"Pallez, you've been fooled!"
As the words fell, Pallez's phantom froze on the spot. Regret? Resentment? Shock? Fear?
If he hadn't just consumed a Sequence Three characteristic, he might have been scared into losing control on the spot.
Klein, who had just descended from the Gray Fog and picked up the Dice of Probability, which was still playing dead, was also startled. He nearly threw the die in his hand away. Just as he was about to head back above the Gray Fog to see what was happening, he saw the lady suddenly plunge her hand into her chest—
"Rip!"
Blood sprayed out violently as she pulled a twisted worm from the bloody wound. Yet the lady seemed to feel no pain at all. Maintaining a somewhat manic smile, she toyed with the Worm of Time as it continuously curled and twisted in her hand, then said with a laugh:
"This avatar is pretty interesting. I'm going to keep it around for a few days."
"Can Ammon be kept as a pet?" Pallez looked at the Beyonder Characteristic containing only a single Worm of Time's worth of power, his expression exceedingly strange. It was difficult to tell whether those words had come from Ammon, who thought he had completed the parasitism, or whether they were a rather unfunny joke the lady was playing on him.
Pallez had no particular aversion to followers of the True Creator. Or rather, thousands of years ago, he had been an Angel of the True Creator's faction and a duke of the Solomon Empire. Compared to that, what gave him more of a headache was her idea of raising Ammon.
"Don't worry. I know how to raise Ammon." Integra tossed the Worm of Time into the shadow beneath her feet. Among the countless twisted, cold