It was an ocean of corpses forged from despair.
Amidst the churning waves of bodies, Kirie and Shuichi saw countless faces, both familiar and strange.
There was the kind middle-aged neighbor from next door.
There were the friends from school who always loved to joke around.
There were their family members, their parents.
They even saw several versions of themselves in various states.
Among those different versions of themselves, some were giant snails, some were tangled together like sea snakes, and others had their bodies twisted into grotesque human spirals, just like Shuichi's father.
A chilling truth dawned on them, instantly shattering their already fragile sanity.
It seemed they had always been trapped in this town, forced into an endless cycle of death and reincarnation.
They had already died here countless times in the past.
Watching those twisted figures identical to themselves roaring, struggling, and crawling toward them, an indescribable sorrow and terror welled up in their hearts.
If not for this unexpected call for help, they might have sunk here for eternity, becoming just another inconspicuous ripple in this sea of corpses.
The girls' faces, however, showed no trace of hesitation.
Miko calmly waved her hand.
Several large bubble machines, modified with the [Noita] module, activated simultaneously and aimed at the churning sea of corpses.
Countless iridescent bubbles infused with [Holy Talisman], [Lightning], and [Pure Yang Flame] rained down like a dazzling shower of death, blanketing the mindless monsters.
The moment the brilliant bubble rain gently touched the corpses, it unleashed apocalyptic explosions and radiant runic light.
"Boom— Boom— Boom—!!!"
Amidst solemn hymns and endless explosions, the entire sea of corpses was rapidly evaporated, incinerated, and reduced to nothingness.
Golden flames intertwined with silver-white lightning, illuminating the darkness deep underground.
When the final corpse was completely purified, the ground at the center of the underground cavern suddenly collapsed.
A massive, pitch-black, bottomless pit was revealed.
A terrifying aura, far surpassing anything they had encountered before—one capable of twisting minds and corrupting souls—slowly rose from the darkness.
Although the corpses had been cleared away, the writhing, horrific presence below continued to weigh heavily on everyone's hearts.
A "voice" began to echo directly in everyone's minds.
It seemed to be an illogical, erratic murmuring, brimming with pure malice and madness.
It sounded as if it originated from the chaos before the birth of the universe, every syllable tearing at their rationality.
The nonsensical whispers also carried a massive amount of chaotic information.
"Ahhh—!!!"
Kirie and Shuichi bore the brunt of it. The moment the whispers sounded, they let out agonizing screams and clutched their heads in pain.
Their bodies uncontrollably began to twist once more.
Fine spiral patterns surfaced and spread rapidly across their skin like living creatures.
Miko, Hana, and the others also felt immense mental pressure, as if countless steel needles were frantically churning inside their brains.
The entire world began to warp and distort in their eyes. The petrified faces on the walls seemed to mock them silently, and the ground felt as if it had turned into a soft fluid.
The abyss of madness was right before their eyes.
"Gather around, quickly!" Kyoko shouted.
The girls immediately huddled together, forming a tight circle.
They then pulled out their respective "Fragments of The Emperor's Underpants" and assembled them into a complete pair of underpants.
Though the light emitted by the underpants was faint, it acted as an indestructible lighthouse, helping them fend off the maddening whispers from the outside.
From the bottomless pit at the center of the ruins, the ultimate terror finally revealed itself completely.
It was not a lifeform that could be described with words.
It was a mass of "living spirals," a geometric paradox that constantly collapsed in on itself and reconstructed outward.
Merely looking at it made the girls feel their logical thinking being flooded with endless, spiral-shaped junk data.
A clear intent bypassed the barrier of language and echoed directly in everyone's hearts.
That intent was filled with boundless chaos and fury.
[Bugs...]
[How dare you... interrupt my path... to converge with... the Great Old Ones...]
[You shall... bear... my wrath...]
[Your souls... will wail... in eternal distortion...]
A massive amount of twisted knowledge accompanied these messages, breaking through the defense of The Emperor's Underpants and drilling into the girls' minds.
The girls felt as though their souls were being forcibly torn to shreds.
Even Tomie, who was always arrogant and treated pain as a pleasure, couldn't suppress a muffled groan. For the first time, a look of genuine agony appeared on her face.
Yang Yi looked at "The Emperor's Underpants" with a weird expression. He suspected The Emperor had given him a fake; otherwise, how could it fail to suppress even a false god!
The indescribable vortex entity began to slowly "flow" toward the group on the high platform.
It wasn't moving.
Rather, the space it occupied was spiraling and writhing toward them.
Wherever it passed, the hard rocky ground was left with spiral-shaped, permanent scars, as if chunks had been gouged out.
Just then, the vortex entity noticed the only individual in the area who remained completely unaffected.
Yang Yi stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, studying it with great interest. His expression didn't look like someone facing a terrifying entity on the verge of ascension, but rather like someone observing a rare beetle.
This disregard and calmness thoroughly enraged it.
[—!!!]
Its mental corruption condensed into an invisible storm, blasting into Yang Yi's mind without reservation.
However, the maddening whispers that were enough to drive anyone insane felt like a gentle breeze to Yang Yi, having no effect whatsoever.
Yang Yi merely looked at it calmly, then cleared his throat.
Subsequently, he uttered a series of "syllables" that were far more ancient, far more obscure, and far more contradictory to all known laws of the universe.
It was not a language.
Every utterance was a direct definition of a concept; every utterance contained a fundamental tampering of reality.
The moment it heard this sound, all of the vortex entity's distortions froze.
A terror originating from the very essence of life—even transcending the concept of life itself—instantly washed away its anger.
It understood that the seemingly insignificant human creature before it was no bug that could be casually crushed.
Instead, he was a true, unimaginable, indescribable existence whose rank was far above its own, and even far above the "Great Old Ones" it worshipped.
Yang Yi's "whispers" contained truths from a higher dimension.
The vortex entity's twisted logic and maddened cognition were forcibly "corrected" by this higher-dimensional power.
Then, in a split second, it felt as if it saw everything, as if it understood all the principles of the past. The evolution it had so desperately sought seemed to be clearly laid out before it.
It felt as if it had caught a glimpse of the ultimate!
Amidst endless joy, its body began a drastic "evolution."
The spiral curves on its body—which it had once been so proud of, believing them to be perfect and the optimal solution of the universe—began to slowly collapse.
One by one, far more perfect pixelated blocks continuously surged from the foundation of its existence, replacing the original spirals.
[I... I succeeded...]
[This is... what the ultimate looks like...]
Accompanied by this final, ecstatic thought echoing through the space.
Its existence completely collapsed.
It transformed into billions of faintly glowing pixelated blocks, scattering across the ground like dust.
Meanwhile, its consciousness was eternally imprisoned within these tiny particles that could not move, could not think, and could not even perceive their own existence.
The eternal distortion finally met eternal tranquility.
As the dust settled, the stunned Miko was suddenly jolted awake by a notification sound from her phone.
She took out her phone and saw a mission commission from America.
The client was a Japanese exchange student studying in America.
She claimed they had encountered something terrifying and bizarre. A few days ago, due to a classmate's strong objections, they hadn't boarded their flight.
As a result, the plane exploded.
They thought they had narrowly escaped death, but a few days later, the people who had gotten off the plane began to die one after another.
They sought help from local American witches, witch doctors, and the like, but nothing worked.
So, in a moment of desperation, they reached out to Miko's group.