Even if you're a corrupted magical girl, you still have to try to redeem yourself.

Herika understood what Nishio Reki meant at a glance, and then asked, "Why? We destroyed Asahimi's wand, so she must be feeling pretty bad right now. If things go well, Asahimi should have already lost her ability to fight."

Nishio Reki replied, "Even if you know that Asahimi might be hiding inside this submerged sanctuary, it's almost completely submerged in mud now, and the magic on that black mud is so disgusting. Do you think you can crawl in and pull Asahimi out, or dig out the entire sanctuary?"

Sumireko Yumehara chimed in, "I think so too. If things look optimistic, Asahimi might be powerless to resist, but we can't rule out the possibility that she's feigning defeat. Besides, if we act rashly, we might be outmaneuvered by Asahimi again, just like before. It would be terrible if she ambushed us at this crucial moment. We've almost won, so we can't afford to lose."

Nishio Reki continued, "Besides, if Asahimi is taking any action or preparing any counterattack, it's her who will be anxious if we don't get close. If we make a big fuss, it's impossible for none of us three to notice. The enemy is in the dark while we are in the light, so it's wisest to remain still for now."

"Tsk." Helica clicked her tongue again. She was a little annoyed that she couldn't decide the outcome in one go, but she had to admit that Sumireko Yumehara and Reki Nishio were right.

After glancing once more at Lin Jiezi, who was trembling with fear, peeking out half her head from Yumehara Sumire's chariot, Tenrai Herika suppressed her impulse, crossed her arms, and remained silent, but her actions proved her current stance.

The girls waited quietly, and time passed silently. Apart from the sound of the surging tide and the clash of claws and silver keys in the air, there seemed to be no other noteworthy sounds.

The recurring sound of water even made the girls, who had suddenly relaxed, start to feel drowsy. Both Nishio Reki and Herika began to have the idea of ​​helping Yuuki and the others.

But not long after, Sumireko Yumehara vaguely noticed something unusual below.

Even if it was just a fleeting moment of inspiration, she couldn't ignore it.

The churning black mud seems to have decreased slightly compared to before.

Just moments ago, only half of the spire of the sanctuary was visible, but now it seems that more than half of it is exposed to the air.

The black ocean was always turbulent, and she hadn't paid much attention to the location of the black mud just now, so Sumireko Yumehara couldn't be sure that it wasn't just her imagination.

Sumireko Yumehara rubbed her eyes vigorously to prevent herself from getting dizzy from being in the dark for too long, although she felt that her magical body shouldn't have any problems due to fatigue.

The anomaly that Yumehara Sumireko noticed seemed to actually exist.

"Look over there." Yumehara Sumireko stopped her own musings and pointed her trident at the Great Cathedral below, where only its spire protruded from the black mud. "Have you noticed anything unusual?"

Herika and Nishio Reki stared wide-eyed at the towering spire that stood firm amidst the surging black tide for a long time, until their eyes were sore. They still couldn't understand what Yumehara Sumireko was talking about, and one after the other cast questioning glances at her.

"What? Stop keeping me in suspense!" Helica urged, then nervously looked down for a long time, but still couldn't find anything wrong.

Sumireko Yumehara wasn't intentionally creating suspense or keeping the two of them in suspense. She was simply worried that those were hallucinations caused by her own nervousness, so she wanted to test them in this way.

Surely I can't really be seeing things?

Sumireko Yumehara thought for a moment and then told the two of them about her discovery.

"I don't know, I didn't feel anything." Helica shook her head directly.

Nishio Reki followed suit, shaking his head. "I haven't paid much attention either. Why don't we observe a little longer?"

Both of them said that, which made Sumireko Yumehara even more insecure.

"No...no...that black thing...it really does seem to have decreased. I...I shouldn't be seeing things!"

The only voice of approval came from Yumehara Sumireko's chariot. As if afraid of heights, Hayashi Keko huddled in a corner of the chariot's seat, sticking only her head out and pointing down with her trembling finger.

The group had only glanced casually at Lin Jiezi's gaze, but in the short time they were talking, a large portion of the cathedral's highest spire had already been revealed.

That's right! It's not an illusion!

It's no longer a matter of whether it's an illusion or not; the black tide is visibly receding, like a drink being sipped through a straw in a cup, gradually decreasing, though slowly, it's clearly visible.

