Chapter 377

Chapter 377: Gatekeeper’s Battle

It all happened in an instant.

Three cultists of annihilation, disguised as Death Church priests, launched their surprise attack. Black-clad Guardians rushed in from all sides to help. The dozen staff from the sewage treatment center and the Guardians fell upon each other. All of this unfolded almost at the same time.

A shocking truth revealed itself: this entire treatment center had long since been fully corrupted and replaced.

No wonder there had been no sign of corruption in the settling tanks or any of the pipes. No wonder the elements that escaped through the sewers seemed to have “evaporated.” It already had a lair—right here, beneath the very noses of the city-state’s authority and the Church.

Yet countless mysteries still remained. How could cultists of annihilation, followers of the Abyssal Lord, call upon the name of the God of Death? How had the “replicas” disguised as plant workers slipped past her senses? Where had the real staff gone?

But the Mortal Realm did not give Agatha much time to think or deduce.

The Abyssal Hound’s dark breath, corrosive and full of force, roared toward her. The foul mass of energy passed so close that it nearly brushed her hair, then smashed into a pillar beside the settling tank and blew straight through it. The Smokewisp Jellyfish unleashed spiritual corruption that hammered at her mind. Her movements slowed. Her thoughts dulled. At the same time, the pale woman with the cat-shaped demon raised her hand from afar. Countless crossing blood-lines appeared around Agatha. One edge of her coat brushed against those red lines, and the cloth at the point of contact instantly crumbled to dust.

This was a carefully prepared trap. No wonder those heretics had meekly gathered here to accept “inspection”—they meant to kill the Church’s Gatekeeper.

“Foolish.”

Agatha spoke lightly and tapped the Gatekeeper’s cane against the floor.

The soft touch of the cane-tip on the ground erupted like a clap of thunder. Waves of phantom ripples spread out from the end of the Gatekeeper’s cane in every direction. In an instant, everything around her fell still.

Darkness swallowed the space around the settling tank. Everything in sight turned grey and black. Those Guardians and “replicas” locked in combat froze where they stood. Only a thin, pale light slanted in from the far-off doors and windows, and from cracks that had appeared in the high roof. It made everything within sight hazy and indistinct.

In the Spirit Realm, Agatha held her eyeball in her left hand and “looked” toward the three cultists of annihilation, who were also frozen in place.

Beside them, the demons bound by symbiotic pacts with the Abyssal Deep burned with black flames. In this world of black, white, and grey, their fire burned in eerie stillness while their smoke rose as slowly as a scene in slow motion.

Agatha lifted the Gatekeeper’s cane and gave a light sweep through the air.

The dim, grey space jolted. At once, all the black-clad Guardians who had been fighting vanished from the Spirit Realm. Agatha raised her left hand, and within the range of the eyeball’s gaze there remained only the three cultists of annihilation and the dozen twisted replicas formed of “elements” behind them.

“Feast,” Agatha said softly.

The beings of the Spirit Realm stirred. The Shadows lurking in the cracks of the world had received the Gatekeeper’s invitation and permission. In a heartbeat, countless shadows surfaced on every “surface” around the settling tank—on the floor, on the walls, along the pipes, even on the high roof.

They were like cheering crowds, like herds of beasts packed together. Massed Shadows surged along every surface, flowing toward the enemies in Agatha’s sight.

Every surface within sight crawled with moving Shadows, a sight to make the scalp prickle. But Agatha only watched it all in silence. Her right eye was open and calm, holding no emotion. Her left eye was tightly shut. In her left palm, the eyeball kept turning, never losing track of even the smallest stir around her.

The first to be surrounded were the replicas. The Shadows surged over them like an incoming tide. In a blink, they had spread across the replicas’ bodies and swallowed them whole, dissolving them in utter silence.

In the next moment, the Shadows rushed toward the three cultists of annihilation and the demons bound to them through symbiotic pacts.

The Abyssal demons sensed danger.

A strange cracking sound came from within their bodies and along their chains. The flames on all the Abyssal demons began to shudder violently. The edges of the cultists’ bodies rippled with the same strange vibration and blur. Inside this domain where all things were frozen, they struggled and “came alive.”

