It was nearly dawn, and the city guards atop the wall were preparing for their shift change.
Suddenly, through the torrential rain outside the city, the piercing wail of a woman erupted:
"Uuuhuhu... huhu..."
The sound was exceptionally desolate.
The guard captain, who had been joking with his subordinates, frowned. "What's the situation?" he muttered, peering through a crenel. His soldiers followed suit, curious, looking out through the arrow slits and distant-viewing lenses.
Through the relentless curtain of rain, they spotted a young village woman covered in mud and water, lying in a pit not far from the towering walls.
She was sobbing hysterically, her arms clutching an abnormally large-headed infant.
"Waaaah... my child!"
She cried so bitterly that two horrifying streaks of bloody tears streamed from her eyes. "You died so tragically, my son!"
"Captain," a soldier stammered, looking at his leader. "Should we... go out and check on her?"
"No, stay put," the captain replied sternly without looking back. "Don't you know there are only forests and swamps around this section? No one lives here. A woman appearing out of nowhere is wrong. Ignore her for now; just observe."
"Yes, sir," the soldier replied.
Outside, the strange woman clutched the infant with one arm while using the other to frantically claw at the wet, black mud. Her movements grew increasingly violent.
"Aaaaah!"
With a sudden shriek, she tossed the infant aside and dug into the mire with both hands. In an instant, she had carved out a shallow pit. Then, with a face twisted in a ghoulish grin, she grabbed the infant and slammed it face-down into the mud.
BOOM!!
CRACK-CRACKLE!
Thunder rolled as a blinding flash of lightning turned the world a shocking blue.
In an instant, the hundreds of men atop the wall clearly saw the infant buried in the mud... it possessed the face of a grown man.
That face was the exact likeness of their guard captain.
"What is this?!"
The captain shuddered, his face turning ghostly pale. At that moment, the woman abruptly looked up, her bloodshot eyes staring at the men on the wall with a sinister grin:
"Kekeke... Hehehe..."
WHOOSH!
An arrow suddenly streaked down from the wall, snapping her neck. The wound produced no blood, only gray-black sludge and rainwater. Even after decapitation, her headless body did not fall; she used her last strength to pack the mud tightly over the infant in the pit before finally collapsing into the murky water.
The archer stood frozen in terror at the sight.
"Quickly, save the captain!" a panicked cry erupted nearby.
"What!" The archer's expression shifted as he stowed his bow and sprinted toward the commotion.
Within a few steps, he saw several soldiers pinned to the ground, desperately trying to restrain the captain's thrashing body while another applied a medical talisman.
The captain, perfectly fine moments ago, now had eyes wide with agony. Thick, gray sludge bubbled and surged uncontrollably from his nose and mouth.
"Gurgle... Blegh... Cough..."
The guard captain was suffocating.
"Move! Get out of the way!"
The resident military medic hurried over with his medical kit. He knelt beside the captain, pressing two fingers against the man's throat and jaw.
A few seconds later, he spoke grimly:
"The trachea is collapsed, yet the jaw is bulging. This mud... it's as if it's being manifested from inside his mouth... Gasp!!"
The medic's eyes bulged. He clutched his throat and vomited a massive heap of filthy sludge before collapsing, following the captain's fate in a violent seizure.
"Doctor! What's happening..."
The archer rushed to help, but as he reached out, his face contorted. He grabbed his own throat, body trembling uncontrollably.
"Aaaah..."
With a muffled groan of agony, the archer spat out a thick glob of blood-streaked mud and fell heavily to the ground.
That thud acted like a starting pistol. All soldiers present began clutching their necks as if infected. Gray-black sludge erupted from their eyes, nostrils, mouths, and ears. Amidst agonized screams, they collapsed one by one.
CRACK-BOOM!!
Thunder roared again, bathing the world in a brilliant, searing glare. In that light, hundreds of soldiers lay strewn across the wall, their bodies twitching as sludge continuously geysered from their facial orifices.
Half an hour later, the rain tapered off.
The relief guard arrived in formation, only to witness a scene of absolute horror. Along this thousand-meter stretch of wall, a thick layer of ashen mud blanketed the stone. Within the mire lay hundreds of blue-faced corpses, their eyes wide in death.
