Chapter 45: The Moving Town, The Butcher Under the Moonlight
Green's intuition was wrong.
At this moment, with dead fish eyes and an expressionless face, he watched Lucia open the car door for the Nth time and stumble toward a crooked tree by the roadside.
"Blegh—"
The sound echoed across the silent highway, like the wail of some dying nocturnal animal.
Then, like a crumpled piece of paper barely smoothed out, she staggered back into the car, sliding limply into the seat as if her bones had been removed.
"Don't tell me you're going to get solo-killed by the road before we even reach the town."
Lucia waved her hand weakly, lacking even the strength to argue.
Green couldn't help but think it would have been better to bring Tony Stark. At least that guy doesn't get carsick. Maybe the Wisdom Gem in his head would have spun around and built an Anti-Evil Spirit Armor.
Looking at the one in front of him again...
"Did the Vatican send the wrong goods? Can I apply for a return?"
"I... I'm fine..." Lucia responded with a raspy voice.
"If you knew you got carsick, why didn't you just say so? We could have taken a plane. I thought we'd go for a nice drive, and instead, we get this."
Green handed over a throat lozenge. He could handle a live passenger in the shotgun seat, or even a dead one, but half-dead... what a buzzkill.
Lucia took it, opened her mouth slightly, pushed it to the side of her tongue with her fingertip, and kept quiet, guiltily looking away.
"...Don't tell me you get airsick too."
"Severe... airsickness."
"So we actually avoided the worse option." Green laughed out of sheer frustration.
"I usually... don't travel this far," she tried to defend herself.
"Don't make excuses."
"Oh."
"Tsk." Green clicked his tongue, feeling like the Vatican had sent this girl here just to die.
Just as he was thinking this, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen; it was Drake. He swiped to answer.
"Speak."
"That town... it's gone." Drake's voice held a hint of disbelief.
"...Please speak English."
"I'm not joking. It's just gone. The whole town, along with those 'consumables.' All signals are cut. The original location is now just a forest. Hey, hey, wait, I'm not finished..."
The voice on the other end suddenly switched to the Old Priest.
"But I suspect the town has moved. If we understand the entire town as a single entity that has entered an unobservable quantum state,"
"Theoretically, it could appear anywhere. Much like a ghost itself is the result of an out-of-phase superposition of an unobservable state and visible light."
"Don't understand."
"That's not important! What's important is that this might be why Irene wanted to go there. The willpower of ordinary people is harmless, like water droplets—they dissipate upon impact."
"But Irene is different. Her thoughts are like a drop of ink; they pollute everything around them, increasing probabilities and tilting things in the direction she desires."
"To an evil spirit that devours souls, this is too conspicuous. It's highly probable that it captured her willpower and is rushing toward her."
"Got it. Opposites attract."
Green patted Lucia on the shoulder.
"Congratulations, you've gained another useless flaw."
"Huh?" A question mark practically popped over her head.
"Tell me the truth, what exactly is Lucia?"
The other side paused for a moment.
"...An Angel."
Green tilted his head and looked at Lucia skeptically. She was also tilting her head at him, her eyes full of confusion.
"The impurities excreted by an Angel?"
"Do not insult the Wings of Pure White!" the Old Priestsnapped.
"Any good news?"
"If you die, I will carve your name into—"
Beep.
Green cut the connection.
"Damn it, both are bad news."
"By the way, if I dump you here and run, will those evil spirits let me go?"
He asked nonchalantly, as if talking to himself. He had seen several types of dark creatures; they all practiced indiscriminate slaughter. There was no reason for this one to be an exception.
"I don't know, but you can do that. If it's so you can survive, I'm willing to sacrifice myself." Lucia was very decisive, looking at Green seriously.
Green glanced at her, his gaze cold.
"You think you're noble? I don't care about your death at all."
"We are allies. You said so."
"...Idiot."
"How far are we from the town?"
"Uh... maybe two hundred miles?" Lucia scratched her head.
"My math isn't very good."
"Fine, we have something in common." He paused.
"Fuck! I forgot to ask that old geezer how fast that thing moves."
"At least let me finish my cigarette before the fight."
He tapped the cigarette pack, a filter popped out, and he bit it.
Lucia lowered her head and felt around under the seat for a while.
"Oh, oh, found it."
She held up the metal lighter, flicked the lid open with her thumb, and clumsily spun the flint wheel.
Green leaned over, bringing the tip of the cigarette close to the dancing flame.
Sss—
A slender flame rose, briefly illuminating the dim car cabin.
Their faces were very close.
One had eyes half-closed, squinting slightly from the smoke; the other had wide eyes, filled with innocent focus behind her lenses.
The same flicker of fire was reflected in both their pupils.
The flame went out.
Only the spark of the cigarette remained, flickering in the darkness.
"Phew—"
Green exhaled a puff of smoke, the white mist scattering against the windshield.
Lucia closed the lighter lid with a 'click' and tightened her grip on the seatbelt.
"Let's go," she said, her voice steadier than before.
Green glanced at her, said nothing, and stepped on the gas.
He reached out to turn on the car radio. After some static, an overly energetic male voice jumped out.
"It's 1 AM. You're still awake. Are you hungry?"
"Stop touching those fake fish sticks made of starch."
"Deep Sea Brand Fish Crackers, ninety-nine percent real fish meat!"
"Not flavoring, not flour, but white fish meat freshly caught from the depths of the North Atlantic, pressed into crackers to lock in the sweetness."
"Every bite is like the sea breeze pouring into your mouth—solid, real, no nonsense."
"Rich in Omega-3, high protein, zero fluff. Perfect for those staying up late, suffering from insomnia, or just getting through a rough patch..."
Neither of them moved to change the station.
Lucia leaned against the car door, her head against the glass, staring blankly ahead.
Green was in a similar posture, right hand on the steering wheel, left hand holding a cigarette out the window.
Like two dejected, passionless young people, they just listened to the junk ads while driving deeper into the darkness.
At some point, moonlight began to grace the road.
The ghastly white moonlight spread out like a flayed human skin, stretched long and stuck to the road, crushed by the wheels as it extended forward.
A few shadows appeared at the end.
No, those weren't shadows.
It was a town.
It exuded a deathly silence, like a once-charming doll whose limbs had been snapped, with the bone shards supporting the joints driven into the dirt to make it... stand.
"Translucent is back."
"You're in the shower, hot water flowing over your skin, steam coating the mirror. You close your eyes to rinse the foam off your face, and at that moment, you feel something behind you—"
"Slowly sliding up from your waist, stopping between your ribs. You can't see anyone, but you can feel the breath right at your shoulder blade—damp, scalding."
"You clench your hands, water running down your thighs. You thought you screamed, but the water is too loud. In the bathroom, there's only his voice against your ear: Don't look back, I'm exploring."
"When a human silhouette faintly appears in the mist, when his hand grips your neck without much force, do you dare admit you want him to squeeze a little tighter?"
"Vought... bzz... Company proudly pre... sents, 'Translucent: Fingers... bzz... Growing in the Steam'."
"Bzzzt... Vought... Studios... bzzzt... making the extraordinary... bzzzt... everyday."
Click!
The radio signal grew more blurred before finally going silent.
Only the low hum of the engine and the muffled sound of tires on the asphalt remained in the car.
The town rapidly enlarged in their field of vision.
Suddenly,
Both their eyes narrowed simultaneously.
A tall figure stood in the middle of the road.
Under the moonlight, wearing dark blue overalls, head tilted.
A deathly white human face mask was buckled over his face, with hollow darkness behind the eye sockets, hiding his gaze.
The town behind him was submerged in the night, like a blurred boundary line.
He just stood there with his hands down, holding a long kitchen cleaver, facing the two people approaching on the highway.
Like a simple butcher, warmly waiting for the lambs to come to the door.
"Green..." Lucia's voice was tight, her breathing subconsciously shallow.
