Chapter 476: Dominating!
*Thud*
"Ah! Why did you stop, you big oaf?" Mandy yelped, nearly falling on her butt if Fujin hadn’t caught her. She had been running full tilt to keep up with Lyra, only to crash into her back when Lyra halted without warning.
"Damn it," Lyra muttered, looking up at the night sky as shattered fragments of the estate’s protective array began to rain down. Her curse incarnations, sensing several hostile gazes aimed their way, searched the surroundings in alarm but couldn’t locate the source.
Even Dee3 froze as the array burst apart, staring blankly at the falling shards.
Then, a crushing, suffocating pressure swept over them, snapping everyone out of their daze. Mandy collapsed, knocked out by the overwhelming force. At the same moment, Dee3, Lyra, and Lyra’s curse incarnations finally pinpointed the origin of those unfriendly stares. Four figures slowly descended along with the falling debris, their faces emotionless, but a cold, superior gleam flickered in their eyes.
Reacting instantly, Dee3 summoned a dungeon gate beneath each of them. The five dropped through their own separate tunnels—like chutes in a water park—and disappeared safely into the dungeon.
The four figures watched Dee3 vanish into her dungeon with her companions, their lips curling into sneers. They knew neither she nor the dungeon would escape leaving so many of her friends and acquaintances behind. Still, disappointment flickered in their eyes.
"She didn’t take the bait," remarked one of the void-tier curse masters. He appeared in his sixties with a full head of gray hair, dressed in a sky-blue kimono patterned with drifting clouds. "Looks like she learned from her past mistake."
They had hoped Dee3 would repeat the blunder she made during the incident with Sir Ulysse—when he threatened to execute wounded allied soldiers unless she used her curse ability to slaughter the captured and injured enemies.
Dee3 built the world’s largest maze in record time to stall Ulysse while sheltering wounded soldiers on both sides inside her dungeon until reinforcements arrived. However, the enemy soldiers repaid her by staging a mutiny to capture her and force her to use her dungeon to help them escape to safety instead of handing them over to the allied forces.
The four void-tier curse masters hoped Dee3 would repeat the same this time too to protect the guest gathered to attend her pet cyborg’s funeral, allowing Ulysse and his spies hiding among the guests to infiltrate her dungeon and attempt to seize control of it from within.
That ordeal taught her well. Dee3 didn’t recklessly open her dungeon to everyone. She was cautious—and they could no longer exploit her compassion.
"Let’s round them up and start killing them one by one until she surrenders herself and her dungeon," said another void-tier curse master—a bald man with a gray Viking beard, dressed in a white linen shirt and pants—instructing the other three.
"Why can’t we just excavate her dungeon and pull it out of the ground like we planned earlier?" the void-tier curse master in the kimono asked. His impatience was obvious; he wanted the task finished quickly.
"Where’s the fun in that?" replied the void-tier curse master with a blurry body and golden hair, smoking a cigar and wearing nothing but beach shorts, an unbuttoned short-sleeved beach shirt, and slippers. As he spoke, he deliberately increased his pressure on the curse masters gathered for Dee3’s friend’s funeral.
While the four old void-tiers discussed their next move, a young feminine voice suddenly rang out: "Ulysses! Show yourself, you old bastard. I know you are behind this. Call your men off and compensate for the array."
It was Janice, standing unharmed behind an invisible barrier of energy that shielded both her and Matthews from the crushing pressure. Matthews looked like she wanted nothing to do with any of this but had been dragged along anyway. She was the type who wouldn’t lift a finger unless she was paid or stood to gain something. Yet here she was—Janice had pulled her into this without even allowing her to check on her daughter. Given the urgency of the situation, Matthews swallowed her complaints and went along with it, though her face and eyes betrayed exactly how she felt.
"McSuile girl, this doesn’t concern you or your family. Stay out of this," Ulysses’s voice rang out from among the gathered curse masters as he slowly rose into the sky to join the other four void-tier curse masters.
"It doesn’t concern me? Who said that? Old bastard, have you started going senile—" Janice began, but before she could finish, a beam of curse energy slammed into the invisible barrier protecting her, cutting her off mid-sentence.
To the shock of everyone watching, the barrier not only held against the void-tier strike — it actually seemed to grow sturdier.
Janice had long understood: since Ulysses had revealed himself, he had no intention of letting anyone here walk away. Clearly, he had a much bigger plan than simply capturing Dee3 and her dungeon.
"Old bastard, you don’t need to prove you’re senile we know. Now, where was I? Yes, get the fuck put of here," Janice continued boldly, showing not a trace of fear. But Matthews, standing right beside her, caught the slight tremble in her knees.
It was Ulysses who fired the curse beam. He intended to kill Janice—and everything around her—with that attack, but to his shock, the girl’s barrier completely withstood it. The other four void-tier curse masters didn’t intervene; they simply watched from the side with amused smiles, which only made Ulysses flare his dreaded presence, reminding them—and everyone else—who was in charge.
Before he could make his next move, the night sky erupted with multiple bright lights.
At first glance, they looked like a shower of massive missiles streaking past them toward a flock of what looked like enormous pterosaurs chasing some large vessel amidst the falling shards of the curse array. But then the missiles abruptly halted midair, their propulsion systems kicking in with a deafening shriek of displaced air. A guttural roar followed as their thrusters slammed into reverse, and the massive missiles dropped toward the surrounding ground with terrifying, unstoppable momentum.
Moments later, enormous, blurred shadows swept over the area, eclipsing the light and plunging the ground into sudden, icy darkness. The instant before impact was marked by a blinding burst of engine flare and a seismic shockwave that shook teeth loose and hurled up a suffocating curtain of dust and debris.
Once the dust settled, they saw multiple towering monoliths standing across the fields. Each one loomed like a fortress balanced on articulated legs. Their limbs were hydraulic pistons thicker than tree trunks, hinting at a weight that seemed to defy the very laws of physics. They didn’t simply occupy space — they dominated it. The machines weren’t just big; they were an outright scale error dropped onto the battlegrounds.
For a moment, everyone held their breath in awe and dread — even the four void-tier curse masters and Ulysses.
