System Space.
"Quick!"
The instant Lynn appeared, he wasted no time. Gritting his teeth, he hurled the frame he had stolen into the great pile of death star crystals he had stacked in the distance as quickly as he could.
Only after he broke contact did Lynn start gasping for breath, utterly drained, as though he had just fought a massive battle.
"Blockhead! Are you okay?"
Zuo Zuo rushed over, wide-eyed, and skidded to a stop in front of him.
Lynn looked at the hands braced against his knees. Even beneath Curse Removal's white light, he could faintly see wisps of lingering black curses eating into his wrists.
Lynn plopped down, adjusted his Monocle, and said with dead-fish eyes:
"A Root-Level curse. It hasn't taken shape yet, but it's already shown plenty of killing power. Even my removal ability couldn't suppress all of it."
Amid the mass of death star crystals.
The half-formed frame lay with her eyes closed, like a goddess who had just suffered a terrible violation. The curse aura emanating from her gilded body was gradually being neutralized by the surrounding death star crystals.
Clearly.
While the machines had been building her on that special fabrication platform, they had also been keeping her curses in balance. Lynn's theft had directly unleashed the curses suppressed within her.
If death star crystals hadn't been a companion material to primordial divine gold.
Forging a frame amid such curses would have been all but impossible.
Zuo Zuo asked, bewildered:
"Blockhead, is this really okay? You stole their frame before they even finished building her. Won't the Mechanical Church declare war on Dark Night City immediately?"
Lynn shook his wrists, adjusted his Monocle, and panted:
"Of course they will."
"That's exactly why we had to do it. Right now, any little bit