Chapter 55: The Hunt

"The terrain's shifted, and it ain't just the streets turning into rivers," Jeanne said. "Some exits might also differ from where we thought they'd be."

"Do you need me to carry you across the river?"

"No need, just keep the one in your arms safe. I'll guide us based on my memory. Oh, and can you whip up some soul magic now?"

Salser snapped his fingers, casting a dim light upon the pitch-black riverbank, which promptly self-ignited, blackened, and finally dissipated into a fetid, putrid mist. In that fleeting instant of illumination, one could see Viola, her arms encircling his neck, nestled securely in his embrace, her chin resting upon his shoulder. Frankly, considering the typical conduct of a Dark wizard during an escape, he would not ordinarily opt to bear such a burden in such dangerous circumstances, but Jeanne was now in command.

Jeanne turned to him: "What about your Warren magic?"

The implication was clear. How much combat capability do you have left, Salser quickly understood.

"The Warren remains intact, but the spirits employed as spell components will rapidly decay naturally," he said.

Jeanne's gaze moved beyond Salser, scanning the narrow alleys between the houses. Salser felt Viola's abdomen rising and falling, her heartbeat quickening against his chest, her breathing gradually intensifying, her small hand tightly gripping the ruby necklace around her neck—which contained her father's soul, something the Dark wizard had gone to great lengths to create. He could guess that the little girl's mind was repeating one sentence over and over: What do we do, what do we do, what do we do...

Jeanne paused for a moment. "Can't turn invisible, that's a real bummer, huh? You didn't pick up any other schools' concealment spell, just the soul stuff?"

"As if there's any concealment spell in the Warren of Light," Salser retorted sarcastically.

He had no desire to offer Viola comfort at the moment; his sole wish was for her to cling to him and refrain from any movement.

Jeanne glared at him.

...

A cold, blood-red full moon rose from the dark horizon, emitting an eerie glow.

Chavazon Turan landed on the edge of the roof, dust gathering, his bones creaking: "The hunt is about to begin, why have you summoned me here, esteemed Bonecaster?"

"Go help your covenant partner, but do not go so far as to sacrifice your life," Si said calmly, "Help them hold off the shapeshifter created by the Romans and the emissaries of the Shadow Throne for a while."

The undead nodded, a few pieces of rotting skin falling from his neck. His bones creaked again: "I will find them, but I will only take simple intervention measures. I do not guarantee their survival, as the covenant only requires secrecy."

"Intervention is enough," Si nodded, "The covenant does not include opposing the Shadow Throne, as Ammanas was one of the earliest Ascendants to make contact with the Outer Gods, and the phantom elves died without resistance in his hands. We see that he not only gained control of the Shadow Warren but also caused the ancient shadow hounds, older than humans, to wither. He gave life to their corpses, creating those abhorrent three-headed giants. Before the summoning officially arrives, the clan does not wish to make too many enemies."

With that, Chavazon vanished like a wisp of smoke.

Smoke spread through the city, like clouds from the mountaintop settling on the ground, the deformed towering buildings shrouded in mist standing like mountains over the undulating streets and rivers of the city.

She walked through the air towards the lofty sky: dark clouds converged above, so low they seemed within reach. Green lightning flickered through the clouds, and above them stretched a blood-red sky, with a blood-red moon—or perhaps a blood-red monster—sinking within the clouds, casting an unsettling light.

It hovered in the air, as if riding the rolling clouds and green lightning, descending slowly like a feather. Hundreds of red-to-black, soft tentacles longer than its body danced on a skull with only three black voids, writhing like intertwined water snakes.

Its slender body was encrusted with sharp, pale ribs, their ends clinging to remnants of foul flesh, rendering its skinless, muscle-less form akin to a deformed mouth bristling with teeth.

Its tail resembled a forked water snake, each branch extending hundreds of meters, resembling the exposed blood vessels after peeling away human skin in the night sky.

Yet its slender limbs and soft tentacles were so beautiful, so graceful, so nimble, that they were almost mesmerizing, enveloping the mind in a fog of intoxication.

Thousands of demons whirled around it, like black, rotten leaves dancing in a tornado. They emitted sharp, hoarse sounds, as if chanting an inconceivable hymn. They bit into each other's bodies with their sharp teeth, pierced their own chests and limbs with their claws, squeezing out colorful blood into the clouds, sprinkling it high into the sky, spinning and licking the raindrops, and singing even more madly and eerily.

Seeing the blood-red moon finally sink into the clouds, she nodded.

Smoke and dust began to churn, encircling the reveling demons in a giant semicircle. Countless flint longswords materialized, slicing through the demons' bodies like butter. Moments later, piles of heads, limbs, and tentacles rolled down like a mudslide, the horrific screams rising and falling, even drowning out the hoarse singing.

Then, an unsettling resonance began to reverberate, and the demons commenced chanting strange rhythms that defied existence in this world. Countless blasphemous, filthy words gnawed at the barriers of space like termites on a tree, transmitting dizzying syllables. Dirty bloodstains surged upward like a reversed waterfall, inundating the night sky, with thousands of unclean colorful rays sweeping through the demon horde and dust warriors, blasting flesh and claws into turbid red-black sludge. The glow of witchcraft enveloped their bodies like blood-red moonlight, the sound of flesh and bones shattering echoing through the sky like thunder from the underworld.

The hunt had begun.

The warriors who turned to dust drifted through the air, weaving through the demon horde and spells. Through the reversed turbid blood, one could see the spells of the kinfolk twisting and jumping like a spider's web in the giant semicircle, melting flesh and armor indiscriminately.

The intertwined spells formed a fierce whirlwind upon impact, mixing with the blood to form a swirling lake. Colorful severed limbs were torn apart as they were sucked into it, like cockroaches falling into a meat grinder. The screams and chants intertwined, like a mournful elegy.

In the increasingly high-pitched screams, piles of demons were sliced open by flint swords like cutting through butter, tearing through the rudimentary spell barriers, falling like rags into the green lightning-flashing clouds below. They sank into the clouds, like salt dissolving in water, then fell towards the earth, one by one, one by one... Although they continuously brought destruction to these demons, there were also warriors submerged in bloodstains, melting into unconscious liquid, disintegrating like ink dropped into the sea—but their numbers were disproportionately small.

Si gently tapped her staff.

More wriggling dust spread around her.

...

The place was very open, yet twisted dream visions constantly surged out of the fog, like waves of colorful tides, but they always walked steadily ahead of the waves.

A writhing living white snake rolled over the streets and flesh like a moving wall. A series of short, anguished cries ended in the burning white flames. Its six blood-like eyes scanned the fog, its glassy scales crushing the moving bodies, piercing clusters of flesh balls fill with dead spirit, sucking in the spreading black smoke, like a living creature truly driven by an insatiable hunger to hunt—it indeed was hunting. The souls burned to ashes were its food, the only instinct of this quasi-life form.

Salser always understood that the spells unleashed by connecting to the Outer Gods' Warren were mostly of this nature.

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