The Death of Mrs. Sharon

Seeing that Daly had not been splattered with blood on the spot, but had instead activated her spirit mediumship in time and restrained Mrs. Sharon, Angel's heart, which had nearly leapt out of her throat, finally settled back into her chest.

Leonard, who had maintained a forward-charging posture nearby, also broke free of the silk thread bindings. He stumbled forward and nearly fell.

"Wasn't that even twenty seconds?"

Angel asked Daly. By her reckoning, at most half the time had passed.

Mrs. Sharon had willingly taken a bullet and used Mirror Substitute to move beside Daly. She had originally thought that Daly, still engaged in spirit mediumship, would be incapable of resisting. Unexpectedly, Daly had activated the effect beforehand, making Mrs. Sharon, who had walked right into the trap, look like a clown.

"Heh, I lied to her. Ten seconds was enough."

A faint smile appeared on Daly's face, pale after two consecutive spirit mediumship sessions despite the eyeshadow and blush.

"Finish her quickly. Black fire may be useless against this spirit, but I'm afraid she has other tricks."

Angel did not stop moving as she spoke. She swiftly loaded the last five Storm Convergence rounds into the cylinder and strode toward Mrs. Sharon, who stood frozen in place.

"Crash—"

What came first was not Angel's gunshot, but the sound of shattering mirrors. Leonard directly grabbed a chair and smashed each of the remaining decorative mirrors in the reception room.

Only after every mirror in the room had been reduced to fragments smaller than a palm did Angel raise her handgun and press its muzzle against Mrs. Sharon's forehead.

The anger and terror on Mrs. Sharon's face suddenly faded into calm. Her pale red lips turned black, while the brown in her eyes spread across the whites around them, like the surface of a tranquil lake.

Black flames erupted from Mrs. Sharon's body, enveloping her from head to toe. Then flecks of white frost appeared within the black fire, rapidly spreading into ice that covered the flames and encased her body like an Ice Coffin.

One by one, previously invisible threads emerged in the air, wrapping layer upon layer around the ice and forming a cocoon-like object. The surrounding temperature suddenly plummeted, and the entire room seemed to fast-forward into winter.

It all happened in an instant. Angel thought Mrs. Sharon had launched another attack and hastily retreated two steps, placing herself in front of Daly. Leonard also rushed over with the chair, and the three of them surrounded the "cocoon."

Yet the "cocoon" made no further movement, merely standing silently where it was.

Leonard first frowned in confusion, then his expression drastically changed as though he had remembered something. He said quickly, "She's trying to remove Ms. Daly's curse. We need to kill her immediately."

Angel immediately raised her gun and fired. A Storm Convergence round struck the "cocoon," easily tearing through the outer threads, but the sturdy ice stopped it. The bullet left a dent in the ice before shattering, leaving behind only a faint blue mark.

That was Storm Convergence's trait: as long as she continued attacking the same spot, the following rounds would inflict increasingly greater damage.

"Wait. Don't waste bullets yet."

Leonard reached out to stop Angel from continuing her attack and turned to Daly.

"Ms. Daly, please find its weak point."

Daly nodded. Her green eyes swiftly turned grayish-white, as if shrouded in mist, then became transparent.

After staring at the "cocoon" with those unusual eyes for only a second, Daly pointed to a spot roughly level with Angel's waist. "At this height. Shoot straight through it—the back is where her head is."

The threads outside the "cocoon" had already begun to loosen. Perhaps in only a few seconds, Mrs. Sharon would break the curse and escape.

Crouching slightly and lowering her gun, Angel aimed at the spot Daly had indicated and pulled the trigger again.

Bang!

The first Storm Convergence round left a blue bullet mark on the ice.

Bang! Bang! The next two bullets struck the marked spot precisely. The stacking damage took effect, cracking open a tiny gap in the sturdy ice. Beyond it was Mrs. Sharon's fair forehead beneath her brown hair.

Goodbye, Sharon Hoy. Go keep Cole company down there... Angel silently bid Mrs. Sharon farewell in her heart and pulled the trigger, firing the final Storm Convergence round.

As if detonated from within, the "cocoon" of solid ice and threads exploded. Black flames poured out from inside before drifting away and vanishing.

Mrs. Sharon knelt where the "cocoon" had stood. Her exquisite face overlapped with the image in Angel's memory. The large-caliber bullet entered her forehead and flew out through the back of her skull, spraying a fan-shaped rain of blood. Her body, left with only half a head, toppled backward from the impact and collapsed limply on the floor.

If that final bullet had not taken out Mrs. Sharon, the battle ahead would have become much harder...

Angel exhaled in relief, only then noticing that the hand holding her gun was trembling slightly. After firing Storm Convergence's high-powered shots in succession, even her potion-enhanced body could no longer bear the strain.

Daly, behind her, cared even less about appearances and simply sat down on the floor. Her face was deathly pale after consecutive spirit mediumship sessions, her eyes unfocused as though she might faint at any moment.

Seeing this, Angel and Leonard hurriedly helped the greatest contributor to this battle onto the only intact sofa in the room.

"I'm fine. I've just exhausted too much spirituality. I only need to rest for a while."

Although Daly said so, the pallor that even her blush could not conceal and her bloodless lips still worried Angel. She simply moved away from the sofa, giving up her spot so Daly could lie down and rest properly.

Leonard, however, seemed accustomed to such situations. He took off his windbreaker and draped it over Daly, who fell asleep the moment her head touched the sofa. Then he returned to the battlefield, picked up the revolver, and went back to Mrs. Sharon's curvaceous but catastrophically head-holed corpse.

"We were very lucky." After a long silence, he finally forced out those words.

