"Huh?"
'My... my arm.'
The man stared wide-eyed at his cleanly severed, frozen stump, his breathing growing increasingly rapid and heavy with shock.
Noah raised his hand and gripped the screaming man's face, pouring the power to manipulate souls directly into his mind.
The next moment, the man's body began to warp grotesquely.
As the fundamental shape of his soul was violently altered by Weaver, his physical flesh began to swell and deform unnaturally to accommodate the new, horrifying shape.
"St-Stop! Please, stop!"
The man felt overwhelming terror.
He could physically sense his own DNA mutating into something "unknown."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!!"
Amidst his wet screams, the man grew increasingly bizarre.
Massive, pulsating pustules swelled on his back, and chaotic, black blood vessels violently bulged on his face, distorting his human features.
From his appearance, it was hard to tell if he was even still human.
Although Stella couldn't clearly see these fleshy changes from her angle behind Noah, she was frightened by the man's inhuman screams and wanted to stop Noah.
Just as she was about to speak, Noah suddenly released the man's face.
He then dodged backward, effortlessly avoiding the wet fleshy tentacles that suddenly sprouted from the man's mutating body.
"Noah!" Stella called out worriedly.
Noah retreated to the girl's side, indicating he was fine and the two watched the man's monstrous transformation together.
The man's tailored suit was now stretched taut by something massive growing inside, as if his body had suddenly grown enormous.
Accompanied by chilling, gurgling wails, his body swelled grotesquely, finally tearing the fabric apart.
When Stella saw the man's current form, she couldn't help but feel a severe chill run down her spine and instinctively took two steps back in horror.
It was simply too disgusting!
In the blink of an eye, the terrorist Bisho had transformed into something nearly ten feet tall.
A muscular, writhing monstrosity of immense height. Its exposed muscles seemed to flow like liquid across its body, with massive, tumorous lumps shifting all over.
Meanwhile, its legs had completely degenerated into something resembling a puddle of fleshy mud, from which numerous spiked tentacles violently extended.
After losing all its hair, its head had swollen to three or four times its original size, with half its face twisted into a bizarre, terrifying maw.
"What... what kind of monster is this?!" Stella looked at the transformed monstrosity with utter disgust, not wanting to get anywhere near it.
'It's a minor spiritual contamination.'
Though he wanted to say that out loud, what Noah actually said was.
"Probably some kind of trump card. After all, it is Rebellion—nothing they do would be surprising."
"Could it be that they genetically modified their own bodies?! Driven into a corner, he finally resorted to it?!"
From the girl's perspective, Noah had cleanly subdued the opponent and heroically seized the detonation button.
The opponent, having lost his hostage leverage, suddenly triggered a mutation and went completely berserk.
That was roughly the sequence of events.
But there was another factor hidden in between: Noah had altered the man's soul, causing him to become a terrifying "minor spiritual contamination" monster.
This way, any legal suspicion of him being a murderer was cleared.
Stella wouldn't suspect him of torture either.
The Chairwoman wouldn't be left with a bad impression of him.
All that remained was to completely subdue the "berserk terrorist."
"Ooooh—!"
The massive monster let out a piercing, unearthly shriek.
Prepared for this, Noah quickly erected a soundproof barrier in front of the two of them, though they still suffered some minor acoustic effects.
The girl clutched her ringing ears. "Damn it, what is this?!"
BOOM!
The monster suddenly sprang into violent action.
It manipulated the heavy tentacles on its body to strike the structural wall above the two of them, completely shattering the mall ceiling.
Massive concrete rubble and steel debris rained down from above.
Noah instantly manipulated gravity to shield their heads from the falling debris.
Seeing this, Stella raised her hand toward the collapsing ceiling and unleashed a roaring torrent of crimson flames, instantly reducing the multi-ton rubble to fine dust.
But by then, the monster had vanished from the concourse.
Considering the direction of the structural damage, it could only have fled toward the opposite wing of the mall.
Stella hurriedly said, "Not good! It is going after the evacuating hostages! We need to catch up to it quickly!"
...
At that exact moment, on the other side of the mall, the three students assisting the police in guiding the hostages to the emergency exits suddenly felt a severe chill run down their spines.
Ikki Kurogane broke out in a cold sweat, his sharp swordsman's eyes fixed on the unlit shopping passageway.
"This suffocating feeling... something is coming!"
Staring into the deep darkness, his unease and fear grew exponentially.
