Northern Shore of the Conquest Sea, Telva.

Late at night, in a large mansion on the outskirts of Telva city, the lights blazed brightly as the entire estate bustled with activity.

Due to a sudden turn of events, the members of the Dark Gold Society had received emergency orders to evacuate. The entire organization’s forces within Telva were now busy in the dead of night, preparing everything so they could board the train and leave at dawn.

Amid the hectic scene, a man dressed in black named Bana was striding swiftly through the corridor, his expression solemn and a large cloth bag in his hand. As he walked, he glanced cautiously around at his surroundings.

Ascending several flights of stairs at a brisk pace, Bana arrived on the third floor of the mansion. After wandering the floor for a while, he spotted a servant in livery hurrying toward him from the opposite end of the corridor. As the servant passed by, he bowed slightly and asked.

“Mr. Bana, do you know where Mr. Gochelle is right now?”

“Hm… What do you need him for?” Bana paused for a moment, not answering directly but instead posing a question in return. The servant stopped as well and responded.

“Ah, it’s nothing urgent really. I just wanted to ask him how we should deal with the ‘material’ people in the basement who haven’t been transported yet. There are still more than a dozen down there. With time so tight, it’s hard to move them all. I was going to ask whether we should dispose of them now to avoid any potential trouble.”

The servant explained, and after a moment of silent thought, Bana nodded and said, “Hmm… That is indeed something worth addressing. How about this — I happen to be looking for Mr. Gochelle myself. Come with me.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Bana.”

The servant followed Bana’s lead as he turned and continued down the hallway. Before long, Bana led him into a vacant room. The servant entered behind him, glancing around and seeing no sign of Mr. Gochelle. He began to speak, confused.

“Mr. Bana, are we—”

Before he could finish, Bana suddenly turned around. A gun, which had appeared in his hand at some unknown moment, was now pointed directly at the servant’s head. Before the servant could react, Bana pulled the trigger. With a deafening bang, the bullet tore through the servant’s forehead. His eyes widened in shock before he collapsed lifeless to the ground.

The gunshot rang through the mansion, startling everyone within. Without hesitation, Bana tossed several yellowish cylindrical sticks from the bag he carried beside the corpse, then swiftly leapt out the nearby window he had opened earlier, landing in a predetermined spot on the ground outside. He then quickly re-entered the mansion and dashed back up to the third floor.

Meanwhile, within the now-silent room, the fallen corpse of the servant suddenly stirred. He picked up the discarded explosives and tucked them into his chest before lying flat again, feigning death.

Back inside the bustling mansion, the gunshot had thrown everyone into alarm. Servants and members alike rushed toward the source of the noise. Bana blended into the crowd and headed upstairs. Along the way, he ran into the middle-aged man Falor.

Seeing him, Bana asked urgently.

“What happened?”

“No idea. The shot came from upstairs. Let’s go take a look!” Falor replied, and the two of them rushed up together.

Moments later, they reached the room where the incident had occurred. Several figures were already gathered at the doorway — among them, the elder Gochelle and his young attendant Alaulo, along with a few other servants. All of them stared grimly into the room.

“What happened here, Mr. Gochelle?” Bana asked, approaching with Falor and the others. This time, it was Alaulo who answered him.

“Someone’s been shot… we’ve been infiltrated. Someone snuck in.”

“What…” Bana and Falor exchanged stunned glances and looked into the room, spotting the prone figure of the servant’s body, both men visibly taken aback.

Seeing the scene before him, Gochelle, leaning on his cane, turned to face Bana with a stern expression and opened his mouth to speak.

“We’ve been exposed. You were followed when you came back. They let you escape on purpose!”

“Fo-followed...? No way. I was constantly using my ability on the way back. There shouldn’t have been any chance of being tracked... could this be...?”

Bana tried to explain as everyone’s attention gathered on him. At that very moment—while the eyes in the room were all focused on him—the corpse that had been lying motionless on the floor suddenly stirred.

