The air was thick with a strange, complex, pungent smell—the scent of air ionized as particle beams tore through it, mixed with gunpowder smoke and toxic exhaust. The special spatial phenomenon caused by "Otherworld transformation" had blocked most of the battle's impact, but it had also transmitted a small amount of the "aftershock" into this reality. Several cars' anti-theft alarms had been triggered, and the hollow, monotonous alarms echoed through the underground parking garage.
The spatial rift had collapsed, and every Hermetic Society cultist who had invaded this place was dead. The Great Sage at the center of the blast had been completely obliterated. His final self-destruction had seemingly not been meant to take Yu Sheng and the others down with him, but simply to erase all traces that he had ever existed, as well as... close that spatial rift ahead of time.
Huli was the first to realize this. She had already returned to human form and was frowning tightly. "We should've captured someone alive earlier... Now we don't even have any spoils."
"I didn't expect that old man to be so decisive either! His teammates were all right around him!" Eileen scratched at her somewhat disheveled blond hair—it had gotten that way when she had been rolling and scrambling around on the ground earlier. "He just blew himself up at the slightest disagreement. I didn't even do anything to him, so why was he so touchy...?"
Then Luna and Huli both stared at her.
"...Fine, I guess I might've had something to do with it too." Eileen raised a hand in surrender, though her other hand was still clutching her beloved frying pan. "But I think the main issue was that he had poor mental resilience..."
As she muttered to herself, Yu Sheng's somewhat lifeless voice suddenly came