Lord of Mysteries:The Good Witch

Angel breathed a sigh of relief after successfully luring out and killing the hooded assassin hiding behind the chimney.

During the reload, she had formulated this risky yet potentially rewarding plan. Her previous .45 caliber handgun only had five bullets, and the new .38 caliber gun also had just five rounds before reloading. She wanted to try using this "illusion" to draw out the hooded assassin to attack her, hoping to end the fight quickly.

Unexpectedly, the naive assassin fell for it easily. After Angel deliberately used up her "five" bullets, he rushed at her without hesitation, attempting to attack while she was supposedly unarmed.

Then he was shot through the chin and out the top of his head with the last bullet, becoming a corpse.

Angel pushed away the hooded assassin's body that had fallen on her. His eyes were still wide open, unable to close even in death. His lifeless body slumped to the side, the young face under the hood facing the sky. His vacant eyes reflected a glimmer of light in the blazing sun, as if still alive.

She picked up the other discarded handgun, reloaded both weapons, and then headed towards the main battlefield. There had been no gunfire from that direction for a while, suggesting that the Night Watchers, who had the advantage in both strength and numbers, had likely finished the fight.

Leaving the area still permeated with cold air, she arrived at a corner of the rooftop overlooking the open space where the Night Watchers had battled the tuxedo-clad clown earlier.

The sealed item "2-049" now lay unattended in the center of the clearing. Urgent "thump-thump-thump" sounds came from the iron box, as if expressing displeasure at being ignored, but the surrounding Night Watchers had no time to pay attention to it.

Lolotta had retreated from the warehouse wall to the other end of the clearing, standing with Borgia and aiming their guns at the warehouse's main entrance. Dunn, Klein, and Leonard were on the other side, forming a triangle withLolotta's group and 2-049, also on high alert with their weapons raised.

The tuxedo-clad clown was nowhere to be seen.

What's going on? Where's the clown? Angel frowned as she observed the strange scene below. Had he hidden inside the warehouse?

Bang!

A thunderous noise erupted as the wooden double doors of the warehouse exploded into countless pieces, scattering across the entire clearing.

Angel's enhanced vision detected human tissue mixed among the wooden debris.

Calling it tissue was no longer accurate; it was more like human fragments. Chunks of flesh, unrecognizable, flew alongside the warehouse door. There were red and yellow muscles and fat, dark red internal organs, and pinkish-white bones.

The most intact pieces still had half of a dock worker's gray uniform hanging from them.

It was the "dock worker" who had failed to ambush Dunn earlier and disappeared after being wounded by Angel! So he had sneaked into the warehouse, planning to find Ray Bieber's Antigonous family notebook before the Night Watchers.

But in just a few minutes, a living person had been reduced to fragments flying out of the warehouse doors. Who or what inside the warehouse had torn him apart like this?

As if answering Angel's question, a grayish-white figure appeared in front of the warehouse doors.

In the intense sunlight, the "assassin's" dark vision couldn't clearly see the situation inside the warehouse, but the grayish-white figure quickly squeezed through the warehouse doors, revealing a body over two meters tall.

He, or rather it, although barely maintaining a humanoid shape, had limbs bent backward, with viscous, semi-transparent liquid flowing all over its body. The ends of its ribs were broken, protruding one by one from under the skin. The grayish-white skin looked as if it had been soaked in water for days, covered in wrinkles.

Compared to the highly swollen body, the only relatively normal head was tilted back, its mouth opening and closing, drooling blood-tinged saliva mixed with muscle tissue.

It seemed the "dock worker" torn to pieces was the work of this monster.

As chewed human tissue fell from its mouth, a porcelain denture stood out among the deformed and fallen teeth.

"That's Ray Bieber, he's lost control!" Leonard shouted, accompanied by the suddenly accelerated knocking from 2-049.

Hearing his cry, "Ray Bieber's" upturned head mechanically turned in that direction. His cloudy eyes seemed unfocused, yet they accurately gazed towards the group.

"Bang, bang!"

Without waiting for Dunn's command, several people had already aimed and fired. Two bullets accurately hit the mutated Bieber's head, the only part that could still be considered a human organ. The hunter bullets easily penetrated his skull, leaving two finger-thick holes.

But apart from leaking some grayish-white liquid, the mutated Bieber was completely unaffected. It swung its two swollen, backward-bent legs, leaving a trail of viscous secretions as it walked towards Leonard and the others.

Leonard and Klein retreated while firing, hunter bullets hitting the mutated Bieber's deformed body one after another. However, bullets of this caliber were like tickles to the monster over two meters tall, doing nothing to stop its advance except making it leak more grayish-white fluid.

The others also fired from the sides, but attacks on its sides or back were equally ineffective.

Looking down from above, the monster Bieber seemed to be chasing Leonard and the others, but Angel keenly noticed that its direction of advance wasn't directly towards the Night Watchers, but towards 2-049, the Antigonous puppet in the middle of the field!

"Be careful, its target is the sealed item!" Angel warned those below while raising her gun and firing a hunter bullet, accurately hitting the top of the mutated Bieber's head and exiting through the other side of its neck.

