Chapter 144: The Land Filled with Calamity |
A few minutes earlier.
Underground, where Evina and Celt were.
Evina, who had been talking with Celt, released the scholar she was holding and walked to the wall.
“Aren’t you going to check out the gathering upstairs?” Evina looked at the wall.
“Me?” Celt shook his head slightly, “Nah.”
“Sereia doesn’t like crowded places.”
“Heh heh heh.” Evina laughed lightly a few times, “You’re turning more and more into an old mother.”
She looked out the window, a sun slowly rising outside.
It was a black sun.
Evina suddenly realized something was wrong.
Wrong!
I’m underground — how do I have a window?
She took three quick steps forward, leaned against the window, and peered down.
“This...”
The scene outside had changed at some unknown moment.
The ground was parched, devoid of vegetation, the air warped and shimmering under intense heat.
“This is...” Evina’s eyes widened a bit.
Originally, she was on the second basement level.
Now, she seemed to be standing in a two-story villa.
“Cae...” She spun around sharply.
Celt was gone.
No scholar, no Celt, no Sereia.
Nothing.
Behind her was an open lot.
An open lot?
Wasn’t she supposed to be in a small upstairs room of a villa?
She turned back and looked ahead.
The window was gone.
She was standing on the very dry ground she had seen before.
“Proto-Divine Realm?!” Evina realized all at once.
She had unknowingly been pulled into someone’s proto-Divine Realm!
She squinted at the black sun slowly rising in the sky and felt its searing heat against her body, making her skin feel warm.
Hotter and hotter.
The black sun’s ascent was clearly abnormal.
In just seconds it hung in the sky and then stopped there.
She felt the temperature around her keep climbing, making her uncomfortable.
Sirens liked water; this roasting sensation made Evina feel ill all over.
“Hmph...”
She snorted in dissatisfaction, reached out and opened her hand, a fine trickle of water gathering in her palm.
Although the Siren Law Rhyme excelled more at charm, it still bore the “sea” character.
Simple water control and creation were within reach.
She raised her hand slightly, lifting it over her head.
Soon, a light rain began to fall over the small patch directly above her head.
The raindrops hit her, moistening her somewhat parched skin.
An inexplicable irritation looped in her mind; she felt a faint, subtle anger for no reason.
Odd — she didn’t feel there was anything worth getting angry about, yet she was angry.
Because it was dry?
That shouldn’t be...
Evina frowned.
Suddenly a crack opened above her left eyebrow and a left eye opened.
She borrowed one of Celt’s eyes.
The Tuner ability activated.
Her mood steadied instantly.
But the dry, suffocating sensation didn’t simply vanish.
The feeling of dryness lingered at her core, making her uncomfortable.
She was calm now, and her body was wet, yet she still felt a strange, dry heat.
It seemed like a hallucination...
“Phew...”
She exhaled strongly and raised her right hand.
A ring with an eyeball appeared on her right index finger.
It was the Fallacy ring Samuel had placed into the Travel Guide — she had taken it and used it directly.
Next second, she activated the Illiterate ability.
She made herself forget that dry sensation.
If it was only an illusion and couldn’t cause real harm, she might as well simply ignore it.
A little personal rain cloud made her stand out in this drought-stricken town.
Her pointed ears twitched; she heard doors opening and footsteps.
One by one, townspeople emerged from shade and houses and surrounded Evina.
They stared blankly, looked at her with longing.
Evina again felt that inexplicable feeling welling up inside her: irritation, anger, desire...
She tried to tune herself again, but this time the effect was minimal.
Those people held weapons — cleavers, machetes, sickles...
Their eyes were glazed as they stepped closer.
Seeing the dry, withered crowd closing in, Evina smiled and whipped the chains in her hands.
The short chains, originally only a few centimeters long, lengthened with each whirl and soon reached about a meter.
Like iron whips.
The ground beneath her also began to change.
Centered on her, concentric ripples spread across the stone surface.
As if she weren’t standing on solid floor but on a water surface.
Using the Tuner ability along with the Fraudster ring’s deception, she tricked the ground into believing it was merely a puddle of water.
The approaching crowd was instantly spooked.
They couldn’t see the Spiritual Flame burning on Evina, but the ground’s oddity was plain to them.
“So many people~.” Evina said with a teasing tone as she looked at the crowd.
To her eyes, numbers began to appear above each head.
99%... 99%... 99%... 99%... 99%...
That was the Gambler ability.
She could see the probability of certain outcomes.
Now she was seeing each person’s chance of being killed by her instantly.
Whoever she looked at got a 99% above their head.
But that didn’t mean there was a 1% chance they wouldn’t be killed when she struck.
Gambler couldn’t show decimals precisely.
Otherwise Evina wouldn’t know how many more nines followed the decimal.
These people were intimidated by Evina’s aura and hesitated.
When Evina shifted her gaze, the numbers above their heads vanished and reappeared on their bodies.
This ability wasn’t limited to whole people; it could focus on body parts and calculate “critical hit” probabilities.
She smiled, paused the spin of her iron whip, and looked at the ground.
At the same time, the percentages on various joints and vital points shrank to 1%.
Before the townspeople could react, Evina snapped her right hand downward.
Smack!
The iron whip struck the “water surface,” and countless stones were flung into the air like splashing droplets, scattering outward.
Those numbers reflected the chance that flying stones, after she whipped the ground, would coincidentally hit the townspeople.
Because the probability was so low, Gambler could not show decimals and thus displayed 1%.
But an accident occurred.
The numbers on them ballooned.
1%... 5%... 20%... 90%... 100%... 200%...
“Heh,” Evina emitted a light laugh.
A good gambler is naturally also a skilled cheat.
This was Gambler’s second extraordinary ability: temporarily raising certain probabilities; if a probability exceeds 100%, the excess becomes “critical rate.”
