The exalted and supreme Lord of Crawling!

Meanwhile.

Over on Gear Street, before the enormous Exorcism Array that was still rumbling away, almost every Exorcist stationed there abruptly turned toward the tower at the same time.

Dong-

Dong-

The thunderous, urgent tolling shattered the silence of the night in an instant.

Every Exorcist's hair stood on end, and a tremendous shudder coursed through their bodies.

"The Spirit Bell rang!! The Spirit Bell rang again!!"

"Nine times!! Nine times!"

At that moment.

Every Exorcist present was shocked beyond words.

Jones, who had been keeping watch there, scrambled to his feet as fast as he could. He raised his head and stared tremblingly in that direction, his pupils contracting sharply.

He immediately contacted headquarters through the Impression Crystal and said through gritted teeth:

"What's going on?! What happened?! Why did the Spirit Bell ring again?!"

An urgent voice soon came from the other end.

Clearly, this sudden development had caught everyone completely off guard.

"It's the aura of a great demon! No! An ultra-ancient great demon! It's the same kind of aura as last night!"

Jones immediately whipped his head around toward the enormous Exorcism Array behind him. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he said:

"Is it Gear Street?! Is it here?!"

"We're tracking it!"

The voice on the other end grew increasingly frantic.

And just over ten seconds later.

Jones heard a terrifying piece of news that plunged his entire body into icy dread, as though all the blood in his veins had frozen in an instant.

"No, it's not Gear Street... it's in the Lower City! South City!"

His hand went slack, releasing the Impression Crystal. Trembling, he slowly turned his gaze toward the distant night sky obscured by black fog. His lips quivered as he muttered to himself.

"You've got to be kidding..."

A few minutes later.

Rumble-

Every dark-circle-eyed Exorcist outside Gear Street went mad. Furious and flustered, they raced toward the Lower City in South City under Jones's leadership at an unimaginable speed, like a migrating herd of deer.

"Is our world a fucking public toilet?! Everyone just comes rushing in?! They can fucking come whenever they want?! And leave whenever they want?!!"

"A second one?! How can there be a second one?! Are they here on vacation?!"

"Just destroy it! Hurry up and destroy it! Fuck!!"

At the same time.

On the street where the black fog had receded.

The enormous skeleton, several meters tall, trembled as he stared at that indescribable behemoth. He backed away, then fell to the ground with a thud.

Countless gigantic, hideously twisted tentacles, an enormous black eye that occupied almost the entire center of the body, and the vast shadow it cast-just one look felt enough to drown someone in that indescribable aura of calamity.

Hana Ye had already bristled in terror, (ΩДΩ), and hidden inside her trash can. She clutched the lid above her head so tightly that the entire can rattled with her trembling.

"Wh... what is Tiga?!"

Lin En said with dead-fish eyes:

"The light of our kind."

What a shame. ╮(╯▽╰)╭ He had thought some miracle might happen and actually let him evolve into a giant of light.

Alas, the light shines on you, but not on me.

"..."

"You... you... what exactly are you..."

The skeleton stared at him, trembling.

And at that very moment.

Before the terrifying monstrosity dozens of meters across, his enormous body several meters tall was as helpless as a little girl who couldn't hurt a fly.

"What?"

Lin En's enormous eye watched him as his body continued to swell with cracking sounds, more and more frenzied tentacles surging out.

"Didn't you tell me not to bluff?"

His voice had changed completely.

Before, it had been the clear voice of a teenage boy.

Now, what came out was a language of calamity, as though every syllable gnawed at your bones and soul.

[Ding! Your second-stage advancement is 30%% complete... 31%... 32%...]

The skeleton stared tremblingly at the enormous, indescribable being and said:

"You... what exactly are you..."

Lin En's enormous eye looked down at him.

"In my own words, I suppose I'm just a little tadpole. But in your terminology, I seem to have heard an interesting name. Do you think I'm an ultra-ancient great demon, or..."

"An outer god?"

Buzz-

The instant he heard those words, his eye sockets went blank.

In that instant, he seemed to remember the nine chimes of the Spirit Bell that had suddenly sounded last night, when the Red Moon descended and they were preparing to move that corpse. He remembered the terrifying aura they had sensed as they fled in panic, an aura that still made his soul tremble now.

Yes... because in every sense, what the Nine Chimes of the Spirit Bell signified... was...

"That's impossible! That's absolutely impossible!!"

He kept shuffling backward in terror.

But his legs seemed to have stopped obeying him. He couldn't muster any strength at all.

"Do you know what an [outer god] is?! They're colossal gods from beyond our world that nearly destroyed the entire Seven Nights World! You... stop trying to scare me! If... if an outer god's true body really descended... this reality couldn't possibly withstand it!!"

Lin En's eye watched him as he said:

"Did I ever say this was my true body?"

At that moment.

The entire street seemed to fall silent.

The skeleton froze vacantly, his mind going blank in an instant.

Because that was right... if they truly wanted to descend, then whether they were the mighty beings deep in the Spirit Realm or the even higher-ranking legendary great demons, they preferred using mediums and vessels to peer into the real world through projections without paying too steep a price.

At that instant, his unresponsive hand shakily removed a ring from his finger.

As though trying to confirm something...

He held the ring over his eye socket and looked through its opening at the indescribable monster...

Boom-

In an instant, the [Ring of True Seeing] in his hand, which could peer into the essence of things, exploded into countless fragments.

Crack-

Dense webs of sorcerous cracks appeared across his skull in an instant, and the flames inside his eye sockets burst straight out of his head.

[Ding! Skeleton Lord Salgon's fear of you +100, Sanity -50]

[Ding! Igor's fear of you +40]

"Run!!!"

He turned with an almost howling scream, reaching forward with every ounce of strength he had. Boundless terror instantly crawled over his entire soul like a dense web of spiders.

"He is-real-!!"

At that moment, the doctor turned around tremblingly and scrambled toward the street in the opposite direction.

But then came the crack of a whip.

Snap-

The doctor had barely run a few meters when a single lash of that tentacle reduced his entire body to a mist of blood.

Gurgle, gurgle-

In an instant, Lin En's tentacles shot out, coiled around the skeleton's torso, and dragged his several-meter-tall body back.

Lin En slowly lifted him before his eye, watching his bony teeth chatter in terror.

"What did you just see?"

Lin En asked with interest, having clearly noticed his little maneuver.

The skeleton trembled as he said:

"I... I am but a lowly ant. I would never dare offend... offend you. Please forgive the insolence of lowly ants such as us. If... if you are willing to spare me... I will offer you my eternal loyalty..."

Lin En's eye watched him as he said:

"I asked you-what did you-see?"

This was actually something he had been puzzled about all along.

Judging by the reactions of the Evil Spirits he had encountered yesterday, even if they could truly see through to his real body, he was only a tadpole spirit. He did have some self-awareness about his own situation.

Surely a tadpole spirit couldn't scare them this badly.

So there had to be something more to it.

The skeleton's voice trembled with fear:

"I... I saw... you..."

[The exalted and supreme Thousand-Armed Demon God]

[The eternal... Lord of Crawling.]