The ash at the end of Green's cigarette fell as his lips twitched.
"I see him."
"Sit tight."
Clutch, gear shift, floor the gas!
"Run him over!"
Exhaust fumes billowed from the tailpipe as high-pressure gas inside the internal combustion engine pushed the pistons in a frantic cycle.
Bang, bang, bang, bang—
Every explosion accelerated the mechanical energy; the metal heart beat to its limit.
The pickup truck roared.
The tires gripped the ground hard, the rubber letting out a sharp groan against the asphalt.
The front of the car broke through the air, the airflow bursting into fine white streaks on the windshield.
Only the engine's roar remained, stretched and torn by the acceleration, finally turning into a sustained, rising shriek.
The G-force instantly pinned them back.
"Holy Mother Mary!"
Lucia was pressed into the seatback, her voice trembling.
In her vision, everything retreated rapidly. The shadows of trees on both sides were pulled into blurred lines, and the road surface dove under the car like flowing water.
Except for that butcher.
Getting closer... and closer...
Chapter 46: Refusing the Forced Passenger
The front of the car cut through the night wind, the bright headlights slicing through the darkness, shining straight onto the figure in the middle of the road.
A deep blue jumpsuit, a deathly pale mask, motionless, like an abandoned statue on the highway.
The holes behind the mask were deep and hollow; his eyes were invisible, yet they made the back of one's neck go cold.
You could clearly feel it—he was staring at you. That gaze pierced through the windshield and the beam of the headlights, like an infant's fingertips stroking down the spine.
Fifty meters.
Thirty meters.
Ten meters—
At the very moment of impact, he suddenly vanished into thin air.
No afterimage, no smoke, no trace of teleportation; he just disappeared, as if he had never existed.
Green didn't slow down.
The pickup's engine continued to roar. The tires rolled over the spot where the figure had just stood without the slightest pause, charging straight toward the small town lurking in the night.
Green suddenly felt a chill on the back of his neck.
That feeling of being watched was back. He glanced at the rearview mirror.
In the back seat, in the shadows, that pale mask faced him quietly.
The butcher who should have been on the road was now sitting in the car, curled in the shadows as if he had been there all along.
"Damn, did you pay before getting in?"
Green reached for a button on the door panel and pressed it.
Click.
The back door locks engaged.
Sensing his gaze, the pale mask moved slightly, tilting at an angle. The hollows behind the mask met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
The next moment, the butcher raised his knife.
An arm reached out from the shadows. A cleaver whistled through the air, lunging fiercely toward the back of Green's neck, its blade glinting coldly in the moonlight.
"Tsk."
Green's eye twitched, his neck muscles tensed. Just as his body was about to lean to one side—
Click.
The seatbelt unbuckled.
A slender, shapely leg in a white sock reached out from below.
Her skirt billowed like a flowing black tulip, swirling up from the passenger seat.
Her leg kicked high, her black low-heeled boot tracing a sharp arc in the air. The heel precisely intercepted the butcher's wrist, kicking it away.
The leg retracted, stepping onto the car mat. Then, both legs pushed off the floor; her left hand gripped the passenger seat while her right hand rested on Green's shoulder for leverage.
"Hmm?"
Green's eyes shifted, a hint of surprise crossing his pupils, followed by a curl of his lips.
"Now I know why the Vatican sent this chick."
Lucia leapt into the air.
At only 157 centimeters tall, she barely needed to duck inside the car. Her legs tucked in, her core tightened, and her spine arched before she extended like a fish.
Her legs snapped together, heels forward, kicking hard into the butcher's mask.
Bang.
The butcher's tall frame toppled backward, his back slamming into the seat. The seat springs creaked under the strain.
Beneath her headscarf, Lucia's gaze was cold, the white mask reflected in her pupils.
Using the recoil, she landed on the center console, her body nearly parallel to the car's frame.
Her knees bent slightly, her center of gravity low, her boot soles planted on the panel.
Phew—
Lucia's chest heaved as she let out a short breath. A dagger had appeared in her left hand, held in a reverse grip.
Then she lunged directly toward the back seat. As she pushed off, she left faint boot prints on the panel.
Having recovered, the butcher swung his cleaver in a diagonal slash.
Her dagger met it. The moment the blades touched, she flicked her wrist, the slant of the blade parrying the cleaver's force to the side. The metal friction produced a piercing screech and a shower of sparks.
As she landed, Lucia's left foot stepped on the butcher's right hand holding the knife, while her right hand grabbed his hair.
She gripped that messy, greasy, blood-scented hair and yanked hard. She felt the faint snap of hair strands between her fingers.
The butcher's head was forced down.
Using her right leg as a pivot, Lucia drove her left knee upward into him.
Thud!
Her knee struck the side of his face. The faint sound of facial bones cracking came from beneath the mask. The butcher's head was knocked aside, and his whole body slumped.
The dagger flipped in her hand, switching from a reverse to a forward grip. The hilt rotated 180 degrees in her palm. With the blade forward, she drove the point into the butcher's right ear, twisting her wrist to grind it in.
"Pūrificō (Purification)!" Lucia shouted.
On the hilt, white flames ignited, spreading from Lucia's palm to the handle, then pouring down the blade into the butcher's cranial cavity.
Steam mixed with bloody froth hissed out of the holes in the butcher's mask. His eyes spasmed violently behind the mask, his pupils dilating.
He raised his left hand, fingers splayed, trying to claw at Lucia's throat.
Click.
The hammer cocked back.
The silver revolver spun around Green's finger. The muzzle pointed at the butcher's forehead as his thumb pressed down the safety, locking the hammer into the ready position.
"Ahhh~"
Green tilted his head, his narrow eye peering at the butcher. His eyes squinted slightly, his lips curling into a malicious smirk.
"..." The butcher's hand paused.
"Say thank you."
His index finger pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell.
The bullet was pushed out of the chamber, spinning and accelerating inside the barrel, following the rifling out of the muzzle.
Bang!
Gunfire flared in the darkness.
The holy inscriptions engraved on the bullet glinted for a fleeting moment.
Pfft!
The bullet sank into the butcher's forehead. A spray of dark red blood mist erupted from the back of his head. His head snapped back against the seat, and for a brief moment, his body went still.
The next moment, he was alive again. He drove his elbow back, knocking Lucia off him.
Her back slammed into the inside of the car door. She grunted, quickly adjusting her center of gravity.
"Jie jie jie..."
Green's revolver spat tongues of fire repeatedly, blooming blood-flowers on the butcher's back.
Ignoring everything, the butcher threw open the door and tumbled out of the car, rolling across the dusty road and leaving a trail of dark red blood.
Then, his form began to twist, like melting film. His silhouette blurred before vanishing into thin air under the moonlight.
The dust slowly settled.
Only a pool of blood remained on the road.
"Ahhh~~ That scared me to death. Good thing you didn't lock the door and let him escape."
Seeing that the enemy had truly vanished, Lucia slumped into the back seat. Her voice trembled, and her glasses slid down to the tip of her nose, hanging crookedly. She didn't even bother to fix them.
The white flames on the dagger slowly receded, flowing back down the blade into the hilt and then into her palm. As the fire passed, the bloodstains on the blade were cleansed completely.
"Actually, I did lock it. I just don't know how it opened again."
Green glanced at her, one hand on the steering wheel to straighten the truck, which had veered slightly off the road.
"As for you, you fight pretty fiercely. Heh, I like the contrast."
Lucia's movements paused. Her eyes shifted behind her glasses, but she didn't respond.
"And the guns the Vatican sponsored are no good; he didn't die even after a headshot."
Green holstered the revolver and patted the grip, his tone laced with dissatisfaction.
"This kind of Dark Creature possesses a certain level of immortality," Lucia explained.
"Most are corrupted by the aura of some being from Hell or are directly possessed. You can only eradicate them by destroying their physical body multiple times and then purifying their soul."