In the instant everyone’s gaze was diverted, the fallen corpse abruptly sprang to life, as if everything had been premeditated. He stood up suddenly and charged toward the crowd at the doorway. Hidden inside his clothing was something clutched to his chest.

The unexpected movement instantly drew everyone’s attention back. Their eyes widened in shock as they saw the corpse rushing toward them, and instinctively, they all tried to retreat.

And just then, Bana’s previously tense expression darkened. In that critical moment, he reached out and seized the nearby Falor and Alaulo, yanking them in front of him with abnormal strength to use them as human shields. The suddenness of it made Falor and Alaulo instinctively try to break free—but it was too late.

The reanimated corpse had already reached them.

With a faint, almost imperceptible crackle of electricity, the explosives clutched in the corpse marionette’s arms detonated.

BOOM!!!

A violent explosion erupted right at the doorway on the third floor. Blinding fire and an immense shockwave blasted outward, sweeping in all directions. The corridor and room at the center of the blast were consumed in flame in an instant. Windows on the third floor shattered, debris and black smoke spewing outward. Even the floors below trembled from the force of the blast, shattering windows and triggering distant dogs to bark in alarm.

After the explosion, thick smoke engulfed the entire mansion. The point of detonation had become a ruined wasteland—walls collapsed, ceilings and floors caved in. Large sections of the third floor and roof had collapsed down to the second floor. Cracked bricks littered the area, and servant corpses lay buried under debris and splintered ceiling beams. One-third of the entire mansion had been reduced to ruins in a single moment, the destruction concentrated on the second and third floors.

Amidst the devastation, from a pile of shattered rubble, an old figure slowly stood. Gochelle’s clothes were torn to shreds, his entire body caked in dust and ash, fury blazing in his eyes.

He had been very close to the epicenter and took the brunt of the explosion. The people who had stood beside him were now nothing but scattered, mangled limbs. Gochelle himself, however, bore only a few fine cracks across his body—barely visible.

“Damn it... I was played. Alaulo! Anyone still alive, get up!”

Gritting his teeth with hatred, Gochelle shouted into the surrounding wreckage. Not far from him, amidst another heap of rubble, survivors began to stir in the dust and smoke.

Bana stood amidst the ruins. At his feet lay two broken bodies—one of them unrecognizable, a mangled corpse beyond saving. That was Falor. The other, although still intact in form, had thin, fractured lines of blood-red cracks all over its body and had also lost all signs of life. That was Alaulo.

At the critical moment earlier, Bana had pulled Falor and Alaulo in front of him to serve as shields, absorbing most of the blast. Despite both of them being Wall Walkers—whose bodies could resist bullets—they couldn’t survive such a close-range explosion. Both were killed instantly.

As Gochelle’s voice rang out from not far away, Bana fixed his gaze on Alaulo’s fallen form. Under a strange influence, Alaulo suddenly opened his eyes again and rose to his feet. He responded in the direction of the voice.

“Cough... cough... Mr. Gochelle, I’m here!”

Alaulo then took a revolver from Bana’s hand. The two began moving toward Gochelle’s position, navigating the wreckage. After climbing over two obstacles, they found him—standing amid rubble and corpses.

Just as Gochelle was about to speak upon seeing them, Alaulo and Bana raised their guns and opened fire without hesitation.

Bang! Bang!

Bullets flew from the revolvers in their hands, striking Gochelle squarely. But the shots clanged off harmlessly—Gochelle didn’t so much as flinch.

“Mind control...! They’re flesh puppets?!”

Realizing what was happening, Gochelle growled with growing fury.

He reached for his ring, then swung his cane. The tip of the cane fell away and expanded into a spiked iron sphere the size of a basketball. A sharp blade snapped outward from within the sphere, and a long iron chain extended from the shaft—transforming the cane into a massive flail.