Angel froze for a moment, then immediately understood what he meant.

"Indeed. Very lucky," she sighed.

A Sequence 6 Beyonder had launched a surprise attack, yet not only failed to kill anyone present, but had even been counter-killed through their cooperation. In the end, it came down to Mrs. Sharon's own lack of preparation.

Had Mrs. Sharon prepared adequately and brought a firearm, then fired decisively once the silk threads had taken hold, no one there possessed the almost shameless defensive capability of Mirror Substitute. Unable to dodge while controlled by the threads, they would have been hers to kill at will.

Perhaps she had been overly confident. Perhaps the decision had been made in haste. Or perhaps she wanted to preserve her public image after secretly killing Angel. Mrs. Sharon had come to the Nighthawks' base carrying only a dagger, intending to control everyone with Invisible Silk Thread, then silently kill her target while invisible and leave unharmed.

Unfortunately, although the people present were collectively weaker than her, the combination of their various Beyonder abilities formed a powerful synergy. They not only swiftly broke the threads' restraint over them, but also launched a counterattack.

Angel's suppression of invisibility, Leonard's Lullaby and combat support, and most importantly, Daly's spirit mediumship—twice restraining Mrs. Sharon—ultimately gave them the chance to kill her.

Looking at Daly Simone, who had fallen asleep, Angel guessed that she might possess strength close to Sequence 6. Otherwise, even with everyone else's cooperation, it would have been difficult for her to control and even curse Sequence 6 Mrs. Sharon by commanding invisible spirits.

"Unfortunately, Ms. Daly's spirituality is depleted, so she can't conduct spirit mediumship on the dead Mrs. Sharon. Otherwise, we might have learned why she attacked this place."

Leonard crouched beside Mrs. Sharon's corpse, frowning as he spoke. Wearing gloves, he searched through her pockets. Aside from the dagger that no longer burned with black flames and a palm-sized mirror smeared with an unknown dark-red liquid, he found nothing of significance.

"Mediumship? It works on the dead too?" Angel asked curiously.

"Of course. To a Medium, the dead are more useful than the living. Didn't you just witness what a spirit body could do?" Leonard picked up the dagger, moved away from the blood-reeking corner of the room, and returned to the sofa.

"Ms. Daly is a Sequence 7 'Medium.' As long as the person has been dead for less than an hour and their spirit body hasn't been damaged by Beyonder powers, the information she can obtain will be quite complete. But in her current state, she definitely won't risk performing another séance. That could very likely cause her to go Out of Control."

So "Medium" really was the name of Daly's potion, and she was Sequence 7. No wonder she could restrain Mrs. Sharon, a Sequence 6, for a short time... Angel thought silently, committing the key phrase "Out of Control" to memory as well.

No, wait. If a "Medium" could speak with the dead, then killing Mrs. Sharon hadn't truly achieved the goal of silencing her?

The thought made Angel break out in a cold sweat. She looked at Daly lying on the sofa and felt a flicker of relief. The only person here capable of mediumship had exhausted her spirituality and apparently couldn't perform a séance anytime soon. According to Leonard, the best window for mediumship was within an hour. As long as Daly didn't recover enough to conduct one during that time, Angel would be safe.

But if that was the case, why hadn't Dunn Smith considered bringing Daly along when planning the operation? Wouldn't a "Medium's" abilities be extremely useful when capturing desperate criminals like Mrs. Sharon?

When Angel voiced her question, Leonard's previously tense expression relaxed, even taking on a faintly gossipy smile.

"You don't know about the relationship between the captain and Ms. Daly?"

How could I possibly know...

Angel froze for a moment, then shook her head.

Leonard cautiously glanced at the sleeping Daly. Only after confirming that she had not awakened did he continue in a low voice:

"Actually, the captain has always liked Ms. Daly. He acts like he doesn't care, but whenever he lectures us, he uses her as an example. Every other sentence is about 'how Daly does this' or 'how Daly does that.' If you ask me, Ms. Daly has some feelings for the captain too. Her post is at Emmett Harbor, and every time she leaves, she has to submit an application to the Holy Cathedral, yet she comes to Tingen City all the time. Naturally, she always has one excuse or another—assisting an investigation, escorting a Sealed Artifact, that sort of thing—but nothing escapes my observation... Back to your question, mediumship involving cults like the Witch Sect carries considerable risks..."

The commotion downstairs interrupted Leonard's gossip. He nervously hunched his neck and listened carefully, only to realize that it wasn't Dunn and the others, but several police officers questioning Passersby.

"Probably some nearby residents heard the gunshots and reported it to the Police Station. One of the officers downstairs looks familiar—I think he's the Patrol Officer for this district."

Leonard leaned out from the window and looked down. After observing for a while, he reached that conclusion.

He holstered his pistol under his arm and walked toward the reception room's door. After thinking for a moment, he returned to Mrs. Sharon's corpse, grabbed the tablecloth that had fallen to the floor, and covered her mangled head and entire upper body with it.

"I'll go down and deal with the police. We can't let them come up for now. Mrs. Sharon is quite a celebrity in Tingen City. It's better to wait for the captain to coordinate with the higher-ups before announcing her death."

He explained this to Angel.

Angel nodded. As the most famous socialite in Tingen City, Mrs. Sharon had close ties with many political figures. If they learned that she was not only a Beyonder but also a member of the Witch Sect, they probably wouldn't sleep tonight.

The noise downstairs suddenly vanished, as if the sounds from moments ago had merely been an illusion shared by the two people upstairs. Angel and Leonard exchanged a glance. Leonard turned back from the doorway and looked out the window once more.

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