Before the endless starlight and colors, Bertram felt his consciousness gradually disintegrating. Things that should not have belonged to him rapidly poured into his soul, swiftly eroding and replacing it—there was a moment when he still remembered his name, but in the next, all knowledge of himself was drowned in the vast ocean of information. Another instant later, he realized that the body he had only recently taken over was already slipping out of his control.
New organs sprouted from him. Flesh reappeared beneath the surface of his body, which had turned woody years ago. He opened one pair of eyes after another, and behind each pair seemed to be an independent consciousness—countless voices clamored in his mind, eventually merging into a grand yet chaotic howl. Within that howl, he saw a colossal, lighthouse-like figure descend.
The figure stood before a small hill and bent toward him. She reached down to grasp the earth as casually as a giant picking up a pebble from the roadside. Bertram's final thought was to run, yet his body willingly threw itself into that palm shrouded in violet mist. Then... he could no longer sustain his mind and, as though embracing a gift, temporarily lost consciousness.
Milmina reached out and picked up the creature that resembled both a treant and a human. Lowering her head, she curiously inspected his body. Its bizarre form interested her greatly, but she knew she could not keep this creature in her laboratory—according to the information transmitted through the Neural Network, this should be the Dark Priest who had escaped Beltira's "predation." As an important source of intelligence, he was imperial property.
Thus, the Master of All Laws could only sigh regretfully. Her tower-like body stood amid swirling clouds and mist, then rapidly began to shrink and fade. A