Gochelle whipped the flail with a mighty swing. The heavy iron ball, pulled by the chain, slammed directly into Alaulo’s body, hurling him aside. His upper torso was pulverized, bones shattered, and blood sprayed everywhere. He was instantly incapacitated.

With one sweep ending Alaulo, Gochelle followed with another. The iron ball whirled toward Bana, who couldn’t dodge in time and was smashed to the ground. Cracks spread across his hardened body. If not for his Black Earth rank hardening, the blow would have rendered him completely immobile.

Seeing Bana collapse, Gochelle moved in to land a finishing blow—but as he swung the flail again, he felt his arm drag suddenly, and the strike went wide, smashing into rubble nearby and kicking up a cloud of dust. When he looked down, he saw that his right arm was being tightly held by a broken corpse of a male servant—it was the same one that had been lying near his feet moments ago.

In that instant, the scattered, maimed corpses across the rubble all sprang into action simultaneously. From all directions, they lunged toward Gochelle, swarming him and pinning him down. Gochelle tried to swing his flail in retaliation, only to discover that the head of the flail was now firmly gripped in Bana’s hand.

Just as Gochelle began to channel more strength to break free, a blazing streak of searing orange light pierced the night sky from afar, striking him directly. His back erupted in a burst of blazing heat, and a torrent of flames spewed from the impact point, engulfing both Gochelle and the corpses binding him. His entire body was instantly transformed into a raging pillar of fire.

At that moment, several hundred meters away, on the rooftop of a low building, Dorothy crouched, cloaked in black. In her hands was a long rifle.

The weapon was finely crafted from brass and cypress wood. Intricate etchings adorned the brass barrel, and the polished wooden stock felt smooth to the touch. A series of lenses were suspended over the rifle’s top by delicate brass arms. Through these overlapping lenses, Dorothy gazed at the distant mansion, now shrouded in darkness.

“Ignis Converta”—that was the name of the rifle. It had the ability to convert Lantern spirituality into high-temperature projectiles, firing them like beams across distances of up to a kilometer, incinerating its target. The “Insight Overlay Lenses” mounted atop the rifle granted even ordinary users enhanced long-distance and night vision on par with Lantern Beyonders. They also heightened the shooter’s focus, greatly improving their sniping precision.

This rifle had once been prepared by the Eight-Spired Nest to assassinate Duke Barrett. When Dorothy disrupted their original plan, the weapon was abandoned at the scene and later confiscated by Vania, who eventually passed it on to Dorothy. This was her first time using it in real combat.

“Not bad at all… at least in terms of accuracy and destructive effect, it’s reliable… or at least it looks that way.”

Through the lenses, Dorothy murmured while observing the aftermath in the ruins. Despite the flames successfully engulfing the target, a trace of wariness remained on her face. As she watched the burning wreckage, she noticed clearly: the flames consuming Gochelle were rapidly diminishing.

Within the mansion ruins, the inferno surrounding Gochelle gradually faded. As the fire dispersed, the first things to appear were the charred corpses, and next—the being they had tried to restrain.

His body was coated in smooth black stone-like skin. Beast-like claws extended from his limbs, his face twisted into a demonic snarl between long pointed ears, and from his back stretched a pair of broad stone wings.

When the blaze had fully died down, what emerged before Dorothy’s eyes was Gochelle’s new form—one like a grotesque and intricately sculpted stone demon.

Now transformed, Gochelle stood atop the ruins, his gaze sweeping across the scene. All around him, more broken corpses began shambling toward him in a relentless tide. In response, glowing orange runes lit up across his body, many of them bearing the symbol of Lantern.

Then, Gochelle opened his mouth and breathed out a torrent of blazing fire toward the oncoming corpses—flames that he had absorbed earlier into his gargoyle skin during the attack.

As a White Ash rank Gargoyle—the next advancement of a Wall Walker—Gochelle possessed the ability to absorb and reflect back nearly any elemental or material-based spiritual attack.