The battle was over. The pungent smell of gunpowder mixed with the bizarre stench of charred monster flesh lingered in the air above the once-again quiet streets.
The odor drilled into Shuichi and Kirie's noses, bringing wave after wave of intense physical discomfort.
The two of them slumped on the blood-stained ground, gasping for air. The unimaginably bloody battle that had just unfolded had completely terrified them.
They knew a lot of strange things had been happening in town lately, but they never expected so many monsters to be hiding in the shadows!
The steel pipes they had been tightly gripping were long gone.
All that remained were their hands, trembling slightly from overexertion, and their completely blank minds.
However, this momentary peace did not last long.
"Rumble—"
A massive, muffled tremor, grander than any before it, echoed from far away.
This time, the epicenter wasn't the town, but rather the direction of the coastline.
Everyone looked up in horror, gazing toward the sea.
On the previously calm surface of the ocean, an unimaginably massive whirlpool was rapidly forming.
The center of the whirlpool was as black as ink, as if it connected to some unknown, terrifying abyss.
Seawater was frantically sucked into it, letting out a deafening roar.
The sky and clouds changed color in response.
Thick, dark clouds gathered madly around the whirlpool's center, twisting into a colossal spiral that blotted out the sun.
As the oppressive, spiral-shaped cloud layer descended, the light of the entire world dimmed.
"Each of you grab a few villagers and run up the mountain!" Yang Yi ordered the group.
The group immediately reacted, pulling ropes from their bags to tie up the unconscious villagers whose bones and muscles had been shattered.
Then, everyone dragged a large number of villagers and sprinted toward the peak of the mountain.
For the already heavily injured villagers, a few more scrapes and bruises didn't matter anymore.
The giant whirlpool churned the atmosphere, spawning a violent hurricane out of thin air.
The hurricane whipped up massive waves dozens of meters high.
A sky-obscuring tsunami, like a slowly moving wall of black water, surged toward Kurouzu Town.
Slung over Tomie's shoulders, Kirie and Shuichi were pale as ghosts.
They watched helplessly as the town they had lived in for over a decade was instantly swallowed and torn apart by the raging seawater.
Houses, streets, trees.
Everything in their memories shattered before that unrivaled force of nature.
When the tsunami receded, the entirety of Kurouzu Town had been reduced to a flooded wasteland of ruins.
And in the murky, stagnant water, several twisted black silhouettes slowly emerged.
Each of them was a massive serpentine creature formed by two human bodies spiraling and coiling together.
The surfaces of their bodies still retained the texture of human skin.
Two faces, twisted in agony, faintly appeared in the gaps of the spirals, letting out silent screams.
"Disgusting."
Tomie looked at the two ugly creatures swimming in the water, a look of disgust on her face.
"Snakes are such graceful, sexy creatures, yet they've been twisted into this state."
Just then, Miko's gaze was drawn to a strange splash of color in the spiral-shaped grass at the top of the mountain.
It was a butterfly with exquisite spiral patterns on its wings, resting quietly on a broken wooden board.
In this dead, hellish landscape, it looked so bizarre yet beautiful.
Miko carefully reached out, wanting to touch the butterfly.
However, what her fingertips felt was not a physical sensation.
The moment she touched it, the beautiful butterfly silently turned into a handful of ashes and scattered in the wind.
It was as if it had never existed in this world.
"Don't be fooled by these cheap tricks."
Yang Yi's voice broke the eerie atmosphere.
He pointed toward the center of the town.
"Its true source is over there."
The group arrived at the center of town, and the sight before them made everyone gasp.
The houses here hadn't been completely destroyed by the tsunami.
They were connected, coiled, and twisted together in an unimaginable way, forming layer upon layer of spirals. At the center of the spiral was a bottomless black hole.
With the seawater receding, the group approached the area.
"Tch, we have to walk down by winding around these broken houses?"
"Too troublesome!"
Tomie complained impatiently, having absolutely no intention of respecting these ruins.
Grinning fiercely, she raised the six-barreled Gatling gun in her hands and aimed the muzzle at the building's wall.
"So, I'll just open up a direct VIP passage!"
"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!!!"
Accompanied by deafening roars and explosions, Tomie and the girls used The Emperor's Gatling gun and bolters to forcefully carve a straight path downward through the twisted architecture.
Countless pieces of rubble mixed with wood splinters flew in all directions.
They violently broke through the buildings and entered the very center of the town, where they saw a bottomless pit.
A cold, ancient aura rushed out from the opening.
The group descended the stairs.
They soon discovered that the walls of the passage were not natural rock.
Instead, they were made of countless petrified bodies twisted into spirals.
These ancient "reliefs" seemed to silently tell the tale of a curse that had lasted for thousands of years.
The deeper they went, the fresher the "walls" they encountered became.
Some twisted flesh that hadn't fully petrified was even writhing slightly on the walls.
They seemed as if they were still alive.
At the end of the stairs was an incredibly massive underground cavern.
The floor of the cavern was paved with layer upon layer of densely packed, constantly writhing, twisted humanoid corpses.
It was an ocean of corpses.
The arrival of the intruders awakened the "natives" of this place, who had been slumbering for who knew how long.
Countless pairs of eyes bearing spiral patterns suddenly snapped open.
The sea of corpses instantly turned into a surging tide, sweeping toward the group.
"More of this disgusting trash."
Miko and the others calmly pulled out several large bubble machines from their backpacks, which Yang Yi had just modified using the [Noita] module.
"Prepare for 'purification' operations."
Just then, amidst this mountain of corpses and sea of blood, Kirie and Shuichi spotted a large number of familiar yet unfamiliar faces.