"Orlando—"
Father Wright, who had been watching Orlando's condition with tense concern, glared furiously, his eyes wide with rage. His figure suddenly turned transparent, transforming into a ghost as he tried to intercept the woman's dead soul.
But it was too late.
Everything had happened too quickly!
The moment his figure transformed into a ghost, the woman's dead soul lunged into Orlando's body.
"Mm—mm—"
Orlando, who had been struggling against his loss of control, suddenly opened his eyes. The tumors that had gradually faded from his face began sprouting wildly again.
"Waaah..."
An eerie woman's sob escaped Orlando's mouth.
"I'll leave! I'll leave, all right? Why won't you even spare the child? Why?!"
Before his voice had even faded, Orlando, who had suffered the attack, completely lost control. The tumors on his head burst one after another, shooting out slick tentacles.
He looked like an octopus-shaped blood-dripping executioner's blade had removed his head and taken its place.
"Completely... out of control!"
Inside the carriage, Father Atley's pupils contracted sharply, and a flicker of struggle passed through his eyes.
He gritted his teeth, abruptly raised his revolver, aimed at Orlando's head, and pulled the trigger.
Unexpectedly, Wright, who had just failed to stop the woman's dead soul, suddenly became corporeal and slapped the revolver aside.
Bang!
The shot went wide.
"You're going to kill him?"
Wright looked at Atley and demanded furiously.
"He's completely out of control. He can't be saved. Kill him, quickly!"
Atley was both shocked and enraged. Their perfect chance to kill Orlando had been lost.
"I don't believe it. He said... mm!"
Before Wright could finish, his entire body suddenly shuddered, and his mouth opened as wide as it could.
—but a viscous tentacle abruptly wound around his neck, burrowed into his mouth, and blocked the rest of his words.
Bang!
Another gunshot rang out. Atley fired decisively, severing the tentacle that had entered Wright's mouth.
But he couldn't sever the attacks that stabbed in one after another.
Orlando's body was rapidly swelling. The octopus head on his shoulder grew larger and larger, while tentacles shot madly toward Father Wright, who was closest to it.
The carriage was far too cramped, and Wright had moved too close to Orlando to stop the woman's dead soul.
As a result, when the tentacles shot toward him, he had no chance to dodge.
No—more precisely, if he hadn't become corporeal to knock Atley's revolver aside, those tentacles wouldn't have been able to seriously injure his ghostly body.
His corporeality had led him straight into the tiger's jaws.
"Splurt, splurt, splurt!"
"Bang, bang, bang!"
The sounds of tentacles piercing flesh echoed through the cramped carriage, accompanied by a furious barrage of gunfire.
Tentacles snapped one after another, but new ones immediately emerged.
The bullets were finite, while the tentacles were endless.
After Atley emptied the cylinder, nothing could stop Orlando's loss-of-control form from slaughtering Father Wright.
Countless tentacles pierced Wright's seven orifices, making him resemble a gluttonous, grotesque sea monster greedily sucking away his life.
Wright's body rapidly withered at a speed visible to the naked eye, becoming nothing more than human skin.
It sounded slow when described, but in reality, it happened extremely quickly.
If Ning Xiuyuan hadn't initially fused with Disease Deceiver, he wouldn't even have been able to see the battle clearly.
While Orlando's loss-of-control form attacked Wright, Atley had tried to save the besieged by attacking Orlando's loss-of-control form and easing the assault on Wright.
But after firing only two bullets, he changed targets.
There were simply too many tentacles around Orlando's loss-of-control form. Both bullets he fired at it in succession were blocked by the tentacles.
By then, after absorbing Wright's supernatural characteristic, Orlando's loss-of-control form suddenly turned transparent.
—it had actually transformed into a ghost.
"Run!"
Atley was preparing to reload when he saw this. He shouted in terrified fury, his body abruptly turning ethereal as he prepared to escape into a dream.
His supernatural characteristic was Dreamwalker!
As long as someone nearby fell asleep, he could use that to open a door leading to the Dreamlands and flee there to evade harm.
"Here, supernatural phenomena are prohibited!"
Unexpectedly, at that moment, an earth-shaking shout suddenly came from outside the carriage.
It was Payne!
His tongue cracked like thunder. He seemed like a god as a mysterious force enveloped the carriage.
Orlando's gradually transparent loss-of-control form suddenly became corporeal!
Payne looked at Atley in delight.
His supernatural characteristic was called Divine Word. Everything he said and did possessed incredible power.
The more characteristics he fused and the higher his social standing, the stronger his power became!
Of course, his current power was still extremely weak, and his failure rate was high. He often needed to activate it several times, or even dozens of times, before it took effect.
He hadn't expected it to succeed on the first try this time.
However, when he looked at Atley as though expecting praise and waited for him to display his might, his expression suddenly froze.
Atley had been on the verge of escaping into a dream, but his half-ethereal body suddenly became corporeal again, leaving half of him outside the carriage and half inside.