"Lolotta, it looks like an undead, find its weakness quickly. Leonard, try to control it!"

Hearing Angel's warning, Dunn immediately reacted, firing a shot at the iron box containing the puppet, knocking it several meters away, while quickly issuing orders.

Lolotta lowered her gun, pressing her hands to her eyes, quickly entering the vision of the undead, using the "Gravedigger" ability to search for Ray Bieber's weakness.

The "Midnight Poet" Leonard also began to recite a memorized poem:

"Ah, the danger of fear, the crimson hope..."

The mutated Bieber had already reached 2-049, but seeing the sealed item about to be in its grasp knocked away by Dunn's shot, its brain, incapable of intricate thought, drove its distorted limbs to change direction, continuing to pursue the iron box. As the poet's recitation reached it, the sleep-inducing power spread, slowing the steps of the two-meter-tall monster, which seemed about to fall asleep.

A fireball the size of a washbasin flew out from among the wooden boxes at one corner of the clearing, wobbling towards Leonard as he recited his poem.

Only then did ripples appear there, revealing the tall, thin figure of the tuxedo-clad clown.

"Quick, dodge!" Klein shouted in alarm.

Leonard caught a glimpse of the fireball targeting him in his peripheral vision and had to interrupt his Midnight Poet ability, rolling away from the fireball's attack range.

Angel fired several shots at the tuxedo-clad clown from her high vantage point, but the agile clown dodged the bullets with a strange, contorted posture, his face painted with greasepaint not forgetting to squeeze out a mocking smile at her.

Bang!

With a snap of his fingers, the tuxedo-clad clown erupted in flames from various parts of his body. As the fire dissipated and smoke swirled, the figure within had vanished once again.

But this brief distraction was enough for Ray Bieber, who had been on the verge of falling asleep, to regain his normal speed. He tilted back his head, his mouth wide open and full of bloody saliva, letting out a silent roar.

Wooo——

A heart-palpitating wave swept across the entire field.Lolotta, who was at the forefront with her eyes turned colorless as she searched for the monster's weakness, leaned back and retreated two steps, automatically exiting her spirit vision state.

Leonard, who had dodged the fireball and was preparing to continue reciting his poem, fell backward as if struck by an invisible heavy punch. Blood flowed from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.

The others, being further from Bieber, were less affected, but even Angel on the distant rooftop felt a pain in her head, numbness in her limbs, and her vision becoming blurry.

A single roar had severely injured the Night Watchers present. The mutated Bieber's upturned head lowered again, its cloudy eyeballs locking onto the distant 2-049. It took stumbling steps, unhurriedly walking towards the iron box.

From start to finish, its target had only been that sealed item of the Antigonous family.

"Control it, I've found its weakness!"Lolotta shouted, having re-entered the Gravedigger's unique spirit vision state and taking only seconds this time.

Seeing Leonard struggling to get up, Dunn didn't hesitate. He pressed his brow, closed his eyes, and the invisible waves of "Nightmare" radiated outward from him.

Faster than listening to the "Midnight Poet" recite poetry, the mutated Ray Bieber's distorted limbs stopped moving. Its eyes ignored the nearby 2-049, and its head, disproportionate to its huge body, slowly drooped, falling into a deep sleep.

Lolotta threw away her gun and charged bare-handed towards the motionless monster. With a sliding tackle, she scraped against the ground's sand and gravel, entering beneath the monster.

With lightning speed, she threw a punch. Dark red bodily fluids splashed from Ray Bieber's groin, drenchingLolotta beneath him. Ignoring the spray, her striking right hand pulled hard again, extracting an object mixed with a section of intestine. She kicked with both feet, leaving from under the monster.

In her hand was an ancient notebook covered in mucus and blood—the Night Watchers' target for today, the Antigonous family notebook.

On the warehouse roof, the tuxedo-clad clown's figure reappeared in the rippling air. He grinned, his finger pointing towardsLolotta below, who was clutching the notebook and fleeing from the mutated monster.

"Bang!"

A gunshot rang out. The clown's upper body remained still, but his waist twisted as if boneless, avoiding the incoming bullet.

He looked towards the residential building's rooftop across the way. The female Night Watcher was holding a gun, its barrel pointed in his direction, a wisp of smoke rising from it.

The clown's grin widened further. He made a strange expression, somewhere between a smile and not, and disregarding the threat of the gun, leaped down from the warehouse roof.

Angel fired two more shots following his figure. They seemed to hit, but didn't stop his movement. The clown rolled as he landed, flames erupting again, dodging bullets fired by Borgia from the side. His body reappeared several meters away amidst the smoke and dust, now only a few body lengths away fromLolotta, who held the notebook!

"Ah!" A piercing scream rang out.

Ray Bieber, his groin emptied, seemed to finally wake from his slumber. He opened his mouth in an agonized howl, then his body emitted a dazzling light, as if ignited from within.

"Boom!"

With a thunderous explosion, the twisted monster's body blew apart entirely.