CHAPTER 107: THE YELLOW SIGN

The Nihil still loomed on the distant horizon, a crimson maelstrom of chaos and hunger.

Its vortex spun with violent intent, ejecting red hurricane-like tendrils that stretched across the sky. Each tendril writhed, their tips splitting into jagged, toothy maws that gnashed at the air as they surged forward.

Their target was not the Monochara bastion itself, but the ridge where Samael and Oizys stood, the source of whatever torment had roused the Nihil’s wrath.

Samael’s dress fluttered in the rising wind, her expression as flat as ever. "It seems like the Nihil’s rather mad," she remarked, her voice devoid of inflection, as if commenting on a minor inconvenience rather than an approaching storm of destruction.

Oizys, her shadowed fleshy tendrils coiled the periphery, preparing to retaliate in case that the hurricane protrusion reached them.

She kept her gaze fixed on the advancing threat. "For something that doesn’t show a single sign of intelligence," Oizys said, her tone edged with dark curiosity, "it sure has a great reactive instinct."

Her lips twitched into a faint, sadistic smirk, her eyes gleaming as the tendrils drew closer.

Samael tilted her head slightly, her fingers tracing idle patterns in the air. "I wonder still," she mused, "what kind deed Monochara—or someone within it—committed to make the Nihil this hellbent on reaching us. Most Nihils lack the focus to care, let alone the acuity to target anything with such effort."

As she spoke, she summoned fifty Limbo Tier Divine Constructs, their translucent forms shimmering into existence like ghosts on the ridge.

Behind them, her sole Lust Tier Divine Construct emerged, its towering frame radiating a quiet, ominous power.

Samael glanced at Oizys, her tone still casual. "Someone or something might have tapped it, puppeteered it to some extent."

"You don’t know what caused it? So much for your intelligent network."

"As much as I wanted to deny that, it seemed like it had been perpetuated far before Kivas got to Fathomi."

Oizys’s smirk faded into a thoughtful frown.

She tapped her temple with a finger, sending a telepathic pulse rippling outward to Uhr’tarukh and the Bastion of the Harvest, their distant figures poised on the ridge’s edge, preparing for the imminent clash.

"If that’s true," Oizys muttered, "we’ve got bigger problems than a tantrum-throwing storm."

Before Samael could reply, Blanchette strolled into view, her ever-present smile wide and mocking.

"Oh, look, the two almighty geniuses are at it again, doing the best deed of justice for the betterment of the world," she purred, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I’ve arrived to join the festivities—my sister’s lovely orders, of course. Not that I had much say in the matter."

Her smile twitched on the last sentence, a hint of bitterness seeping through.

Oizys chuckled, some of her tendrils on the background flexing as she shot Blanchette a sidelong glance. "The Unrelenting Vow strikes again, eh? Kivas must’ve had enough of your loafing."

Blanchette’s smile widened, though her tone grew sharp. "I go where I want, when I want, vow or not. But since I’m here, I might as well enjoy the show."

At that moment, one of the hurricane tendrils lunged forward so close to the vicinity already, its fanged maw mere fifty meters from the ridge.

The Lust Tier Divine Construct reacted instantly, conjuring a massive blade forged of swirling entropy.

With a single, fluid slash, it bisected the tendril, the severed halves twitching as entropic energy surged through them.

The corruption raced back along the tendril’s length, striking the Nihil’s crimson core.

The massive eldritch vortex from afar shuddered, its surface rippling as if in pain, though it offered no sound—only a heavier, more oppressive silence.

Samael’s constructs hummed in readiness, their forms poised for the next assault.

"Looks like entropy-based attack seems to be three times more effective than the divine warhead we had lobbed," Samael commented after seeing the Lust Tier Divine Construct in action.

"To think that we have elemental and attack type resistance in this world," Oizys chuckled. "By the way, I’m curious. The Monochara has their own church, how come they can’t revive their dead noble?"

"You thought about this now?" Samael snickered. "Well, the killer didn’t only attack her body, but also her soul and essence. For the church to revive someone, their soul or even bits of their essence needs to be intact.

"The wound in itself was clean and all the body parts were there to retrieve. But without the soul, it will only become an empty husk."

"Is it truly confirmed that the soul got destroyed?" Blanchette said, flaring her usual smile. "Maybe it was taken?"

"Then the church should be able, in some way, to call upon the soul in the resurrection process on the leftover body parts as the catalyst," Samael answered. "Unless the church here is just that incappable."

In the shadowed underbelly of Monochara—beneath the bastion, on a rather shattered glass bridge suspended over an abyss of churning mist, Cayame stood tall before the trenchcoat man.

His severed arm lay discarded at her feet, blood pooling on the bridge’s faintly pulsing surface.

