Transmigrated as the Cuck.... WTF!!!-Chapter 187. An Entity

"Hah... looks like we need to blow off some steam with these fellows. Look how constipated they look, don’t you think?"

Art’s voice oozed with casual malice, a crooked smile stretched unnaturally across his face. There was something off about it—too calm, too collected.

I nearly flinched. He rarely wore that expression.

Shaking my head, I forced a smirk, trying to match his energy. "Kk, let’s get it over with. Then we’ll figure out the damn mystery behind this distorted fog. Just hope we don’t bump into some entity beyond comprehension."

Art laughed. It was raw, guttural. "Hahaha... can’t disagree with that."

Then, as if it were rehearsed, we both rolled our shoulders and cracked our necks in unison. Our gazes locked forward. The monsters ahead—silent, stagnant, and watching—twitched like puppets awaiting permission to move.

Amethyst lightning sparked around me, faint at first, then roaring to life as it traced jagged paths across my arms and shoulders. A storm awakened beneath my skin.

Beside me, the clink of iron echoed as Art’s chains slithered into existence, materializing with a dreadful hiss. Their purplish hue glowed unnaturally, licking the air with flames of purgatory.

And then—

BOOOOOOM!!

Our charge shattered the air.

We collided into their formation like twin calamities. The impact was apocalyptic. Fissures erupted from our point of contact, stretching in all directions.

Dust exploded, the ground cracked open like brittle glass, and the very atmosphere warped—sucked into the whirlpool of violence we had created.

My amethyst lightning surged, dancing like serpents through the chaos. I directed it into the air, channeling mana as sharp as razors.

The wind itself turned into blades, slicing through flesh and spirit alike. Screeches filled the battlefield as their forms—once towering and grotesque—were reduced to mist.

Meanwhile, Art’s chains lashed out, binding the ones that tried to scatter. Each link coiled like a predator, searing with purgatory flames that burned from both the outside and within.

Some of the enemies had form. Those were easy.

Scorch. Bind. Shatter.

But the ones that didn’t?

Those were the real pain.

A sludge-like creature with an ink-black texture targeted me, oozing forward with no distinct form. It moved like thought—erratic, intangible. It slithered up toward me, trying to latch onto my arm.

The moment its gooey tendrils touched my skin, I felt my mana ripple like a disturbed pond. It wasn’t pain—just an invasive presence. Something... wrong.

It tried to expand, to engulf me.

Too slow.

"Bad idea," I muttered.

I forced it into a physical state—drawing in my lightning to condense its form. The moment its body crystallized into a semi-solid surface, I slammed a [Violent Fist] into it.

CRACK!

Its body burst like a pressurized balloon, goo spraying in every direction as chunks scattered into the mist.

But something was... off.

My senses flared.

A pressure settled over me. Heavy. Distant, yet close. Like an ocean pressing down from above. My thoughts grew scattered, like static danced through my skull. My body wasn’t affected—at least, not directly. But I could feel something trying to dig into me. A foreign will.

And then I noticed Art.

His movements—sluggish. His chains? Misfiring. Wrapping around his own limbs. His flames flickered, dying before they ever fully formed. His [Creation] skill... wasn’t working. It sparked, but never completed.

Someone—or something—was targeting him. Only him.

"Art, snap out of it!"

He gritted his teeth. "Trying, dammit!"

I didn’t have time to help directly. Not with monsters still lunging toward us like moths drawn to a lightning bolt. I danced around their attacks, sparks exploding under my feet as I zipped through narrow gaps, all while charging mana into my palm.

If something was messing with us from the shadows, I had to hit everything.

A gamble.

I condensed mana into a sphere in my hand, tightening it with every breath, every pulse. It crackled violently—unstable, eager to be unleashed. I didn’t stop there. I poured more into it.The sphere grew brighter, hotter—shifting between hues of violet and white, its glow warping the air around it.

Monsters lunged.

I rolled, dodging just in time, and slammed the sphere into the ground.

KRRRRRRRAAAAACK!

The earth ruptured beneath me like a spiderweb, and in the next instant—

THOOOOOOM!!

A wave of high-voltage thunder exploded outward, ripping through the battlefield in a dome of crackling destruction. Arcs of amethyst lightning tore through the mist, sizzling everything in their path. The monsters, both physical and intangible, shrieked as their forms disintegrated—ripped apart by mana turned sentient rage.

Ash. Mist. Silence.

All that remained were flickering bolts dancing across the shattered ground and the scent of scorched air.

Art, now clear of whatever was affecting him, stumbled beside me—chains limp, flames gone. "Okay... that was something," he panted.

I exhaled. "It’s not over."