Slippery black slime was visibly seeping inwards along the broken stained glass and cracks in the window.

"Could it be that the water is flowing in?" Helica asked a pointless question, even though she herself knew that the receding water level was already enough to flood several of these great cathedrals.

No one answered; the girls strained with all their might, preparing to face the unknown that was about to arrive.

Yes, something is definitely coming.

Click.

The unbroken glass on the spire suddenly trembled violently, and the long-neglected stone bricks covering it seemed as if they might crumble at any moment. The entire building emitted a muffled sound, like the churning of a stomach.

The roof tiles began to roll back, like some creature unfolding its scales. The black mud, swallowed up to only half the sanctuary, was compressed into a spiral shape by an invisible force, climbing upwards along the stone bricks like veins. The bas-reliefs decorating the sanctuary's exterior were stained with an asphalt-like color, seeping the viscous substance into the hollow stone structure.

Wait, did the original cathedral have these reliefs?

The sanctuary was devouring the black mud at an increasingly faster pace, and countless honeycomb-like holes appeared on the surface of its outer walls, as if there were an invisible summons, making the girls seem to hear some extraordinary whisper.

The entire black mud swamp began to boil, the mud transforming into thousands of pythons swimming upstream, scrambling to squeeze into the writhing holes. The outer walls of the sanctuary gradually expanded, the originally light gray stone gleaming with a greasy metallic sheen, like the belly of a snake digesting its prey.

As the last wisp of black mud was swallowed up by the sanctuary, the chanting that had been lingering in the girls' ears seemed to grow even clearer.

Even more chilling was the sound they seemed to hear: the entire sanctuary let out a burp. No one could describe what the sound was; all words seemed pale and powerless in the face of that fleeting sound.

After absorbing all the black mud, the sanctuary seemed even more swollen. The black mud surging beneath the stone bricks and reliefs flowed like blood under the skin, turning the already eerie sanctuary into an even more unsettling color.

"Should we fight or not?" Helica couldn't stand it anymore, but she was also worried that her unauthorized actions would cause trouble for others, so she succinctly asked for their opinions.

Nishio Ryū glanced at Yumehara Sumireko and clearly read from her eyes that she also felt they could no longer sit idly by and wait for their doom.

"Let's do it!"

At Nishio Reki's command, Helica and Sumireko Yumehara, who were prepared, quickly gathered their power and unleashed a lightning beam and a water cannon simultaneously, hitting the swollen sanctuary squarely.

The feeling of striking this time was completely different from before. Helica clearly felt her power destroy the surface of the sanctuary, blasting a large hole in the outer wall that was full of honeycomb-like holes, and the black mud flowing inside gushed out with a "poof".

Large chunks of the cracked wall plaster began to peel off, revealing the cavities inside the wall.

The sight that appeared inside the cavity truly sent chills down Helica's spine.

Asahi, or rather, the wand of the Holy Prayer, is known to everyone. It is the Black Goat of the Forest, who governs abundance and fertility, and has given birth to countless offspring from the past to the present and into the future.

Knowing her abilities, seeing the current scene still sends chills down one's spine.

Deep within the crack, nuns were densely packed together, like larvae embedded inside a honeycomb. The fabric covering their headscarves seemed to still blend into their bodies, and the black mud clinging to their skin was the material of their nunneries, outlining the curves of each nun's figure.

The entire wall collapsed with a roar, and hundreds of nuns with nearly identical faces, embedded in the wall structure, simultaneously opened their eyes, their irises reflecting the deep, dark light unique to black mud.

All the nuns' necks turned mechanically, producing a grinding sound like rusty gears turning, and their deep eyes all turned to look at the magical girls in mid-air.

Under the piercing gaze, Helica felt uneasy; even Nishio Reki, who should have witnessed similar scenes before, got goosebumps all over.

For a moment, Sumireko Yumehara even forgot to continue her attack. Her canine teeth embedded themselves between her soft, elastic lower lip, and her hand, gripping the trident, wanted to raise it several times, but she persuaded herself to do so each time.

Being stared at silently by all the nuns, the girls felt an overwhelming sense of unease.

No, not all of them.

The corner of the relief, which had looked eerie from the very beginning, quietly cracked open, and the bluish-gray stone skin fell to the ground and shattered into powder, but what was revealed on the wall was a skin-like pink.