Her lion-like form trembled, not from weakness but from the barely contained fury coursing through her.

Her claws dug into the man’s remaining arm, pinning him as her humanoid torso loomed above, her hawk-like eyes blazing with lethal intent.

"How long," she growled, her voice a guttural snarl that echoed across the mist-shrouded expanse, "has the Yellow Order planned this?"

The man’s pale, featureless face twisted into a grotesque grin beneath the brim of his hat. "All of it," he rasped, his voice thick with fanatic glee, "is according to the King in Yellow’s will."

Before Cayame could respond, a gnarly sword erupted from the mist behind her—its blade a grotesque amalgam of hard flesh and unblinking eyes.

It plunged through her humanoid torso, piercing her chest with a wet, sickening sound.

Pain flared, white-hot and blinding, but Cayame’s reflexes were faster than her shock.

But as her lion’s body reared, an axe of the same fleshy material swung toward her neck.

The blade bit deep, severing her head in a single, brutal stroke.

Her head sailed through the air, blood trailing in its wake.

Yet Cayame, or in this case, her body itself, did not falter. Even as her body staggered, her arm lashed out with preternatural speed, seizing the wrist of her attacker—a woman cloaked in yellow, her face obscured beneath a hood.

With a silent wrath that shook the bridge, Cayame slammed her to the ground, the impact splintering the glass beneath them.

Her lion’s paws then descended, crushing the woman’s chest with a visceral crunch.

Ribs snapped like dry twigs, blood sprayed across the fractured surface, and the woman’s body went limp, her yellow cloak pooling around her like a shroud.

Cayame’s fury burned hotter, undeterred by the wound or the loss of her head.

She invoked a gravity skill.

Her severed head snapped back toward her outstretched hand, guided by an unseen force. She caught it, pressing it firmly back onto her neck.

The flesh knitted together seamlessly, as if the beheading had been a mere inconvenience.

Her hawk-like gaze sharpened, now a furnace of unrestrained wrath—her breath ragged with the weight of her grief.

She turned to the trenchcoat man, who staggered back, his grin faltering as her shadow fell over him. "You took her," she spat, her voice breaking with raw emotion. "The one you killed just to enact your plan, she meant the world to me."

Her voice became so guttural, it could be confused as the lion itself roared with the intent to kill.

Cayame claws extended, gleaming wickedly in the dim light. She lunged, tearing through his coat and into the flesh beneath.

"Vervendi, she had a beautiful obsession with meaningful imperfection."

Fabric shredded, skin parted, and blood sprayed in arcs as her strikes landed with relentless precision.

"I’m one of those imperfections, a creation unfinished yet cherished greatly by her gentle claws..."

The man’s screams rose, shrill and desperate, but they only fueled her rage.

Each blow was a tribute to Vervendi—her laughter, her warmth, the life stolen from Cayame’s grasp.

"But to think that her story ended in such an unfinished state..."

She drove her claws deeper, twisting them in his chest, feeling the resistance of bone and muscle give way.

His screams turned to gurgles, his body twitching as life drained from him.

The glass bridge cracked further under the force of her assault, its runes flickering wildly as if recoiling from the violence.

Cayame’s humanoid torso glistened with sweat and gore, her lion’s form heaving with exertion. "Today, when we defeated that accursed Nihil, I planned to propose to her again. I should have done it sooner... If only I have the ability to turn back time," she hissed, her voice a broken whisper laced with venom, coated with some kind of ritualistic chant, "For those who are unskilled, make them drink their fill...

"For those who are unfulfilled, make them drink their fill." The reality appeared to be warping beneath Cayame, as if she was influencing what should not happen through sheer power of will. "May there be curses, on you and your fellowship...

"May you be cursed, you and your companionship."

With a final, savage thrust, she ripped through his chest, her claws emerging slick with crimson.

The trenchcoat man crumpled, his grin frozen in a death mask, his body a ruined heap at her feet.

Cayame stood over him, her chest rising and falling with ragged breaths, her eyes still burning with unspent fury.

But she had enacted something so severe that not even Fathomi itself might not be allowing it for the foreseeable future.

"This is not over," Cayame bit her lower lip as tears finally started to stream from her swelling eyes. "I won’t let it be over. If needed, I’ll drag down the entire continent, or even half of Fathomi with me...

"The Yellow Order... you filled my heart with hate."

The mist swirled thicker around her, shapes of it curling like specters in the gloom.

A faint whisper drifted from the shadows—too soft to decipher, yet heavy with malice.

Cayame’s head snapped up, her gaze piercing the darkness, her claws flexing as if daring the unseen to step forward.

She had lost something dear to her, but she would take it all back, piece by bloody piece.