His face twisted. The half of his face outside the carriage stared incredulously at Payne by the carriage door.
He seemed unable to believe that unreliable Payne had actually succeeded on the first try!
If Payne had been reliable, Atley wouldn't have ordered him to "run" in the first place.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I—I didn't mean to! I—I didn't know... I..."
Young Payne completely panicked and stammered his explanation, his voice choked with tears.
Atley's lips twitched. A thin thread of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
His vision gradually blurred, and his consciousness sank into chaos.
Death was ultimately unavoidable!
At the threshold between life and death, Atley suddenly remembered Arthur's joke: "If apologies were useful..."
The eye trapped inside the carriage grew hollow, reflecting the tentacles shooting toward him.
"Atley! Atley!"
Payne cried out in panic. Unexpectedly, a tentacle shot toward him like lightning, pierced into his mouth, and burst out through his right eye socket. A huge eyeball still clung to the suckers at its tip.
What was supernatural power?
Any power that transcended the limits of the physical body was supernatural.
For Orlando's loss-of-control form, the tentacles were its very body. Its abilities of rapid proliferation and ghostification had been sealed, but the innate strength of its body had not.
"Splurt, splurt, splurt, splurt!"
One tentacle after another pierced into Atley and Payne. Their bodies rapidly withered just like Father Wright's.
Everything that made up their bodies, including their supernatural characteristics, rapidly gathered toward Orlando's loss-of-control form.
A loss-of-control form fused with four supernatural characteristics was about to be born.
But it still wasn't satisfied. Its gaze abruptly fixed on the fleeing Ning Xiuyuan, and it instinctively tried to proliferate a tentacle to crush the insect.
Following its will, it suddenly realized that supernatural phenomena were prohibited here.
Thus, it had no choice but to pull a tentacle from Payne and shoot it out like lightning.
Danger!
The frantic warning from his spirituality made Ning Xiuyuan instinctively twist aside as he turned and ran, but how could his speed compare to the loss-of-control form's?
Even so, his dodge still had some effect.
The tentacle that should have pierced his neck abruptly went through his shoulder blade and sent him tumbling to the ground.
"It's over!"
Ning Xiuyuan was horrified beyond measure as endless terror and despair enveloped his body and mind.
By then, he could no longer feel the pain in his shoulder blade. He only felt himself being pierced by immense force before the world spun around him and he crashed to the ground with a bang.
Immediately afterward, the tentacle tensed and slowly dragged him back to his original position.
The street paved with bluestone was hard and cold, scraping painfully against Ning Xiuyuan's cheek. He frantically clawed and struck at the tentacle hooked into his shoulder blade.
It was slick and sticky.
It reminded Ning Xiuyuan of the loaches he had never been able to catch as a child.
He could feel the tentacle embedded in his body sucking away his life force, rapidly weakening him.
For the first time, he also gained a clear and direct sensation of that abstract thing called life force!
It was like air. Normally, one couldn't feel it, but only after losing it did one understand that it was irreplaceable.
His supernatural characteristic was also draining away.
However, because only one tentacle was devouring him, the efficiency was very low.
That meant he could probably live for another dozen seconds or so?
A dozen seconds?
Ning Xiuyuan barely lifted his head and reached for his gun. When his hand touched the edge of the holster, he suddenly remembered.
He had used up all his bullets killing Horse-Head Tiger, and the church hadn't issued him any more.
External objects were ultimately just external objects!
He instinctively reached for the lantern again. The lantern fastened to his waist was as cold as ever.
Ning Xiuyuan's remaining spirituality stirred frantically inside the lantern, but the lantern remained silent, as though it were an ordinary object.
That made sense. If the lantern worked, it would have shown its power long ago. Why wait until now?
Ning Xiuyuan gave a bitter smile. Was he going to die here?
He had only come into contact with supernatural power for two days, and he was already going to die?
If I had taken the Bird-beaked Monster's supernatural characteristic earlier, would I be able to escape now?
I had been too cautious.
Did I really think this was a movie, where every enemy would let the protagonist slowly grow, and every ordeal would end with narrow escapes?
Ning Xiuyuan's consciousness grew increasingly hazy.
He thought of darkness.
At that moment, how wonderful it would be if that darkness descended.
Perhaps the monsters hidden within the darkness could kill Orlando's loss-of-control form.
He thought of Bishop Byron.
The church didn't seem to be very far from here. Why hadn't Bishop Byron arrived yet?
He thought of supernatural characteristics.
He was just about to try something blindly when he remembered: this place prohibited supernatural phenomena.
His instinctive will to survive made Ning Xiuyuan run through nearly every possible means of survival he could think of.
But no miracle occurred.
No one came to save him.
His life was fleeting, and death was closing in.
As his consciousness was about to sink into darkness, Ning Xiuyuan heard a heartbeat like a drum. It was the rhythm of his self being devoured, of his imminent fusion into the loss-of-control form.
Ning Xiuyuan's dim eyes suddenly blazed with fiery light.
He knew what he had to do.
Before you continue