Had it not been for their uniforms, they would have been unrecognizable. Their expressions were twisted into something entirely non-human, as if they had endured unimaginable agony before the end.
"This... this is..."
The incoming captain stared blankly at the sea of corpses, his mind paralyzed by shock.
WHOOSH—
A desolate wind, carrying bits of debris, swept in from the distant wilderness, fluttering the stunned captain's clothes as it passed over the graveyard of his men.
He looked against the wind toward the wet, grassy slopes beyond the wall, his heart racing with unease.
"What... what happened?"
Suddenly, sensing something, he snapped his gaze to the right.
On a gentle slope hundreds of meters away, a pair of headless figures—a man and a woman—stood silently hand-in-hand.
"What the hell?!"
The captain blinked, and the pair vanished instantly, as if they had never been more than a mirage. Shaking his head to clear it, his gaze caught something on a flagpole at a bend in the wall just dozens of meters away.
At the very tip of the slender pole, a man hung by a thick noose. His bloodshot eyes bulged and his long tongue lolled out.
CREAK—
As if sensing the captain's gaze, the hanging man's body twitched, swinging slightly as he stared back with a deathly intensity.
"Ah!"
The captain recoiled in terror. Losing his footing in the thick sludge, he slipped and fell hard.
"Captain, are you alright?" a nearby soldier asked, rushing to pull him up. "Did you... see something strange?"
"I saw..."
The captain gasped, staring back at the flagpole, but the hanging man was gone.
"Eh? How... why is he gone?"
He scratched his head, utterly bewildered. The soldier supporting him offered some comfort: "You probably just haven't rested enough. It must have been a hallucination."
Before he could finish, the soldier froze. On a steep cliff across from the wall, a strange young girl was dancing joyfully. Sensing his gaze, she turned and offered a radiant smile. Then, after a short sprint, she leaped from the top of the dozens-of-meters-high precipice.
THUD!
After the dull impact, the girl lay twisted and mangled among the rocks, her blood splattered across the stones. Even as shattered white bone fragments pierced through her skin, her pale face maintained that same sun-drenched, brilliant smile.
Her wide, watery eyes were locked directly onto the soldier.
"This...!"
Atop the wall, the soldier rubbed his eyes vigorously. When he looked again, the spot was empty; even the bloodstains had vanished. It was as if everything he had witnessed was truly nothing more than a hallucination.
He was not alone. The relief captain and almost every soldier present experienced various supernatural phenomena visible only to themselves. These terrifying sights vanished as quickly as they appeared, as if their only purpose was to incite fear.
The city guard was unaware that they were not the only ones facing these anomalies.
...
Inside the city.
Citizens everywhere were encountering large-scale hauntings and even more perilous supernatural incidents. The sheer scale of the horror could only be described as a Resurrection of Ghosts.
"Monster! There's a monster!"
"Run! Run!"
"Help me!"
GURGLE, SQUELCH, SQUELCH
In broad daylight, amidst a crowded street, a massive glob of bloody sludge covered in dozens of eyes manifested out of nowhere. It rolled forward with a roar, lunging at the terrified crowd.
Elsewhere...
"Ah! My dog!"
A normal pet dog suddenly spasmed. Before the owner's eyes, its fur rotted away as its body twisted and bloated, mutating into a several-meter-high wolf-beast that howled at the sky. Following the cry, it turned, baring rows of jagged, yellowed teeth, and shrieked as it pounced on its horrified mistress.
"...Emergency broadcast..."
"...Unknown monsters are appearing in every city..."
Enormous floating Witchcraft scrolls hovered over the urban districts, flickering with brilliant light as they broadcasted news regarding the widespread anomalies. Below, citizens hiding in various corners of the city looked up, focusing on the dignified witch announcer on the screens.
"...Current estimates suggest this is a massive curse attack launched by the Sea of Blood..."
"...Please stay indoors. Do not go outside..."
"...Holy Church Legion witch-soldiers have been mobilized..."
"...To conduct a city-wide extermination of all monsters..."
