Chapter 95: Surviving the Calamity (1)

“Watch out!”

“Shoot it in the eye!”

“I’m out of arrows!”

A massive branch came crashing down. Felice and Sonia scrambled out of the way, stumbling and gasping. Felice was so exhausted she could hardly move anymore, and Sonia’s quiver was empty.

“Uwahhh!!!”

A collapsing tree trunk toppled toward Reiko, who stood frozen in terror, her legs rooted to the ground as if nailed there.

“Fuuuuuck!”

Booker hurled himself at her, knocking her out of the way just in time. The branch smashed down right where they had been, grazing their bodies. It should have been a picture-perfect scene of the hero rescuing the maiden—

Thud!

“Gah!”

—but Reiko’s head smacked against a rock as she went down.

She gave a little shudder, then her eyes rolled back, and she fainted.

“Hey? Hey, hey, hey!? What the fuck?!”

“What the hell are you two doing?!”

Sonia and Felice were ready to lose their minds at the pair of them. Neither Booker nor Reiko had any weapons, and they couldn’t contribute a shred of fighting power. Sonia thought to run over and help, but the branch looming between them suddenly opened an eye. A wave of overwhelming psychic shock burst out again, washing over everyone.

“Urrrgh!”

The Tree of Life roared once more. But this time, something was different.

“Wait…?”

The Tree of Life was in agony. The vines making up its body writhed uncontrollably, and as it struggled, the entire ground trembled beneath them.

Felice, Sonia, and Booker clung to rocks just to keep from being flung aside. The Tree of Life’s bellow hammered at their brains like a giant mallet, pounding again and again at the cortex. In that torment, time itself seemed to drag. A minute, two minutes—or maybe only a second or two—passed until they reached the very brink of endurance.

And then, the wind rose.

A strange wind, from some unknown faraway place. It carried with it an unknown power, as if it were the breath of the world itself.

The gray fog that had smothered the Fran Wetlands for ten long years was swept away. The haze drifting through the sky melted like flowing clouds, and the starlight began to shine through. The world around them grew clearer and brighter. The Tree of Life’s howls stopped. Its movements stopped. It stood there like nothing more than an ordinary dead plant, utterly still. The fierce wind rushed across its vast trunk, and in the span of a heartbeat, that colossal creature became nothing more than a hulking corpse.

An unprecedented freshness filled everyone’s hearts. With the dispersal of the fog, the entire world seemed renewed.

In that moment, the same words appeared in each person’s mind, or perhaps it was the same message rising up from within them.

==========

The Mist King has been slain.

==========

Booker was the first to snap back to himself. He blinked, dazed, and looked around. The last shreds of gray fog that had blanketed the wetlands were gone. The landscape had never been so clear.

Above, a star-studded night sky stretched wide, a pale moon hanging high and shedding a gentle glow.

The Tree of Life was utterly lifeless.

From the tips of its branches and leaves, its body began to dissolve into mist, drifting skyward and fading forever.

On the ground remained only a vast hollow. The stagnant waters of the marsh poured into it, spilling downward into the darkness below.

“Eh… eh? We won? Wait, was it brother Yuhong? Did brother Yuhong really win? Did he take down that masked bastard?”

Booker stammered, mumbling half to himself, then suddenly, still clutching Reiko in his arms, he sprang to his feet.

“Wooow! We won! We actually won, holy shit! My head’s all scrambled, but we won! We really, really wooon!”

He bounced around in giddy excitement, completely shattering the atmosphere in one go. Only then did Sonia and Felice truly come back to themselves.

After such a long and grueling fight, its sudden end left them strangely unable to adjust.

“We won. Yuhong really won? He defeated Dilas?”

“Yuhong, where is Yuhong?”

Startled awake as if from a dream, the two of them rushed toward the massive pit left behind where the Tree of Life had vanished. Beneath that hole was the collapsed cavern, half-filled with broken stone and shattered wood. That was where Yuhong and Dilas had fallen before.

Ignoring their wounds and exhaustion, they stumbled and staggered to the pit’s edge and peered down.

---

【Dilas is dead.】

In a place far, far, unimaginably far away, a being who had witnessed everything through the eyes of a messenger sat upon a wide seat, muttering to itself.

【Kukuku. Such is the fate of those who don’t know when to submit. If he had pledged himself to His Majesty sooner, he would not have ended like this.】

Another voice rang out, thick with disdain.

【A pity, though. We lost another talent. With Clint’s defection not long ago, we should be recruiting more, not fewer.】

【Clint was nothing but trash, hardly worth mentioning.】

A third voice spoke.

