"Were we too late?" A slightly coughing voice rang out, making Smick halt his attack.
Chris and the other nine had all arrived. Looking at the white bones scattered across the ground, Chris sighed and fixed his gaze on Negary.
Before seeing Negary in person, Chris had sensed from him only an utterly ominous Rhythm. But now that he stood face-to-face with Negary, Chris reached only one conclusion: a being like this simply should not exist in this world.
"Evil Spirits are errors that should never exist in this world. They are mankind's natural enemies, and therefore, Evil Spirits must be eradicated." Austin's gaze was grim. He had once crusaded against an Evil Spirit and knew full well how dangerous they were.
Every Evil Spirit that matured was a natural disaster. Every moment of their existence had to be sustained by the lives of others. There was the Devil in the Mist in Interkami's capital, the Green Elder that had once appeared in a rural town, and the Shipwrecked One that had emerged at an eastern coastal port.
What made Austin, and indeed the entire Divine Grace Church, restless with unease was that Evil Spirits were appearing more and more frequently. It was impossible not to wonder whether the calamity recorded in the Divine Grace Codex would truly come to pass—especially now, when an intelligent Evil Spirit like Negary had appeared.
According to the Divine Grace Church's records, the Kexi People had once been the most powerful race on the continent. They had established a vast empire: Trilansia.
The main reason this empire, which had perished more than two hundred years ago, had fallen was that an intelligent Evil Spirit had emerged within Trilansia at the time. That Evil Spirit possessed the power to manipulate people's hearts. He had stirred