He grinned, though his expression was strained. "Good. Wouldn’t want it to be boring."

Then, as if on cue, the world around us began to shift—no, reshape.

It started subtly. The air flickered like a mirage, and for a brief second, I thought I was hallucinating. But no—this was real. The temperature dropped ever so slightly, and the wind that wasn’t there before suddenly whistled past my ear.

A tree manifested in front of us—not grew, but materialized. Its bark was gnarled and ancient, its roots floating slightly above the ground, refusing to obey gravity. Like reality itself had to bend to let this thing exist.

Then the sky cracked.

The warm hues of evening dissolved. Darkness poured in like ink, and in a blink, nightfall replaced the sunlit sky. The moon didn’t rise; instead, thousands of stars blinked into existence—far, far too close. So close that I instinctively raised my hand, certain I could touch them. They pulsed, breathed. They weren’t just stars.

They were watching.

Beside me, Art narrowed his eyes. His hand tapped my shoulder—firm, deliberate.

"....."

He said something. He must have said something, it was a habit of his. But no sound reached me.

Confused, I turned my head—and jolted.

He was still beside me. Close enough to reach, yet... he wasn’t. Still his voice didn’t reach me, thinking that he was playing games.

Annoyed, I tried slapping his arm. My palm passed straight through.

His expression, once mildly irritated, turned grim. He raised his hand to hit me in return—but just like me, his strike failed to land. He stared at his hand, then at me. Understanding clicked behind his eyes.

It felt... wrong. There was no physical barrier between us. Yet somehow, a space—no, a distance had wedged itself between us. An invisible chasm.

It was like standing across a canyon that didn’t exist, separated by thousands of kilometers that you could feel but couldn’t see. Spatial dissonance in its most terrifying form.

Art and I locked eyes. His expression twisted—not in confusion, but revelation.

This wasn’t some illusion.

This entire domain was a monster.

A sentient entity. One that had now decided to confront us directly.

I grimaced. My mind reeled with calculations, assumptions, and possible escape routes—but all of it was useless. I had no means of defeating this thing. None.

But Art did.

I turned to him again. The only one capable of harming this thing.

Because he could hurt mana itself.

Art met my gaze, then nodded. He understood without words. He sighed, deeply, then exhaled slowly and sat cross-legged on the mist-wreathed ground. The moment he did, the air trembled.

Then I saw them.

Six glowing orbs—no, stars—began to orbit around him. Each one pulsed with a golden radiance, warm yet overwhelming. They hovered in an intricate pattern around his seated body, casting rippling shadows across the ground.

They looked like ★s.

And then it hit me.

They were the stars. Not metaphors. Not symbols.

They were his cores.

Until now, I’d assumed the ★ system was just a tier mechanic—another lazy ranking system in a broken eroge world. But this... this shattered that notion.

Here, ★s were real. Tangible. A true source of power. The foundation.

Like engines in a vehicle, they fueled everything.

They stored mana. Controlled flow. Governed force.

And Art—he had six.

For the first time, I realized just how pathetically small my understanding of this world was. I’d been smug. Arrogant. Looking down on everything just because I knew the "original script." But this wasn’t a game anymore.

This world had rules I didn’t understand.

I clenched my fist. My mind spun with theories—rushing, overlapping, none of them confirmed. The lore was full of holes, the dev notes never mentioned this, and nothing was ever explained.

And then there was Cassius.

The bastard who created [Violet Violent Swordsmanship]—a brutal technique designed to eviscerate.

There was no way he was a pacifist, no matter what the story painted him as. No man who crafted a technique like that was "gentle."

Something was off. Something had always been off.

And most of all—how the hell did I get here?

At first, I thought my transmigration was a miracle. A one-in-a-million stroke of cosmic luck.

But now?

Now I was sure it was orchestrated.

Cassius did something. Pulled some strings. Whether through mana, fate, or some fucked up reality-bending power, he brought me here. Or at least interfered with whatever brought me.

Mia’s presence here wasn’t coincidence either. There was no way two related people from Earth just happened to get thrown into the same twisted fantasy. Not unless someone planned it.

Maybe I’m crazy.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid, trying to make myself feel special, like some chosen protagonist.

But honestly?

I don’t give a damn.

No normal person had two elements trying to kill them. No normal person woke up in a fantasy world with hostile mana in their very bloodstream.

I’m not normal. No way in hell was I normal.

And while I spiraled into existential dread, Art opened his eyes.

The moment he did, the world changed again.

Like a painting splashed with black ink and red wine, reality melted around him. The space between us shivered and began to crack. The stars above pulsed in sync with the golden ★s around him, like celestial instruments drawn into a symphony of annihilation.