"Weren't your grades terrible?" Green raised an eyebrow and asked casually as he lifted his hand.
His hand was stained with some of the black blood the butcher had splattered. The blood was thick and an unnatural dark red.
The black aura in the blood seeped into Green's skin through the pores. More accurately, Green's body was actively plundering this dark aura.
The black blood faded at a visible rate, eventually turning into the color normal human blood should be.
But the amount was too small—so small that Green didn't feel any change at all.
He just stared at the bloodstains that were drying quickly and becoming ordinary, a strange light flashing in his eyes.
"Ho? Does this count as Cursed Energy too?"
In that light, there was surprise, realization, and something deeper and hungrier—greed.
This town seems to have quite a few edible prey.
Green licked his lips and returned his gaze to the road ahead.
During the fight, he had conveniently marked the butcher. This mark would gradually expand its sensing range as he grew.
Currently, it was only four miles, but that was enough for now. He couldn't run.
"I like learning about the characteristics of these monsters." Lucia crawled over and leaned out to pull the open door shut.
"You should have been a hunter."
Green casually wiped the remaining blood, which had turned back to a normal color, onto his pant leg.
"However, you've successfully broken my prejudice that Vatican clergy aren't good at close combat."
Lucia slumped back into her seat. Hearing this, the corners of her mouth curled slightly, but she quickly suppressed it.
"By the way, if you're such a good fighter, how did you end up at the bottom of the class?"
"The academy I attended didn't have combat assessments. Our daily physical activities were just farm work and things like that."
Lucia rubbed her abdomen where the butcher had elbowed her, grimacing in pain.
That elbow strike wasn't light; she'd likely have a huge bruise there tomorrow.
Green silently lit a cigarette, took a drag, let the smoke swirl in his lungs, and then slowly exhaled.
He rolled down all the windows, letting the night wind sweep away the smell of blood in the cabin.
He had also guessed where Lucia's Combat Skills came from.
It wasn't taught by the academy; it likely came with the Angel. Along with that white flame ability... a dual-spec in magic and combat, huh? Combat experience and abilities—the only thing Lucia hadn't inherited was the memories.
"He should be... injured, right?" Lucia spoke, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
"You stabbed him in the brain, and you're asking me?"
"I haven't faced anything this resilient before..." Luciascratched her head, her fingers running through her hair, her brow furrowed.
"General Dark Creatures are just a bit stronger than an adult man, maybe a bit tougher at most."
She propped herself up and sat, looking down in thought, replaying every detail of the encounter in her mind—the angle of the dagger's entry, the force of the twist, the feedback when the Purifying Fire poured in.
That's right, it was a fatal wound.
At least for a human, it would be fatal.
For most Dark Creatures, it should have been fatal too.
But he just didn't die.
Why?
Could there be some kind of variable?
Once Lucia relaxed, her stomach began to churn again.
When her nerves were taut earlier, she hadn't noticed, but now that she had gone limp, the nausea rose up her esophagus.
"Green," she said, her voice weak.
"Yeah?"
"I want to throw up again..."
"Hold it in."
"Green~"
"...Almost there."
The vehicle slowed down, entering the shadows at the edge of the town.
A white sign stood by the grass, its paint peeling, looking a faded white in the night.
Large black letters read "Welcome to Ravens Fair," the handwriting clear as if it had just been painted.
But when the moonlight fell upon it, those black letters seemed to flow.
Slowly, gradually, as if something was seeping out from within, the black faded into a dark red, and the dark red faded into the color of blood.
Until the vehicle passed the front of the sign.
Below the large letters, as if eaten away by insects or crumbling like rotting wood, a row of smaller letters gradually took shape.
"Don't scream."
Inside the car, Green looked back as if sensing something.
Outside the rear window, there were only shadows.
And some other kinds of shadows—their shapes weren't quite right, their outlines blurred, but when he looked closely, there was nothing there.
He turned back and continued driving.
Beneath the sign.
A blurry, tall, thin dark figure stood there, watching the red taillights fade into the distance.
Its slender limbs hung at its sides, standing stiffly amidst the weeds by the road.
Its face and clothing were indiscernible; it was just a deep black silhouette, like a piece cut out of the night and pasted there.
It hunched its body as if bones were barely supporting the flesh, then stepped into the moonlight.
Its form began to shrink, its outline becoming clear, finally transforming into a white woman standing naked on the road.
With shoulder-length blonde hair, beautiful features, high cheekbones, and blue eyes reflecting a rational light.
Yet the overall impression was one of indescribable eeriness—a feeling of being too perfect, of not being a living person.
She looked up at the red taillights gradually disappearing into the night, her eyelids drooping.
"How can the Angel's Vessel walk with an evil person?"
A patch of dark clouds drifted by, intermittently obscuring the moon.
The moonlight faded. In the brief moment shadows covered the road, the figure vanished.
Chapter 47: The First Battle is the Decisive Battle
Late at night, in the heavy, humid air, water vapor gathered into a thin mist that drifted slowly mid-air.
Vehicles drove through, dispersing the mist, but after a moment, it closed back together viscously, like some living thing breathing slowly.
Tires rolled over the gravel road, making a fine, crunching sound.
Two rows of streetlights were lit, but in the damp, heavy vapor, their pale halos were too large and too blurry, like translucent shrouds draped in mid-air, extending all the way to the end of one's vision.
Outside the window, the doors and windows of houses flashed past; they weren't completely closed, and eyes seemed to peer through the narrow slits in the curtains.
The pickup truck stopped in front of a mansion.
Wind rolled sand and stones across the road surface.
The car door opened.
Green Morgan lowered his head, and his foot landed, stepping onto the gravel road.
His tall figure stood with his head slightly bowed. The light from the streetlamp shone down from above, the beam licking around his skull but splitting in front of him as if deliberately avoiding a small area.
A lighter sparked a flame.
The flame lit the cigarette butt in his mouth and also illuminated his face. Beneath his brow bone, his eyes flashed in the firelight before receding back into the shadows.
Ding!
Closing the lighter, he tilted his head back and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
The smoke rose into the mist, appearing to merge with the pale halo of the streetlight.
[Area scan complete.]
[A mild evil spirit magnetic field exists in this area. Type: Assimilation. Characteristic: Selective intrusion of thoughts, control of limbs. Suggest maintaining mental barriers.]
[Detecting host status...]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX hidden characteristic triggered.]
[Analyzing...]
[This negative influence has been exempted.]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX current Evolution Degree: 0.30%]
"Ah~ it feels just like coming home."
He cracked his neck with a slight click, then closed the car door, walked around the front, and went to the passenger side.
He opened the door.
Lucia was slumped in the seat, her glasses crooked.
Green reached out, supported her armpits, and scooped her out of the seat.
"Still feel like throwing up?"
"Gulp... *hic!*" She let out a hiccup and then shook her head.
"Where is this?"
"The Boss's lair."
"Huh?!!!" Lucia snapped her head around, looking at him in disbelief, her eyes wide and round.
"What, were you planning to go to town for a drink?" Green let go of Lucia and walked straight to the back of the pickup.
He lowered the tailgate and pulled a rocket launcher from a pile of equipment. The barrel was pitch black, its surface engraved with Latin consecration prayers and exorcism runes that shimmered with a cold silver light under the moon.
"Or did you think I'd take you to conquer those monster strongholds from the intel one by one?" Green shouldered the rocket launcher.
"No, no. This town is called Ravens Fair. The main variable is that old thing who was already here, Mary Shaw.
There's a high probability that she is the primary cause of the magnetic field, perhaps even the core."
"The research department speculated this result, but they weren't sure. It went against their'step-by-step' habitual thinking."
"But I'm sure!"
Green had seen 'Dead Silence' after all, and he knew where her final true body was. Damn it, back then he was so scared he didn't dare go to the bathroom at night, fearing the old hag would jump out from behind the door and rip out his tongue.
