The Kingdom of Gospel, Highway 47 leading to Azura. A floating car crackling with electricity sped across the ground, the smoking, sizzling chassis clearly indicating its anti-gravity module had completely failed. The rear lights flashed rapidly in red, orange, and yellow, showing that the car’s autopilot module was entirely malfunctioning, with a crazed driver flooring the accelerator, speeding wildly.

A spiritual light streaked across the night sky and landed on the car roof, transforming into an extremely thin and short goblin, only 90 centimeters tall, wrapped in a tattered cloth, holding a spring steel spike longer than his height, it was almost like a spear to him.

Targeting the driver’s seat, he fiercely thrust the steel spike through the car roof!

The spike did not pierce through flesh as expected; instead, a straight blade thrust out from the car, slicing off half of the goblin’s foot! However, the goblin showed no sign of pain from the limb loss. He had been blessed with the "pain-blocking" miracle before setting out tonight, although at the cost of rendering all his reflex nerves useless — most close-combat mages roaming the underworld dislike using pain-blocking. After all, pain can be overcome, but the reflex nerve impairment from lost pain sensation can be the difference between life and death in lightning-fast skirmishes.

But this goblin was one of the few close-combat mages who didn’t rely on body techniques, evident from his movement miracle ’Rainbow Light.’ As the most famous and powerful miracle of the Light Magic faction, Rainbow Light allowed a mage to transform into light, moving at tremendous speed, unstoppable, uninterruptible, and unharmable, though the magic power consumption was enormous, restricting its use to short distance transfers. The only way to reduce Rainbow Light’s consumption was by lowering the mage’s body weight.

A Gospel goblin’s normal height was certainly more than 90 centimeters. This goblin Light Mage had purposely had his bones trimmed down and flesh reduced, to the point his weight was such that a breeze could blow him away. In return, he could almost use ’Rainbow Light’ as a regular spell, earning the fearsome reputation of ’Sting Light,’ with none remembering his real name.

However, a weight even lighter than that of a child doomed Sting Light to be no match for a regular mage in body techniques, he couldn’t handle even a dagger fluidly, as even a little extra muscle would greatly increase Rainbow Light’s consumption. Incidentally, the size and weight of the weapon also affected Rainbow Light’s consumption, which was why Sting Light wielded such a unique weapon as the steel spike. His weapons, like his body and style, were extreme to the point of leaving himself no way out—an all-or-nothing gamble!

Missing was no problem; the steel spike was not a weapon, but a medium!

Technique Spirit·Iron Flower!

Under the goblin’s deliberate guidance, the spike that pierced the car erupted into countless spikes, enacting a cruel torture within the inescapable car interior. Though Sting Light preferred to pierce the steel spike into an enemy’s body before unleashing Iron Flower, making them bloom into bloody iron flowers inside out, causing its populace distress. The resulting psychological relief provided a slight respite for his pent-up depressive state.

The mandatory long-term dieting had already driven Sting Light into physiological depressive disorder. He had an appointment with a Blood Moon mental health doctor online three days later. Now, the tri-weekly psychological therapy barely buoyed Sting Light enough to catch a breath in the drowning sea of life he lived.

No one expected, that Blood Moon’s biggest export product to Gospel was actually psychologists. Due to the Gospel system’s guidance in education, everyone, mages included, knew their correct path and life direction. The invisible societal pressure, along with an unhealthy pursuit of ’ranking’ and ’status,’ coerced everyone into forcing themselves into relentless effort. Living an exhausting life but dared not voice it out. Hence, when this vast market opened to Blood Moon, foreign mental doctors were immediately swarmed by countless patients.

This shitty life can be over, Sting Light thought. If urban legends were true and there indeed existed a devil in Azura who could fulfill all wishes, then if he succeeded in this job, he could leave Gospel and enjoy a dreamlike freedom in the Kingdom of Blood Moon... perhaps even meet his psychologist Anabel, though Sting Light had met many pretty goblins, he was still struck by Anabel’s pure innocence, goblins from Blood Moon were simply better than those from Gospel.

Yet, Sting Light did not hear any cries of agony, only the clangs of metallic collisions, and the car swerving uncontrollably from side to side.

Did it get blocked by the sword? He looked down and saw the recently pierced blade tip suddenly split open, revealing the round hole on the hilt... Wait, it looked like... 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

A gun muzzle?

The high explosive gun bullet instantly blasted through Sting Light’s head, blossoming into a blood flower and dispersing into the air. The body was then lifted by the flowing wind, floating like a piece of paper. The female beastman, Kehwa, with golden and silver wings unfolded, dodged Sting Light’s corpse, flapped her wings to accelerate, closing in persistently on the still speeding floating car!

Reaching a certain range, Kehwa drew her rifle to shoot at the rear fuel tank tires, the floating car being a hybrid could be blown up! But the driver’s skills were excellent, swerving continually, resulting in Kehwa expending her magazine with little damage inflicted.

This was only natural; though Kehwa was a Two-winged Mage, beastman’s fingers were inherently unsuitable for firearms. When she pulled out her rifle, she didn’t expect much from it, only using it to force the floating car to evade, allowing her to close in further!