"Onion burial," Lilith murmured, breaking the silence in the Lander house as she rose from the dinner table and walked toward the front door. A portion of her insect legion responded imdiately, swarming around the house and linking together like pieces of a puzzle until they ford multiple layers of a corpse-do around it—layers that soon resembled the bulb of an onion.
A mont later, the corpse-onion began to sink, burrowing into the earth and dragging the entire house down with it. Ahead of it, Lilith walked unhurried and calm, moving toward the large curse entity as if she had all the ti in the world, even as the fire spread from the Lander tangerine orchard to the nearby Lansky avocado orchard and then toward the surrounding fields, unchecked by any interruption.
With every step Lilith took, the ground beneath her shuddered as grotesque cursed corpses began to claw their way to the surface, rising one after another to obediently fall in line behind her.
Just then, the void-tier array formation covering the entire Lander Estate shattered, its barrier falling to the ground like fragnts of broken glass. In the next mont, panicked screams and war cries tore through the still night.
Yet, ignoring all the chaos around her, Lilith continued to walk in the burning tangerine orchard. The starry night sky above was slowly being swallowed by smoke, but she moved with a single focus—to finish what they had started with her tiny hands.
Just as she neared the large curse entity, it shot into the sky. Little Lilith lifted her head, watching it rise with a blank, indifferent expression. Monts later, a chorus of piercing screeches ripped through the chaos as a dozen massive beaks burst from the earth. Huge, skeletal creatures—resembling prehistoric Quetzalcoatlus—crawled out of the ground one after another.
One erged directly beneath Lilith’s feet, lifting her effortlessly onto its bony nape. It unleashed a thunderous screech before taking to the sky, and the other Quetzalcoatlus curse corpses followed close behind.
...
Surrounded by screens and control systems inside his Cursenought, Kidd felt every passing second of its rocket propulsion system warming up stretch longer than his entire lifeti. He chewed at his fingernails in panic as he watched the insect curse-corpse legion steadily gain ground, inching closer and closer despite every flathrower and missile system he had running at full throttle.
Kidd snapped the mont he noticed a small silhouette erging from the raging fire—walking toward him with an unsettling grace and poise. Behind her, nurous oddly shaped shadows followed, unhindered by flas, explosions, debris, or smoke. He stared at the screen in frozen dread. For reasons he couldn’t explain, terror crept up his spine as the smoke parted and the small silhouette’s face beca clear.
He had never known fear—not when standing before his void-tier grand-uncle, nor before any official of the C.I.B. But today, for the first ti in his life, he felt fear born from the deepest part of his being. Raw. Primal. As if he were staring at death itself.
His usually calm and calculating mind was screaming at him to run—run as far as he could, even if it ant abandoning this world altogether. It felt as though he had encountered his bane here, in this backwater far from the capital. Yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the young face on the screen long enough to follow his instincts and give the order to take off, even though the thrusters had been ready for several seconds now.
He only snapped out of it when he heard the void-tier curse array formation surrounding the estate shatter, the sound reaching him even inside the Cursenought’s cockpit. Half the screens instantly switched to display the collapse of the once-towering formation. Kidd stared in astonishnt and blurted, "What the fuck is going on here?"
Despite his initial confusion, Kidd imdiately realized he had been ensnared in soone else’s sche. As such, he was far from pleased to see the greatest obstacle to his escape plan destroyed so easily.
He couldn’t help but wonder what and why would an entity capable of destroying a void-tier array co here of all places. It didn’t take a genius to see the truth staring them in the face. What or whoever it was, they were here for Dee3, the walking library on curse-tech.
Realizing this, Kidd imdiately addressed his AI—Trixie—whom he had put on standby earlier after blaming it for the debacle at the Lander house, which was why it hadn’t activated the thrusters the mont they were ready to take off.
"Trixie, change of course. We’re not going ho. Set our destination at Ma’am Dee3’s place. I want to see who dares cause trouble for her while I’m here."
"Your Highness, multiple void-tier hostiles detected at the destination. Recomnding reroute... no possible safe paths to the destination," Trixie reported, having already scanned the coordinates her master selected and calculated the shortest and safest route—only to find none.
"Fuck," Kidd spat before barking out his orders. "Call in all Cursenoughts to the destination. Tonight, we’re going to war. Lift off!"
He didn’t dare take one last look at the small girl walking through the flas toward him, her dress reduced to cinders. He feared that if he saw her face again, his mind would freeze just like before.
Monts after the Cursenought lifted off, Kidd heard a series of loud, piercing screeches echo through the cockpit. Curiosity forced him to check the external feeds—only to see massive beaks erupting from the ground. One after another, grotesque, misshapen creatures resembling twisted, skeletal Quetzalcoatlus clawed their way to the surface.
There were fifteen in total, counting the one carrying the little naked girl on its bony nape. A heartbeat later, they all surged into the sky, following the lead of the creature she rode. And they were clearly chasing him. Despite his state-of-the-art thrusters, the Quetzalcoatlus curse corpse closed the distance with the Cursenought in no ti.
Kidd’s expression tightened as he struggled to figure out how to shake off the girl and her army of curse corpses.
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