'Wait, I'm Supposed to Become a Goddess?! But I'm a Guy!'

The air thickened, extremely suffocating.

It was as if the entirety of space surrounding them were made out of fleshes and blood!

The stench of rot and blood curled into Mize’s lungs, twisting his stomach into knots.

Liam’s voice was different, colder.

"These people…" His golden eyes narrowed, expression unreadable.

But his grip around Mize tightened. "What have they done?"

Something was wrong.

Mize’s breath hitched. His entire body screamed danger, danger, danger.

The fine hairs on his arms stood on end, his skin prickling with an instinctive fear he couldn’t even understand yet.

"L-Liam?" His voice wavered. "What is it?"

He tried to move, but Liam’s arm didn’t budge, holding him tight into his embrace.

"Wait obediently."

A command.

Mize didn’t argue.

Couldn’t argue.

He simply nodded and huddled his body as close as he could, his eyes were still clamped under Liam's hand, shielding his sight from whatever it was before them.

Then, Liam moved.

His boot slammed into the ground with a force that sent a ripple cracking through the stone beneath them.

Fingers twisted mid-air, a summoning diagram exploded instantly, enlarging rapidly spanning the entire plain on his side.

A low humming noise vibrated through the air.

In an instant, a huge ocean of darkness emerged on the ground, replacing what once was a barren land into a deep and endless lake of darkness.

Mize clenched his jaw, forcing himself to stay still.

Liam exhaled, shaking his head. "What a troublesome secret realm this is…"

"It might not be a secret realm at all... What shitty luck it is"

The glow of the magic circle reflected in his eyes. "We should’ve realized it from the start"

Mize swallowed hard.

He already knew the words before Liam even spoke them.

"This isn't a secret realm at all."

The moment Liam's hand lifted from his eyes, Mize wished he could take it all back.

He froze.

The world split open before him, revealing a plain of nightmare incarnate.

Human shapes.

At least, they used to be.

Their bodies were bloated, grotesque, skin peeled back to expose raw, weeping flesh.

Their bones jutted out at unnatural angles. Mouths, dozens of them, faces, dozen of them!

Gnashed, bit, screamed, laughed, all at once.

And their faces.

Their real faces.

Untouched.

Their original skin still clung to the front of their heads, as if something had forced them to keep it.

Bloodied tears ran down their hollowed cheeks.

Their eyes were wide.

Wide and aware.

Mize’s nails dug into Liam’s coat.

“W-what are these?” His voice was barely above a whisper, the words escaping before he could stop them.

Liam’s smile returned.

But his eyes remained cold.

"Whatever they are…" His hand tightened around Mize’s waist. "They are no longer human. And they aren't friendly either"

Then.

The creatures turned.

All at once.

The plain, once filled with eerie noise, fell into a deafening silence.

Tens of thousands of them stared back.

Forty thousand.

At least.

Liam clicked his tongue. “All tier 4…” His brow twitched in mild annoyance. "How troublesome."

Then, they smiled.

A sickening, inhuman grin.

Split wide, too wide... stretching from one side of their faces to the other, and the blood poured down endlessly.

And in perfect unison, they spoke.

"May God save us"

"May God save us... "

"May God save us... "

And they paused, their smiles completely filling the entirety of their faces, "May god forsaken us!"

The sound slithered into Mize’s skull, sending a violent shudder down his spine.

His lips parted, but no words came out.

His hands clenched tighter, tighter, tighter.

His legs refused to move.

His heartbeat, thundering, erratic, painful.

Liam felt it all.

The trembling.

The ragged breathing.

The quiet, suffocating terror.

Mize wasn’t acting this time.

He was scared.

"How… did we end up here?" His voice barely pushed past his lips, color draining from his face.

Liam pulled him closer, pressing his palm over the small of his back.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured against his ear, tone smooth and reassuring.

"We have an army of our own, too"

And behind them.

The shadows moved.

The domain beneath Liam’s feet writhed and expanded rapidly.

Then, they rose.

Figures emerging from the darkness, one by one they climbed out of the ocean of shadows.

An army, the same one from before, Liam summoned them through the gate, though it consumed a lot on his part.

'Luckily I had saved more than enough points to perform this mass teleportation multiple time if I wanted to' He inwardly thought within.

