Steel and a tide of flesh formed a meat grinder; countless pieces of flesh flew as the swarm of drones in the sky and the hideous, twisted flesh creatures on the ground engaged in the most primitive of collisions.
These drones were all illusions created through construction, unable to fire any thermal weaponry; once discovered, they would lose all ability to cause harm.
But these soulless monsters were clearly incapable of discovering that these were illusory objects existing in reality... at the very moment Lilith's Mechanical Swarm collided with the tide of flesh below.
Within a quiet ancient temple courtyard in Tokyo, a bizarre contrast was unfolding.
No earth-shaking roars could be heard here; there was only the faint rustling of the night wind passing through illusory cherry blossoms that had bloomed unnaturally out of season.
A person sat cross-legged beneath a tree.
Clad in saffron monk robes, with a face so handsome it was almost demonic, a cinnabar mole between his brows shimmered like a third eye.
He closed his eyes and entered a state of meditative concentration, as if isolated from the outside world.
And he was the third on the hunter leaderboard, India's strongest powerhouse, Brahma.
At this moment, his consciousness was like the most sensitive radar, deeply capturing the boiling faith in every corner of Tokyo.
Ghost Prison's domain of madness had drained the souls of tens of millions, leaving behind the most extreme and unified collective obsession.
Believing they were merely tools, believing destruction was their mission, believing the man atop the tower was the only god, believing this soulless husk could tear apart all enemies... chaotic, insane, but incredibly pure and intense.
What the god Brahma had to do was not to oppose this madness, but to add fuel to the fire and give it shape.
He opened his eyes.
Galaxies seemed to rotate deep within his pupils, with illusory Sanskrit characters floating within.
"Madness is also a form of faith."
He whispered, his voice carrying a strange resonance.
"Believing oneself to be a weapon, believing destruction to be one's destiny... such a fervent conviction cannot be wasted."
He raised his hand, palm upward; no light shone, but with him as the center, the air seemed to become viscous and light warped slightly, as if reality itself was beginning to loosen.
"You believe yourselves to be indestructible, you believe yourselves to possess infinite strength, you believe yourselves to be born only for slaughter."
"Good."
"I shall help you become more like what you believe yourselves to be."
Brahma's talent was fully activated at this moment!
The target: all the flesh within Tokyo that had been transformed by Ghost Prison.
All of Tokyo seemed to be pulled into a dream, with new concepts projected into this dream.
Hardness, strength, slaughter.
This wasn't a direct enhancement of the monsters, nor was it controlling them.
Instead, Brahma used his own understanding of the concept of madness as a template, using the extremely unified mad convictions of tens of millions of monsters regarding power and destruction as a fuel point.
He briefly overlaid this enhancement template onto their very existence!
The effect was immediate, yet bizarre and inexplicable.
On the battlefield, whether they were charging the Dragon Country's defensive line or pouncing on the mechanical drones, the monsters' movements all stiffened at once.
Deeper, non-human syllables seemed to blend into their roars.
Immediately after, the transformation occurred.
The twisted purple-black flesh on many monsters' bodies didn't change much in color, but its texture seemed to shift, faintly taking on a dull, aged bronze luster.
When they swung their claws and fangs, the sound of them cutting through the air became sharper.
The marks left by their scratching on Xuanwu's earthen walls or Lilith's drone shells grew deeper, even producing actual sparks!
Those already massive fusions and mountains of meat grew exaggerated muscles; every impact caused the walls reinforced by Luna to tremble violently, with cracks reappearing!
More troublesome was that a trace of extremely faint faith seemed to have been forcibly injected into their eyes, which previously held only mad slaughter.
This didn't return their sanity, as they no longer had souls, but it caused a bizarre change in their chaotic charge.
Faster monsters would instinctively clear obstacles for strength-type monsters, and different fusions would even briefly switch targets, attempting to find defensive weaknesses!
It was as if an invisible energy, transcending the individual, was coordinating them; the source of this power was those extreme faiths, given new life by Brahma using his talent.
Within the Dragon Country's defensive line, Xuanwu sent a lunging dog-like monster flying with a punch.
A faint bronze hue emanated from its body, making it harder.
Even after being sent flying, it could twist its body in mid-air to shed the force, roll twice upon landing, and pounce again with a roar, the power of its claw attacks noticeably stronger!
"Damn it!"
Xuanwu roared.
"These things have gotten harder! And they're fucking coordinating now?!"
In the next moment, his power increased, directly blasting it into fragments!
In the air, starlight flashed within Luna's purple eyes.
He saw a strange mental field seep into the monster swarm, resonating with their mad intentions and pushing them to the edge of evolution, granting them a brief combat consciousness.
"Someone is using the convictions these monsters held while alive to enhance them."
Luna's voice was low yet calm.
The mad thought of making the monsters believe they were stronger had temporarily become a more tangible reality!
This indirectly increased the threat of the flesh army, and in such a bizarre way.
It seemed someone didn't want them to easily deal with that Ghost Prison fellow.
Luna's gaze turned toward the southeast, his purple eyes locking onto a distant ancient temple... Atop a high building, Lilith's pinkish-blue eyes narrowed slightly.
Her mechanical drones collided with the first batch of monsters shimmering with a dark bronze luster.
The expected cutting sounds still rang out, but the resistance had increased significantly.
The high-frequency particle blades that could originally sever limbs with ease now required longer contact to be lethal.
Some massive fusions, covered more heavily in dark bronze, could even use their own powerful defense to stubbornly withstand the drones' kamikaze attacks!
Watching all this, Lilith gently pushed up her glasses, her gaze behind the lenses deep.
Ghost Prison alone clearly couldn't possess such an ability, and it was impossible for the Dragon Country or America to secretly help the Japan; after all, they were the ones who had proposed the strategy to draw out Ghost Prison's true methods earlier.
That left only Brahma from India.
Lilith looked into the distance, her pinkish-blue eyes locking onto Brahma's location.
"Similar to my talent, yet somewhat different..."
...Meanwhile, on the other side.
In the ancient temple courtyard, the reality-warping energy around Brahma slowly subsided.
His face was slightly pale; clearly, enhancing such a massive number of units and exerting influence simultaneously was a huge drain, but his current goal seemed to have been achieved.
He looked toward the Tokyo Tower, and then seemed to glance toward Lilith and Luna.
"The flames of madness are burning even brighter."
He whispered like a Buddhist chant.
"Only in the ultimate collision will the true variables emerge."
He closed those galaxy-like eyes once more.
And the battle in Tokyo, due to his intervention in aiding the villain, suddenly escalated.
The monsters' enhancement broke the brief equilibrium, bringing greater pressure to all those trapped, and like a spark thrown into boiling oil, it made the already volatile situation even more unpredictable.
He didn't expect these monsters to be able to kill those SSS-Rank Hunter, but if they could kill these SS-Rank elite Hunters, then his goal would be achieved.
By weakening the top combat powers of various countries, India would become stronger in another way.
Under the blood-red night, the buzzing of metal, the roars of monsters, and the bursts of energy intertwined into an increasingly violent movement of destruction.
And the boundary between reality and believed reality was becoming increasingly blurred in this city of madness...