Anita and the other three launched four attacks at once, all hurtling toward Shepherd's massive, sack-like body.
Its swollen flesh, together with its skirt, split open like ruptured intestines. With a wet splat, a pool of blackened, murky, viscous fluid filled with floating clumps burst forth.
Like water spilling from a ruptured bag, it poured out in its entirety.
The disgusting fluid instantly flooded the entire floor to a depth of half a foot, giving off a pungent stench that made their eyes ache.
Mixed within the liquid were countless mangled corpses. Some had only heads left, some only arms, and there were even dead infant fetuses.
All of them had swollen from soaking in it. Like fish trapped in a drained mud pond, they struggled incessantly, letting out harsh, wheezing cries.
The last things to spill out were the shriveled, desiccated corpses that Shepherd had enveloped, including the little girl's body, which had recovered to the point where only half a leg was still missing.
Shepherd's body exploded completely, breaking into fragments that drifted down onto the half-foot-thick mire of blood and flesh.
The mummified corpses that hit the ground were instantly shredded into countless pieces by Quirk, interrupting the ritual. Yet his gears deliberately avoided the little girl.
The little girl's eyes were gradually turning gray. A thin green flame still crept upward from beneath the sludge toward her body, and her sole remaining lower leg continued to regenerate.
"What do we do? Who's going to do it?" They looked at one another.
They knew the little girl could no longer be saved, but none of them could bear to strike.
Quirk considered himself a soldier, someone hard enough to withstand anything. He had always believed that if he encountered the old, weak, sick, or disabled again, he