"Oh? Someone actually sent something to this drunkard? Let me see what this is." Venti smiled as he opened the small box, but the moment he cracked it open with just a sliver, his smile instantly disappeared. He transformed into a gust of wind and floated out of Angel's Share without anyone noticing his movement.
When Charles returned after serving other customers, he found Venti gone, only half a glass of unfinished wine remained on the table. After glancing around and failing to spot him, the bartender's eyes widened: "He hasn't paid yet! How could he just run off?!"
Venti reappeared in a secluded alley and opened the box, picking up the teardrop-shaped crystal inside.
"This is Dvalin's tear... but the curse energy inside has been purified! Who did this?"
He noticed a piece of paper in the box with an ugly doodle on it.
A golden-haired stick figure holding a sword, and next to it, an even smaller floating figure with a four-pointed star drawn above its head.
'What in the world is this?' Venti examined it from every angle—right side up, upside down but couldn't make sense of it.
'Ah well, never mind. There's still half a glass of wine waiting back at the tavern.'
A few minutes later, at Angel's Share—
"Eh?! Where's my wine?"
"Mr. Venti, my apologies! I thought you'd left on some business, so I took the liberty of clearing your drink. Let me mix you a fresh one—on the house!"
"Ahem, what about the previous tab..."
"That's on you too!"
"Ehe!"
...
Brightcrown Canyon
"Lumine, what are we doing out in the wilderness so late? Even though the Knights have cleared out most of the monsters around Mondstadt, running into them would still be troublesome."
Lumine pressed her right hand against her chest, frowning uncomfortably. "I don't know. I just suddenly felt... as if something here was calling to me."
"Just because of some vague feeling, you dragged us out here at night? Couldn't we have come tomorrow morning?" Paimon crossed her arms disapprovingly. "I'm getting sleepy!"
Lumine offered an apologetic smile. "Sorry, it's just... I wasn't sure if it might be related to him. Maybe it was just my imagination. Sorry."
"N-no, it's fine! No matter where you go, I'll always be with you!" Paimon quickly waved her hands. "Him... you mean your brother?"
"Mhm." After wandering around the area and finding nothing, Lumine said dejectedly, "Let's go back. It really must have been my imagination."
"Maybe your feeling wasn't wrong!" Paimon said earnestly. "If we leave now and miss something important, that would be terrible. Since we're already here, why don't we wait a while longer?"
"Okay!"
Not far from them, inside the ruins, the four assault teams had split up and were advancing simultaneously toward the depths.
Keqing's team took the lead, five Millelith soldiers at the front held Reaper as they explored ahead on hoverboards, with Keqing flanking them, using the Smart wristband Shen Qin had given her to maintain a protective shield.
Behind them, three medics carried healing sprays at their waists and Hellhound pistols in hand, muzzles pointed upward to avoid accidental discharges. Bringing up the rear, Sucrose also activated her shield while keeping watch for potential attacks from behind.
When they reached the entrance to the first chamber, Keqing signaled a command. Everyone pressed against the wall with their backs to the entrance, covering their ears.
Keqing had already memorized the room's layout. She pulled out a stun grenade, flicked off the safety cap with her thumb, pressed the ignition button, counted silently for one second, then tossed it into the room before ducking back behind cover with her ears covered.
BOOM! BZZZT!
A blinding flash and deafening buzz erupted inside. The five assault troops immediately charged in with rifles raised, finding three Abyss Mages inside, some covering their eyes, others their ears, all stumbling about disoriented.
Without hesitation, all five rifles fired simultaneously. Over a dozen standard explosive rounds struck their targets, the sheer kinetic force and detonations instantly tearing their bodies apart.
Perhaps they never even understood what happened in their final moments.
Three assault soldiers returned to guard the entrance while the others searched the room for survivors or valuable intelligence.
Finding nothing unusual, they continued onward. However, when they reached a particularly treacherous stretch of corridor, Keqing halted the team's advance. She stepped forward and deftly used her sword to flick aside some broken bricks, revealing buried beneath them several explosive barrels suffused with Abyssal energy.
Clearly a trap set by the Abyss Order! If anyone stepped on them unaware, the Abyssal energy would ignite the barrels!
But this petty scheme was easily foiled by Keqing.
After careful inspection, she stowed her hoverboard and leapt over the trap, testing the ground with her foot before signaling the others to jump across as well.
They all put away their hoverboards, the backblast might have detonated the traps, and vaulted over the hazard one by one.
Progressing steadily, they soon reached the first convergence hall— only to be shocked by the scene before them.
At the hall's center stood an altar where four Abyss Mages (Pyro, Hydro, Electro, and Cryo) danced and chanted. Above them floated an unmistakably sinister orb of Abyssal energy.
From this orb extended countless thin filaments, each connected to a hilichurl. Hundreds of hilichurls surrounded the altar, prostrating themselves with foreheads pressed to the ground.
The vast hall was packed wall-to-wall with hilichurls—an estimate of six hundred hilichurl in total.
Keqing signaled silently, and everyone switched to magazines loaded with elemental explosive rounds. At her attack signal, ten gun barrels roared as flames, ice mist, and lightning cages erupted continuously across the altar.
After emptying their magazines, Sucrose and Keqing immediately raised shields to protect the entire team.
The Abyssal orb began pulsating violently before detonating in the next instant. A spherical shockwave of energy radiated outward—every hilichurl it touched swelled uncontrollably until their bodies could no longer contain the energy and exploded into gory fragments.
The shockwave's intensity proved weak, dissipating instantly upon contact with the shields.
Sucrose stared in horror at the hall now awash with blood and viscera, her voice trembling. "W-what just happened?"
"If I'm not mistaken," Keqing analyzed, "those four Abyss Mages were using Abyssal energy to enhance and control these hilichurls, a gradual process. When we killed the Mages, the energy went berserk, drastically strengthening the hilichurls' bodies in an instant. But their tissues couldn't adapt quickly enough, causing them to rupture from the imbalance."
"Miss Keqing's assessment is essentially correct," Albedo said as he approached with Kaeya's squad.
By now all four squads had regrouped. They used Inferno Incendiary rounds to cleanse the gruesome remains from the hall before pressing deeper.
Yet when they reconvened at the second central hall, they realized they hadn't encountered a single Abyss Order member throughout the second branching paths. Raising their guard, they proceeded into the third set of passages.