For both business and personal reasons, the first one he had to take out was this woman.
Revenge!
"Come on—" Green shouldered the rocket launcher and grinned savagely at the main body of the mansion above,
"Let's say hello to the mayor!"
Meanwhile, inside the pitch-black mansion,
Mary Shaw had just projected her consciousness back into her physical shell. She walked lazily to the balcony, preparing to use the 'townspeople' to observe the strange duo that had broken into the town.
Mainly that Angel vessel.
She couldn't kill the Angel, but that vessel... it was an excellent shell.
"No rush, they're probably still looking for a place to stay."
Before she could even reach her lounge chair, she caught something in her peripheral vision below.
Whoosh—
A streak of fire rose from the ground, trailing a tail of flame, getting bigger and closer.
Her startled, beautiful eyes locked onto the warhead.
A grinning shark face was painted on the warhead.
"What the—"
Boom!
Her head made zero-distance contact with the warhead.
The next second, the ball of fire exploded violently. The scorching airwave instantly swallowed her figure, rubble poured down, and the exquisite balcony shattered in the blast.
A huge, burning hole appeared in the front of the mansion, and the innate old-aristocratic aura vanished instantly.
It was like a reserved noble lady being brutally punctured through her thin layer of dignity by a crude country brute, leaving irreparable trauma on her body.
Black smoke billowed up.
"That looks expensive." Lucia stared at the crumbling gap with a bit of pity.
"Like it?" Green lowered the smoking rocket launcher and proceeded to load another round.
"I remember I bought a few similar safe houses. Maybe we can go there... and talk about the Bible."
"Your intentions are too obvious, Green."
"Oh~ is that so? Actually, I wanted to talk about the 'Bible Black'."
As the two chatted, that charred, supposedly physical thing next to the gap blankly opened its eyes.
It looked at its own ruined shell, the whites of its eyes slowly widening on its shattered face, its mouth opening mechanically.
"Ah..."
Boom!
Another shot.
This round penetrated directly into the building, exploding like a blooming fire-cream, brilliant in the night.
"Don't howl like a ghost in the middle of the night." Green had been watching her the whole time.
He casually tossed aside the empty launcher and pulled the soul-releasing blade from ugly treasure's mouth, the blade glinting coldly in the firelight.
[Liberation Degree: 15%]
The muscles in Green's upper arms suddenly bulged, and dragon scales emerged from beneath his skin, tearing his shirt and spreading all the way to the back of his hands.
"You... aren't human?!" Lucia stared in shock at the changes in his body, her pupils contracting slightly.
"I've always been human, Lucia."
Green exhaled a puff of smoke, the white mist drifting slowly under the dim yellow streetlight.
"That's why I'm strong enough."
"I'll leave the outside to you, Irene."
The words fell,
Boom!
A shallow pit exploded in the ground, and the wind pressure lashed against Lucia like a wave.
She instinctively raised her hand to protect her face. Her headscarf was blown away, and her thick black hair broke free from its band, streaming backward.
There was only that figure, dragging twin blades as he charged into the burning building.
"Ho~ greedy little guy, leaving the small fry to me?"
The glasses were removed.
Lucia's innocent eyes turned deep and cold as her eyelids lowered.
Her long black hair shimmered under the moonlight, losing its color from the roots, spreading rapidly like ink in clear water, finally turning into flowing pure white.
The fragile, weak voice vanished, replaced by a magnetic, icy, mature female voice.
At some point, eerie green eyeballs emerged one by one in the woods surrounding the mansion.
Half-human-sized Humanoid Puppets peered crookedly from behind trees, and deformed Creepers approached silently, clutching rusted blades or shotguns.
Three brothers with malicious glares stood at the front, followed by soggy Wax Figures. Steam rose from their bodies, emitting a rotting stench.
Through the translucent wax layers, one could vaguely see the melted flesh and skeletons inside, reaching out as if wanting to pull the living into their embrace.
[Note: The three brothers are the Sinclair Brothers from 'House of Wax'.]
"Hmm~"
Lucia casually pulled a dagger from the trunk and gripped it.
Her head tilted casually toward her front, her shoulders slumped in a lazy posture.
The tip of the dagger in front of her chest pointed at those foul things.
In the next second, white flames spread from her palm, climbing up the hilt along her fingers and flowing onto the blade. The dagger elongated, shaped, and solidified like flowing silver liquid.
Finally, it transformed into a double-edged Silver Cross-sword.
The corners of her eyes curved into narrow arcs.
There was no longer innocence in her eyes, but a certain near-fanatical excitement. Her lips curled into a dangerous, savage grin.
A long black dress, the face of an Angel, and the smile of a demon.
"Hehehe..."
She raised the silver sword, the blade glinting with a cold white light under the moon.
"Let me cut you all into pieces... shall I?"
Chapter 48: Evil Spirit, Butcher, Puppet, Dragon
Inside the building,
Mary Shaw struggled to her feet from the pile of rubble, her body draped in a layer of writhing shadows.
The holy power carried by the flames was still eroding her form; every inch of her skin hissed with white smoke as wails were squeezed from her throat.
Her figure elongated and twisted, reverting to that tall, thin ghostly silhouette.
Only her face remained that of a beautiful woman, like an exquisite piece of human skin forcibly pasted onto some wicked monster.
Grotesque.
Terrifying.
"Damned human! You only know how to rely on hypocritical faith and weapons!!" She raised a venomous gaze, stabbing it toward the tall figure jumping in through the gap.
Cold eyes.
A cigarette in his mouth.
His outline was soaked by the moonlight into a sharp silhouette.
Mary Shaw's heart suddenly constricted.
—Fear?
"I'm actually feeling fear toward a human?!" Her face twisted, the boundary between beauty and human skin becoming even more blurred.
"Without a long lifespan, without a powerful physique, without sufficient sanity, what right do you ha—"
Green didn't have the habit of waiting for enemies to finish their lines.
With a flash of movement, he appeared at Mary Shaw's side, his blade swinging down at her head!
"No fluctuations of holy power, it's just an ordinary weapon. I can take it!" Mary Shaw's thoughts were like lightning; she moved almost simultaneously with Green, thrusting a palm toward his chest!
Puff!
A golden light flashed across Green's body and then shattered.
That palm struck his chest, but it only produced a muffled thud, hindering his offensive for only an instant.
"A blessing..." Mary Shaw's pupils suddenly contracted.
The blade light flickered past her body.
The hand that had struck Green, along with the shock on her face, were severed in mid-air, spinning as they fell.
Mary Shaw felt pain for the first time in ages—the agonizing pain of a blade rending the soul!
"This blade... can cut souls!"
She screamed, staring in horror at the soul-releasing bladein Green's hand.
Green didn't give her any chance to react.
His momentum suddenly erupted outward.
In a daze, Mary Shaw seemed to see a vicious beast opening its fangs to bite into her body.
While her consciousness was blurred, her body was shredded within the blade light.
"Eh?"
The eyeball on half of Mary Shaw's face trembled violently.
She had miscalculated.
It wasn't that the blade was strong.
It was the Master wielding the weapon who was strong!
The remains crashed to the ground, the fragments still writhing and aggregating.
That half-face of Mary Shaw stared fixedly at Green, her single eye churning with venomous spite.
The body fragments, as if pulled by invisible threads, were gathering toward the center at a visible speed.
"Recovering right in front of me?"
The ash from the cigarette at the corner of Green's mouth fell. He raised his blade and was about to step forward.
Intuition warning!
From a dark corner inside the building, the chilling roar of a chainsaw suddenly erupted!
A Leatherface butcher, over two meters tall, bizarrely emerged from the shadows and charged straight at Green.
The rubble on the ground vibrated violently under his heavy footsteps. The chainsaw spat white smoke, its teeth spinning frantically.