The young man bound to the Smokewisp Jellyfish was the first to break free. He tore himself out of the Spirit Realm’s grip and, by instinct, raised his head to look toward Agatha.

Almost at the same time, the thin old man bound to the Abyssal Hound also broke loose. Seeing what his companion was doing, he shouted a warning:

“Don’t meet the Gatekeeper’s eyes!”

But his warning came too late. The young cultist had already turned his gaze toward the triangle where Agatha stood.

Agatha raised her left hand higher. She held up her eyeball as though offering it to the young cultist.

The heretic’s eyes flew wide. His gaze locked onto the eyeball in Agatha’s palm, his whole being caught by it. He stared, stunned, almost intoxicated. A quiet, peaceful smile slowly spread across his face.

As if in that moment, he had grasped the true meaning of life and death, and in that truth had found the whole purpose and answer of his existence.

“Ah, how beautiful…”

He spoke in a soft voice, then smiled and slowly fell backward into the tide of Shadows.

He and his Abyssal demon were torn into pieces in an instant by the endless Shadows.

But as that heretic fell, a strange shriek rang out from nearby. A sharp gust of wind pressed in from Agatha’s right. She had to turn her body slightly to avoid it. An invisible blade skimmed past her forehead. She turned her head toward the source of the attack.

The pale woman bound to the cat-shaped demon was screaming at her. Her mouth split open like a twisting, inhuman maw. Blasphemous spells were crushed into short, piercing cries. A new blade of wind was already taking shape.

On the other side, the Abyssal Hound had also prepared its next breath.

Agatha seemed to ignore the hound and the thin old man behind her. She lifted the Gatekeeper’s cane and pointed it at the pale woman, who had already begun to distort like a demon. At the same time, she raised her left hand again, holding up the eyeball.

The pale woman instinctively tried to avoid the gaze of the eyeball in Agatha’s hand—only to be met, in the next second, by a dull gunshot.

The front of the Gatekeeper’s cane spat a burst of blinding fire. A heavy silver bullet blasted apart the pale woman’s already torn and twisted head.

In the next heartbeat, as the heretic’s headless body fell and the Shadows swallowed it, a mass of fiercely corrosive Abyssal Deep breath slammed into Agatha’s back and exploded.

Black fire leapt up. Smoke and dust billowed. The hound’s breath strike burst behind the Gatekeeper and quickly faded.

Agatha’s black coat did not bear a single mark.

She slowly turned and looked at the last remaining cultist—the thin old man.

He stared at her, eyes wide with shock and terror.

“I thought that if you dared to set this trap, it must have been after careful study and planning,” Agatha said, calmly fixing the final enemy with her gaze. “But judging by your expression, that is not the case. So… were you three merely expendable pawns?”

The last cultist’s fear grew even stronger, and beneath it there was a hint of helpless confusion.

Agatha noticed the change in his eyes.

“Are you looking for this?” the young Gatekeeper said quietly.

The next second, she opened her mouth wide.

A foul mass of viciously corrosive Abyssal Deep breath formed at once in front of her. It shot forward with the same force and along the same path as before, racing back toward the Abyssal Hound at the old man’s side.

The demon sensed the danger at once. It reacted almost instantly, trying to leap aside. But the returning Abyssal Deep breath curved in midair like a shell with eyes. It drove straight into the hound’s skull. After a brief delay, the demon made of piled bones exploded into a rain of fragments.

The thin cultist bound to the demon let out a scream. Even though no attack had touched his body, he crumpled to the ground in agony and could not even crawl.

The tide of Shadows surged toward him in a blink, eager to continue the Feast.

“This one is mine,” Agatha’s voice rang out. At the same time, the heavy thud of the Gatekeeper’s cane striking the floor echoed through the dark space. “Leave.”

The Shadows all around them turned wild at once. Overwhelming malice and a jumble of eerie sounds rolled like waves through the air, battering the whole domain. Some of the Shadows even edged toward Agatha.

Her expression did not change. She simply raised the Gatekeeper’s cane and slammed it down again.

Another thunderous crash rang through the space.

“Begone.”

After a brief, frozen silence, all the Shadows withdrew like the ebbing tide.