A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

A few minutes ago, inside Lorenzo's church domain.

A young woman in a pitch-black bodysuit briefly raised her eyes, gazing around expressionlessly as she thought, 'A domain-type ability... Simply leaving here isn't realistic. I need to finish him off quickly.'

At that moment, clear moonlight pierced the sacred dome, casting a cold glow between the Renaissance-style pillars. Torches burned fiercely in their alcoves, their light refracting off the stained-glass windows.

Religious frescoes covered the walls. Above the crucifix, a statue of Jesus stretched out his arms as if to embrace the full moon beyond the dome.

Lorenzo's black robe trailed along the floor, casting a dark shadow.

Holding the Bible in his hands, he raised his grayish-blue eyes to meet Executive Zero's gaze.

"I believe I have heard of you... You are an executive for the Control Bureau, yes?"

He spoke slowly after a brief pause. His tone carried a soul-piercing tranquility. Anyone hearing that voice would struggle to connect it with an unforgivable villain who had murdered countless people.

"It's good that you've heard of me." Zero remained expressionless. "Otherwise, you wouldn't even know who killed you."

Countless motes of ice dust floated upward and gradually coalesced. In moments, an incredibly massive meteorite formed in midair.

The entire church trembled under the howling wind and plunging air pressure. The stained-glass windows shattered with a deafening crash, raining down like a storm of glass.

'Using such a destructive move right from the start?' Lorenzo thought as he watched. 'She seems in a rush, but why?'

With a thunderous rumble, the meteorite plummeted.

The plunging air pressure crushed everything beneath it. Every remaining window blew out, and the colossal statues and towering pillars were pulverized.

Yet Lorenzo's expression remained unchanged.

The Bible flipped to a specific page, and a gigantic bell tower abruptly manifested directly in front of him. It shuddered violently, radiating deafening sonic waves that slammed into the falling meteorite.

In a flash, Zero vanished from her spot.

For combatants of their caliber, attacks of this scale were often just a smokescreen.

In battles between espers of the same level, victory was never decided by brute-force, telegraphed strikes. It came down to surprise attacks—strikes that completely exceeded an opponent's imagination.

"A hollow egg?" Lorenzo raised an eyebrow.

All thunder and no rain. The meteorite was nowhere near as heavy as he had expected. In fact, it was so light it felt as if she had only shaped a shell of ice without filling the inside.

Grand on the outside, but entirely empty within, it shattered at the slightest touch.

The bell tower's resonant hum completely blocked the strike. But a second later, the meteorite disintegrated into swirling ice dust, cascading down like a torrential storm of ice crystals!

Pinned entirely behind the bell tower, Lorenzo couldn't take a single step.

Zero, meanwhile, skated across the smooth, frozen floor. Using the blind spot created by the shattered meteorite, she flanked him in an instant, appearing directly at his back.

With the massive storm of ice dust in front and Zero behind him, Lorenzo was cornered.

In the next instant, Lorenzo was slightly taken aback.

He wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him; a fiery red phantom suddenly enveloped Zero's body.

Upon closer inspection, she seemed to have sprouted a massive, crimson phantom limb.

The limb interlocked seamlessly with her own arm. Its five fingers, fierce as a beast's claws, gripped a flaming sword forged entirely of fire. The Sword Hilt was dark crimson, distinguishing it from the fiery blade.

For an esper to display both ice and fire abilities simultaneously was simply unrealistic. Thus, only one explanation could account for the sight before him:

—she was not a pure esper.

However, before Lorenzo could fully process this thought, Zero swung the flaming sword, attempting to cleave him in half from over ten meters away.

Staring down the incoming blade of fire, Lorenzo instantly unleashed one of his stolen abilities—Door. A wooden door materialized and opened before him.

He opened the door, revealing another corner of the church on the other side.

The moment the flaming sword swept through, Lorenzo stepped through the doorway. The roaring veil of fire and the surging blade struck nothing but empty air.

Seeing this, Zero merely tilted her head. As her hair whipped through the air, over a dozen ice spikes instantly formed. They shot straight into the wooden door, destroying the frame in a split second.

But the door had already closed, and Lorenzo was already standing in the opposite corner of the church. A gust of freezing wind rushed against his face, fluttering his hair and the black bowler hat on his head.

Pressing a hand to his hat, Lorenzo turned slightly and stepped aside, dodging the volley of ice spikes that shot out from behind the door. A layer of frost coated his dark robe.

The spikes slammed into the stained-glass window. As the glass shattered, the shards of ice transformed into a flurry of butterfly-like dust, swooping back around to strike at Lorenzo's back.

