Arc found a passageway leading from the underground chasm toward the shrine and made his way slowly deeper inside.

  The corridor had been thoroughly ravaged. The lanterns that once lit the altar had all gone dark. Arc tilted his head in confusion.

  “Something’s wrong… the shrine is destroyed.”

  Someone had smashed the shrine and broken the seal.

  “Who could have done this…?”

  A bad feeling crept over him.

  The hole behind the cat rock was one thing, but someone had clearly destroyed this shrine by force.

  “…Could this be the angels’ doing?”

  While Arc was examining the shrine, a black shadow crept up silently behind him. The moment he sensed it and spun around, the shadow bared its fangs and lunged.

  “Whoa! What are you?!”

  Arc leaped sideways in an instant and hurled a loose stone at the attacker.

  “Light!”

  He gathered his illumination spell close and lit up both himself and his assailant.

  What had attacked him was an enormous black cat—roughly two meters long. Its eyes were gold, and it bore razor-sharp fangs and claws that gleamed silver.

  “A black cat?”

  Arc recalled the cat-shaped rock at the entrance. Could this black cat be the very familiar they were looking for?

  “Wait—I’m not your enemy!”

  Arc tried to calm the creature, but the black cat wouldn’t listen. It bared its fangs at him and hissed—a clear warning to leave.

  When it realized Arc had no intention of going anywhere, the black cat finally sprang at him.

  “Wha—!”

  Arc was stunned.

  The cat had lunged at him—then vanished.

  While Arc stood frozen in shock, the black cat materialized behind him and raked its claws across his back.

  “Gah!”

  Arc threw himself into a tumbling roll to dodge, but a thin line of blood was already seeping from his cheek.

  “It’s black, and I can’t see it in the dark!”

  The black cat melted seamlessly into the shadows, expertly exploiting Arc’s blind spots to strike. It appeared from different directions as if teleporting.

  “This one’s tough!”

  Arc broke into a cold sweat and groaned.

  “I told Mina I’d be right back… but it doesn’t look like I’ll be keeping that promise.”

  Even as he fought, his mind turned to Mina.

  If the angels showed up while she was alone—she wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Arc grimaced.

  “Should I have brought Mina with me after all?”

  While he was lost in that thought, the black cat’s claws tore into his side.

  “Aaagh!”

  Arc winced and leaped back.

  “If I keep getting distracted, I’m the one who’s going to go down!”

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  It was only because Arc could defy gravity and maneuver freely through space that he’d managed to dodge the cat’s attacks at all—but even so, he couldn’t afford the slightest lapse in focus.

  “Light!”

  At his shout, roughly ten orbs of light rose into the darkness.

  The space flooded with daylight-level brightness, revealing a chamber about the size of a school gymnasium.

  “Heh—bigger than I expected.”

  The black cat squinted against the glare for a moment, but quickly adapted and began racing along the walls at terrifying speed.

  It darted across walls and ceiling in rapid succession, then slipped behind a rock formation—only to burst out from Arc’s own shadow the very next instant.

  “So that’s it—the teleportation is shadow-walking!”

  Shadow-walking: the ability to move freely between shadows. It was limited to shadow-to-shadow transit only, but even so—it was effectively teleportation.

  “Tch!”

  Sharp claws grazed Arc’s arm.

  His expression hardened as he glared at the black cat.

  “Hey! Are you one of Lady Lilia’s familiars?!”

  At the name Lilia, the black cat froze mid-attack, its ears twitching sharply. But after a moment, it let out a low growl and fled deeper down a shadowed passage.

  Arc watched it go, then checked his side. The wound was shallow, but the flesh had been sliced open.

  “Haah… this just got a whole lot more complicated.”

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

  “The way it reacted to Lady Lilia’s name… that cat is almost certainly the familiar.”

  But the seal hadn’t been properly released, Arc reasoned—so the familiar had likely gone berserk. If it was indeed their ally, he couldn’t afford to kill it. But holding back meant putting himself at risk.

  Arc cast a quick healing spell on his wounded side and headed deeper down the passage after the black cat.

  “That cat is strong… but of course it is. It’s Lady Lilia’s familiar, after all.”

