Malus's body was silent. The harsh voice was gone, leaving Lilith alone with the dreadful awareness of where she'd landed.
"Ugh… what is this place?" Lilith muttered, forcing her voice through the foul air.
The cracked, collapsing ceiling above her dripped polluted water, turning the chamber into a reeking swamp.
Faint light came from clusters of bioluminescent fungi — a nauseating mix of purple and green — clinging to the wet walls and casting a sickly glow. The stench was unbearable: a suffocating blend of sulfur, rotting mud, and the metallic tang of scorched magic.
"Wonderful," Lilith grumbled, pinching her nose on instinct. "I've apparently landed in a sewer past its expiration date."
She tried to take a step, but her foot sank up to the ankle in thick, slippery muck.
Glancing down, she saw her cloak now coated in a layer of slick, dark slime.
"Great. I've managed to enrage a Luminar guardian, tap into forbidden Shadow power, and now here I am — a girl knee-deep in a swamp that smells like raw sewage. My first day on the Firmament couldn't be going any better," she muttered, forcing herself to look ahead.
Out of nowhere, the murky water erupted, splashing upward with grotesque sounds as dozens of venomous, purple, slime-covered caterpillars crawled out of the mud, spitting jets of greenish poison. At the same time, three grotesque, limp arms of Mutant Plants burst from the swamp, thrashing wildly and reaching for Lilith's skin.
Lilith reacted purely on instinct. With the cold precision drilled into her by Elara, she summoned a Split Shield. The barrier materialized not as darkness, but as a shimmering, radiant light—a divine shield pulsing with cold, crystalline energy. It stood as proof that her strength has never relied on demonic power.
The poison jets struck the barrier and evaporated into harmless vapor. The mutant vines cracked against the divine light, only to tear themselves apart on impact.
Lilith didn't hesitate. She gathered her strength, stepped forward against the current, and unleashed a wave of power—colorless, overwhelming, and glacially pure. The raw Luminar energy, long suppressed within her, surged outward in an unstoppable burst.
The caterpillars were instantly vaporized, turning to mist and ash swept away by the wind. The three mutant plants crumbled into shredded stems, their corruption erased.
Silence returned to the underground gallery, now tinged with the scent of ozone and the faint purity of her Ether.
Lilith lowered her arm. Her lips curved into a faint, but unmistakably scornful smile.
"Pathetic. And disgusting."
Lilith watched the scene of destruction where the Mutant Plants and the Caterpillars had been annihilated.
After a few seconds, the viscous, murky water at the center of the pool began to boil. Mud was pushed aside, and a smaller, perfectly circular portal emerged from the ground. It wasn't chaotic; it pulsed with an intense, contained electric-blue energy — a clear sign of a local boundary.
Lilith tilted her head. Her eyes, heavy with fatigue, scanned the anomaly that looked like a magical doorway to the next level.
"This world is full of portals, huh? Seriously — is this a fetish?" Lilith thought, sarcasm dripping from her mental tone. She sighed, already bored of having to cross dimensional holes to get around.
The portal spun, revealing only a starless darkness.
"Where's this one taking me now? If it's to another swamp, I swear I'll open a portal just so Grandmaster Theron can come take a look. Pretty hazardous, I'd say."
Before Lilith could even take a step toward the portal, the air at the far edge of the swamp — near where the twisted roots of dead trees formed a natural barrier — trembled violently.
Another portal, identical to the one that had emerged from the mud, tore open at the swamp's entrance.
Almost instantly, voices echoed from the newly formed rift — muffled, confused, but unmistakably human.
Lilith's ironic boredom vanished. Her reaction was inhumanly fast — the reflex of years of Luminar training, pure survival overriding exhaustion.
She moved without hesitation, diving behind a cluster of thick, gnarled roots and sinking into the swamp's cold, reeking sludge. Her body tensed, breath held, eyes fixed on the entrance.