Do Not Look Directly at a God!

"What happened?!"

"Glass Lamp!! What's going on over there?! The Spirit Bell rang... did you hear it?! Did something get in..."

"Glass Lamp!... You... (crackling static)... the signal on your end... (static)..."

In an instant.

The signal cut out.

The entire street plunged into darkness and deathly silence.

Glass Lamp's face went deathly pale.

Thunderous tolls rang out from the city's tower.

[Dong-dong-dong-]

When the bell reached its ninth toll, her eyes trembled with fear.

That was Clockwork City's [Spirit Bell], an alarm warning of a powerful calamity's arrival. It meant that, here and now, a terrifying being beyond reality had descended upon her location.

This...

How was this possible?!

The terrifying aura kept rising, already leaving her too weak to stand.

What was it?!

What had come into this world?!

Yet she still used the last of her strength to activate her [Eye of Truth-Piercing] and gaze into the depths of the darkness. She wanted to see what it was, what kind of arrival could give off such a terrifying aura.

But the moment she looked.

Splat-

An explosion rang out.

Her eyes burst into a cloud of bloody mist, and blood streamed down her face.

In that single instant, she had vaguely glimpsed a twisted, crawling figure in the darkness beneath the Blood Moon, descending into the world with an indescribable aura of calamity.

In her daze.

She remembered that sentence from the book.

[Do not look directly at a god.]

"Can you reach her?! What exactly happened?!"

"We're trying to contact her as fast as we can. We don't know the details either. It seems that over on Clockwork Street... something strange... descended there!"

At the Exorcists' headquarters, the clerks responsible for communicating with the various Exorcists wore expressions of fear and urgency.

They had been chatting with Glass Lamp just moments ago. Who could have imagined something like this would happen?

"Did you hear it clearly? How many times did the bell toll just now?"

An old man asked anxiously.

One of the young women trembled, fear written all over her face.

"...Nine... nine times in total."

At that instant, the old man's pupils abruptly contracted, and a tremendous shudder spread through his entire body like a network of capillaries.

"Archdemon-class."

"No..."

In an instant, he remembered the upheaval twenty years ago.

During that crisis, the bell had only tolled seven times.

And the only thing that could make the Spirit Bell toll nine times was...

His face turned pale as he spoke.

"Could it be... an [Outer God Projection]..."

[Clockwork Street]

On the silent, deserted street, Glass Lamp sat blankly, blood flowing from her eye sockets. Both eyes had already burst when she tried to look.

Deathly silence.

Although she could no longer see, she could still hear something twisted approaching her little by little.

Crack, crack, crack-crack, crack, crack-

It sounded like bones constantly twisting out of shape.

There also seemed to be some terrifying dripping noise mixed with the sound of scraping against the ground.

Definitely not human...

Those were definitely not sounds a human could make!

Her little face was pale, and even her voice had become barely audible. The immense fear of the unknown had frightened her so badly that she could no longer stand.

[Ding! Liuli Yin felt immense fear of you. Sanity -20.]

As notifications kept ringing in his ears.

In the distance.

A stark-naked, contorted young man crawled along the ground. His arms and legs seemed utterly incapable of exerting any strength. Every time he tried to stand, he fell, leaving him with almost no choice but to wriggle like a tadpole.

"Damn, I finally made it down..."

Lin En was frustrated. He couldn't muster any strength anywhere in his body.

There was nothing he could do about it.

After all, he had spent the past ten years swimming around in the form of a twisted tadpole, and he couldn't immediately adjust to moving like a normal human.

He had even forgotten how to walk.

"Hey! Girl up ahead! Give me a hand!"

He spotted Glass Lamp sitting there and called out.

But at that moment, the sound he made reached Glass Lamp's ears as the indescribably terrifying hum of a monster, a demonic whisper echoing from hell.

"Gurgle-hiss, hiss (twisted whispers)-clatter, clatter (chaotic tones)-(hoarse utterances)-"

She sat there numbly, her entire body shaking uncontrollably, her mind having completely lost its grip on reality.

[Ding! Liuli Yin heard your voice. Sanity -50.]

She swore.

Those twisted whispers were absolutely the most terrifying sounds she had ever heard in her life. That was definitely not a human language!

A monster!

A truly terrifying abomination from another world!

It was right in front of her now...

"Seriously. Looks like I'll have to do it myself."

Getting no response, Lin En could only contort his body with a frustrated series of cracks, extending one tentacle after another to support himself as he stood.

Like a baby learning to walk.

He had to admit that it was an extraordinarily strange experience.

It felt as though he had just been born from his mother's womb all over again. There was a certain joy in returning to childhood!

At last.

Stark naked, he walked step by step up to the vacant-eyed girl.

"Can't you hear me?"

"Well?! You still haven't reached her?!"

"I'm sorry! The interference from that terrifying aura seems to have damaged the Communication Crystal to some extent! The audio band has failed, but it should still be able to project an image of what's happening around Glass Lamp!"

"Hurry! Connect it now!"

"Done! It's working! The connection is being established! I'll bring up the image right away!"

In an instant.

Ripples of light rapidly spread across the crystal before them. Amid the crackling visual noise, an image quickly began to emerge.

All the clerks in the Exorcists' headquarters hurried over.

A team of High-Rank Exorcists had already been dispatched, but it would still take them some time to reach Clockwork Street.

They could only hope that Glass Lamp would be all right!

Otherwise... otherwise...

"We're connected!"

The next moment.

They could clearly see the image projected by the crystal on Glass Lamp's chest.

They immediately looked closer.

Right in the center of the image, directly facing the lens, a shape gradually emerged that they could not readily put into words.

"That's..."

"..."