【The royal capitals of Inoria and Havendale already belong to His Majesty. As long as we maintain the current pace, there’s no need to worry. All glory will return to His Majesty.】

【Not worry? That’s impossible. His Majesty is in agony. We may be expanding across the continent, but still.】

【The Imperial Fleet has already conquered a third maritime kingdom. On the Holy Wall’s side, the Last Knight has begun to stir. If the Giant Saint-King moves as well, it will bode ill for us.】

【Damn it. If His Majesty were still at his full strength.】

【Enough, Sibylr. The past is best left unspoken.】

【More pressing than that are these divine envoys.】

The conversation broke off.

Silence spread through the hall.

【The matter of the divine envoys cannot be handled for now. Opening more sub-fog realms would drain us severely.】

【So, for the time being, we simply watch?】

---

Sunlight poured down.

The air was fresh.

The earth smelled of newly turned soil.

Plants once withered to the brink of death had burst back into life.

Only a few days had passed, yet the village that had been so pitiful now looked utterly transformed.

The rotted-face people, at last able to step out from the forest, washed their bodies with water no longer poisoned. With the resources left in the town, they fashioned new clothes. Their ghastly decay could never be erased in this lifetime, but cleaned up and dressed neatly, they were no longer quite so frightening.

Now, all of them had gathered in the small square at the village’s center, their eyes fixed on the large house on the other side—the chieftain’s residence. Their faces were filled with both reverence and worry.

---

On the second floor of the chieftain’s home—

On a bed that was plain but meticulously kept, Zhou Yuhong lay swathed in bandages, eyes shut tight in deep unconsciousness.

The chieftain rested a hand against his forehead, eyes narrowed, murmuring incantations under his breath.

Felice, Sonia, Booker, and Reiko stood nearby, watching anxiously.

Sonia and Reiko both couldn’t help but be distracted by the strange appearances of the rotted-face people they were meeting for the first time, but of course, that hardly mattered now.

Getting Yuhong safely back to the village was already a miracle in itself.

At the time, Sonia and Felice had been utterly spent, unable to move another step. It was the still-energetic Booker who climbed down into the pit and carried Yuhong back up. With nowhere else to turn, they had hoisted his unconscious body and begun staggering toward the village of the rotted-face people—luckily, they had barely reached the wetlands’ edge when the villagers, sensing that something was wrong, came out to investigate and found them.

“Mmm…”

Chieftain Lund lifted his hand from Yuhong’s forehead, his expression caught in a subtle mix of emotions.

“Let me begin with the conclusion. Lord Zhou Yuhong’s life is not in danger, neither now, nor in the foreseeable future.”

The moment he spoke, all four of them—Felice and Sonia most of all—finally let out a breath of relief.

“His wounds are severe, but the emergency treatment was administered in time. Without that, he truly wouldn’t have survived.”

““““…””””

The four of them exchanged uncertain looks.

“We did give brother Yuhong emergency treatment, but… how should I put it…” Booker hesitated.

“Before that, there were already some ‘things’ closing up his wounds. Otherwise, he would have bled out long before. And besides…” Sonia added.

Together, their gazes shifted toward the nightstand.

There lay a straight-backed dagger, slightly longer than the runic dagger, yet completely different in style.

It gave off a dark, subdued sheen. The hilt was bound in cloth etched with arcane markings, the guard gleamed black-gold, mysterious patterns were carved into the spine, and the blade itself glimmered cold and sharp.

The runic dagger had shone with silver light, all dazzling edges and obvious danger. This blade was its opposite: understated yet luxurious, its sharpness concealed. At first glance, it seemed unremarkable, but the longer one looked, the harder it was to look away.

==========

Dilas’s Ritual Dagger

Forged by Dilas, High Priest of the Tree Cult, with his own hands.

Cold iron as its bones, Egil’s black-gold as its flesh, refined mithril as its blood, tempered in condensed primordial essence.

A blade for sacred rites, and a weapon for war.

==========

Such words appeared, unbidden. There was no doubt: this was Dilas’s weapon, won by Yuhong’s victory.

“A remarkable sword. No weaker than his runic dagger, perhaps stronger.”

Lund ran a reverent hand along the blade.

“And this here… some kind of hidden weapon?”

Beside the sacrificial knife lay a pistol with only two bullets left. When they had pulled Yuhong out, these were all they found at his side: the sacrificial blade and the gun. His old runic dagger and the Lustrous Core had been shattered into fragments.

“These… you can think of them all as Yuhong’s possessions now,” Felice said.

“And this too?”

The chieftain frowned, seizing Yuhong’s left hand.

On the back of what had once been bare skin, a black tattoo-like sigil had appeared.