The distance was too close, only three or four meters remained.
With a large stride, he raised the chainsaw, swinging it to cut through Green's body.
"Hmph!"
Green clenched his dragon claw into a fist and smashed it against the chainsaw.
Dragon scales collided with the saw teeth, and sparks exploded.
Both sides were pushed back simultaneously by the counter-force.
Before Green could stabilize his stance, he followed through with an upward slash, the blade light striking the Leatherface butcher.
Pshhh!
A large amount of black blood splattered from his opened body. Green raised his leg and kicked him in the chest.
The Leatherface butcher stumbled back, the organs inside his abdominal cavity spilling onto the ground with a wet thud.
At the same instant,
Under the moonlight, the The Masked Butcher appeared out of thin air.
He still bore the bloodstains from the previous fight. As soon as he appeared, he lunged at Green.
Green wasn't surprised; he could sense the existence of a marked target.
The opponent had originally been on the other side of town, outside his sensing range, but had moved here in an instant after entering it.
"Reinforcements came quite fast."
His thoughts were like lightning as Green followed through with a horizontal sweep of his blade!
The The Masked Butcher ducked to avoid it, but his throat was seized by Green's other dragon claw. He was lifted up and slammed violently into the ground!
Bang!
A shallow pit was smashed into the ground, and blood exploded from his back.
Yet he acted as if nothing had happened, thrusting a knife toward Green's ribs with a backhand strike.
Sparks skated across. The blade sliced through Green's clothing but was stopped dead by the emerging dragon scales. The blade slid along the scales without leaving even a white mark.
"Let's see how you live after being decapitated!"
Green slashed his blade across the man's neck. The blade cut through the neck and into the ground, causing rubble to explode.
The The Masked Butcher's body stiffened, his hands dropped, and he stopped moving.
Green grabbed the head. Just as he stood up,
Buzz—!!!
Behind him, the Leatherface butcher held the chainsaw high, the teeth spinning frantically as it slammed into Green's back.
[Liberation Degree: 30%]
Green's stature suddenly surged.
Muscles bulged, shredding his shirt. Dragon scales erupted from beneath his skin, covering his back in layers.
Screee—!!!
The saw teeth struck the dragon scales, letting out a bone-jarring shriek as sparks flew in all directions.
The butcher's hand holding the chainsaw went numb from the vibration. He watched helplessly as his perspective shifted from looking straight ahead to looking upward.
The chainsaw slid from Green's shoulder blade all the way to his waist without even carving a deep mark.
Green turned his head, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.
"Are you polishing my scales?"
Dragon pupils looked down from above, as indifferent as if looking at an ant.
The butcher, still clutching the buzzing, idling chainsaw, froze. His fingers unconsciously loosened.
Green turned around, picked up the The Masked Butcher's head which was still dripping black blood, and swung it with full force into the Leatherface butcher's face.
Crack!
The skull shattered!
The Leatherface butcher stumbled back, the chainsaw slipping from his hand and crashing to the ground.
Green didn't stop.
He stepped forward, clutching that head, and smashed it over and over again into the Leatherface butcher's head.
Black blood splattered onto his expressionless face, onto the dragon scales, and onto the broken ground.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The head in his hand was deforming—the face flattened, bones shattered, and eyeballs burst.
The Leatherface butcher's hand was still clutching Green's leg. He struggled at first, but gradually lost his strength.
His head had also been smashed to pieces, with mangled meat and bone fragments mixed together, plastered onto the ground.
"Weaker than I imagined."
Green casually tossed away the head that was no longer recognizable. He raised a hand to brush back his black-blood-stained, sticky hair.
The dark aura from the two headless corpses surged out and flowed entirely into his body.
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX]: Evolution Degree 12.7%.
Green turned his gaze toward Mary Shaw's pile of body parts.
She had put herself back together—barely.
The fragments were loosely stacked, as if they would fall apart at any moment, held together entirely by some form of will.
Green tilted his head, looking at her.
"Why don't you run?"
"Heh, is there anywhere to run?" Mary Shaw acted quite composed, though her beautiful face was covered in cracks, like broken porcelain pieces barely glued together.
"No, that's not right. You're trying to use your death to hide something." Green approached.
"Jed (Leatherface) wasn't just 'visiting' you by coincidence; he was teleported here. Michael Myers (The Masked Butcher) might not have been; he should be able to teleport under the moonlight."
"But as the 'Mayor,' you should also have spatial movement authority. After all, this place is called 'Ravens Fair,' your domain."
[Note: Leatherface is from 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre', The Masked Butcher is from 'Halloween']
"You know them?!" Mary Shaw's expression changed drastically.
"Before coming here, I obtained all your information in advance."
"Is there something very important to you here? You're reluctant to run?"
Behind him, the two headless corpses melted like broken black sand, scattering as soon as the wind blew.
Only two tattered human skin masks remained on the ground; the weapons were gone as well.
"Clones, huh..." Green looked sideways at the dissipating black sand.
"Those two brutes are more cautious than you. At least I didn't face much resistance driving all the way here. I thought I'd have to fight my way in, but I didn't expect it to be so smooth."
The mark Green had placed on Michael had been erased, which was a bit of a pity.
"You have the nerve to talk about me?!" Mary Shaw's voice changed pitch.
"What kind of hunter is as reckless as you!"
Her mentality was starting to crumble.
Was it that she didn't want to stop him? Those puppets didn't have her main consciousness operating them; they could only mechanically record and passively counterattack.
Moreover, she had issued defense orders immediately, making them rush over here.
They were all stopped by that Angel outside!
Damn it, she had searched human memories. In those legends about the supernatural, weren't Angels supposed to be holy and compassionate?
What about the Angel outside? A pure executioner.
The human inside looked even less like a good person than she did. What kind of human has scales growing on them!
Her on-the-spot performance was already very good, but she just couldn't win!
Two monsters!
Two outliers within their own species!!
If she had known she would run into this kind of thing on this trip, why would she have come? It was enough to scare a ghost to death!
"Now you've met them."
Green flicked his cigarette butt at her face, sparks flying.
"It doesn't matter. I can search slowly. It's just a matter of you dying a bit later."
A puppet Master only having one main body? He didn't believe it. If it were him, he wouldn't dare show his face without splitting his soul into several Horcruxes like Voldemort.
Besides, he did indeed sense the presence of another Cursed Energy.
He thrust the soul-releasing blade into the ground and carved a circle. Stones fell away, revealing a dark gap.
"You can't go there!" she screamed, lunging over.
"Get lost."
Green kicked her away, and her body disintegrated again, scattering across the floor. The soul of this Mary Shawshell had long been hacked to pieces by him.
He leaped down and landed, his heavy body crushing the floorboards.
There were no strange changes.
But there was a faint, high-purity aura of Cursed Energypermeating this space.
Green frowned.
"Is there some key point I haven't discovered?"
At that moment, a translucent luminous body appeared out of thin air in front of Green.
It was humanoid and gaseous, as if squeezed out from some invisible crack. It stood not far away, its outline blurred, with no facial features, only a cluster of faint light slowly circulating.
"What the hell is this?!"
Green instinctively gripped his blade. For this kind of thing that popped up out of nowhere, one slash usually made it behave.
But it showed no aggressive tendencies; it just hurriedly raised a hand and pointed at Green.
No, to be precise, it pointed at a certain position in front of him.
"A mirror?" Green raised his hand and waved it, but touched nothing.
"Let's start with a slash!"
He pulled the Inverted Spear of Heaven from ugly treasure's mouth and slashed in front of him.
[Note: Special Grade Cursed Tool · Inverted Spear of Heaven: Its core function is to forcibly nullify any active Cursed Technique.]
Rip—!
Electric wires appeared out of thin air and were severed. Electric sparks crackled, emitting a blinding white light.
Green looked inside.
Inside... was a stage?
Red curtains hung down, their velvet texture gleaming with a dull light in the dimness.
