A bustling city, so crowded that people could barely squeeze through.
A deserted city, with not even half a person visible on the streets.
Two utterly different scenes gave completely different impressions, as if they were the two extremes of existence.
But at that moment, Black Marsh City was rapidly switching from one extreme to the other.
Those people who had been fanatical yet still alive were being swiftly wiped from the city like color. The noisy streets grew deathly silent, and the packed squares gradually became clean and hollow, as if erased by a rubber.
"Bzzzz..."
At the center of the square, the black smoke rising quietly twisted into a hideous shape, as though an invisible wind had blown through it.
In an abstract sense, this could be regarded as an image representing different emotions. Some existence was feeling panic, and that feeling was affecting everything in the square—including the smoke, causing it to twist and change.
It had sensed the disappearance of the people in the city, and it knew how terrifying that was.
It could even sense that those people had not truly disappeared. They were still in the city; it simply could not see them.
To it, not being visible meant disappearing.
Originally, it could have relied on the unique mental traits of Black Marsh City's residents to help them resist this disappearance.
But it did not dare, because when the power of disappearance spread, it was accompanied by another powerful will.
If it resisted that power, it would be caught by that will.
Thus, it could only watch helplessly as the crowds disappeared from the outside world, with the effect gradually spreading inward...
In the end, the square had become utterly empty. Only a dozen or so people wearing collars around their necks remained,