'And perhaps, the current number wouldn't be enough to face this many tier 4 creatures'

A force of darkness, spilling onto the battlefield in direct opposition to the horrors before them.

Liam’s fingers grazed Mize’s cheek, tilting his chin upward.

Then, he smiled.

"Give them death"

The battlefield erupted!

A wave of flesh and bone, shrieking and contorting, surged forward, colliding with the wave of darkness.

The ground quaked, boots slamming against the cracked earth as thousands of tier 2 warriors braced their shields.

And then...

Impact came...

Boom!

A sickening crunch echoed as the first monstrosities slammed into the shield wall.

Their grotesque, bloated bodies twisted unnaturally, jagged bones piercing out of their torn flesh as they threw themselves mindlessly against the defense line.

"Tch... Mindless creatures" Liam cursed, constantly ordering his troops to move accordingly to the enemy movements.

Some bit into metal, jaws unhinging, teeth scraping against steel, their entire bodies convulsing as if in ecstasy.

Others pounded at the shields with brute force, rotting fists pulping against the dark iron, each hit sending a shockwave down the line.

"Hold!"

The tier 2 soldiers grunted, arms straining, feet digging into the ground as they absorbed the impact.

Behind them, the tier 1 troops readied their weapons.

And then.

Thud!

One of the creatures leaped.

A disgusting, elongated figure, arms flailing, its stomach ripped open mid-air, intestines hanging like rotting chains.

It crashed onto a group of tier 1 soldiers, its grotesque limbs splitting open as it landed.

And then.

It burst.

A fountain of blood and organs exploded outward, acidic bile spraying in every direction, melting through armor, flesh, and bone.

Screams, inhuman, gurgling, but none of the soldiers reacted, those noises came from the monsters themselves.

The soldiers beneath it convulsed, their bodies melting into the ground, bubbling, dissolving.

The creatures kept coming.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands.

A nightmare of writhing limbs and twisted faces, climbing over their own fallen kin, reaching, crawling, grasping.

And then, like a dam breaking.

"The shields are breached!"

Boom!

One section of the defensive line collapsed.

A group of tier 2 soldiers were ripped apart instantly, their shields splintering, their bodies dragged into the ground.

The swordsmen charged, swinging.

Blades pierced flesh, but the creatures didn’t fall.

They shrieked, laughed, gurgled.

One had its head cleaved off, but its body kept moving.

Another was impaled straight through the chest, and smiled.

"May God save us."

It chanted...

A symphony of prayers and laughter as they tore into the frontline.

Mize watched, paralyzed.

His hands clutched fistfuls of Liam’s coat, his breath shallow.

Too much.

Too real.

The battlefield was painted in red.

The air was thick with the stench of rotting flesh, burnt metal, and death.

Liam’s expression remained calm.

But his fingers slowly curled...

"Do it!"

And beneath them, the shadows stirred. Darkness swelled.

Then.

A shift.

It was from the other side of the monster's line, a huge lake of darkness suddenly emerged on the other side.

The air grew heavy again, and this time... It came from the back of their line.

The soldiers these time were all summoned for the every first time.

Which in turns, it meant that Liam had spent a new round of spending to win this battle.

They appeared.

A second army.

One moment the battlefield was a churning sea of flesh and steel.

The next, 150,000 tier 1 shadow soldiers materialized from the darkness.

50,000 tier 2 tank troopers followed, massive shields slamming into the ground.

And at the back, 1,000 tier 3 strange cloaked shadowy figures stood tall, their faces shadowed under the hood.

It was an instantaneous reinforcement. Like a phantom army rising from the abyss and it directly countered the monsters from the back.

"An element of surprise for them" Liam smirked...

"The amount of soldiers were doubled?" Mize's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Amazing!"

The battlefield shifted.

The creatures, once mindlessly surging forward, suddenly stopped.

Some twisted their grotesque heads, sensing something. Others continued charging, oblivious.

But the trap had already been sprung.

The new army rapidly closed in from behind. A slow, creeping encirclement.

The creatures, once on the verge of victory, were now trapped unknowingly.

"No matter how strong they are, once mindless, always would be a group of mindless creature"

"Kill them!"

Liam's voice echoed and the slaughter began anew.