Chapter 404: Poppy… Is Dead?

Had it not shifted those few inches, the blade would have driven clean into the seam of its spine and split its patchwork torso in two.

But such a trick would work against her at most once.

She had already grasped the toxic mist’s particular nature. She would not give it room to act again.

So when Pandora’s gaze had lingered a moment earlier, what truly concerned her was not that her opponent had dodged the attack.

What she cared about was its appearance.

This was actually the first time she had ever seen the “Remnant Sovereign” Poppy had named.

While tracking through the tunnel, she had only witnessed the traces of battle, never the Remnant Sovereign itself.

Had its appearance strayed too far from the name Poppy had given it, she might not have been able to match the name to the creature at all.

But now... she could basically confirm it.

That skeletal humanoid figure pieced together from countless remnants, holding its scepter aloft, its face a hollow of empty darkness—

This was, in every sense, the Remnant Sovereign.

The problem was...

The Remnant Sovereign was still alive, and appeared to have suffered no significant injury.

True, the slash had sheared off a few fragments, but for a being whose entire body was cobbled together from assorted remains, such a loss was almost negligible.

On the other hand, Poppy, the one who had been fighting it, could no longer be reached.

In other words... Poppy had hunted the Remnant Sovereign, and in the end, had gotten herself taken down instead?

Pandora frowned. That possibility seemed unlikely.

She knew Poppy’s strength well.

Poppy sat in the upper-middle tier of Rank-3, with rich combat experience and a wide variety of methods. She was nothing like the newly advanced Rank-3, “Blighted Hand” Wilbur.

Even if she couldn’t decisively overwhelm the Remnant Sovereign, she shouldn’t have fallen. There was no reason for her to be killed in a counterattack.

And yet...

Thinking back on what the support squad had gone through, Pandora hesitated.

The support squad’s encounter with the mutated Bonebeast could have been an accident, but then they had run into a swarm of Building-Borer Ants as well. Could that still be called an accident?

Two Anomalies, coincidentally distributed within the same building, cornering the support squad into a desperate situation.

Had she not arrived in time, the support squad would have very nearly been wiped out.

By that same logic, the probability that Poppy had also run into an “accident” suddenly became very real.

A bad feeling rose in her chest.

Judging from the recent exchange, the Remnant Sovereign’s combat power was also in the upper-middle tier of Rank-3, right on par with Poppy’s.

Factoring in combat experience and other elements, Poppy might even have held a slight edge in actual combat.

So at first, it had been Poppy hunting the Remnant Sovereign.

That much was clear from the distribution of battle traces in the tunnel: a clearly one-directional advance, stretching all the way from the subway station to here.

It meant Poppy had maintained the initiative the entire time, while the Remnant Sovereign had kept fleeing.

But because their strengths were close and their methods widely different, Poppy had never been able to finish it off, and had chased it all the way here.

And then the accident appeared.

The toxic mist did not seem to be one of the Remnant Sovereign’s abilities.

Its dodge just now had relied on that sudden pulling force within the mist, not on any active power of its own.

And this toxic mist seemed almost perfectly suited to counter Poppy’s water-smoke techniques.

When both fought using mist as their medium, the toxic mist’s suppression made Poppy’s smoke impossible to sustain.

When fire meets fire, the fiercer flame devours the other.

Poppy’s smoke was refined, but it could not overcome this brutish, venom-based fog.

Add to that whatever unknown methods the source of this toxic mist might still possess...

And the hunter had become the hunted. Could the killer have been killed in return?

It was possible.

As for Poppy...

With no response for this long, she was very likely dead.

At that thought, Pandora’s expression grew colder.

The aura around her body drew inward, more restrained than before, every sense alert for the next sudden change.

The Remnant Sovereign attacked again.

Black light coalesced into bone hands that lunged for Pandora, fewer than last time, no longer intended to land a killing blow.

But the angle of each strike was more cunning. Clearly, after taking that slash from Pandora, the creature had grown far more cautious.

Pandora swung her scythe to meet them.

But this time, she again failed to land a hit.

Not because the Remnant Sovereign had once more used the mist’s pulling force to evade.

The same trick was something Pandora had already accounted for; she would not give it room to work again.

As she swung, her spiritual power had already locked onto the space around the scythe’s target point. Any outside interference would be detected the instant it appeared.

It was mainly that the earlier strike had clearly left a deep impression on the enemy.

So now this foe had grown much craftier.

It no longer closed the distance, but launched its attacks from far off.

The bone hands flew from the depths of the toxic mist, crossing a long stretch before reaching her, giving it ample room to retreat.

Although its threat to Pandora had diminished even further, she now found it difficult to reproduce the effect she had just achieved.

Her scythe could not reach it, and if she tried to close the gap, it would immediately fall back, reopening that distance just as quickly.

The two sides had fallen into a delicate stalemate.

What now?

Pandora’s thoughts raced.

Continuing to tangle with the Remnant Sovereign like this was clearly meaningless.

The creature had learned its lesson and would not give her another chance to get close.

And her ranged attacks were even less effective under the interference of the toxic mist. Her Susurrus Mist was suppressed to within ten meters, and shadow blades dulled as they traveled through that clinging fog.

She needed to change tactics.

The true key... perhaps didn’t lie with the Remnant Sovereign at all.

Her gaze passed through the toxic mist, toward the farther distance.

The dark-green fog churned, draping the entire block in an eerie hue. The low buildings loomed faintly through it, like ruins sunk at the bottom of a deep sea.

The toxic mist.

This venomous fog, blanketing the entire block, was the real variable in all of this.

It wasn’t the Remnant Sovereign’s power.

That much was clear from how the Remnant Sovereign had dodged just moments ago.

That pulling force had been an external factor even for it, not an extension of its own abilities.

So where did it come from?

What was its source?

If Poppy truly had met with misfortune, then what killed her was probably not the Remnant Sovereign, but whatever lurked behind this toxic mist.

The Remnant Sovereign didn’t have that ability, but the thing behind the mist just might.

If she found it, she might find Poppy’s whereabouts...

Dead or alive.

As she was thinking, a flicker of movement at the corner of her vision caught her attention.

The sewer drain at the street corner, its rusted iron grating half-buried in the pavement, had been sitting quietly all this time.

But at that moment, it let out a piercing shriek of warping metal, as if something from beneath had just forced it open from the inside.