The sealing proceeded smoothly.
The black runes had already drifted directly above the salt jar and began descending slowly.
The hum of the incantation grew louder and louder, and even the air in the storage room resonated with it.
Everything was proceeding according to plan.
Then, something went wrong.
"Urgh—"
The curse witch suddenly let out a muffled groan.
Her right arm—from shoulder to palm—suddenly twisted into an unnatural shape.
As if someone were wringing out a rag, twisting her entire arm and hand in opposite directions.
Muscles, bones, blood vessels, nerves—all the tissue let out faint tearing sounds beneath that twisting force.
The curse witch's face instantly darkened, because she had not detected the attacker.
Her left hand swiftly rose and pressed against her twisted right shoulder. Black light surged from her palm, trying to resist the twisting force.
The other wizards instinctively looked toward her and guarded against their surroundings.
That was only human nature.
When a teammate was suddenly injured, anyone would first focus on what had happened.
Yet in that instant, as everyone's attention shifted from the finger to the curse witch, Benjamin's mental power caught the change within the salt jar.
The finger was still there.
But the strange force clinging to it had already dissipated.
One moment earlier, it had still been there, radiating that indescribable sense of "wrongness"; the next, it had become nothing.
The finger had turned into an ordinary dead man's finger, covered in age spots.
Benjamin reacted almost instinctively.
His mental power erupted at full force, the Fate System running beyond its limits as he tried to track where that dissipated force had gone.
But the force had vanished too thoroughly, leaving behind no trace at all, as though it had never existed.
"It escaped," Benjamin said heavily.
The air