But the incantation did not stop. Its sound grew stranger and stranger.
The voice no longer sounded like Ruby's own. It had become the hoarse roar of a woman, a completely unfamiliar voice.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks.
Using the special dagger in her hand, she stabbed herself in the throat, slicing open her windpipe.
Ruby's own voice emerged from the wound in her throat. "Ash, you attacked the wrong person. The real enemy is outside."
"If you still want to close the evil spirit passage, hurry up and help me."
"Help you do what? You set Pablo up." Ash continued closing in on Ruby. His face kept twisting as he endured the pain inflicted by Eligos, yet his mind remained exceptionally clear.
"I don't think you're helping me at all."
"I promise you, Pablo will be fine. I'm only borrowing his body to gestate some children of my own!"
"This is just something I'm doing along the way while closing the passage!"
The unfamiliar, hoarse female voice continued chanting the incantation from Ruby's mouth, while Ruby's own voice kept explaining from the wound in her throat.
The effect of the duet sounded extremely strange.
It was like some evil woman was presiding over a sacrificial ritual while another woman, serving as the sacrifice, wailed in agony—yet both voices clearly belonged to Ruby's one body.
"That is the future me, and also the me from the past!" Ruby's torn throat explained.
"I sacrificed everything I had to break free from Baal's control over my soul. At the same time, I'm extracting its authority as the Father of Evil Spirits—the ability to produce offspring."
"As long as Baal loses that ability, no one will ever help it again. It will be trapped in the Book of Evil Spirits forever."
"Likewise."