Bright light tore through the blockade of the dense fog as three figures slowly walked through the thick mist.
The horses did not dare enter the fog, so the four of them had no choice but to walk. Even though the red fog was filled with an eerie and dangerous aura, with monsters chasing them from behind, the four of them could only brace themselves and rush into the mist, trying to find a sliver of hope.
It was better than being eliminated by the monsters, after all.
Luke walked at the very front, holding the Torch of Light with a racing heart. The trembling frequency of the light beam reflected his tense state of mind.
His wife, Clara, followed closely behind while holding their daughter, Nara, tightly. Her face was pale and her body trembled; she didn't dare take a single step away from the range where she could see her husband's back.
Lynch, meanwhile, held his cane and drifted around the family of three like a ghost.
At this moment, Lynch felt as if he had returned to the time before he woke up in this world, when his post-death self had drifted aimlessly through the red fog for thousands of years. Back then, he had been dazed and ignorant, knowing nothing, until that crimson moonlight enveloped him. What followed was a long period of living as neighbors, bathing in the blood-colored moonlight every day as he drifted through a world filled with red fog.
It was very similar to now.
Perhaps because he had long grown accustomed to this feeling, Lynch, relying on the private moonlight in his heart, could see much more clearly than the family of three.
Beneath their feet was a smooth asphalt road stretching all the way into the dense fog, heading to a destination perhaps only God knew. Below the shoulders on both sides of the road lay a wasteland where the fog was even thicker. The wasteland was pitch-black, making it completely impossible to see from the road.
Luke's family didn't know what was in the wasteland either. During their last picnic, they had simply followed the instinctual drive of their consciousness to set foot on this road. Although they had no memory of the journey itself, they were certain that they had reached their destination by following this path.
During the day, they could still peer through the fog to see that the wasteland was just barren gravel and pebbles with nothing else. But at night, in the pitch-black darkness, countless eerie creatures seemed to loom in the mist, peeping at the single line of light on the road and whispering maliciously.
The greatest fear stemmed from the unknown. Even though they saw nothing, the family of three grew more and more terrified as they walked. The parents in particular were trembling so violently that Lynch worried they might break down at any moment.
Or perhaps they already had.
“Screeech—”
An ear-piercing screech suddenly erupted from behind, breaking all four of them into a cold sweat. Lynch whipped his head around to look at the sky, recognizing that the cry came from above.
The pursuers had arrived.
Illuminated by the blood-colored moonlight, Lynch barely managed to peer through the red fog to see the sky behind them.
Six stitched-together monstrosities tore through the air, carrying the pursuers on their backs. Led by the monster girl with the black fan, their expressions were obscured, but judging by the rifles gripped in their hands, they were likely not in a very pleasant mood.
“Bang!”
Even as they were still in the air, the sound of gunfire rang out.
The sound of a bullet striking the ground echoed nearby, and Lynch could even feel the slight sting of flying pebbles hitting his face.
Mrs. Clara let out a short shriek, then clamped her hand tightly over her mouth, trembling as she quickened her pace.
Luke glanced back in panic, but realizing he could see nothing but fog, he could only keep his head down and grope his way forward along the road. With his anxious, ragged breathing, the light beam in his hand shook more and more violently.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Another volley of rapid gunfire erupted, once again kicking up debris on the ground within the fog.
“Watch out!”
Luke, who was leading the way, suddenly cried out in alarm and threw his wife and daughter to the ground. Following another shout, the three of them tumbled off the shoulder of the road and fell into the wasteland below the slope.
Damn it, the fog doesn't seem to affect them much.
Lynch fired two shots at the pursuers in the air, but the range of his pistol was no match for their rifles. The pursuers didn't even bother to dodge; they merely burst into mocking laughter, followed by another burst of rapid gunfire. Worried about the family of three who had fallen, Lynch gritted his teeth and slid down the slope as well.
“Uncle, we're over here!”
The parents were a bit dazed from the fall, but the little girl was completely unhurt. She had already crawled out of her mother's embrace and was waving at Lynch.
With a soft thud, Lynch landed on his feet. He took a few quick steps, intending to run over to the family of three, but after just two steps, the ground beneath him suddenly gave way, and he fell right beside them.
It was a literal sinking of his feet; the texture of the ground was entirely different from what he had expected, as if he had stepped on something soft.
An ominous premonition rose in his heart. Before he could see what he had stepped on, a scream pierced the air right beside his ear, nearly rupturing his eardrums.
At that moment, Lynch also saw clearly what he had stepped on.
Corpses.
Not just one, but countless corpses.
The wasteland below the shoulder of the road was carpeted with corpses. Fresh bodies piled on top of decayed ones, stacked layer upon layer, stretching endlessly across the wasteland all the way to the horizon.
Ugh.
It was utterly repulsive. Lynch nearly vomited on the spot. A wave of intense horror struck his mind, and though he barely managed to keep his composure, his lips trembled slightly.
Not to mention the increasingly loud screaming in his ears.
That was Mrs. Clara's reaction. Her face had turned pale-green, her expression distorted, and her eyes bloodshot, looking as though she might completely lose her mind at any moment. Her husband, Mr. Luke, was slightly better; at least he didn't scream as loudly, but he lay limp on the corpses, desperately trying to climb up. Yet, his limbs were weak, and every attempt ended in failure. Only the little girl remained oblivious, seemingly not understanding the horror of death as she curiously observed the corpses covering the ground.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Several more shots fired down, the bullets sinking into the corpses with strange, squelching sounds.
