Chapter 376: Pandora’s Experimental Creation

He tossed it to a squad member beside the assistant squad leader—an unremarkable-looking man—and spoke rapidly:

“Remember what I taught you before? That pronunciation! Quick, now!”

The member had a plain aura, an ordinary face, and a thoroughly unremarkable reputation. His name was simply “Jack.”

Jack silently caught the crystal, offering no extra words, only a nod.

His fingers gripped the crystal’s edges steadily as he brought it to his throat.

There, his throat looked subtly different from the others’. Something seemed to stir faintly beneath the skin, like a dormant living thing.

The next second, an exceedingly strange tone emerged from his throat.

The tone was low and obscure—like some ancient language twisted and reassembled. Each syllable carried an unnatural vibration, his vocal cords forcibly rewritten by some power.

But the tune was nearly identical to the one in the squad leader’s mind.

A thought flashed through the squad leader’s mind. He knew this was the “trigger” Lady Pandora had mentioned before.

And the trigger’s purpose was to activate…

Jack crushed the crystal.

Crack.

A crisp shattering sound.

From within the crystal, something intangible was fully triggered. A dense, heavy mist burst forth instantly!

The mist was gray-white, erupting from the crystal’s fragments and spreading outward at an incredible speed. Within a few short seconds, it had swallowed the entire floor—and was still expanding upward and downward.

The six members of the support squad were instantly swallowed by the gray-white haze, vanishing from the corridor.

In the distance, the Anomaly seemed to react the moment the mist exploded.

The massive skeletal cat smashed a paw through the bone-spike wall blocking its path, sending bone shards flying. It lunged toward them—

And was swallowed by the onrushing mist.

The sound of the Anomaly’s charge vanished in an instant.

Total silence.

Within the mist, all sound became muffled and distant, as if filtered through layers of cotton…

“What is this?”

A squad member asked hesitantly. His voice wavered, rising and falling, his position impossible to pin down in the fog.

“A Wizardry Crystal made by Lady Pandora.”

The squad leader’s voice came through, slightly distorted, but carrying a hint of relief at having narrowly escaped death.

“This one is called… the Susurrus Mist.”

“It’s an experimental wizardry tool made by Lady Pandora. It’s said to be able to release Rank-3 Wizardry in her absence. But it’s not finished yet—it needs a trigger to activate…”

As the squad leader spoke, Jack’s low, slightly flat voice also rang out:

“Squad leader, it seems I can sense the Anomaly’s general position now.”

“It’s stopped not far from where we just ran past. It should have lost our position—it can’t hear us moving.”

“But I can hear its movements. Let me try to make you all hear them too…”

Several breaths later, the squad members suddenly felt a shift in the mist around them.

The fog before them slowly thinned, their vision clearing once more. The six of them could see each other again.

Every face bore the lingering marks of shock. Some legs were weak, others gasping for air.

The member who had activated the wizardry—Jack—now cupped the largest shard of the crystal in his hands, eyes tightly shut, brows furrowed. His lips moved faintly, as if murmuring something.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and shook his head.

“No luck. This is all I can manage.”

“I can sense the movements over there, but I can’t let you all sense them too…”

The squad leader nodded. “It’s fine. This much is already enough.”

As he spoke, with the assistant squad leader’s help, he cleaned away the blood-soaked scraps of his clothing.

The wound at his severed arm was a horrifying sight—skin and flesh peeled back, pale bone starkly exposed.

But the bleeding had stopped.

In that brief moment, he had already used a potion to perform a temporary sealing treatment on the stump. The potion had formed a gray-white membrane over the wound’s surface, firmly sealing the open injury.

This prevented further fluid loss and kept the heavy scent of blood from giving away their position.

But it was only a stopgap measure.

………………

In the mist, the squad members leaned against the corridor walls, gasping for breath.

One slid slowly down the wall, back pressed to it, until he sat on the floor.

Another braced his hands on his knees, shoulders heaving, rough breaths rattling in his throat.

Jack, who could perceive the Anomaly’s position, crouched in the center of the corridor, cradling the largest crystal shard in both hands. His eyes were half-closed, his brows tightly furrowed.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and reported in a low voice:

“That Anomaly… probably won’t catch up to us in the short term.”

“It’s circling at the edge of the mist, searching for something… but it hasn’t moved in our direction.”

Most of the other members breathed a little easier at these words.

Tense shoulders relaxed slightly; someone wiped the cold sweat from their forehead and let out a long, heavy breath.

Betty, however, did not.

Her brows remained tightly knit, her gaze fixed on the Palmfiend’s patch of faintly glowing skin—no larger than a palm—as if waiting for something.

Across the surface of that skin, lines of tiny text were slowly surfacing, then swiftly fading away.

The squad leader also remained tense.

He braced himself against the wall with his remaining left arm, a dull ache throbbing from the stump.

The wound sealed by the potion no longer bled, but the sense of absence lingered like a shadow. It was as if something had been carved out of him, and his body still hadn’t grown accustomed to the emptiness.

“What did Lady Pandora say?”

He asked, his voice hoarse.

Betty was silent for a moment.

Then she spoke, her voice trembling slightly, though she fought to keep it steady:

“Lady Pandora says… she needs some time before she can get here.”

“She suggests we find our own way to retreat first. As long as we can pull out and ensure our own safety, she’ll take care of the Anomaly.”

The squad leader said nothing upon hearing this.

His gaze wandered through the mist for a moment.

Lady Pandora clearly couldn’t arrive in time. Lady Poppy and Lady Ophelia—neither had responded. Lady Poppy was in the subway tunnels pursuing the Remnant Sovereign, and Lady Ophelia was carrying out a mission elsewhere.

As for Lady Elsa—her situation was a bit special. She essentially always operated alongside Pandora, so she wasn’t considered separately.

The situation was still far from good.

But for now, the Susurrus Mist wizardry should be enough to guarantee their safety… right?

The squad leader wasn’t sure.

He instinctively felt that things were not so simple. That intuition was the same one that had carried him through countless narrow escapes in The Dead City.