(Babaluno)
"Why...?"
Right before my eyes, Miluno had been devoured.
I was the one who had been ready to sacrifice myself. Why did something so senseless have to happen to Miluno?
The shock drained the strength from my body. My legs gave way, and I sank to the ground... My mind went blank, hollow.
It had all happened too suddenly.
For a moment, nothing else in the world seemed to matter.
Then Sirius called out and brought me back.
"Ceruno, it's too early to give up! Miluno isn't dead yet! Remember what the Great Blood was made to do. It's the Black Pool!"
The Black Pool was, in a sense, this world's fountain of life.
Besides producing Base Bodies used to create Monsters, it could change the forms of living things...
Guardians entered the Black Pool and underwent a glorious evolution and rebirth.
Dad fell into the Black Pool and was transformed by its darkness into an Ice Dragon that had lost control.
So what about Miluno?
What would she become after being devoured?
The Great Blood did not keep us waiting long for an answer.
The black mass enveloping Miluno kept contracting as it writhed. Its enormous body, nearly ten meters tall at first, soon shrank to almost Miluno's height... It looked as though it was burrowing into her.
"Miss Sirius, it looks like it's trying to take over Miluno's body!"
Miluno... no, Mono was different from everyone else.
If another living being had been devoured, they might have evolved and been reborn. But Mono, like the Great Blood, was one of the Great Will's Proxy Units—a backup system.
They had been rivals from the beginning. Why would the Great Blood make Miluno stronger?
Miluno would only be absorbed into the Great Blood, or reduced to a shell...
At