Chapter 405: The Second Anomaly

Then—

Foul sludge, slick with an oily, gasoline-like sheen, suddenly erupted from the drain.

The pitch-black, viscous liquid carried a suffocating stench and moved with terrifying speed.

It surged up from underground like a high-pressure water cannon, blanketing an enormous area and covering nearly every corner of the space around Pandora.

The trajectory of that spray was aimed precisely at where the Remnant Sovereign had just stood, the exact place Pandora now occupied.

Faced with this sudden assault, Pandora responded with the utmost seriousness.

In her perception, the enemy’s attack posed a tremendous threat.

The sense of danger was utterly different from the Remnant Sovereign’s black light. It felt as though a vast, corrosive net were descending from above.

In an instant, her powerful combat instincts drove Pandora to react.

Umbral Weaving activated.

Dense shadow, as if alive, coiled around her entire body, forming a dark cocoon that clung tightly to her skin.

It was not thick, but it was exceptionally compact, completely wrapping her figure in a shroud of pure darkness.

At the same time, Pandora’s gaze swept rapidly across the foul-smelling mass surging toward her.

In a flash, she locked onto the weakest point of its coverage.

To her left, near the entrance to a narrow alley, the sludge was nearly half as thick as elsewhere. A small gap had formed there, like a natural seam, perhaps due to the arrangement of the drains.

However, just as Pandora prepared to charge toward that weak point, the Remnant Sovereign’s attack arrived as well.

Several beams of black light tore through the toxic mist, aimed with deadly precision to seal off her escape route to the left.

She was caught between two fronts.

Above: the corrosive, foul-smelling sludge. To the side: black light capable of piercing clean through flesh and bone.

The two attacks arrived in near-seamless coordination, as if prearranged.

Pandora’s brow tightened sharply.

But her body showed no hesitation.

Umbral Weaving shifted again. The shadow coiled around her right arm extended with blinding speed, transforming into a spike that met the most lethal of the incoming black beams head-on.

Shadow and black light collided, detonating with a thunderous roar.

The shockwave destabilized the protective shadow cocoon around Pandora, its surface rippling in unstable waves.

But in doing so, Pandora had also deflected the black light’s trajectory by half a meter.

Half a meter was enough.

Using the recoil of that block, Pandora suddenly changed direction. She abandoned the weak point on the left and charged straight ahead instead.

That was where the sludge was thickest.

But precisely because it was thickest, there existed a split-second gap before the jetting sludge could land.

In the process of the sludge erupting from the drain and arcing through the air to cover the ground, there was a brief window between the arc’s highest point and its point of impact. For that fleeting instant, the space there was empty.

That gap.

Pandora seized it with her extraordinary reaction speed.

Her entire body shot forward like a dark arrow, slipping through the fleeting opening.

The shadow cocoon let out a teeth-grating “sizzle” as it grazed the sludge. The foul substance clung to it, corroding it relentlessly; the dense surface of shadow bubbled with fine blisters, as if doused in concentrated acid.

But Pandora had already broken through.

With one more step, she entered a narrow alley ahead.

Behind her, the rest of the sludge slammed into the ground, splattering iridescent filth in all directions.

Inside the alley, Pandora did not slow her pace.

The shadows wrapped around her slowly dissolved with her successful escape.

The cocoon, riddled with corrosion, peeled away from her body like a layer of necrotic skin being shed.

But the next moment, Pandora turned her attention behind her.

That strange, foul substance could cling to her solidified shadows and even corrode them.

From the moment she had broken through until now, the sludge had remained stuck to her shadow, gnawing at its form like a parasite that refused to let go.

Only when Pandora dispersed the shadow did the filth finally fall away with it.

Pandora’s gaze followed the fallen sludge to the ground—

The ground sank visibly before her eyes.

Acrid, putrid fumes rose into the air; even the surrounding atmosphere seemed to warp faintly under the stench.

Within a few short breaths, a massive hole had been eaten into the street, the brick and stone at its bottom reduced to a soft, black slurry that still bubbled slowly.

Pandora had no doubt how badly she would have fared had that iridescent sludge struck her directly.

Even with her Witch bloodline, dealing with a substance whose nature leaned toward corrosion rather than poison would not be easy.

Her blood could break down toxins, but against a corrosive agent that directly dissolved flesh, decomposition would never keep pace with the rate of destruction.

Without Umbral Weaving, she would have struggled to protect herself well enough to escape.

Just then.

A sudden disturbance rippled through the shadows around her.

A threat materialized.

Pandora’s eyes went cold. A shadow scythe formed instantly and swung down—

The attack landed before she even fully registered her target.

It was a phantom shape, surfacing from the shadows surrounding her.

It was similar to the shadows Pandora controlled through Umbral Weaving, but not quite the same.

This phantom was closer in nature to the black light wielded by the Remnant Sovereign, darker and denser, more compact in substance.

But this time, the attack was different from anything the Remnant Sovereign had used before.

The phantom-shaped black light had appeared directly beside Pandora!

It had not come from afar, but emerged from the shadows at her feet.

Yet Pandora had reacted before it could strike. Her scythe had already cleaved it in two.

The blade passed through the phantom’s body, but the sensation was not like cutting through a solid object. It was more like slicing through a cloud of condensed smoke.

Then something unexpected happened.

The phantom split in two, but neither half vanished.

Both halves paused in midair for a moment, as if drawn by some unseen force, then swiftly reformed.

One became two.

Two complete phantoms stabilized, each slightly smaller than before, but the sense of threat in Pandora’s perception had returned, stronger than before.

Pandora did not hesitate. Shadow coalesced into a scythe, and she instantly cleaved both phantoms in half at the waist.

Just as before, the two phantoms became four.

Pandora’s brow furrowed deeply.

The shadow scythe was ready to strike again, but it did not fall.

This time, she did not hurry to attack. Instead, she observed carefully.

She watched the exact process of the phantoms’ transformation.

It was centered on the severed remains of the phantom. Black light continuously coalesced from thin air, as though drawn in by some unseen force, and the form began to shift.

Twisted lines gradually resolved, taking shape from the amorphous black smoke, outlining limbs, torso, and head.