"What the hell is that thing?!"
Inside the Mistwood Ruins, the heavily wounded Blaidd stared at the creature before him, eyes filled with shock.
Blaidd was a subordinate of the witch Ranni, whom Lloyd had encountered earlier. He had come here to hunt down a traitor named Darriwil. According to the information he'd gathered, Darriwil had last been seen in this area. That led him to the Mistwood Ruins, where the remains of a tall structure allowed him to survey most of the surrounding land from above.
Unlike Lloyd, Blaidd hadn't been bothered by the monsters prowling the ruins. After all, not everyone was an Undead or a Tarnished—creatures so cursed that even passing dogs would try to bite them. Besides, he was perched high above, out of their reach, and so far, they'd left him alone.
That peace lasted until a mass of writhing sludge crept up and engulfed a dozing giant bear nestled among the ruins.
No one—not even the monsters—knew where the sludge had come from, how long it had been there, or why it had appeared. It seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, yet also felt like it had always been part of the ruins. It looked like mud, but also like a cluster of hardened shards.
The sleeping bear never stood a chance. In an instant, it was swallowed by the sludge. Flesh and fur melted away, its body twisted grotesquely, and humanoid limbs began to sprout across its skin. A thick, black mist oozed out, resembling pus.
"GRAAAARRRGH!"
The thing raised its head and unleashed an incomprehensible roar, then began lashing out indiscriminately at everything around it.
Its attacks were utter chaos—each limb seemed to move on its own, flailing wildly and unleashing erratic, varied strikes.
Palms, fists, claws…
Severed limbs, bone blades, skulls…
Some arms even fired blue magic arrows mid-swing, impaling unlucky squirrels that happened to pass by.
"GRAAAARRRGH..."
At first, Blaidd had no intention of interfering. After all, if the Lands Between lacked anything, monsters weren't one of them.
But then he noticed something unsettling. With each kill, the monster seemed to grow—its limbs swung with greater force, its body swelled.
The growth wasn't minor either. It was evolving. Fast.
Realizing this, Blaidd's expression hardened. He leapt from his perch and swung his Royal Greatsword, slashing down directly onto the abomination.
A surge of cold erupted from the blade, instantly freezing everything in its path. The monster froze solid on impact, and one of its flailing arms—caught mid-swing—snapped off under the force of inertia, shattering into pieces as it hit the ground.
But just as Blaidd thought he'd ended it, something began to grow from the spot where his sword had struck. A shriveled arm extended outward, clutching a grotesque staff fashioned from what looked like the dismembered remains of a human corpse.
The staff ignited.
Blaidd's instincts screamed in warning. He moved instantly—but not fast enough.
Bang—
A blue Crystal Soul Spear shot forth, exploding against his chest. That single blast nearly killed him.
Before he could recover, two more blobs of black sludge erupted, roaring like sentient pus as they hurtled toward him. He raised his greatsword like a shield, reacting as quickly as he could—but the impact still sent him flying.
"What is this...?"
Though the tide had turned in their favor, the monster's roar only grew more desperate. It sounded like an abandoned cub crying out for its mother, or like a knight in the abyss chanting the name of his king.
Then, more limbs burst forth.
Twisted, wailing, writhing in agony and desperate for death—these limbs were forcefully dragged back into the world.
Blaidd wanted to retreat, but the injuries he'd sustained had already crippled his movements. Worse, his earlier attack had made him the monster's prime target. Now, all the Sorceries and Incantations coursing through its countless arms were trained on him.
Just as he raised his greatsword, ready to risk it all—
Snap.
A faint finger snap.
A golden meteor crashed down from the sky, striking the monster and detonating in a blinding flash, like a sun igniting midair, illuminating the entire sky.
Boom!
As the light faded, a flaming greatsword descended and slammed into the monster, engulfing it in fire.
But it wasn't over.
Dodging a sudden burst of pus with a quick backstep, someone flung a massive fireball directly at the creature.
Bang!
As the fireball exploded, a Spiral Sword burst from the blaze, piercing deep into the monster's flesh. The spiral blade embedded itself and erupted in flames.
With embers rising, the monster howled in agony. Yet, oddly enough, this cry sounded... less desperate than before. Almost—
Joyful.
"GRAAAARRRGH..."
The fire spread.
Flames surged from within, consuming the twisted creature's form. Along with its cursed pain and despair, its body turned to ash.
"Who... are you?"
Blaidd stared, stunned, at the man who had suddenly appeared in front of him—dressed in strange armor, as if it had once been scorched by fire.
But the man didn't answer. Instead, he turned to the blonde girl who had somehow arrived beside him.