The cracked edges triggered a chain reaction, with irregular cracks spreading rapidly across the wall. Large sections of bricks peeled off, revealing the view below in its entirety to the girls.

Those weren't reliefs at all, but rather walls that were even more severely eroded, and rows of nuns visible beneath them.

Seeing this, the girls seemed to vaguely understand something.

This sanctuary was built by one nun after another like this.

They should have noticed it when they tried to stop Saint's rampage on Christmas Day, but then someone else appeared...

Mashiro Gorgen's appearance there wasn't to stop Seishin, or rather, it wasn't simply to stop Seishin; she also wanted to prevent the girls from discovering the secret.

Using Yog's abilities, it was indeed possible to conceal this secret. It was entirely feasible for Genki Mashiro to hollow out the entire inner wall of the cathedral and then pretend to dismantle the Great Cathedral using a large-scale teleportation.

No wonder she arrived a beat late.

By the time they realized these things, it was too late.

The most urgent task now is to figure out how to deal with these unknown changes.

In any case, the significance of the appearance of these nuns encased in the wall is self-evident.

Asahi still has the strength to fight.

"Ah—" Erling ({焐澪IX衤三锍韭)

A nun let out a scream. There was no vibration of the vocal cords, no contraction of the throat muscles, and not even the rise and fall of the chest. The pure sound seeped from the depths of her body, and it was clear to everyone that it was a piercing scream.

The sound seemed to spread like a contagion, rippling across the entire exterior wall of the church, like the unison playing of the church's organ.

The nuns looked up, the edges of their headscarves, which were still attached to their bodies, were covered with hardened black mud. Their bodies, which should have shaken violently with their screams, now looked like insects trapped in amber, firmly still.

"Noisy!"

Helica covered her ears with one hand, her body transforming into a high-speed electric current, instantly arriving near the sanctuary. She raised her foot and kicked one of the nuns in the sanctuary.

But her feet were blocked by an invisible force. The flowing lightning seemed to have come into contact with a barrier, and the rushing current was conducted to the side from the barrier. No matter how hard Helica tried, she could not make any real contact with the nun.

Using the barrier as a springboard, Helica stepped on it again, using the reaction force to back away to the side.

Herlica's kick seemed to have triggered some incredible switch; the screams of the nuns lined up neatly on the wall suddenly became words she could understand, making Herlica feel as if she hadn't kicked anyone, but rather turned on a translator.

"He is in the forest! He is in the bed! He is in the roots! He is in the womb! He is in the panting of copulation!"

The nuns chanted in unison, and the few remaining specks of mud on the ground slowly rose, swirling and merging in the air like willow catkins.

The black mud reached the top of the sanctuary, as if an invisible plate was supporting it, allowing it to flow horizontally.

Like blood vessels, the fine filaments intertwined and gradually expanded into a shape.

"Black magic runes?!" Nisio Reki's pupils trembled.

She was very familiar with this thing.

After all, it was one of the countless endings he had witnessed with his own eyes, and the beginning of another nightmare for his own past. No matter what, Nishio Reki would never forget this strange shape.

"Divine liberation?!" Sumireko Yumehara's shoulders trembled violently, as if she shivered from the chilling power.

The jet-black black magic patterns had already taken shape in the sky above the sanctuary.

Seeing the girls' terrified expressions, the nuns chanted with even more joy and frenzy.

"Please accept our physical form, let our flesh and blood bloom into a thousand flowers! We are neither human nor beast, but merely the crawling reality beneath His feet. Mother, let us return to the womb and become Your infants!"

A nun slowly merged into the wall, and the frantic expression on her face before she disappeared was like a steel stab, firmly nailed into the girls' minds.

"King of the Forest! Ruler of the Harvest! Appear in the Cave of Night, and sing your praises in the Abyss of Stars!"

The nuns sang in unison, transforming into a dark confluence that merged into the black magic runes in the sky, making the black magic runes that spanned the entire sanctuary even more substantial and heavier.

Just looking at it makes you feel like you can't breathe.

The nuns merged into the black magic runes one by one, and the remaining number dwindled, but their chants grew ever louder. This frenzied sacrifice seemed to them as nothing more than a rebirth.

That's all? Judging from their fervent expressions, they must consider this a great honor.

"This is insane! These things are insane!"

“I’ve never seen anything like this before…this…is very strange.”

"Watch out, something's coming!"