A man in a suit sat on a wooden chair, his head slightly bowed as if in a deep sleep.
His face was painted with white powder and his lips with lipstick, dressed like an 18th-century performer. He held a blonde female puppet in his arms, smiling happily at Green.
"This crazy woman wants to create her own kind?"
The intel said that Mary Shaw was a ventriloquist in life. Her partner was usually her signature ventriloquist puppet, Billy, who was dressed exactly like this.
Only now, it was reversed. Billy had become the living person, and Mary Shaw had become the puppet.
[Note: The beginning of 'Dead Silence' features this Billy puppet as a medium for murder.]
Tap tap.
Behind him, his shoulder was lightly tapped twice.
"Hmm?"
Green didn't turn around. He thrust his blade backward from under his ribs, but it hit nothing.
The moment the blade sliced through the air, the light in front of him suddenly dimmed.
A face was almost pressed against his!
An old woman in a grand black dress with a head full of white hair appeared out of thin air, her hands reaching for his neck!
An icy sensation came from her palms. A dead person's hands had no temperature, like rotten wood just taken out of an ice cellar.
Green's body suddenly stiffened.
His joints felt as if pulled by invisible threads, forcibly twisted as if someone were manipulating him like a puppet.
His mouth felt as if an infant's hand was grabbing his jawbone, forcibly pressing it down.
His vision blurred.
He was standing on the performance stage.
Surrounded by red curtains hanging from a height, enclosing a sealed space. Light shone down from above, diffused like a surgical lamp, its source unclear.
He had become the performer.
Performing... death.
"Cheating old hag."
Green looked down coldly at the Mary Shaw before him. There was no screaming, no medium intervention; she was forcibly dragging him into her killing rules.
[Note: In 'Dead Silence,' Mary Shaw can only pull out a tongue after the target screams, and it's a forced action that cannot be resisted.]
Little did he know, Mary Shaw was also shocked.
"Why... is this male human's physical resistance so high?"
She had already used all her strength. For an ordinary human, she could almost kill them instantly, but several seconds had passed and he hadn't even opened his mouth.
Suddenly, she noticed that Green's hanging hand moved slightly.
"No way?!"
Mary Shaw's eyelids twitched. she didn't even dare look directly into Green's mocking eyes.
"Almost there, just a few more seconds..."
Green muttered in his heart. His body was bit by bit breaking free from the restraints.
[Detected that the host's current area is a moderate evil spirit magnetic field. Defining... Definition complete. The field is named: Mary Shaw and Billy's Stage.]
[Detecting host status...]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX hidden trait triggered.]
[Analyzing...]
[The negative influence has been exempted.]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX current Evolution Degree: 15.21%, increasing at 0.20% per second...]
"Hmm?"
Green's eyes showed a bit of surprise.
The traits of this evolution template... were a bit of a counter to evil spirits.
"How could this be?!"
The old woman—no, the real Mary Shaw—showed shock in her eyes.
This was her home turf. Why was this human instead absorbing her power?!
"I have cheats."
On Green's controlled body, that invisible restraining force dissipated.
He regained his mobility and pierced Mary Shaw's body with a single blade strike.
"Ugh..." It was that same pain of the soul being torn apart.
She had thought that without the constraints of a physical body, she would never feel pain again. As it turned out, she had encountered a hunter who specialized in cutting souls.
Her grip loosened and she stumbled back. The light behind her seemed to dim as her figure began to blend into those shadows.
"Trying to run?!"
Shing—!
The Inverted Spear of Heaven thrown by Green pierced her body, pinning her to the wooden boards with immense force.
The light returned to normal.
"Women are like fine wine; the older, the more mellow."
He took a large step forward, grabbed her face, and used his fingers to pry open her cheekbones, forcibly squeezing her mouth open.
Mary Shaw's aged face showed terror as she looked up at Green. Inside his open mouth, the firelight churning in his throat was surging.
"Come, let's get intimate!"
[Dragons Breath]!!!
Chapter 49: The Curtain Falls, The Audience
"Roar!!!"
Dragonflame spewed out, drenching Mary Shaw's face.
The firelight flickered on the eyeballs of the puppet Mary Shaw nearby. Those dead, inanimate eyes now seemed to be coated with a spiritual luster, appearing to tremble.
"Aaaaaah!!"
Mary Shaw let out a heart-wrenching scream. In the intense flames, her body quickly charred and cracked like oil-soaked paper, her flesh turning to ash and being swallowed by the fire mid-air.
Impossible?! Fire shouldn't be able to burn her to death.
This was magic fire!
It was Blood Magic!!
Wasn't this the exclusive equipment of the Dark Faction?!
"You... traitor!!"
Mary Shaw's roar was swallowed by the flames. Her form turned into a pile of charred ash, swept up by the heat wave and scattered across the stage's brand-new wooden planks.
Green closed his dragon jaws, a residual wisp of fire trailing from the corner of his mouth.
"It seems you couldn't handle my passion."
He brushed the ash off his hands, leaned over to pick up the Inverted Spear of Heaven from the ground, and then turned to look at the man and the puppet with a half-smile.
The embers beneath him gradually died out, and shadows crept over half of his face.
"This woman called me a traitor. What do you think?"
Green muttered to himself as he stepped forward, tilting his head to examine the man and puppet before him.
Suddenly, without any warning, he plunged his blade into Billy's chest.
The blade pierced through the torso.
Blood—real blood—oozed out along the blade.
Green twisted the handle, the flesh making a sizzling sound in the wound, yet Billy remained motionless.
"It really is a human body," Green remarked in wonder, though his gaze fell on the puppet.
"Stop wasting time. I know you're alive. Cooperate a bit; I still need to catch some sleep before dawn."
No sooner had he spoken than...
The surrounding red curtains rose upward. On the circular display stands, puppets were neatly arranged, one next to another, layer upon layer, extending from the floor all the way into the shadows above.
They were all people. Every wooden face was turned toward the center of the stage, the light hitting their hollow eye sockets and reflecting an eerie glimmer, like a group of long-waiting spectators.
"...To think there are so many of them."
Green looked up and scanned the room, a flicker of something unusual passing through his eyes.
"Every one of these puppets has been filled with a soul by me."
Mary Shaw's voice came from the puppet's lips, the wooden jaw opening and closing with a sharp clacking sound.
"Their original physical bodies were stuffed into the buildings by me; they are the town itself. But I am the primary link. If I die, these five thousand four hundred and thirty-two souls—"
Bang!
The muzzle flash of a silver revolver exploded.
The puppet's head burst apart at the sound, wood chips flying and fragments scattering everywhere.
Green didn't stop. His index finger repeatedly pulled the trigger—one shot, two shots, three shots—until the cylinder was empty and the puppet had completely shattered into a pile of unrecognizable wreckage.
"...So... unwilling..."
Mary Shaw's wail echoed faintly in the air, like wind blowing through a decaying wooden corridor, before quickly and completely fading away.
Wisps of dark energy drifted up from the remains, burrowing into Green's body as if they were alive.
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX] — Evolution: 28.4%.
"So it really was alive."
Green whistled and holstered the revolver, the barrel still slightly hot.
He casually pressed down on the hilt of the knife stuck in Billy; the hilt bounced, then bounced again.
Billy still showed no reaction.
"A shell without a soul is just a puppet in the end."
Green pulled out the Inverted Spear of Heaven and casually stuffed it back into ugly treasure's body.
He looked up at the many puppets on the circular stands.
Theoretically, when inanimate objects possessing souls gather to a certain extent, supernatural phenomena can occur—such as moving limbs, or... speaking like a human.
This was also a conclusion regarding supernatural phenomena reached by The Foundation's research department.
"What's the matter? Why is no one willing to speak up and condemn me, this cold-blooded and heartless person?"
Green raised his eyebrows and spread his hands, letting them fall back against his thighs.