"Alice, where'd you learn that move? What are the stat requirements? How many Runes does it cost?"
That golden meteor earlier had been insanely flashy—and powerful. It had wiped out half the monster's health bar in a single strike, shredded all its limbs, and even provided a massive area-wide buff to allies, boosting resistances, increasing attack power, and gradually restoring HP.
It was flashy, destructive, and instantly caught his interest.
"I taught myself," Alice replied after thinking a moment.
"You won't be able to use it with your current system, but I can make a scuffed version from another one. Should be usable with about 50 Faith."
"What about the original?"
"Faith 99. And you'll need max Focus too. Even if your Faith is high enough, without full Focus, it won't cast."
Explosive magic, indeed.
Hearing the steep casting requirements, Lloyd shook his head, thinking this was clearly out of his reach for now.
As for the scuffed version...
In the Soulslike world, when someone talks about a 'scuffed' version, it usually means it's a completely different thing from the original.
Just like how some of the powerful weapons or spells bosses wield get turned into player versions—you can't exactly call it a replica. More like something you'd see in a circus act: not quite the same, but good enough to entertain.
After finishing his chat with Alice, Lloyd suddenly remembered there was someone else nearby.
He turned to look at Blaidd, caught sight of the wolf ears on his head, and recalled the howl he'd heard earlier. After a brief pause, he seemed to recognize who Blaidd was. Without a word, he made the "signal" Kalé had taught him.
Snap.
When Blaidd saw the familiar signal, he froze.
Kalé's signal? Where had this guy picked up a monster like that?
And that blonde girl... based on what they were saying, that golden blast earlier had come from her. For a moment there, Blaidd had almost thought Queen Marika herself had descended.
"My name is Blaidd."
Regaining his composure, he used his greatsword to push himself upright and gave a slight nod to the two.
"Thank you both for your help."
Blaidd, huh...
Lloyd gave the half-wolf man before him a once-over. Well over two meters tall, black-haired with wolf ears—and even through his fur-lined armor, that imposing build was hard to miss.
Classic Soulsborne unit. Big body, big sword, big presence.
"I'm Lloyd, a friend of Kalé."
After the introductions, Lloyd struck up a conversation with Blaidd. As they chatted, he casually cast Warmth, letting the soft firelight mend some of Blaidd's battle wounds.
Meanwhile, Alice had wandered over to where the monster had died. With a curl of her finger, a shard flew up from the corpse and landed in her palm.
She examined it closely. Her expression darkened.
This... was going to be trouble.
Before coming here, she'd assumed the "anomaly" was just another group of idiots like the ones who once broke her router—maybe they'd built some god-slaying weapon to stir up chaos or something.
At worst, she expected a large-scale mess, powerful weaponry, maybe a few gods or kings teaming up to raid nearby worlds and planets in search of her lost equipment.
But now, holding this fragment, she realized the situation might be far worse than even her worst-case projection.
This was a shard of a completely destroyed world. It had drifted endlessly through the void, absorbing echoes and traces from countless other worlds, and had finally ended up here...
And this definitely wasn't the only one. She could tell, due to certain factors, that all these fragments had landed somewhere near the Lands Between.
But just because they landed in the same place didn't mean they arrived at the same time.
And "time" here didn't just mean past or future—it referred to something much simpler:
The fragment had impacted the timeline of this world.
Because time, after all, was just another part of the world itself.
Normally, a world instinctively rejects anything that comes from outside—these fragments and the pollution they bring. "Order" helps neutralize those effects to the greatest extent. Even if they strike the timeline directly, they won't trigger massive butterfly effects. At most, they'll cause small-scale changes that don't alter the world's core structure.
But that wasn't the real problem.
The real issue was that this shard wasn't just tainted—it was saturated with the essence of multiple foreign worlds. And that contamination wasn't something it picked up by accident. If the shard had touched those worlds first, it would've crashed there, not here.
That implied something bigger. Something dangerous. Even she couldn't predict what might happen—and neither could the massive void behind her.
And worse, while the world might reject the changes a fragment brings, if someone were to absorb the power contained within, it would effectively make that fragment part of the world. At that point, the world would no longer reject the changes—and that could open the door to far more serious consequences.
The odds were low, but not zero.
And then... there was one more thing she'd noticed.
The shard still carried a faint echo of the monster's final moments.
"GRAAAARRRGH..."
Hearing the jumbled voice leaking from the fragment, she raised her hand. Golden light shimmered at her fingertips. With the power of law, she unraveled and rewove the sounds, converting them into the script of the Golden Order Adherents.
"Ah... my lord... O Flame that burns the world..."
"You've finally come to take us home..."