Hearing the witch's serious tone, the citizens felt their racing hearts ease slightly. Those monsters were terrifying, but against the renowned Holy Church Legion, they wouldn't stand a chance. No matter how fierce, they would be turned to ash!
"...Do not go outside..."
"...Shortly, there will be..."
"...Static... SIZZLE..."
The images on the massive Witchcraft scrolls in the sky suddenly began to blur.
"Hmm? What's happening?"
"This is strange. What's going on?"
"Why is it doing that now?"
The citizens frowned at the screens, a wave of unease washing over them.
"...There will be... SIZZLE... There will be..."
Abruptly, a series of grotesque images flashed across the giant scrolls. They showed people laughing maniacally, sobbing, self-mutilating, and dying horrific deaths. The sight made everyone's skin crawl.
Just as the panic reached a breaking point, the broadcast stabilized. The dignified female witch reappeared, smiling calmly.
'Maybe the scroll just had a glitch and finally recovered,' the citizens thought, exhaling in relief.
The witch on the screen continued:
"...Everyone, please do not worry..."
"...Soon, we will gradually come to your doors..."
As she said this, her body suddenly spasmed. Her expression turned malevolent as her eyes rolled back, showing nothing but bloodshot whites as she stared through the screen at the millions of terrified citizens.
"...And we will... KILL YOU ALL!!"
"HIHIHIHIHIHI!!"
The witch's mouth tore open in an exaggerated slit reaching both ears. As black blood geysered from her eyes, nose, and mouth, she slammed her hands on the desk and shrieked with insane laughter:
"HAHAHA! AHAHAHAHA!!"
While the citizens were paralyzed with fear, an agonizing sense of suffocation, one that made their very souls tremble, suddenly descended from the heavens above.
Under the crushing weight of this suffocating pressure, millions of Glorious Kingdom citizens were suddenly seized by violent, throbbing headaches.
"AAAAH!"
"The pain! It's too much!"
"What is happening?! My head is splitting!"
Clutching their heads in agony, the people instinctively looked toward the sky.
BOOM!
Bodies trembled and pupils dilated as minds went blank.
"Is this... the end of the world?!"
The populace stared up at the incomprehensibly darkened sky. Suspended in the heavens was a milky-white crescent moon. Across its cold, desolate surface, a narrow, slit-like eye had opened, peering down at the earth.
At the center of its bloodshot, pale gaze, it was constantly erupting with boundless gloom and hatred that made the soul shudder. It was as if the eighteen levels of Hell were boiling within that eye, screaming to pour every horror and impurity onto the mortal realm.
This was the celestial phenomenon manifested by Sachiko, who had undergone a rapid evolution, barely pulling herself up to the Resplendent Moon level.
Under the gaze of Sachiko's Lunar Eye, millions of people suddenly contorted in fury. They roared at the sky, abruptly mutating into Curse Vessels filled with infinite malice. It was as if every restraint in their hearts had been shattered, releasing their full potential. They began to vent their cruelty upon those who remained normal, employing every brutal method imaginable to unleash their madness.
As these countless Curse Vessels committed their atrocities, the demonic curse began to spread and evolve even faster. Sachiko, as the source of the curse, grew increasingly eldritch and terrifying, fed by the unending power of their resentment.
Yet, most bizarrely, despite every city in the Glorious Kingdom suffering these supernatural disasters, Holy Sword Sun had yet to appear. Even as the nation's high-ranking officials attempted to reach him through every possible channel, there was no response.
It was as if that Shining Sun deity had completely vanished.
...
Deep within the Forest of the Dead, Sea of Blood.
"HUFF... HUFF..."
Loneng, shrouded in streams of blazing fire, sprinted at extreme speed through the eerie woods. To maintain his momentum, he didn't bother dodging the massive trees in his path. He simply smashed through them head-first.
Loneng had abandoned the concept of evasion entirely. He charged forward like a berserker, a blur of speed and flame. His skull was as if forged from a super-alloy. Whether it was rock or ancient timber, everything crumbled like brittle foam under his hyper-velocity impact.
CRACK!
Another ten-meter-thick tree was bored through, leaving a gaping hole in its trunk.
"What on earth is that guy's background?"