Dead silence.
On the circular stands, five hundred and forty-three pairs of hollow eye sockets watched him silently, without a single sound.
"Fuck."
Green put a cigarette in his mouth and took out a lighter. Perhaps influenced by the atmosphere here, he flicked the flint wheel several times, sparks flying, but it never actually lit.
"What the hell, is it damp? If I stay here too long, my bones are definitely going to ache."
Just as he was about to take the cigarette out, his fingers just touching the filter, the tip suddenly lit up.
A tiny wisp of flame had somehow ignited on its own.
Green's hand froze in mid-air.
He was silent for a few seconds, then took a drag. Smoke drifted from the corner of his mouth, swirling in the brilliant white light.
He held the cigarette before his eyes, staring at the point of flickering light, and suddenly smiled.
"Hmph."
He tilted his head back and glanced at the light fixture, which had begun to sway.
The shifting light and shadow on his face made his eyes look a bit softer, as if from the exhaustion of his biological clock, or perhaps something inexplicable.
"You all should just go ahead and die properly."
Green casually tossed the cigarette onto the ground, turned around, and walked toward the exit he had hacked out.
Behind him, the puppets on the circular stands continued to watch his retreating back in silence.
Like spectators. Like tombstones.
Crack.
The stage's wooden planks began to fracture, the cracks spreading just half a beat behind Green's footsteps, collapsing exactly a second after he stepped past.
Broken planks fell into the darkness, making hollow echoes.
As for that cigarette, all the planks around it had collapsed, yet it was lucky enough to be at the very edge, suspended alone on a surviving piece of wood.
And just then, a gust of wind blew from nowhere, causing the cigarette tip to flicker and burn a bit faster.
Finally, the lights went out.
In the darkness, only that single red point of light remained, flickering and flickering as it fell into the depths of the boundless dark.
[Moderate Evil Spirit Magnetic Field has been destroyed, the Multi-Soul Aggregation Area is about to collapse]
[You have obtained 30% equivalent of High-Purity Cursed Energy]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX current evolution: 56.9%]
[You have obtained a large amount of High-Purity Positive Energy]
[Heaven and Tyrant MAX is mutating...]
[Estimated mutation completion time: 639 hours]
[destiny value has reached maximum.]
[Infinite Module is unlocking...]
[Estimated time for full host adaptation and unlocking: 1521 hours]
Green stepped out of the spatial rift, his gaze sweeping toward the spot where the luminous entity had once been.
There was nothing there.
Only a silver lighter lay on the ground, its surface smooth as a mirror, reflecting the residual light among the ruins.
He walked over and leaned down to pick it up.
[You have received the Gift of the Tearless Puppet]
[Gift of the Tearless Puppet]
Origin: Ravensfair Town (Evil Spirit Transformation)
Holding Requirement: Green Morgan (Unique)
Trait: After lighting a cigarette, it dispels your own negative status effects. Can be used twice a day. While lit, the flame will not be extinguished by any variables.
Passive Trait: Charm toward friendly ghost-type creatures is significantly increased.
Description: Finally... I can rest in peace.
Click.
Green tried lighting a cigarette.
The flame leaped up, steady and quiet.
He took a deep breath and raised an eyebrow. Hmm, the cigarette had a bit of a minty taste now.
As for the containment matter...
He looked up, his gaze scanning the mess on the ground.
There was black fine sand remaining on the ground, like the ash of burnt joss paper, along with the masks of those two butchers.
And Mary Shaw's body—or more accurately, the remains that had crumbled into a pool of spreading black shadow after losing their spiritual nature, leaving only a cracked face skin.
The features on the face skin were hollow, gaping in pain, like a shell after the soul had been forcibly extracted.
"Do I really have to dig up this entire stone slab?" Green scratched his head.
He soon made a decision.
He leaned down to pick up the face skin, folded it, and tucked it into a compartment of his tactical belt, casually hanging the two human-skin masks on the belt as well, the metal buckles clicking into place.
He then grabbed a tablecloth from nearby and squatted down to collect some of the black sand from the butcher's disintegrated body, wrapping it into a small cloth bundle and tying it to his waist.
Having finished this, he stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, kicked through a wall, and then froze.
"Holy... shit?"
Green stared at the sight before him, momentarily speechless.
White flames covered the entire forest like a tide, licking the tree trunks and consuming the remains.
The firelight dyed half the sky a weird pale color, to say nothing of the corpses piled on the ground, scattered everywhere in layers.
And at the very top of the pile, on that small hill made of bodies, a white-haired figure stood with her back to him.
A man was kneeling before her. She was holding him by the hair with one hand, forcing his face up to look at her.
"Please... I beg you..."
Before he could finish,
The blade sliced across his throat.
Shhh—
"Gurgle..." The man clutched his bloody throat, blood gushing out from between his fingers.
The woman let go, leaving him to twitch on the ground as his life faded away.
As if sensing the gaze behind her, she tilted her head slightly, revealing half of her profile.
That head of white hair began to fade back to black from the roots.
Green leaped down from the building and landed on the ground.
The debris at his feet crackled as flames licked at it, sparks jumping onto his pant legs.
"Lucia."
The woman paused, the black color spreading to the roots until her hair returned to the way it was in his memory.
She shrugged and turned around suddenly.
A pair of weak, puppy-like eyes looked at Green, her gaze containing a bit of ignorance and innocence, like someone who had just woken up from a dream and didn't quite know what had happened.
"Huh? You called me?"
She blinked, her gaze finally falling on the surrounding scene.
"Wah! So many, so many corpses?!"
She was startled, instinctively pulling her feet back and stepping on a severed limb, then jumping away with a "Yikes."
Green looked at her.
He looked at those innocent eyes, that bewildered face, and the pile of still-twitching corpses beneath her feet.
"...It's nothing."
It seemed the perception between her and that "her" was not shared.
"Did I do this?" Lucia took a few small hops, landing lightly off the corpse pile, the remains beneath her feet making a crunching sound.
"Doesn't matter."
Green walked to the back of the vehicle, tore off the cloth strip hanging from his waist, found a new shirt in his luggage, and changed into it unhurriedly.
"Oh," Lucia responded. The silver sword in her hand turned into liquid, flowing down from her palm and seeping into the ground like mercury, disappearing without a trace.
"Well, as long as it helped you."
Green's hand paused while buttoning his shirt.
Lucia continued,
"The whispers of souls linger on you. It seems my first impression of you—no, the Priest's first impression of you—was wrong."
"You guys weren't wrong. I just conveniently let those beasts of burden who were working 24 hours a day clock out."
Mary Shaw said those souls were the town itself; simply put, they were the batteries for this supernatural town, being squeezed day after day without end. She really wasn't lying.
"Beasts of burden..." Lucia repeated the unfamiliar term.
"That's a strange way to describe it."
As she spoke, she took her glasses from her collar and put them back on.
"But it's fitting, isn't it? It's a very negative term, so I just gave their unscrupulous boss a profound lesson in physics." Green pulled open the driver's side door.
"Sounds... profound," Lucia smiled, walking around to the passenger side.
Suddenly, the phone in Green's pocket rang. He answered it while turning the key.
"Speak."
"You've entered the town, right? Have you found the hidden point?" The Old Priest's voice came from the other end, carrying obvious urgency.
"We're already finished. Get some people over here to clean up the aftermath."
"???"
On the other end of the line, the Old Priest and Drake, who was eavesdropping nearby, both froze, question marks practically appearing over their heads.
Chapter 50: The Late Ghost Rider, the Fading Town
"What?!"
What kind of efficiency is this?!
"Did you contain those evil spirit remnants?" Drakesnatched the phone and asked repeatedly.
"Is that the point?" The Old Priest swallowed hard beside him.
"No, I mean, how long has it even been?!"
Green Morgan ignored their shock. He tried to start the car but got no response; checking it, he found it was out of gas.
