Jeanne felt the enemy gathering energy from an extreme distance. The attacker didn't even bother to conceal the strike—bolted charges enveloped in an ominous purple light streaked through the dark air like falling stars, intent on taking lives.
BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—!
Consecutive explosions shattered the narrow street, sending cobblestones and debris flying into the sky.
Jeanne's calm expression tightened, her breath catching for a split second. But after quickly scanning her surroundings and realizing the surrounding houses were completely abandoned, she let out a quiet sigh of relief.
If innocent civilians had been caught in the crossfire because of their duel, she would have carried that guilt for a long time. Collateral damage was something she strived to avoid whenever possible.
Reflecting on it now, it made total sense. This quarter had been serving as an operational hideout for The Deep Sea Church for quite some time. Even if the local residents hadn't known the precise horrors lurking beneath the surface, anyone with half a brain had packed up and fled this cursed neighborhood long ago.
Jeanne couldn't dwell on those thoughts for long, though. The mutated, giant-like cultists were already lunging toward her, forcing her to focus on clearing out the immediate threats before worrying about the sniper or the ruined buildings around them.
Skadi couldn't offer much help at the moment either. The veteran Abyssal Hunter was surrounded by abominations bearing the sickening stench of the ocean monsters. While they posed no real lethal danger to her, dealing with a horde of nimble, erratic creatures scrambling all over the walls was going to take more than a minute or two.
Jeanne delivered a crushing kick to the ribs of a towering brute. The sickening crunch echoed off the alley walls as its spine snapped—or whatever passed for a spinal column in its grotesque body. The blow sent the five-meter monster crashing to the ground, leaving it unable to rise.
The giant creature writhed in silent agony on the cobblestones, much to Jeanne's surprise. She had assumed these corrupted husks were immune to physical pain, but it turned out their pain receptors were remarkably sensitive—or perhaps her blow had simply been that devastating.
As for the merchant Tom, he had vanished amidst the chaos. With so many mutated horrors swarming them, Jeanne hadn't been able to keep a constant eye on him, and the coward had seized the opportunity to slip away into the dark without leaving a trace.
If luck was on his side, he might actually make it out of the district alive. Jeanne figured that if he had any common sense left in his head, his best move would be running straight to the High Inquisitor's headquarters to surrender. Facing trial and execution was infinitely better than being eaten alive by cultists in a dark alley.
"Is that all of them? Did they just retreat?"
After what felt like an eternity, Jeanne stood amidst the fallen husks, staring down at the grotesque corpses scattered across the pavement. She couldn't help but marvel at how these twisted things had even come to exist—their warped anatomy defied human imagination.
There were creatures that looked like mutated wolves, wolves crossed with octopuses, oversized humans, and towering octopus-man hybrids. Jeanne genuinely felt that if someone dragged these monstrosities to Columbia, movie directors wouldn't even need special effects to film a blockbuster horror movie—they could just toss these monsters onto the set.
Of course, on second thought, if these specimens fell into Columbian hands, they would never end up in a movie studio. They'd be locked away in the underground laboratories of research corporations, dissected and analyzed down to the last cell.
"They should all be gone now. But something feels off about this whole encounter," Skadi said, stepping across the field of debris while scanning the perimeter, a deep frown creasing her brow.
"What feels off?" Jeanne asked immediately. Had she missed a hidden detail during the fray?
"Maybe it's just my imagination," Skadi replied, nudging the corpse of a canine abomination aside with her boot. "I get the feeling they set a trap here, but we weren't their primary targets. They were waiting for someone else entirely."
Skadi shared her suspicions after brief consideration, pointing out odd details—like the sudden disappearance of the crossbowman perched on the distant roof, who had stopped firing after only a few volleys.
At the time, Jeanne had assumed the sniper realized his bolts couldn't break through their defenses and opted to fall back to avoid being hunted down.
"I don't think that was it," Skadi turned to Jeanne, her crimson eyes serious. "He didn't pull back because his attacks failed. He left too abruptly, almost as if something far more urgent had suddenly caught his attention."
Her words made Jeanne fall silent. Thinking back, Skadi's logic made sense. While she couldn't say for sure what had happened on that rooftop, it was certainly a possibility worth considering.
Before they could discuss it further, rapid, heavy footsteps echoed down the narrow alleyway.
Jeanne and Skadi turned to see a squad of Inquisitors sweeping into the ruined street, weapons drawn. The soldiers stopped dead in their tracks upon taking in the carnage, their eyes filled with intense caution as they locked onto the two women standing at the center of the destruction.
"You two... are truly something else," the squad leader breathed out, recognizing Jeanne and Skadi. He stared at the giant carcasses for a long moment, struggling to process the scene.
"Have you even been in this city for five hours? In that short span of time, you've managed to stir up more chaos than our entire patrol unit deals with in a week!"
His tone lacked real hostility, largely because Jeanne hailed from Laterano. The last Sankta from Laterano who had stepped foot in these lands was a legendary warrior who had given his life for the Iberian people, so the local authorities treated Laterano citizens with considerable goodwill.
Had it been anyone else standing amidst the wreckage, the Inquisitors would have shackled them first and asked questions later.
"What choice did I have?" Jeanne shrugged helplessly. "Trouble keeps finding me. I didn't ask for any of this!"
"Right, right, of course," the captain chuckled softly, his guarded posture relaxing. He waved his hand, ordering his men to begin securing the scene and clearing the monster remains, before stepping closer to converse with the pair.
"Still, I have to give it to you," the captain remarked, gazing down the street. "Demolishing a clock tower from over five hundred meters away with that kind of destructive power... was that some form of high-tier Arts?"
Jeanne and Skadi froze, staring at him in complete bewilderment. Neither of them had expected a third party to intervene in the battle while they were occupied with the mob.
"That wasn't us!" Jeanne corrected him immediately, her mind spinning. "Neither of us possesses long-range Arts capable of leveling a building from that distance."
Her denial sent a surge of tension through the squad. The Inquisitors had rushed to the scene precisely because local residents reported the destruction of the old bell tower. Finding the structure nearly leveled, along with bloodstains and a sniper's corpse, they had assumed Jeanne and Skadi were responsible.
Now, realizing a dangerous, unknown force had intervened without showing its face, the captain's expression turned dead serious.
He immediately dispatched a second team to examine the ruins of the clock tower, while Jeanne and Skadi learned the full details of what had transpired.
Moments earlier, local citizens had reported a sudden collapse at the old tower. When the Inquisitors arrived, they found the upper levels shattered to pieces, a pool of black blood, and the mangled body of the crossbow sniper lying in the rubble.
"Who do you think stepped in to help us?" Jeanne turned to Skadi, searching her friend's face for a clue.
"I don't know," Skadi replied, her eyes drifting toward the crumbling spire in the distance. "But whoever did it possesses incredible raw strength and a staggering capacity for destruction."
Regardless of who had intervened, one thing was clear: the trail leading to the cult's local leadership had gone cold once again.
Jeanne rubbed her temples in frustration, feeling a headache coming on.
"Well, if we don't have any concrete clues, we'll just have to follow our instincts!" Jeanne sighed, letting her hand drop. "Sooner or later, the truth will come to the surface."