Loneng shook the wood splinters from his body as he sprinted, his mind racing back to the masked humanoid monster that had appeared out of nowhere. Against that creature, his Super Game Character Physique, which was supposed to be immune to pain, had failed utterly. He felt fragile and breakable.
Every attack from that thing, whether a blade strike or a punch, felt like a spike driven into his soul. It was a pain that bypassed his physical traits and struck directly at his spirit, leaving him trembling in agony.
"Ten consecutive Existence Erasure shots couldn't kill him. That's just toxic as hell, damn it!" Loneng cursed through gritted teeth. "Not even the Captain could tank ten concept-erasing shots. What kind of freak is this?!"
Ten minutes ago, he had watched Qunce unleash every move in his arsenal, only for that masked monster to tank the attacks and charge straight at him. The creature had reached out and brutally ripped out half of Qunce's spine.
Qunce was left writhing on the ground in tragic agony, twitching like a worm doused in boiling water. Then, the masked man, reeking of thick blood, had begun to use a chainsaw on Qunce, starting from the feet.
The scene, straight out of a horror movie, had nearly shattered Loneng's resolve. Seizing the moment while the monster was preoccupied with torturing Qunce, Loneng surrendered to his terror, abandoned his teammate, and fled.
He ran until his legs turned to jelly, only stopping to gulp down a recovery potion to ease his fatigue. Once his strength returned slightly, he began glancing left and right, his eyes wide with extreme panic as he scanned the pitch-black forest around him.
He felt as though that masked demon was lurking in the shadows, watching him with a mocking sneer.
"No! I can't stay here!"
Loneng pushed himself off a tree trunk and bolted in a new direction.
WHOOSH!
Another ten minutes passed.
He reached a sparse, gloomy patch of woods. The area was eerily open; aside from a thick layer of withered leaves underfoot and a few scattered shrubs, there was nowhere to hide.
"Hah... huff..."
Loneng gasped for air, forcing a jagged laugh. "Heh, I've run over a hundred kilometers. In a forest this huge, there's no way you can find me now."
He took a leisurely step forward. Then, he felt his foot snag on something: a tripwire.
SNAP! SWISH!
A steel spring, tensioned into a semi-circle and hidden on a nearby branch, whipped toward him before he could even react.
SQUELCH!
"Aaaah!!" Loneng screamed in agony.
The tip of the spring was rigged with three daggers burning with black flames, surrounded by rows of dense, hooked black thorns. It looked like a trident forged in Hell. Now, this trident had pinned Loneng's left hand firmly to his waist. The three flaming daggers had pierced through his skin and internal organs, protruding out through his lower back.
Instantly, blood geysered from the horrific wound.
"Aaaaah! Aaaaah!"
Loneng couldn't bear the pain; it was enough to drive him insane. He collapsed into a semi-crouch on the ground, shrieking. The sheer agony paralyzed his mind, preventing him from wondering why tools that usually couldn't even scratch his skin were now causing such devastating damage.
The answer lay in the black flames flickering on the dagger tips. That fire was condensed from pure hatred: it was essentially an extremely simplified version of [Malice Core Overheat].
This fire, therefore, was the mortal enemy of all living things.
SNAP! CRACKLE!
At that moment, the large, towering Mox inexplicably stepped out from behind a sparse, low-lying tree that couldn't possibly conceal him, slowly approaching Loneng. This sight was eerily unnatural.
However, this was also one of Mox's killing techniques.
Seeing him appear, Loneng immediately croaked: "You actually caught up here... You truly are a monster!"
He gritted through the pain and tried to take a deep breath.
HISS!
In an instant, a ball of flames, reaching over ten thousand degrees Celsius, materialized out of thin air within his mouth. Loneng, at the end of his rope, clearly intended to incinerate his opponent with a single fiery breath.
Unfortunately, Mox didn't give him the chance. With a flick of his palm, he manifested a multi-barreled rotary machine gun, shimmering with ethereal black flames of pure fury. He aimed it directly at Loneng.
"..."
Loneng's puffed-up face turned pale with fear. He frantically raised his remaining right arm to shield himself.
In that very second, the machine gun fired.
DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA!!!