The gunfire became the straw that broke the camel's back. Mrs. Clara completely broke down, screaming hysterically as she clutched her head, preparing to bolt deeper into the wasteland.
But the moment she took a step, Lynch kicked her to the ground.
Before she could scramble back up, Lynch stepped forward, grabbed her by the hair to force her to look at him, then quickly lit a cigarette and blew three consecutive puffs of smoke into Clara's face.
One pound, one pound, one pound.
Lynch didn't even have time to grieve the cost. Using his last-resort soul-returning grass, he managed to bring the nearly driven-mad Clara back to her senses slightly. Taking advantage of the gap in the rifle fire, he pulled the limp Luke up as well.
“Quick, get back to the road! This place is too bizarre.”
What truly made Lynch feel uneasy was not just this sea of corpses and bones, but the omnipresent red fog.
The bizarre red fog drifted in from the depths of the wasteland, and as it traveled, it was absorbed by the endless skeletal remains. By the time it crossed the wasteland and drifted toward the city, very little of the mist remained.
It was almost as if the corpses were filtering out some kind of filth. The question was, what happened to the filtered filth? It certainly wouldn't vanish into air.
They absolutely could not stay here.
However, gloating laughter echoed from the air once more, followed by a barrage of rapid rifle fire that sent the four of them stumbling, nearly falling back into the pile of corpses several times.
“Mr. Hunter, what do we do?”
Luke's face distorted in pain. Although the fog also affected the pursuers' accuracy, a bullet had still grazed his thigh, leaving a bleeding wound.
What do we do? I fucking want to know too.
Are you surprised? Is this exciting?
“Cover your eyes, now!”
Lynch growled in a low voice, then suddenly raised his volume and shouted at the pursuers in the air:
“Hey! I'm over here!”
Attracted by the sound, both the pursuers and their flying mounts turned their eyes toward Lynch at the same time.
In the next moment, a brilliant burst of fire suddenly exploded in the darkness.
Flame Oil, ignited.
Dense fog, pitch-black darkness, and a sudden exploding fireball.
The drastic change in light caused the pursuers to cry out in shock, while their six mounts went completely wild, crashing into each other frantically in midair. For a moment, chaos reigned in the sky above the wasteland.
“Hurry up and climb back up!”
Lynch scooped up Nara and pushed the couple back onto the road. No longer caring about being stealthy, they sprinted along the asphalt. It was a long time before the sound of flapping wings echoed from above, but no more gunfire rang out.
It seemed that sudden flash had disoriented them severely.
“Mr. Hunter, we're almost there. I can feel that place...”
But just as joy appeared on Luke's face, a bizarre chanting suddenly echoed from above.
The words were incomprehensible, delivered in a strange, rhythmic cadence. Lynch could feel a bizarre power hidden within the voice—eerie, oppressive, as if awakening a fear engraved in the deepest depths of the soul.
The fear of death.
“Enough. Your little tricks have angered me. The game is over.”
The monster girl in fancy clothes let out an angry shout, and the chanting in the air grew increasingly high-pitched.
As the chanting continued, countless rustling sounds drifted from the wasteland on both sides of the road.
Growls, groans, scraping, footsteps...
Countless dark figures crawled onto the road from the darkness, dragging their bodies as they closed in on the four of them.
【Authority, Death, Ability, Corpse Tide.】
Damn it, she's flipping the table because she can't win. We both manipulate the Death Authority, so why is hers so terrifying?
The corpses ran surprisingly fast, reminding Lynch of I Am Legend and World War Z. Thinking of the mountain of bodies piled below, Lynch felt his hair stand on end. He threw two bottles of Flame Oil behind him with a series of bangs, letting the fire consume the road behind them before turning around, hoisting the little girl onto his shoulder, and running.
Beside him, Luke suddenly let out a cry. Following the light, Lynch saw that in this brief moment of distraction, a corpse had already caught up to them and grabbed Mrs. Clara by the hair. She screamed and struggled desperately, but she couldn't break free, and was about to be swallowed by the Corpse Tide.
With a heavy thud, the equally frail Luke threw himself forward, knocking the corpse away while using his own body to shield his wife. He was clawed and scratched by the oncoming corpses, his shoulders and back quickly covered in blood. However, his effort successfully held back the surrounding corpses, allowing Lynch to catch up in time and swing his cane to send a few of them flying.
“Go! I'll be right behind you!”
Lynch stuffed his revolver into Luke's hand. A man who would save his wife at a time like this was worthy of holding a gun.
Lynch himself brought up the rear. With one hand swinging his cane, he smashed another bottle of Flame Oil onto the ground with his other hand, raising a friendly finger toward the young lady in fancy clothes in the air:
“You might have declared the start of the game, but it's not up to you to say when it ends. You want to end the game? Did you ask me first?”
“Foolish outsider, you know nothing of humanity.” The monster girl in fancy clothes sneered, then suddenly raised her voice. “Listen up, members of the Helm family! We are now accepting one person to repent. We will wash away your memories and return you to a normal life. There is only one slot. Whoever returns to our side first gets the slot.”
Rate on N.U.
