Before anyone could execute the next tactical move, the siren that had been frantically slamming against the wall of light abruptly ceased its actions.
Its body, covered in slimy scales and twisted muscles, hovered in mid-air as the violent physical battering vanished instantly.
In its place, a series of extremely alien, eerie syllables that sounded as if they could not possibly originate from human vocal cords drifted out from within the black mist.
It was sea-folk language; Elias had heard it once before on a reef of an offshore island, and at the time, it had merely sounded like some kind of out-of-tune birdsong.
But at this moment, Elias's face turned ashen in an instant.
His stomach felt as if it had been suddenly stuffed with a cold, rusted block of lead, as a strange realization that defied biological common sense suddenly pierced his brain.
He actually understood those few strange, bird-like syllables.
Abysis.
A powerful sense of crisis immediately overwhelmed his urge to make a snide comment; cold sweat broke out on Elias's brow as he roared into the mental channel connecting the Seventh Agency investigators:
"Everyone! Cover your ears now!"
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
The eerie syllables were not ordinary sound waves transmitted through the air; they had already transformed into a physical mental piercing.
The sound penetrated the distance of physical space without hindrance, passed through the glowing white shield, and coldly pierced through the mental defenses of everyone present.
"Ryan! What is the Minister's condition!"
"We need him now!"
"Just as you thought, I'm preparing the smelling salts!"
The communication channel instantly exploded into chaos, with frantic shouts intertwined with the teeth-gritting sound of tearing flesh.
Under that massive spiritual pressure, which felt like the water pressure tens of thousands of meters deep in the ocean, the bodies of everyone in the sewer began to undergo violent rejection reactions.
Elias knew this feeling all too well; he felt a thick, fishy stench of rotting seafood rising from the depths of his throat.
He knew that the specialty products exclusive to the abyss were about to erupt from everyone's mouths.
He had always been curious about what kind of even more terrifying mutations higher-scale transcendents would experience when faced with such indescribable pollution.
Soon, reality laid the bloody answer before him.
Standing at the very front, the powerful Blaine saw dark green veins crawling frantically across his arms at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Finn, standing beside him, was in the same condition, though the speed at which the green veins spread was slightly slower, suggesting a lighter degree of pollution.
Immediately after, everyone's stomachs began to convulse violently.
Accompanied by bone-chilling dry heaves, clumps of black, foul-smelling, filthy organisms were forcibly vomited from the mouths of the investigators.
Especially for the Scale Two and Scale Three transcendents, the things they spat out had completely moved beyond the realm of vomit; they were living things with self-awareness.
The moment they hit the ground, the barbed tentacles on their surfaces began to wave frantically, and a sharp, keratinous beak resembling a parrot's split open in the center of the meat chunks.
They wriggled rapidly across the damp, dirty stone slabs, constantly trying to lung back onto their hosts' faces to gnaw and eat their eyes or noses.
This job doesn't just cost your life; it costs your face too!
Elias suppressed the urge to gag, clenching his teeth tightly.
However, this series of mutations was far from over.
As the siren in the black mist continued to chant the slimy syllables, an invisible roar exploded directly on everyone's mental level.
The barrier between the spirit world and reality was shattering.
It was absolutely not the kind of small rift Elias had seen before, but hundreds or even thousands of them.
The dense rifts spread frantically through the dark, oppressive sewer space like tempered glass smashed by a heavy hammer, forming a spiderweb pattern.
Following that, one semi-transparent dream demon after another squeezed out of those rifts, their bodies twisting in defiance of the laws of physics.
"What?!"
Old Ed's voice, filled with disbelief and shock, thundered in Elias's mind.
"The dream demons are actually responding to the 'Lord' of the Mist Veil Society!"
A trace of unconcealed fear crept into Old Ed's voice.
"This defies all common sense!"
By now, Elias had bitten his lip so hard it bled, letting the metallic taste of blood spread in his mouth.
He couldn't say a single word in response; his brain felt as if it had been placed inside a high-speed centrifuge, utterly chaotic.