Close to two hundred terrifying shots per second instantly engulfed Loneng's body. The already fearsome damage of the projectiles, coupled with the enchantment of hatred-fire, became even more terrifying.
In just a second or two, the rotary machine gun's assault shredded Loneng's right arm, obliterated his teeth, and tore away his jaw. The high-temperature flames he had almost unleashed were instead forced back into his throat.
Finally...
BANG!
BOOM!!!
The tightly condensed fireball violently erupted inside Loneng's skeletal, incomplete head.
In an instant, his entire body was engulfed, becoming a humanoid torch.
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH!!!
Terrifying flames spread rapidly, transforming the surrounding forest into a scorching blaze in a short period.
Mox, engulfed in the heat, confirmed Loneng's death, then immediately turned and departed.
...
Hundreds of kilometers away.
Dueng walked briskly through the silent forest, his expression grim and his mood heavy.
Earlier, at the Corpse Amusement Park, while finding Grandma Wolf had been a laborious effort, her combat power wasn't high, so it wasn't particularly difficult to deal with. Overall, there wasn't much danger.
However, when the three of them had gathered all the materials and journeyed to Exiles' Prison to forge the Blade of Lamentation, it was as if they had triggered some curse. They inexplicably drew the attention of a vicious masked man, who relentlessly pursued them.
After a desperate chase of life and death, they barely escaped by detonating the colossal lava lake beneath the prison, but they were forced to scatter.
Qunce and Loneng might not have known the masked man's identity, but Dueng did.
That man was none other than the protagonist of the "Darkness Monday" horror film series: Mirage Lake murderer Mox Wohsi.
But this undead being... had absolutely no connection to "The Legend of Ansel".
One was a fantasy world with a magical tone, the other a modern urban horror slasher film.
The two worlds didn't even match in art style, so how were they connected?
How did he intrude into this world?
It was simply too outlandish.
What made Dueng even more disturbed was that this intruding Mox's combat power completely overwhelmed the three of them several times over.
Mox was nowhere near this strong in the original work!
That defensive power... Even when he used his ultimate move, [Breath of the Light's Fourteen Forms—Lightspeed Multi-Slash], raining down a furious barrage of attacks, even amplified by lightspeed, he couldn't inflict a single scratch on the blood-soaked leather jacket the opponent wore.
If he hadn't risked his life with a close-quarters attack using his Mydrintium claws, it would have been nearly impossible for all three of them combined to leave much of a mark on that strengthened version of Mox.
Especially the black flames he occasionally used, which simply countered his bloodline. Basically, a single hit would drain a massive amount of Dueng's life force to recover. It was exceptionally painful, a pain that made one's soul tremble.
But even so, Dueng's beastly intuition subtly sensed that they might not have even faced the opponent's full combat power.
"That guy..."
Dueng suddenly stopped, speaking with resentment, "He's completely toying with us!"
Then he looked around and said: "I don't know what their situation is now, whether they're alive or dead."
[Able to know the life and death situation of teammates at any time]: this was an ability only an 'Elite-level' Reincarnator team captain could possess. As Dueng, a 'Regular-level' Reincarnator squad leader, the lowest rank in Divine Space, he did not yet have this authority.
Before, when Suhan was still around, with his high-tech equipment, communication between squad members was relatively easy.
But now...
"What exactly caused Suhan's death?"
Dueng continued to walk briskly while furrowing his brow in thought. "Was it a cursed Witchcraft from an original character? Or... an intruder like Mox?
"Ugh, what bad luck. Intruders are legendary; countless Reincarnators in Divine Space never encounter one from birth to death, yet my 'Regular-level' squad runs into one. This is truly f*cking..."
RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE!
At this moment, a soft rustling suddenly came from a nearby bush.
"Hm?" Dueng immediately stopped and adopted a combat stance, warily looking towards the sound.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Six finely engraved Mydrintium claws suddenly extended from between his fingers.
Then, Dueng saw Qunce slowly rise from the lush green bushes under the moonlight.
Next, Qunce, with an ashen face covered in bloodstains, stiffly and slowly turned his neck, staring blankly with lifeless eyes.
Seeing his teammate in such a gloomy, deathly state, Dueng immediately whispered in a deep voice: "Qunce, you are now..."
