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{Chapter: 247 Their Respective Actions}
Years of military service took hold, and the sergeant's hand flew to the hilt of his weapon, poised and ready to draw in the blink of an eye.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the girl, he asked sharply, "Who are you?"
The other soldiers, sensing the change in atmosphere, quickly abandoned their casual chatter and focused their attention on the strange child. Tension filled the air like a drawn bowstring.
The little girl did not move.
Her lips curved into an unnatural smile, and in that same hoarse voice—eerily mismatched with her cherubic appearance—she repeated her earlier words.
"How lucky… How unfortunate…"
The contrast between her youthful face and the hollow, unnatural voice crawling from her throat sent a wave of discomfort through the surrounding guards and civilians.
The sergeant narrowed his eyes. His voice turned cold.
"You need to—"
But before he could finish his warning, the world shifted.
In an instant, the upper half of his body vanished—completely and utterly obliterated—leaving only his lower torso standing, trembling slightly, as if it hadn't yet realized what had happened.
A red mist hung in the air, and a moment later, a wet crunch echoed in the stunned silence.
The girl—if she could even be called that—was chewing.
Slowly, deliberately.
Chewing as if savoring a piece of meat, the remnants of bones grinding between her teeth with grotesque rhythm. She licked the blood from the corner of her lips with a snake-like motion, her expression one of dreamy satisfaction.
Then, her pupils began to dissolve into a deep, unnatural crimson glow, gleaming like dying embers beneath a veil of shadow.
She smiled sweetly at the horrified onlookers—soldiers frozen in fear, passersby clutching their mouths in shock—and said, in a soft yet chilling voice:
"You're all so… very unfortunate."
She could have stepped back.
She could have left the city peacefully.
Just a single step beyond the gate and she would have been outside the city's boundary, free to go.
But she didn't.
Instead, above her, the city's great defensive barrier—the one built to protect the people of Augustus—began to shimmer with dark energy. Once invisible, the protective dome now pulsed with a malevolent aura, revealing its corrupted state.
An ominous radiance seeped through the air, and from the corrupted runes overhead, thick black mist began to pour down like a sinister fog, cascading into the city like a living tide.
And then, as if a switch had been flipped, Augustus was no longer part of the world.
It had been cut off completely—isolated from the outside, swallowed by the barrier that once safeguarded it.
---
Outside the city walls.
A group of civilians who had exited the city just moments before were walking along the road. One of them paused, glancing back with a puzzled expression.
"Strange… Why aren't there any soldiers on the wall tonight?" he asked aloud.
His companion followed his gaze, gave a quick shrug, and replied with casual indifference, "Probably just on a different shift or taking a break. We saw some folks earlier—must've gone to handle something."
"I suppose you're right," the first man said, still staring at the wall.
With a shrug, he turned back to the road and continued walking, the strange emptiness of the wall fading from his mind like a passing thought.
They had no idea that, within the walls behind them, screams had already begun.
And the city of Augustus… was no longer the same.
---
Augustus — City Lord's Mansion
Nightfall cloaked Augustus in a warm, golden veil as the City Lord's Mansion blazed with activity. A formal dinner party was underway—less a feast and more a political convergence. It was the kind of grand occasion where power disguised itself behind polite smiles and idle chatter. Among the attendees were the most influential figures in the city: the City Lord himself, the branch president of the Magic Council, and the esteemed head of the Professionals' Union. All the high-ranking officials and elite professionals had assembled here, dressed in their finest robes and armor, sipping rare wine and discussing affairs that governed life and death in the region.
The hall was illuminated with enchanted crystal chandeliers. Music played faintly in the background, barely audible beneath the hum of conversations. Waitresses in explicit costumes moved gracefully through the crowd, serving delicacies and wine brewed from century-old cellars. No one suspected a thing.
The City Lord was mid-laugh, exchanging pleasantries with a noble when he instinctively froze. He raised his goblet, but before the wine could touch his lips, an overwhelming pressure slammed down from the heavens. His expression contorted in an instant. His pupils shrank to pinpricks as an instinctive dread overtook him. The crystalline goblet shattered in his grasp, cutting into his palm, but he didn't even flinch.
A chill swept through the hall.
He wasn't alone in his reaction. The Magic Council's president, the Professionals' Union head, and several other top-tier powerhouses all simultaneously turned their gazes upward. Something was coming. Something that shouldn't exist here.
The very fabric of the sky trembled.
