Pauline fought off the vanishing serpents for at least another hour, demonstrating a stamina that was nothing to scoff at. The monsters kept attacking her, disappearing when they got too injured and reappearing when she looked like she was tiring, but she avoided any major hits and held off wave after wave.

  Still, even she couldn’t go on forever, especially not at that intensity, so when the next serpent burst out of the misty waters, she started retreating back onto the shore for the first time.

  The monsters took this as a sign of weakness, so they came out of the fog in larger numbers than ever before.

  A dozen giant sea serpents made for a terrifying sight, and Orion only remained still because Asteria’s hand was on his shoulder. He could see that only half of them were real, while the rest were just very solid illusions.

  Projections, more like. That’s actually a really interesting kind of magic that I might have to explore further. It’s not quite the same as being physically present, but I’m sure I could rig something up using light magic.

  The longer the fight went on, the more data [Hypotheticism] was gathering, and the confidence interval had now been reduced to just five percent, meaning he had figured out ninety percent of the magic they were using.

  Only one thing was missing: how they managed to vanish into the mist and return unharmed. If it had just been the illusory clones, he would have understood, but he’d deliberately tracked the movements of a serpent he knew was real, and it, too, had done the same.

  Two more burst out of the mists, causing them to billow angrily, and the river water churned at their passage, refusing to settle the more of them left it.

  That’s the key, Orion realized. There were some very thin threads of mana extending from the serpents into the water, which he hadn’t been able to see when their bodies were in contact with it, but they became visible now that Pauline had lured them out.

  Oh, how he longed to go down there and hack them apart. He was sure their biology would be absolutely fascinating, especially if what [Hypotheticism] was telling him was correct.

  “They aren’t fully flesh and blood,” he muttered, and Asteria gently squeezed his shoulder.

  “That’s right, moonbeam. These are Lesser Scyllas, and they are a very unique variety of sea elementals. They are usually part of a broader ecosystem of monsters.”

  His head snapped up to meet her gaze, and she nodded, seeing the realization dawn on his face.

  The Scyllas weren’t just unfamiliar with the local areas. They didn’t belong to the Belt at all and were very far from any sea, which meant they had traveled much farther than any ordinary monster’s drifting, especially if they couldn’t sustain themselves here without all the other monsters they usually lived around.

  However, they also didn’t seem smart enough to decide to colonize a new area, which left the options as either facing serious danger that pushed them out or someone intentionally luring them here.

  “Now look, she’s ready to end it,” Asteria said, pointing to the still-raging battle, and Orion reluctantly stopped the flood of questions he wanted to ask.

  As he turned to the battle, he saw that Pauline had successfully lured the serpents far enough from shore that none of them touched the water anymore, and more importantly, she had done so without injuring them enough to make them feel threatened.

  At first glance, it looked like she was the one trapped. The massive serpents writhed and lunged, missing her by just a hair and causing her to fall into the sandy soil, leaving her dirty and battered, but [Hypotheticism] revealed the truth of the situation, and Nick saw the monsters' shadows begin to shift as mana pooled inside them.

  “Is she using shadow magic?” he asked, surprised. Pauline had not wielded anything of the sort against him, and even in her session with Asteria, as she was being taught more advanced chants and prayers, she’d focused mostly on light magic.

  “The moon casts its own shadow,” Asteria answered cryptically, and Orion decided he would need to question her further later if he wanted a real answer.

  Pauline Andrés - Aspiring Dark Side of the Moon

  Class: [Black Night Witch] [C-rank]

  Level: 99

  Mind: 375

  Attunement: 442

  Body: 121

  Traits: Lunar Sabbath [C-rank]; Eclipse [C-rank]; Moonlit Witchcraft [C-rank]; Mana Manipulation [C-rank]

  It was a perfectly respectable status, but a couple of things immediately caught his eye. First, he’d completely forgotten that Pauline’s class was [Black Night Witch].

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  Or rather, he had not forgotten, as that was no longer something he could do, but he had dismissed its importance, seeing it simply as a quirky class name.

  With the addition of her Traits, however, a new picture began to emerge, one that became very clear considering the method she was using to combat the Scyllas.

  A typical witch of the Sanctum would try to counter the monsters’ seemingly endless regeneration with light magic, cauterizing wounds. When needed, she would also use alchemical and transmutation arts to influence the environment and turn the tide of battle.

  But that wasn’t all the witches could do. No, there was a reason they weren’t just called light mages, and that was the darker side of their arts.

  Orion saw a perfect example of that in action as Pauline fell to her knees in prayer and began chanting.

  “O Moon Mother, Silver-Veiled Sovereign,

  hear the trembling breath of Your devoted children.

  From the heights of Your celestial throne,

  cast forth the holy Shadow that flows from Your radiant grace.”

  The serpents froze as if every muscle had suddenly locked in place. Since Orion knew they were not fully physical beings and that, as such, affecting their flesh wasn’t possible, he immediately looked down and saw that the shadows had bulged and materialized, only to spear into the monsters.

  “Let it coil around the unbelievers like a velvet tide,

  not in wrath alone, but in blessed correction.

