Altered · Dominator Queen

The world was shrouded in gray mist.

Fine silver threads hung from the girl's fingertips, but they weren't the silver strings used to lift a puppet.

Quite the opposite—

The illusory silver threads curled backward into the sky, tightly linking Soga no Mikoto's aura with that Deceptive Calamity Star.

The girl wasn't the puppeteer manipulating the puppet, but the puppet being manipulated by the puppeteer.

Su Youzi had seen a similar scene before.

While strolling through the undersea tunnel with Yarai Kenha—

Su Youzi had once been attacked by an Altered User.

That Altered User had possessed a similar ability.

Come to think of it, that Altered User's name had been... Yan Ling?

Yes—

Exactly.

That Deceptive Calamity Star seemed to possess an ability quite similar to Yan Ling's Thread Manipulation Figurine.

It was even far more overbearing than Yan Ling's.

Its will itself was the thread linking it and Soga no Mikoto.

Thousands upon thousands of silver threads writhed and curled. Beneath the moon, Soga no Mikoto danced gracefully, while Miss Great Shrine Maiden raised her leg high. The slender, graceful leg-shadow was like a Whip Blade, effortlessly cleaving through Kujo Iruka's defensive barrier.

Within the gray-mist world, Soga no Mikoto completely crushed Kujo Iruka and Su Youzi's group.

At the same time... a similar scene seemed to be unfolding outside as well.

Although, under the impact of the first wave of "Artificial Suns," huge numbers of "Erosion" melted away like ice beneath a blazing sun—

Countless others still evaded the bombardment of the "Artificial Suns."

Though they fell far from human settlements, they gathered at astonishing speed.

The gray mist's... entirely different from the Dark Red Erosion Domains of ordinary Altered Users' Erosion Domain began to swirl and converge across the earth before launching an assault on the