Without warning, twelve searing beams of hellish light erupted from the clouds above, streaking toward the ground like divine punishment. Each beam tore through space itself, carving burning scars into the air. They didn't descend—they pierced.
A second later, the entire City Lord's Mansion vanished in a colossal, apocalyptic detonation.
The explosion erupted with a deafening roar, hurling flaming debris hundreds of meters in every direction. An earth-shaking shockwave followed, flattening trees, splintering buildings, and obliterating statues like they were made of glass. In less than a tenth of a second, the entire estate—spanning hundreds of acres—was reduced to a smoldering crater. Where once stood regal marble halls and enchanted towers, now remained only a gaping hole, hundreds of meters wide and unfathomably deep.
If not for the containment field hastily activated by the defensive matrix, the entire upper city would have been annihilated in a blink. Even so, the echoes of destruction rolled across the city like thunder, windows shattering for miles, towers crumbling, people screaming.
Millions would have died if the explosion hadn't been spatially concentrated. Even so, shockwaves rocked the city, and civilians began to panic as the first fireballs rained down.
Those caught in the mansion's blast zone—high-ranking officials, professional elites, guards, servants—were simply gone. Erased from existence. Vaporized before they could scream, let alone react. Their final moments were stolen from them, snuffed out like candles in a hurricane. The silence they left behind was deafening.
Only a few survived.
Twenty-three individuals emerged from the swirling dust, their armor torn, their faces bloodied, their expressions grim. Several collapsed to one knee, coughing blood. Three or four were grievously wounded, their magical defenses shredded. Burnt skin peeled from their arms. A few had broken limbs, one man's ribs poking through his chestplate.
The rest bore burns, lacerations, and trauma — but lived.
It wasn't luck. It was raw power, quick thinking, and defensive treasures that bought them the few milliseconds they needed to act.
Even so, they knew they had barely escaped death.
And death had not yet passed them by.
None of them spoke. No one cried for the fallen. There was no time. The survivors regrouped immediately, backs to each other, forming a tight circle atop scorched earth and blackened rubble.
Then… the sky turned black.
Not metaphorically—literally black, as if some monstrous hand had smeared ink across the heavens. Stars disappeared. Moonlight vanished. The enchanted lights of the city dimmed one by one.
A thick, noxious fog rolled in like a living tide, churning with malevolent whispers and oily tendrils. It sank into every alley, every crack in the walls, choking torches and snuffing lanterns. The smell of rotting meat and sulfur invaded the lungs.
This was no ordinary magic.
This was a domain.
A powerful, reality-warping domain akin to the dreaded [Polluted Land]—a demonic field that smothered the world's natural order. Within it, demons became stronger, faster, more feral. Their instincts sharpened, while the powers of humans and mortals dulled as if the gods themselves had turned away.
Light was devoured.
Flesh began to rot if exposed too long.
Terror seeped into the mind like poison gas.
The wind carried whispers that twisted thoughts.
Those still alive in the city—civilians and low-tier professionals—were dying by the hundreds every minute, unable to see, breathe, or resist. Screams echoed through the streets. Children wailed. Fires erupted. Explosions crackled in the distance as formations failed and spells backfired.
Augustus, the proud jewel of civilization, had descended into hell on earth.
And the demons?
They were here.
More than a dozen stepped through the fog like wolves among crippled prey. Their eyes glowed like blood-soaked jewels. Some walked upright, wearing shredded cloaks. Others crawled like beasts on all fours, their mouths filled with serrated teeth. One had wings like a bat and a face split open to reveal writhing tentacles. Another floated, its body composed of shadow and bone.
All were at least Mid-level Demons—powerhouses capable of ripping apart armies. Some were greater. At least two of them radiated such immense pressure that space itself distorted near them.
They didn't charge.
They circled.
Watching. Smiling. Tasting the fear in the air.
The survivors knew—they were the main course.
The City Lord, his voice a gravelly growl, glared at the encroaching fog and muttered, "Someone betrayed Mi Ling World… This wasn't just an attack—it was an invasion prepared from within. They had help. Someone with access to the inner barrier protocols…"
His hand clenched tightly. His gaze swept over the others. There were only five or six individuals in the entire city with the authority to override the defensive formations. The implications made his stomach churn.
But there was no time for suspicion.
The president of the Professionals' Union, blood trailing from his mouth, didn't hesitate. He reached into his space ring and pulled out a small case of crystalline vials. "No time to play the blame game," he barked, tossing the potions to the others. "We need to break through their encirclement and regroup with the surviving forces—if any are left. These will amplify your potential. Take them."