  A grin spread across his face as he broke into a run.

  “If our new ally turned out to be a weakling, that’d just mean one more person to babysit…”

  Arc spotted the black cat lurking at the far end of the passage and bared his fangs.

  “You can take a real hit without dying, right?!”

  He clenched his jaw and let out a roar.

  “RAAAAGH!”

  Arc’s body began to swell and expand.

  His clothes tore apart and fell away, revealing a coat of pure white fur beneath. He had transformed into his true form—a colossal polar bear.

  “GROOAAAH!”

  Arc bellowed, and the black cat shrieked back in defiance. In his transformed state, Arc stood roughly three meters tall.

  The massive white bear charged at the black cat. His razor-sharp claws connected squarely, slamming the cat against the stone wall.

  But the black cat landed softly against the surface and immediately launched into an erratic series of leaps, hurling itself at Arc. Its fangs found their mark, tearing through the bear’s thick fur.

  “GWRAAAH!”

  Arc’s eyes flashed with ferocity.

  Heedless of the damage to his own body, he charged forward, pinning the black cat’s movements with both sets of claws before sinking his jaws into its back.

  “GYEEEAAH!”

  Still clamped onto the cat, he hurled it into the rock wall. The impact sent chunks of wall and ceiling crashing down around them.

  But the black cat wasn’t finished. It recovered with blinding speed, kicked off the polar bear’s skull, and sent the massive body crashing to the ground with a thunderous tremor. Pillars toppled and ceiling slabs rained down. But neither beast cared about any of that anymore.

  Fang clashed against fang. Claw met claw in showers of sparks.

  Then Arc’s devastating punch connected, and the black cat’s body smashed through the wall entirely.

  “GYAAAH!”

  The black cat screamed and went limp.

  But the impact had dealt the cavern walls damage equivalent to a massive stick of dynamite.

  “Oh no—!”

  Arc reached out toward the black cat.

  In that instant, the underground ruins collapsed in on themselves—shattering into pieces as though a bomb had gone off.

  ◆

  Canconel and his three subordinates, in pursuit of Mina and Arc, were wandering through the forest under Isarfe’s guidance.

  For refined angels accustomed to flight, being grounded in a forest where they couldn’t take to the air was nothing short of misery.

  “Isarfe! Are you sure we’re going the right way?!”

  Isarfe glanced at Canconel’s attire—utterly unsuitable for forest trekking—and offered a polite smile.

  “But of course, Lord Canconel. I’d hate for you to underestimate my tracking abilities.”

  But Canconel and his three companions trudged along in visible irritation. They wore thin-soled shoes that slipped constantly in the mud, making every step an ordeal. Isarfe, by contrast, had come in thick-soled boots.

  “Look… if the girl is still some distance away, can’t we just fly?”

  One of the angels let out a weary complaint. But Isarfe shook his head.

  “What are you saying? The fact that I’ve come down to ground level means the girl is very close by. Do you actually want to find her or not?”

  Isarfe fixed them with a cool stare, and everyone exchanged glances and fell silent.

  At that moment, an enormous snake lunged at the exhausted angels.

  “Watch out!”

  As Canconel cried out, Isarfe shot a white thread from his fingertip, binding the great serpent in an instant.

  Canconel thanked him.

  “I appreciate it, Isarfe… though I had no idea you could do that.”

  Isarfe gave a modest smile.

  “Oh, it’s nothing—I just instinctively fired a tracking thread. It’s useless in combat, really. It snaps right away.”

  He tugged the thread and broke it to demonstrate.

  “I see… but if you increased your magical output, couldn’t you produce a much stronger thread?”

  Isarfe nodded.

  “Unfortunately, I have no aptitude for combat.”

  “Perhaps you should put in a bit more effort? That’s precisely why you haven’t made upper-rank angel.”

  Isarfe smiled.

  “Never mind that—why don’t you take a look over there?”

  Canconel turned in the direction Isarfe was pointing. His irritation evaporated instantly.

  “Isarfe! Your tracking skills are truly something!”

  Hearing this, the three subordinates lined up beside Canconel.

  And what they saw, right there before them, was Mina.