He hurriedly stepped in front of his sister, Shizuku and warned her.
"Be careful! Something is not right!"
Nagi Arisuin immediately summoned his shadowy Device, ready for battle.
The next second.
A pitch-black, fleshy tentacle, moving like an extension of the darkness itself, shot out from the shadows, aiming straight for one of the fleeing civilian hostages.
Ikki reacted swiftly, summoning his Device in an instant.
"Come forth, Intetsu!"
He raised his black blade to meet the dark entity, but the exact moment they made physical contact, his expression twisted in pain.
Cough!
"So heavy!"
Ikki hastily angled his blade, desperately dodging to the side, trying to deflect the immense, inhuman force with the smooth edge of his sword.
However, the blade seemed to be stuck in the fleshy mass, unable to move freely.
'Damn it!'
Swish!
A razor-sharp watery slash suddenly bloomed before his eyes. Shizuku Kurogane had also drawn her Device.
"Come, Yoishigure!"
With a single, highly pressurized water blade, she cleanly severed the pitch-black tentacle holding her brother's sword.
"Thank you, Shizuku!"
"There is no need to thank me, Brother. You protect me, and I protect you—that's the beautiful love between family."
"Ahaha..." Ikki felt a bit awkward at her intense declaration.
The three of them now clearly saw the remaining, twitching section of the fleshy tentacle bleeding on the floor.
"What... what is this disgusting thing?!" Alice gasped.
"Is it a mutated octopus or a squid?!"
"Is there a seafood aquarium in this mall?!"
Ikki's first civilian thought was that the power outage had caused a massive animal escape at a local aquarium exhibit.
But Ikki quickly spoke seriously, "No, that cannot be it. The kinetic force just now was completely extraordinary. Be careful, it is not over yet!"
"Woooo—!!!"
As if violently echoing his words, the massive monster that had transformed from Bisho crawled out of the dark passage, charging fiercely toward Ikki.
Its speed and strength were both highly exaggerated, casually knocking away heavy concrete pillars and steel benches in its path.
Seeing the suddenly appearing, Lovecraftian monster, the three knights simultaneously paled.
Noticing that he was the locked-on target, Ikki hurriedly warnedthem.
"Alice! Shizuku! Stay away from me!"
Ikki, who wanted to heroically face this enemy alone to buy time, did not get his wish.
Shizuku not only did not retreat but instead stepped forward.
"Daring to lay a filthy hand on my precious brother! No matter what you are, you have no future!"
The Lorelei gathered immense magical power, aiming her Device directly at the charging monster.
"Freezing Dust Illusion!"
In an instant, a massive expanse of frozen, jagged earth was created by Shizuku, brutally binding the monster's lower body to the freezing ground.
"Hmph, is it just intimidating in size? It's just a weakling on the inside."
Seeing her tentative ice attack easily control the opponent's movement, Shizuku prepared to press forward for an absolute victory.
She dropped a massive, multi-ton block of solid ice from the ceiling directly above it.
Even with that immense size, being crushed by an icicle six times larger than itself should realistically make it fall immediately.
"No! Shizuku, dodge!"
Just as Shizuku focused entirely on generating the crushing ice block, Ikki tackled her, knocking her safely away.
'What?'
'Brother? Why do this so suddenly?'
Shizuku propped herself up from the cold floor, completely confused.
And then she saw crimson blood falling before her eyes.
She stared blankly at her beloved brother, whose abdomen had been pierced through by a hidden tentacle.
She momentarily forgot how to react.
But the monster wouldn't stop its assault. It directly lifted the bleeding Ikki high into the air.
"Stop!"
Shizuku wanted to stop it, but it was already too late.
At the critical moment, Nagi Arisuin suddenly emerged from the shadows behind the tentacle and, with a single slash, severed the limb, dropping the bleeding Ikki to the floor and saving his life.
Ikki gasped with immense difficulty, clutching his bleeding stomach.
"Sorry... thank you, Alice."
Nagi Arisuin smiled slightly and even winked affectionately at Ikki. "Aren't we roommates? Helping each other out is only natural! More importantly, that ugly monster is far too dangerous for one person. Let's fight it together!"
"Ah... you are right," Ikki coughed, blood staining his lips.
Ikki frowned, looking up at the terrifying, roaring monster.
In truth, he was deeply puzzled.
'What exactly was this monster? It looked like something that shouldn't exist in this world.'