The power of a Marauder

Hearing the "Amons" all around her address her, Angel's first feeling was not terror, but relief.

So there really were many of his "brothers" hiding nearby that day, besides the Amon's Avatar who dragged me out of the Mirror World. I made the right choice by returning straight to the Church of the Evernight Goddess instead of meeting up with Klein immediately...

But if that was the case, why didn't those Amons help the one fighting me? If four or five, or even seven or eight avatars with Sequence 4 strength had appeared at once, even escaping would have depended on luck... As Angel pondered this, she opened her mouth to say something.

But the next second, her mind went blank, just as she had expected. She briefly lost her train of thought and stood frozen in place.

"Why? To observe how you fight, of course, so we could deal with you more easily later. What would we gain by parasitizing or killing you? One more female avatar?"

The Amon dressed as a laborer, his right eye narrowed, answered with a chuckle. A faint smile lingered at the corners of his mouth, and he seemed in no hurry to attack.

Yet Angel felt a tremor in her spirituality.

Bang—

Angel's expression abruptly turned impassive. Her silhouette glimmered, and her entire body shattered into mirror fragments that scattered across the floor. Amid the glittering shards, a tiny transparent worm wriggled and flew back into the stray-cat Amon on the windowsill.

While the two of them had been talking, another Amon had secretly split off a Worm of Time and attempted to parasitize Angel. Had she not witnessed this silent method during the battle beside the Tussock River, by the time she identified the source of her spiritual warning, there would probably