WHOOSH!
Before he could finish, Qunce soared into the air and flew straight towards him, slamming into Dueng with a strong smell of blood.
BANG!!
The air vibrated continuously from the impact. The force of the strike was so immense that Dueng almost staggered and fell backward.
After steadying himself, he instinctively lifted Qunce entirely.
"Ah?! No, this is wrong!"
His palms felt cold and sticky. Dueng looked down, only to find his hands covered in blood.
It was then he realized that Qunce now... was only half a body. Everything below his chest was completely gone, only a bloody, gooey spinal column grasped by Dueng's hands.
"Already... dead?"
At that moment, a tall, masked man with an indifferent face emerged from the bush.
It was Mox.
He looked at Dueng, who was slowly laying down the mangled remains not far away, and without a word, drew his Mountain-Cleaving Blade from his waist.
Dueng narrowed his eyes and said coldly, "Damn your mother!"
The usually calm Mox suddenly erupted with an incredibly terrifying and chilling killing intent.
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH!
Countless branches and leaves on hundreds of surrounding trees suddenly swayed without wind. Even the air temperature inexplicably dropped to freezing point.
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!
The damp ground suddenly froze, turning a dirty white. Under the cover of this fierce and terrifying killing intent, even the enraged Dueng instinctively shuddered. His anger inexplicably plummeted, even giving rise to a sense of fear.
"Ugh... I seem to have angered him." The corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably, and he felt a faint regret in his heart.
In that instant, Mox appeared before Dueng and fiercely slashed his face with a saber.
CRACK!!
The area within several hundred meters instantly exploded into a vacuum. Within this range, dozens of hundreds of large trees were transformed into splinters and sawdust in a single instant.
And Dueng, the moment he was struck by the saber, turned into a bloody skeletal figure. His upper body was a silvery-white skeleton, his lower body was blurred flesh and blood.
Indeed, with just one strike, Mox had reduced all visible flesh and blood on Dueng's upper body to particles imperceptible to the human eye. And the intense pain caused by this blow almost shattered Dueng's soul.
Next, Mox attacked like a raging storm.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Dueng's silvery-white skeleton resembled a ping pong ball. In one instant, it was violently pulverized against the vast clouds thousands of meters in the sky, and in the next, it was cleaved through the solid rock and earth below, leaving a trench tens to hundreds of meters long.
Afterward, Mox stomped with one foot, causing the ground beneath him to collapse, blasting the resulting debris skyward through the deep strata.
Moving at a speed vastly superior to Mox, Dueng now had zero ability to resist. He could only passively endure this utterly hopeless beating and the horrific pain that completely submerged him.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
This one-sided beating dragged on for a full half minute. In just those thirty seconds, the land spanning over ten li was pockmarked with countless craters and fissures. The previously lush forest was completely pulverized into ash. The severity of the scene was akin to a carpet bombing run by a hundred fighter jets.
Simultaneously during that half-minute, Dueng, who was floundering in a sea of pain, completely lost consciousness. Not only had his brain already been shattered into a bloody mist, but his soul itself was tortured by the intense pain until it collapsed.
Finally, Mox stopped his onslaught.
At his feet, Dueng, now nothing more than a polished, exquisite skeleton, had lost all signs of life. The Lone Wolf Reincarnation Squad was utterly annihilated.
Mox, looking down, seemed to detect something. He crouched, used the tip of his Mountain-Cleaving Blade to pry open the wrist joint of the skeleton, and lifted a small black wristwatch before observing it.
BUZZ!
A faint spacetime ripple suddenly flickered from the watch.
"Hmm?!" Seraphine, stationed far away across dimensions from the world of Ansel, paused. "This is... a Divine Space watch, carrying a profound spacetime ripple."
After remotely sensing this peculiar object via Mox's senses, she immediately transmitted a message:
"Preserve that wristwatch carefully. Do not move it recklessly. Wait for my return to study it."
A moment later, Mox's dry, clumsy mental message arrived:
"...Understood..."
Only after the task was done did Seraphine slowly turn her head, looking toward the Hell of Pain before her, a place entirely unlike any legend or myth.