This consumed Spirituality heavily, and the larger the modification, the greater the consumption.
A one-mark Gambler couldn’t use it at all; a four-mark Gambler could only tweak probabilities by about three percent at best.
Even a six-mark Gambler, pouring everything in, would struggle to double the probability of a small event.
Thus ordinary Gamblers only made tiny 1% adjustments when they acted.
Evina was the exception.
After connecting to the Travel Guide, her Spirituality was effectively limitless.
So she could change probabilities at will.
Either fail, or toy with them.
She could easily tweak an event’s probability up to the ability’s cap.
Two hundred percent.
Those stones coincidentally struck the surrounding townspeople at their vital points.
They were knocked backward as if hit by bullets.
Evina’s arms never stopped; she whipped the ground faster, scattering more stone “splashes.”
“Ehehe... ahahaha...”
Her motions grew faster, more frenzied.
She wasn’t content merely slapping the “water surface”; sometimes she’d plunge the whip into the “water,” stir, then quickly fling it out, sending a wave of stone “water” outward.
Her pinkish-blue eyes stained with blood red.
That was the Madman’s extraordinary effect.
She was a Madman already, even without activating the Fallacy ring.
The townspeople developed more and more wounds; rather than fear, their eyes turned red too.
Blood-colored steam rose from their injuries, and their formerly sapped muscles started swelling.
“Ah! Kill her!” someone shouted, and the townspeople charged at Evina wielding scissors, cleavers, bench legs.
Evina’s grin nearly split her face; pale blue fish scales appeared along her body.
She pushed off with her scaly hind legs and darted forward in a random direction.
Her mind became filled with bloodthirsty desire.
She no longer merely lashed the ground; she swung the iron whip at the townspeople.
When the whip struck a bare-chested man, the same rippling pattern formed on his skin as when it had hit the ground.
But this time the “splash” wasn’t stone.
Sploosh!
The man’s skin and blood broke into droplets and scattered; the whip passed through his body as if through water and emerged on the other side.
His organs became a chaotic slurry, mixed as if stirred together.
When Evina’s extraordinary effect ended, the man’s previously distinct organs were all jumbled.
Half a heart ended up in the intestines, intestines mixed with lungs, bones pushed to the surface with bits of intestine still twitching on them.
This twisted figure stiffened and collapsed, convulsing to death.
“Hee...” Evina laughed as she charged through the crowd, whipping faster.
The one-sided slaughter ended quickly.
In a dozen seconds, blood flowed like a river.
Soon Evina stood still amid corpses.
“Ah... so good...” She tilted her head back and let the rain wash over her face.
The anger, greed, and bloodlust that had swelled in her mind vanished instantly.
Relaxed, she was about to move when she noticed the ground beneath her had been coated with a sticky, blood-colored liquid.
Evina’s nostrils twitched; she instantly identified it.
Blood—human blood.
It was viscous, but looked fresh, as if it had poured out of bodies just seconds ago.
But it wasn’t all from her own slaughter.
There were many bodies, but not enough to produce such a large pooled stain.
She felt as though she stood in a blood pool.
Sirens’ diets included humans, so although she’d never eaten one, she could easily tell the blood’s source and freshness.
Evina tried to lift her foot and discovered the blood was much thicker than normal human blood; lifting felt like stepping on sticky glue.
Moreover, the blood behaved like a bog, slowly pulling her down.
The once-solid floor seemed replaced by a swamp.
When she forced her left leg up, her center of gravity shifted and her right side started sinking; fresh, viscous human blood rose to ankle height.
The next instant, a red hand shot up from the liquid and grabbed her raised left ankle, tugging downward.
Plop.
Her left foot was pulled back into the blood.
One by one, more grotesque, twisted blood-red arms emerged from the liquid and reached for her.
Some clutched her legs, some her waist, some grabbed her hands.
The arms extended unnaturally long and warped, trying to drag her under.
“Ah... what kind of weird little game is this?” Evina’s face showed no panic as the hands clutched and dragged her downward.
However, the downward pull seemed not infinite.
When the blood passed her calves, the sinking stopped.
“Heh heh heh.” Evina chuckled, “This won’t do~.”
She raised her hand again.
Suddenly...
“Cough cough.” Evina started coughing, involuntarily lowering her hand to cover her mouth.
When she lifted her hand, she noticed abnormalities on her skin.
Several areas of her body had rotted, as if infected.
“What?”
“Am I sick?”
She muttered in confusion.
The diseased parts writhed, the skin split, and locusts crawled out.
Evina’s eyes widened further.
“When did they get in...”
Locust after locust burst forth from her body.
More and more...
Faster and faster...
Evina summoned an umbrella with a gesture; it “grew” from her palm.
It was a bone-less umbrella with eight small stone beads evenly distributed along the edge.
Fairy Tale Materialization: The Umbrella of Helskogen Mosken.
Its effect: immunity to all negative external effects.
Evina didn’t bother to hold the umbrella — without ribs it couldn’t open — instead she called up a gust of wind to spin the handle, making the umbrella rotate.
The eight beads spun from centrifugal force, stretching the canopy.
The Umbrella of Helskogen Mosken ignited with a Spiritual Flame.
It was Evina’s own pinkish-blue Spiritual Flame.
A protective special field appeared beneath the umbrella, shielding Evina.
The lesions on her body rapidly healed and purified; locusts stopped emerging.
Evina’s mind cleared in an instant.
The bizarre emotions were gone.
A white flame burned within the borrowed golden left eye above her left brow.
Using the borrowed Tuner again, Evina began analyzing.
Seconds later she understood what she was seeing.
Drought disaster, war disaster, plague disaster, locust disaster...
They were calamities.
This town was filled with countless calamities.