The heartbeat beneath the floor grew closer and closer.
Macao had just shouted, "Get back!" when the stone floor beneath the shattered idol collapsed in one piece.
The fissure revealed no soil.
A huge mouth full of black teeth opened beneath the ground and swallowed the rubble, benches, and half a wall in a single bite.
Wakaba's smoke pulled the four of them clear, and Mira reached back to grab a stone pillar, steadying herself.
Black and silver light flashed beneath Lin Yuan's feet, stretching the distance between the group and the enormous mouth.
Though they were only a few steps away, the mouth snapped shut three times in succession without ever reaching them.
"Is that its true form?" Mira asked.
"At least it looks more like a monster than the idol did," Lin Yuan said.
The thing underground burst all the way through the stone floor.
It was a black mass of flesh covered in mouths. Hundreds of black threads stretched from its back, piercing the church's foundations and reaching places the townspeople had feared.
The mouths had no tongues, only whispers that repeated endlessly.
"The crops will wither."
"The sickness will return."
"Your child will be next."
Macao swept the nearest mouths with purple flames. The fire left large scorch marks, but the whispers did not stop. Instead, even more tiny mouths grew out of the scorched flesh.
Wakaba's smoke circled the surface of the mass.
"No heart, and no separate magic core. The whole thing is absorbing fear."
"It's not a god." Lin Yuan looked at the black threads. "It's just a cursed object that's lived too long. The church and the idol were both tools for collecting fear."
As though the cursed object understood him, all its mouths split open at once.
"Gods do not die."
"The shell you were wearing just broke," Mira reminded it.
The next moment, dozens of black threads lashed at her in fury.
Mira swung her demon arm to block them one after another, but the black threads wrapped around her scales on impact. Every mouth began mimicking voices the villagers had once used.
"Demon."
"Get out of here."
"You'll get your brother and sister killed."
Mira's movements noticeably faltered.
Lin Yuan raised a hand and folded space, diverting all the black threads toward a single point. Macao's purple flames followed immediately, burning through them.
"Don't listen to it!" Macao shouted.
"I'm not listening," Mira replied through gritted teeth. "I just think it's noisy."
Unable to absorb fear from outside, the cursed object began devouring the church's interior. The old sacrificial inscriptions on the walls, the black threads left of the idol, and even the illusions it had just created were all sucked into its many mouths.
It swelled as it fed, its back pressing against the basement ceiling.
Crack.
A crack spread upward from the base of a stone pillar.
"How much longer can you maintain the spatial seal?" Wakaba asked.
"As long as the church's boundary remains intact, I can keep it up." Lin Yuan looked at the walls, which were steadily cracking apart. "But it's eating the boundary."
"Then let's finish it before it eats the whole church."
Macao brought his hands together, and his purple flames turned into dozens of spears that shot into the mass of flesh. Wakaba's smoke sealed the mouths on its surface, stopping the whispers from spreading further.
Lin Yuan struck again with Zero-Distance Crushing Fist.
The force exploded inside the cursed object, blasting a huge hole in the mass. But the surrounding mouths immediately devoured one another, filling the wound in the blink of an eye.
"Ordinary destruction won't work," Lin Yuan said. "We have to destroy most of its body in one blow."
Macao glanced at the mass of flesh, which was still multiplying. "I can burn down the entire basement, but the church will collapse first."
"My smoke can't hold something this big either," Wakaba said.
Mira stared at her right arm.
With only one demon arm, she couldn't wield enough power to tear the entire cursed object apart. But when she had gone berserk the night before, those wings that had not fully formed and the scales covering her entire body had been far more powerful than what she had now.
The only difference was that the power had burst out on its own then.
Now, she had to open the door herself.
"I'll do it."
Macao immediately frowned. "You still can't fully control Take Over."
"That's why I need to learn."
"This isn't a training ground."
"Neither was the Guild hall. Didn't I practice there yesterday anyway?"
The cursed object bit through another stone pillar. Lin Yuan folded the collapsing ceiling toward a corner and turned to Mira.
"Can you promise you'll remember what you're doing?"
"I'll remember to beat it up."
"You also have to remember not to beat us up."
"Especially you?"
"Preferably."
Mira snorted, and black magic began spreading from her right arm toward her shoulder.
Macao remained on guard. He and Wakaba took positions on either side of Lin Yuan, flames and smoke trained on Mira at the same time.
"If you lose control, we'll interrupt the Take Over immediately."
"Got it."
Lin Yuan also folded the space around Mira in advance. If she lost control, he would lock her up just as he had at the Guild.
Mira did not resist.
She closed her eyes, no longer trying to drive the demon out of her right arm or treating the power as a curse.
This was power she had defeated and taken over.
Whether it appeared or not should be her decision.
Black magic surged upward with a roar.
Curved horns emerged from her white hair, scales covered her arms and the sides of her waist, and a complete pair of demon wings unfurled behind her. For the first time, the whispers on the cursed object's surface turned to screams.
Mira slowly opened her blood-red eyes.
Her gaze was clear, without a trace of confusion.
She clenched her claws, aimed them at the largest mouth underground, and gave it a defiant smile.