I had a secret.
I was actually a little afraid of the dark.
Dimly lit places tended to give me terrifying hallucinations, even though I might have been scarier than those ghosts and monsters now...
Yep, I was an undead.
Not the kind who linked the fire.
For the time being, I put on the wolf-shaped helmet Liuzi had given me. Although it carried the scent of her perfume, it was still a helmet built for a man, so it was a size too big for my head. It didn't fit, and it had no automatic adjustment feature...
But it was still usable. It offered night vision while maintaining a good field of view. As expected of the genuine article, it was far more advanced than Metal's knockoff.
The pile-driving equipment the investigators carried looked like buckets with eight legs.
To use one, they first secured its eight extended legs to the ground, then inserted a metal stake into the round opening on top. The measuring stake would slowly be driven into the earth.
The process was slow, but they could move on to set up the next metal stake first. With the camp where Azura had previously taken root as the center, they planted a stake at regular intervals to measure the effective range of her purification.
For now, Liuzi was the only one guarding the camp. The purification device cast a reassuring, gentle glow in the distance, but we kept walking farther away...
"Miluno, there's something strange about the darkness inside this domain."
Following the investigators at a distance, Azura offered her opinion.
"Strange how?"
"It's way thicker than outside! The darkness outside the barrier isn't even a tenth of what's in here... It must have multiplied, right?"
"Impossible. There isn't even anyone in this area. How could