The instant Mira beat her wings and charged, a black storm swept through the basement.
The dozens of mouths on the cursed object's outermost layer were still screaming when she crossed the stretched-out distance and drove a fist into the largest one.
Two rows of black teeth snapped shut at once.
Mira held the teeth apart with both hands. Her demon wings flared behind her, and she tore the entire mouth in half.
"Is that all the strength you have? And you dare play god?"
The cursed object did not answer. The torn flesh rolled back to either side, transforming into dozens of tooth-covered tentacles that lunged at Mira from different directions.
She slashed apart the first three to reach her, but more tentacles slipped around her wings and wrapped around her ankles.
Lin Yuan raised a hand and clenched it.
The distance between the tentacles and Mira folded back toward the cursed object itself. The black shapes that had been reaching outward suddenly turned and bit into one another in a tangled mass.
Mira took the chance to break free, then turned and delivered another kick.
"Nice teamwork," Wakaba said.
"One of them just charges around, and the other makes sure the charge goes in the right direction." Macao burned the fallen scraps of flesh with purple flames. "I suppose that barely counts as teamwork."
"Who's charging around?" Mira shouted from midair.
While she was distracted, a tentacle opened its mouth and lunged at her from behind.
Lin Yuan connected the space in front of the tentacle to a spot beside another one.
Crack.
The two mouths bit into each other and could no longer pull apart.
"You," Lin Yuan answered.
A vein throbbed on Mira's forehead. Every punch she threw after that hit harder than before.
Macao and Wakaba did not follow her into the mass of flesh. Purple flames burned in a ring around the basement, stopping the cursed object from devouring the walls, while smoke seeped into every crack, searching for where the black lines truly converged.
"It's shrinking downward!" Wakaba suddenly warned.
After the flesh on its surface had suffered a barrage of attacks, the cursed object stopped expanding and instead drew all its mouths and tentacles underground. Mira chased it into the collapsed area, dug her demon claws into its sides, and tried to pull the whole thing out of the ground.
The ground shook violently.
Not only did she fail to pull the cursed object out, but the entire church sank half a foot instead.
"Just how big is this thing?" Mira asked.
"The smoke still hasn't found the end." Wakaba's expression turned grim for the first time. "Its roots are everywhere down there."
Lin Yuan looked at the spatial boundary he had left when he sealed off the church.
The black and silver lines were still intact, but the boundary, originally fixed outside the church, was being dragged down the mountain by some force.
The cursed object had not broken through the seal.
It was moving the entire church.
"We can't let it keep withdrawing," Lin Yuan said. "It wants to drag the church underground, then come out somewhere else."
"Then let's pin it here." Macao slapped both palms against the ground.
Purple flames followed Wakaba's smoke into the cracks. Since the smoke could not find the end of the cursed object, the flames did not try to burn all of it. Instead, they set the eight thickest black lines alight at once.
A piercing shriek came from underground.
The cursed object stopped shrinking for an instant.
"Mira, to the left of the biggest mouth!" Wakaba shouted. "That's where all the roots connect!"
Mira dived down, but swerved sharply just before she reached her target.
"Lin Yuan, send me over there!"
"You're already right in front of it."
"There are too many teeth in front!"
Lin Yuan immediately understood what she meant.
He seized the distance between Mira and the space behind the cursed object and folded the two positions together. One moment Mira was in front of the giant mouth; the next, she appeared behind the mass of flesh.
Her demon claws swept down in crossing arcs.
More than a dozen black lines snapped at once.
The cursed object let out the cries of countless people, and its enormous body rapidly went limp. Mira planted her feet on the mass of flesh, grabbed the thickest main root with both hands, and pulled it out of the ground inch by inch.
Lin Yuan kept shortening the distance over which the main root was buried.
Macao sealed every severed end with flames.
Wakaba held up the church roof with smoke, keeping the group from being buried under falling rocks first.
Through the combined efforts of the four, a section of black root over ten meters long was finally dragged out of the ground.
"Found it!" Mira shouted.
There was no heart at the end of the main root, only a black stone fragment riddled with holes. The townspeople's arguments, weeping, and wishes echoed within it.
Just as Lin Yuan was about to approach, a crack suddenly opened in the stone fragment.
"Fear will not disappear."
All the severed roots burrowed into the walls at once.
A muffled boom came from the foot of the mountain.
Even through the sealed space, the group could feel the ground shaking. The withered trees around the church tilted in swaths, and the paving stones on several streets at the foot of the mountain were pushed up from below.
But a web of fine black lines appeared beneath every house.
Macao immediately sent a signal outward with his flames, but the purple fire struck the spatial boundary, circled around, and returned to his hand.
"Lift the seal first!" he said.
Lin Yuan did not do as he asked.
He followed the moving spatial boundary with his gaze into the ground and finally saw clearly where the roots led.
They had not just reached from the church to the town.
Decades ago, the cursed object had grown beneath every house, spreading along wells, cellars, and old tunnels. The church was merely one mouth it had exposed above ground to collect fear.
What they had just severed was only one of its main roots.
"It's not trying to escape from here," Lin Yuan said.
Mira landed beside him. "Then what's it doing?"
The sound of the earth splitting came from the distance once more.
Lin Yuan looked at the lights at the foot of the mountain.
"The whole of Sunken Bell Town has been inside its mouth from the very beginning."