He struggled to lift his head and saw from the corner of his eye that even the dream demon that had been feeding on his spirituality had appeared above him.
"Elias, I'm sorry... I really wanted to see you through to the end."
In his mind, Old Ed's voice began to develop an eerie electronic buzz and tremble.
"But that thing's pollution is too strong; it's about to spread to me through the spiritual channel we've established."
"I have to cut the connection."
As those words fell, a certain string deep in Elias's mind snapped.
He didn't blame Old Ed; if he were in the old man's position, he would probably have pulled the plug at a speed that could break a Guinness World Record.
Run while you can, old man; don't let my broken network crash your system too.
...
Meanwhile, on the surface of Hope County.
The original tranquility of the streets was broken by an invisible tremor.
The smooth sand and gravel on the roads were now trembling slightly like grain in a sieve.
The horses hitched along the roadside seemed to sense some extremely terrifying predator, their eyes widening as they let out shrill whinnies.
Then, the herds began to bolt recklessly through the city streets.
Charlotte, walking home alone, stopped in her tracks and abruptly turned her head toward the center of Hope County.
Her eyes were filled with doubt and confusion.
In fact, ever since Elias had left the house, she had been quietly following him, wanting to find out the truth.
From their first meeting yesterday until today, Elias gave her the feeling that he was constantly wrapped in a layer of elaborate lies.
The stubborn streak in her heart had been ignited; she only wanted to figure out one thing:
Where could a person on vacation, who had just returned home to sleep for a night, be heading in such a hurry?
So, before leaving, she had specifically told Elias she was going to talk with some ladies from the neighborhood.
But in reality, she had turned into a hidden street corner the moment she stepped out, waiting with bated breath for Elias to leave.
Yet she never expected that she would completely lose him in an anonymous alley next to Jester Alley.
She had checked that alley carefully; it was clearly a dead end with no other exits.
How could a grown man like Elias just vanish into thin air?
Where did he go?
Or was it simply because her tracking skills were too poor to keep up with him?
Charlotte paced back and forth in that dark, damp dead end, studying it for a long time.
Ultimately, she could only convince herself that she had simply failed to follow him and turned away in frustration.
But who would have thought that just as she reached her front door, an extremely strange sensation would surge into her heart like the rising tide of a cold sea.
She stood rooted to the spot, staring fixedly in the direction of the central district.
For some reason, the wind blowing from there felt so murky.
...
The scene shifted back to the underground sewer space.
More and more semi-transparent dream demons were flying in the air.
In this moment of despair, a piercingly bright light suddenly rose from the rear of the battlefield.
It was a sphere composed of pure light.
It hovered in mid-air like a miniature sun forced into the ground, emitting cold and sharp rays of light.
Wherever the light reached, the surrounding black smoke was brutally dispersed.
Of course, this light sphere did not emit any actual heat.
"It's the Minister's 【Daylight Spell】!"
Someone shouted with wild joy in the nearly collapsing mental channel.
However, this joy did not last long; soon, the mental channel maintaining everyone's communication finally reached its limit under the massive spiritual pressure and snapped completely.
Along with it, the previous 【Moon's Protection】 also vanished without a trace, like a candle being blown out.
The situation was deteriorating rapidly.
Aside from the bald Minister who had been whipped away, Blaine, the strongest combatant present, was already in a wretched state.
His body surface was already covered by a layer of dead gray coral identical to that on the siren.
And the pieces of tentacled meat with parrot beaks he had just vomited were now frantically crawling up his arms.
The sharp beaks had already bitten bloody gashes into his skin.
Elias's eyes were bloodshot as he whipped his head around to look behind him.
Minister Guardian, if you don't act now, everyone is going to die here!
His hand already gripped the bone flute; it was his final trump card.
At this critical juncture, accompanied by an extremely faint yet soul-trembling hum.
Elias suddenly felt the physical, terrifying pressure lighten abruptly.
Immediately after, an extremely gentle spirituality precisely enveloped his mental core, which had been on the verge of collapse.
Every investigator present who had been struggling to hold on felt their bodies shudder violently.
"【Mental Barrier】!"
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