been a nice patch of grassland had turned into a huge crater. An odd clump of grey light — the same colour of those insects that were falling off Mendas earlier — rippled in the middle, and Dia trembled. There was something incredibly distasteful about that odd clump of light.

Was it the granulated, grainy surface that sent shivers down her spine? Or was it the small random balls that looked very close to eyeballs growing from it? Maybe it was the half-holy, half-chilling red sheen on its granulated surface, like skin that was stricken with all sorts of afflictions. Dia wasn’t sure, but she knew one thing.

That thing was dangerous.

Tearing her eyes away from the dangerous, enthralling sight, Dia fell to the ground. Somehow, the few seconds she had spent just looking at that thing had sapped her strength…or was it her will?

Shaking her head twice, she crawled away from the sight and turned back to the others, who were in the middle of regaining their mobility and vision.

“You guys need a hand?” Dia asked.

“No,” Nero replied, his voice terse. “Keep looking around. You being on guard is the best thing we can ask for right now. Be careful and don’t do anything stupid or reckless. Turn away from any sights you don’t understand. They’ll keep you up at night otherwise.”

Dia looked up at the sky. The Absolute skill — the one they had erroneously named Absolute Entrapment — had vanished. Like the Third Bearer of Destiny, the skill had been deactivated upon the user’s death, which was a far better alternative to being stuck in a dome with no way out.

“It’s about to storm heavily,” Dia muttered. “But it was all clear just no—whoa!”

A lightning bolt smashed onto the crater that contained that hair-raising clump of light, and as Dia reeled from the blinding pillar of debilitating light, hundreds of thunderbolts fell from the sky as a singular entity.

“Run!”

Everyone began to retreat as what looked like divine fury poured down like rainwater, casting harsh shadows that flickered across the world. To stay there was foolish; if a stray bolt smacked them, there was no way they could get justice.

As they hurried away, the blinding whips of the Moons’ anger continued to lash out at whatever thing that clump of disgusting grey light was. This wasn’t the right time to ask either; what really mattered was simply getting away with their lives. To begin with, the sudden reveal that the Red God’s Bearer of Destiny was actually the assassin had thrown everyone off-balance. However, the fact that everyone knew about his poor state and the damage that had carried forward from the previous battle was enough to redress that.

It was a victory, albeit a spontaneous one.

“Ugh. Now is not the time to reflect over things, me.” Dia rubbed her forehead.

“Stop here for now,” Nero ordered. “The Moons are reacting to that thing. We need to stay here and ensure that it doesn’t get away.”

“That thing?” Nightfall asked.

“That idiot decided to implode the mana in his body,” Risti replied. “That crater and what the Moons are attacking is a temporary passage that exists between our world and the vast sea beyond. That grey lump the Moons are attacking is a colony of parasites. Left untouched, an entire territory can be sapped of life.”

“I’ve never heard of this before,” Dia muttered.

Count Nightfall looked at the grey lump, which was already melting away. “Neither have I. This thing…what the heck?”

“It’s not knowledge we publicise. Since practically every mana-user doesn’t know about the existence of Limbo, they are unable to draw from it when they run out of mana. If they knew, they would be more determined to live, and this world would have been long destroyed.” Nero narrowed his eyes. “Only the Holy Children of the Coloured Gods, along with select personnel who have been taught to draw mana from Limbo to use against Limbo itself, know about such a thing.”

He turned to Risti. “Your father…you aren’t lying to me, right? He is the Folder Association’s President, right?”

“I don’t lie,” Risti replied. “And to be honest, you didn’t need to be honest with us. You could have brushed all these occurrences off using the usual excuses, and I would have just stayed silent.”

“…Given that we’re working together, I didn’t want to lie to everyone either,” Nero muttered. “But now that you guys know this…well, I only have one thing to say. Have the grace to die in dignity, at least. Don’t create problems by pulling a Mendas.”

He turned to the hail of lightning strikes, which had long destroyed the ball of light. “That’s the result.”

Risti looked at him. “Do you think that’ll work? The moment you told them about these things, you can never expect them to…’die with dignity’, to use your own words. Best if you tell them how to safely draw power from Limbo.”

“You know there’s no guaranteed safe method to do that,” Nero replied.

“They’ll try it at their wits’ end,” Risti hissed. “You’re young. You haven’t seen the type of things people will do when they become desperate. Like that Holy Son over there. If not for the fact that he knows where our home is, I would have stopped you people from pushing him that far.”

Nero took a step back.

“You could, however, erase their memory of the whole thing,” Risti replied, turning to Nightfall and Dia. “What do you guys think? None of us wants to watch you become a monster whose only instinct is to destroy and destroy. And since none of you guys look like the kind that would die quietly…”

“You guys…aren’t kidding, are you?” Count Nightfall murmured.

“Simply knowing makes you two a risk. And Nero doesn’t want to teach you two about using Limbo correctly. What can I say?” Risti replied. “Not much of a choice.”

“…Fine, I’ll teach them.” Nero eyed Risti. “Why me?”

“Because I already used up my quota,” Risti replied. “The next one gets me a memory wipe, and that’ll be it. You, on the other hand, are barely older than twenty. Not that many people to teach. Two and you’re done.”

Dia was beginning to feel a bit perplexed at the entire thing, but the way the Moons continued to administer their divine punishment on the grassland was more than enough to tell her about the importance the people that really mattered paid to this issue.

By now, the lump of light had been completely destroyed, but the lightning bolts continued to fall anyway. To Dia, this was clear proof that the Moons wanted that thing to be completely eradicated, and would not hold back on expelling every bit of its existence from her world.

Yet, as Risti continued to lecture Nero on about matters she never knew existed, a sinking feeling entered her heart.

Was it just a coincidence that there the red sheen on that thing reminded her of the Red God’s ceremonial colour? Or was it something else? Her mind kept returning to that singular instant of that thing’s emergence, and the more she thought about it, the more fearful she felt.

“…Guys. Dia, Count Nightfall.” Nero’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. “I’ll need you two to follow me later. I’ll tell you what you need to know…and what you need to avoid. I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Do we have a choice here?” Dia asked, a half-smile on her lips.

“What do you think?” Nero looked up at the storm clouds. “Let’s go.”