Lorenzo tore a page from his Bible. Pinching it between his middle and index fingers, he swept it backward, annihilating those seemingly insignificant but deadly ice butterflies.

A dead silence fell over the church. The storm of ice dust had settled, and the bell tower ceased its ringing. The surroundings were in absolute ruins, yet the moonlight remained as clear as ever.

Across a distance of several hundred meters, Lorenzo sized up the young woman in the bodysuit once more. After their brief exchange, he had reached a new conclusion about her:

"You are not a pure esper."

Zero didn't answer him directly. The phantom limb that had hovered by her side was already gone.

"No matter. I will know once I Steal your abilities," Lorenzo said. The Bible in his hand fluttered to another page. Unlike the previous ones, this page faintly glowed with a dark light.

In that moment, skeletal apparitions began to drift through the air. This was another ability stolen by the Bible: Rashomon Souls. The more people the user had killed, the more spirits Rashomon Souls could summon.

Every ability Lorenzo stored within his Bible had a limited number of uses. The higher the tier of the ability, the fewer times he could unleash it.

Rashomon Souls originated from Yanluo, a man once known as Japan's strongest esper. It was one of the highest-tier abilities stored in Lorenzo's Bible.

He could only use this ability a total of two times.

And so far, Zero was the very first opponent to force him to use this ability.

Tens of thousands of ghosts wailed through the air, their skeletal forms rattling and trembling. It evoked that famous line from Shakespeare: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

The corpses piled into a dense, oppressive mountain, nearly filling the entire church. They surged toward Zero from all directions like a tsunami of crimson and black.

The young woman stood like a lone reef amid the raging tide.

Zero looked straight ahead, her face completely blank. The next instant, a sudden, searing heat engulfed the church as a torrential sea of fire erupted, spreading outward without end.

Like a wildfire scorching an open plain, the blazing inferno entirely devoured the skeletal spirits rushing toward her.

Soon after, the phantom of a crimson giant materialized around her. The colossus was so massive that the church domain simply could not contain its existence.

In the blink of an eye, the entire church was swallowed by the flames. Frescoes, domes, statues—everything was annihilated by the fire.

It looked like the collapse of an entire civilization.

At the same time, the giant continued to expand, much like a child stretching its limbs after waking from a deep sleep.

The young woman's hair whipped fiercely in the air, her sharp, cold face illuminated by the fire, her eyes shining brightly.

Watching this, a flicker of surprise crossed Lorenzo's grayish-blue eyes, and two words slowly surfaced in his mind:

—'Mythic vessel.'

Just a second before the church was completely ruptured by the fiery red phantom, Lorenzo finally caught a glimpse of the giant's true face and the towering flaming sword it wielded, which seemed to reach the heavens.

"The Fire Giant, Surtr," Lorenzo murmured.

Right before the entire church could be swallowed by her manifested mythic form, he promptly deactivated his domain, plunging them both back into reality.

Zero returned to the harbor, once again hearing the roar of the crashing waves. The tide was coming in, and the sky-blotting husk of the giant had already vanished.

"What a pity..." she said softly.

Earlier, Xia Lingxue had been operating under the mindset of "I will definitely kill him, so there's no need to hold back," which was why she had unleashed her mythic form inside the church.

But now that she was out of the church, bound by her identity as an executive, she couldn't act as recklessly as she had just moments ago.

Otherwise, the consequences of her status as a mythic vessel being made public would be entirely predictable. Regardless, she had achieved her main goal: escaping Lorenzo's domain as quickly as possible to avoid a prolonged battle.

From the very beginning, Xia Lingxue couldn't care less about the Comet Fragments. All she wanted was to bring Xia Ningzhi away safely.

As for everyone else... they had nothing to do with her.

"Pardon my disrespect."

Lorenzo adjusted the bowler hat on his head, his gaze deepening. "It would surely cause an uproar if word got out. To think an executive of the Control Bureau is actually a mythic vessel."

Zero remained unfazed, her eyes as cold as solid ice.

She had left no evidence. She had only unleashed her mythic form inside the isolated dimension of the church domain. No one would believe Lorenzo's one-sided claims, as he was nothing but a thief despised by the world.

'How is Azhi doing?'

With that thought, Zero looked away from Lorenzo, turning her head to gaze into the distance. Suddenly, her expression shifted, completely losing its previous composure...

In the next moment, the young woman in the bodysuit sprang into action, gliding across the frozen ground as she bolted toward the horizon.

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