"Steal!"
As the gems on the Star Wand lit up, Pallez's figure appeared. He reached out and grabbed at the air before him.
The next moment, the Dark Palace turned into a stream of light and shot into Abner's pure white eyes. All that remained where it had stood was a gray-white Dragon, half-wrapped in thick black liquid!
Abner's thoughts nearly exploded. Before his eyes appeared an impossibly illusory sea whose color and form defied description, as though it held every Secret.
Fortunately, the illusory sun and All-Seeing Eye in the Land of Unknown stirred at the same time. Drawn together by some powerful attraction, they rapidly converged and absorbed the palace-turned-light.
At the same time, Abner forcibly closed the Pure White Eye, severing the connection between the Chaos Sea and the palace—or rather, the Card of Blasphemy hidden inside it.
But the Dragon that had lain in ambush inside the palace now lost the support of the Chaos Sea and mutated completely into a mindless monster. Its body kept breaking down, shedding great swaths of sickening, sticky black flesh, even as it poured its powers of Fallen and evil toward Abner.
Abner did not panic. Without the Chaos Sea as its source of power, this monster—possibly a means prepared for the Dragon King Ankewelt's Resurrection—was still terrifying in its complete Loss of Control, but its actual strength was only that of an ordinary Angel. With Abner's current strength, he had no reason to fear it.
At a thought from Abner, an exquisite doll no bigger than his palm, dressed in a Western-style outfit, flew from his coat pocket and instantly became a beautiful woman.
She appeared to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Her gray-white hair was pinned up, her azure eyes held a smile, and her lips were a vivid,