  For they who turn from Your Light

  are not fit to behold its purity—

  and so Your Shadow becomes their final mercy.

  By Your sacred eclipse, bind their spirits;

  by Your hallowed darkness, unmake their defiance.

  Let them be swallowed gently, reverently,

  into the cool embrace of the Night-Womb

  where all sin is dissolved and all pride forgotten.”

  Something else was happening. The monsters were emitting high-pitched sounds that resembled the cracking of a glacier more than noises a living being should make.

  [Hypotheticism] told Orion that their very essence was being torn apart, as if it were an affront to the Moon Mother.

  All the illusory clones dissolved into mist, before that too vanished under Her angry glare.

  “O Lunar Matron,

  She-Who-Softens-the-World-with-Her-Gloom,

  let Your umbra pass over the unworthy

  as a silent benediction.

  Let their voices fade like candle-flame in storm,

  their arrogance scattered like dust across the astral winds.

  For in surrendering them to Your holy Shadow,

  we offer them the only compassion they deserve:

  to be unmade by the same darkness

  that births Your sacred light.”

  The chanting rose to a high pitch, echoing so deeply through the riverbank that if there had been any other living being nearby, they would have run away.

  A presence was forming, neither human nor monstrous, but purely rooted in faith. It was grand and terrifying at once, and Orion knew deep inside that this was his first encounter with what drove many promising women to swear allegiance to the Sanctum.

  Her light was the warm front that the most promising witches used to pierce through the dark tides that threatened to destroy their home. But there was another side to the coven, and this was its face.

  “Moon Mother, Cradler of the Lost,

  enfold them.

  Unravel them.

  Let the night claim what the day has rejected.

  So be it, beneath Your eternal glow.”

  For a moment, it felt as if the serpents had become free again. The lull in the magic gave them a final chance to strike, and they took it, lunging toward the kneeling Pauline without hesitation.

  But before they could reach her, they were struck with sudden disorientation, their senses overwhelmed by a soft yet oppressive darkness. Their bodies slowed down, as if moving through honey, and their aggression faded away, leaving the massive monsters only the strength to lie down on the sandy bank.

  That was when their shapes started to blur, and they faded into their own shadows.

  [Hypotheticism] went haywire, insisting that they existed, yet at the same time, were not real at all, but the more they vanished, the more it was undeniable that something was affecting them.

  Just a minute later, the frenzy of Scyllas that had seemed so threatening disappeared into the dark void Pauline had created, and moments afterward, as soon as the shadows vanished, light started to emerge.

  It enveloped her, entering her body and hardening into a dome that Orion easily recognized as the System’s presence.

  He hesitated, vividly recalling what happened the last time he attempted to study such a phenomenon. Still, curiosity got the better of him, and he vowed to stop if he sensed anything wrong.

  Being able to use both [Hypotheticism] and the SDGs made his job of parsing through the data much easier, but he was surprised to find that there wasn’t much he didn’t already have.

  Some of it he compared to what he had stored in the CC and used to fill in the missing connections; however, most of it was already familiar to him.

  He sank back, sighing and waiting for the light show to end, more interested in which class Pauline would choose than anything else now.

  Asteria glanced at him but seemed to sense he wasn’t about to do anything reckless, so she stayed quiet as they waited together.

  “Why didn’t you set things up for her as you did for me?” he asked after a while.

  “Her path is different than yours, moonbeam,” Asteria answered. “She has chosen to walk in the Eclipse. She needs to make her own way, and lending her aid would only diminish her success.”

  Orion hummed, mulling that over. I guess everyone has to follow their own path. My class is driven by my scientific curiosity, and if I rely on others to give me answers, I would fail to fulfill its purpose. That would probably lead to terrible class evolutions.

  When Pauline emerged, she didn’t look very different, but there was a confidence about her that he hadn’t realized was missing.

  It was as if she carried a nervousness, an awareness that she wasn't high on the totem pole, which had pushed her down and weighed heavily on her shoulders. Now that she had moved up, her smile was more genuine, and her posture was straighter.

  Pauline Andrés - Daughter of the Dark Side of the Moon

  Class: [Maiden of the Sabbath] [B-rank]

  Level: 100

  Mind: 388

  Attunement: 456

  Body: 131

  Traits: Mistress of Ceremonies [B-rank]; Eclipse [B-rank]; Moonlit Witchcraft [B-rank]; Mana Manipulation [B-rank]

  That was a much more intimidating status than what she’d previously had, though Orion noticed that two of her traits hadn’t changed, aside from their ranks.

  He wondered what options she might have had, whether she was aware of them at all, or if the System had just shoved one on her.

  His observations were inconclusive on that matter. He knew for a fact that higher rank evolutions allowed for more involvement, but he didn’t know how that would translate for someone who believed their goddess would make their choices.

  Before joining them, Pauline sent a wave of darkness into the misty waters, disrupting the natural mana that kept it active despite the disappearance of the monsters that started it, and it began to disperse.

  They climbed back into the carriage, with the driver and steward having observed everything without saying a word, and they were off again, heading to Last Thaw.

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