"Anything else?"
"No... nothing."
Green Morgan hung up the phone and pushed the door open to get out.
"What's wrong?" Lucia had just buckled her seatbelt and poked her head out to ask.
"The gas tank was pierced by a stray bullet." Green Morgan leaned down to look under the car; gasoline was pitter-pattering onto the ground.
He took a puff of his cigarette. As ash fell, he suddenly thought of something and quickly reached out to catch it.
"Then what—" Lucia's words cut off abruptly.
At the end of the road, a ball of fire was approaching at high speed.
Her pupils constricted, her expression instantly turning cold. In her lowered palm, white flames quietly flickered to life.
"...Spirit of Vengeance."
"Damn, we can't be this unlucky."
Green Morgan also narrowed his eyes, staring at the newcomer.
The ball of fire grew clearer; it was a burning motorcycle.
A black skeletal frame, with a skeletal rider sitting on the low-slung seat.
On the path he traversed, he left behind scorched tire marks like hell's brand upon the mortal world.
The motorcycle drifted in front of the car and braked to a halt sideways.
The rider kicked down the stand, dismounted, and stood before the car, silently sizing the two of them up.
Within the hollow sockets of his eternally burning skull was a gaze that felt substantial—as if a single look could ignite a sinner's heart and burn them to ash.
But clearly, the man and woman before him were not affected in the slightest.
"What are you looking at, motherfucker? Arriving this late—was there a traffic jam on the highway?"
Green Morgan spoke up directly.
This single sentence caused Irene's cold expression to crack slightly.
She turned to look at Green Morgan. 'Wait, are you really that brave? That evil aura on you can't even be hidden!'
The Ghost Rider walked up to him.
Green Morgan calmly flicked his cigarette ash and looked at him.
The Ghost Rider leaned his face in close, and an eerie sniffing sound came from his hollow nasal cavity.
He tilted his head, seemingly a bit confused.
"Do you have any manners? Your head is on fire and you're getting this damn close to me. You're singeing my hair."
Green Morgan blew a puff of smoke into his face and then unceremoniously pushed him away.
The Ghost Rider was stunned.
He hesitated.
Then, he fell into a strange state of system failure.
And then, he turned his gaze toward Irene inside the car.
"Tch!" Irene's expression changed, and she glared at him with gritted teeth. At the roots of her hair, White began to spread quietly.
But she soon froze.
Because Green Morgan stood in front of her, his tall silhouette blocking the direct stare of those Penance Stares.
"What do you want with my ally?"
"..."
The Ghost Rider let out a frustrated snort of breath laced with sparks.
A wasted trip.
He got nothing out of it.
He turned to leave.
"You're just gonna intimidate someone and then leave? Shouldn't you compensate a good person?" Green Morgan's voice came from behind him.
"I just fought three hundred rounds with evil spirits. Is this how you do things? Where's your professional ethics!"
The Ghost Rider stopped in his tracks.
He turned his head mechanically to look at Green Morgan.
It was hard to imagine how a skull could look so 'dumbfounded.'
Is he... trying to shake me down?
"Pfft!"
Irene in the car couldn't hold it in anymore.
Both of them turned their gaze toward her at the same time.
"Please, continue." She covered her mouth and turned her head to look at the burning forest outside the window, the corners of her mouth unable to stay down.
"What... do you want?"
The Ghost Rider spoke, his voice sounding like it was squeezed out of burning charcoal—raspy and filled with sparks.
"So honest?" Green Morgan raised an eyebrow, laughing inwardly.
His eyes, however, unceremoniously glanced behind the other party at that Harley Hellfire. Just sitting there, it looked like a sleeping Beast.
The Ghost Rider's skeletal jaw dropped with a 'clack.'
Wait, you want the tool of my trade?
"No!!"
"Then stick that big flaming cock of yours into the gas tank and fill it up for me."
"Or we can trade. I'll give you all the equipment in this car. Seeing you swing that shitty chain around like some S&M freak... you're broke as hell."
"..."
A moment later,
Green Morgan was driving that hell cycle, speeding along the forest path. The roar of the engine felt exceptionally good.
Lucia's small frame sat in front of him, her eyes squinted against the wind.
The morning mist was dispersed, and dew-dampened leaves were ignited by passing sparks, leaving a trail of embers behind them.
As the 'qualification' for inheriting this vehicle, Green Morgan had gained a mark bestowed by the Ghost Rider.
It wasn't clear if the other party just liked the look of him,
But simply put, if the human host possessed by the Angel of Vengeance within that Ghost Rider died, It would come looking for Green Morgan to make him the next host—or have Green Morgan choose one for It.
"Why does the seat under my butt feel so hot?" Luciasuddenly spoke, her tone tinged with confusion.
"What do you think?"
Lucia's body stiffened.
She looked down and confirmed exactly what that 'wicked thing' was. Her body began to tremble as she tried to shift away.
"...Don't move."
"O-okay."
She blushed and leaned forward, curling herself into a small ball.
"I should have chosen to sit in the back..."
She whispered dejectedly to herself, wondering why she had chosen to sit in the front.
"Was it your idea?"
She clutched her chest, asking silently in her heart.
It must be. How could I... No, I cannot have such worldly desires. Everything I have belongs to the Lord...
The wind whistled past.
The temperature beneath her was still rising.
In the sweltering silence, there was only the panting of the engine and the crackle of sparks.
Lucia was the first to break.
"Why... aren't you afraid of that Angel of Vengeance?"
The Penance Stare, by looking directly into the target's eyes, could read all memories and sins and then burn the soul with Hellfire, making the target repeatedly experience all the pain they had caused their victims.
Logically speaking, this should have been Green Morgan's nemesis.
"Because I don't have a single shred of regret for the things I've done or the people I've killed. The Penance Starecannot judge my right or wrong." Green Morgan's voice came from above her head.
Lucia tilted her head back to look at him. Her dark eyes were level with his jaw, her pupils reflecting the firelight.
"Do you really not have even a little?"
Green Morgan gave a light chuckle.
"Who knows. Maybe it's because of something else. Hard to say."
"Hmph, riddler."
Lucia puffed out her cheeks like a hamster, finally showing a bit of the expression someone her age should have.
To be honest, in Green Morgan's eyes, she had always seemed like a child pretending to be an adult.
"Are we going back?" she asked, her tone a bit melancholy.
This journey had been much more interesting than the boredom of the academy. She found herself a bit reluctant to leave—whether it was the events, or... the person?
"I'm going to do a few small missions, but first, let's go to the nearest convenience store to buy a can of Red Bull. My eyelids are starting to get rebellious."
"Are you going to kill people again?!"
"We'll split the reward fifty-fifty. You'll get an average of two hundred thousand U.S. dollars per job. Think about how many people who deserve saving you could help with that."
"Let's set off right now!" Lucia switched sides in a second.
"No more mercy for the world?"
"Oh, I just..."
She stopped mid-sentence.
The back of her head pressed against Green Morgan's chest.
Only then did she realize that by tilting her head back to talk to him, she was leaning almost her entire weight against him. Her ears flushed hot, and she lowered her head, her voice dropping softly.
"I want to do more meaningful things."
"Oh, that sounds really boring."
"Hmph! Still, partnering with you... isn't bad."
"I know that, of course."
"So... can you endure it?"
"The little lamb smells too good. I'm already restraining my 'appetite.'"
"Then... I... I don't know anything."
Behind them, the grand fireworks gradually swallowed the shadows in the forest.
The town buildings on both sides were disintegrating like heatless ash, rising up, longing to touch the edges of the night sky.
This soul-less 'Ravens Fair' was dying.
The hell cycle swept past the town exit.
Among the grass by the roadside, a standing sign burst into flames with a 'bang.'
The writing on it was burned to a charred black, and the wooden board shattered and fell.
That ball of fire drove straight onto the boundless moonlit highway.