Chapter 184

Chapter 184: Attack of the Enders

Dog’s cracked, gong-like roar exploded like thunder and echoed through the shabby little house. The attackers in tattered black robes, who looked like ascetics, were clearly shocked when they heard a Abyssal Demon speak rational human words—and in the next second, something even more shocking happened.

Shirley flicked the chain. She swung the Abyssal Hound in her hand in a wide circle and smashed it toward the nearest “Ender”.

She actually did not know much about the Enders. She only knew in a vague way that they were also a group of cultists, even more crazy and extreme. The “lord” they worshiped was even Subspace itself. Shirley did not know why a bunch of such madmen suddenly crawled out in the city-state of Pland, or why these madmen had found her. But that was not important—

Her experience crawling through gutters and back alleys had taught her one rule: when you met danger, you did not waste time thinking about things you could not figure out. Swinging your arms and beating the hell out of it worked better than anything else.

The huge Abyssal Hound howled through the air like a cannonball. In an instant it smashed into one of the robed “preachers”. After a dull thud of flesh and bone, the attacker flew backward, slammed hard into a pillar not far away, twisted into a strange angle, and then slid to the floor.

Shirley yanked on the chain and dragged Dog back to her side, then swung him again toward the next enemy.

But in that brief moment, the black-robed figures had already reacted. They clearly had more combat experience than the lowest the Suntists Shirley had met before. Even though this rare fighting style had stunned them for a second, they still quickly pulled themselves together and scattered the instant the Abyssal Hound came whipping toward them.

One of them dodged past Dog’s bony skull by a hair’s breadth, slipped to the side, and raised a hand to point at Shirley. From under the hood came a hoarse, gloomy shout: “Thou Shalt Grow Weary!”

“What the hell are you mumbling about?!” Shirley was already in a foul mood. Hearing that muttering voice made her even angrier. She stepped, twisted her waist, and turned. The chain in her hand whistled out. Dog’s skeletal body slammed into the screeching Ender and sent him flying.

But in the few swings it took to do that, Shirley suddenly felt something wrong with her body.

She felt a bit tired. It was not very serious, but the tiredness was real.

At the same time, her head started to buzz. Her anger rushed in her chest like a wild beast she could not hold back. A violent urge to drop all defense, charge straight in, and die together with the enemy slammed in her mind. It almost made her dizzy.

A strange creaking, cracking sound suddenly reached her ears. Shirley turned toward the sound and saw the attacker she had just smashed away getting up from the floor. He was covered in blood. Many of his bones were clearly broken, yet this “preacher” seemed to ignore pain that would have made an ordinary person faint. Blood still sprayed from him as he raised both hands high: “My hands and feet shall not die to the flesh—The curse!”

After that muttered shout, the Enders around them seemed to gain endless courage and strength. In the next second, Shirley watched in shock as these madmen’s bodies started to change.

Their skinny, bony frames began to swell and twist. Thick bone spurs and tough, whip-like muscle cords grew from their limbs and stretched out like weapons. Their bodies tore and reshaped in great pain, turning ugly and monstrous, twisted and profane.

Yet these fanatics seemed to fall into a strange ecstasy in this pain. They cheered, shouted, praised—and then they rushed at Shirley.

“What the hell are these things?!” Shirley of course did not sit still and let them do as they pleased. The moment the first Ender’s body began to change, she swung the chain so fast it hummed and hurled Dog at the closest enemy. The impact broke the target’s tendons and bones. He did not die on the spot, but his mutation stopped at once.

However, just that single attack made Shirley feel even more clearly tired than before. A sharper, more painful wave of violent impulse stabbed through her mind.

She even began to hear noises that did not exist. Every muscle in her body felt like it was being gnawed by invisible teeth, full of cruel pain, as if every fiber was about to tear itself free.

“These ‘preachers’ are madmen who chose to embrace Subspace! Their words and bodies carry corruption!” Dog’s voice suddenly rang in Shirley’s mind, more anxious than ever. “Don’t let them keep yapping! Whoever opens his mouth, you smash him! Don’t look into their eyes. Don’t listen to their shouting!”

In a flash, a cold gleam appeared at the edge of Shirley’s vision. She moved on instinct, trying to dodge, but a bone spur still grazed her and stabbed into her arm. She hurriedly swung the chain to strike back and felt her hands and feet grow twice as heavy as before. This time, even black afterimages started to appear in her field of vision.

Another Ender took the chance to spread both arms and chant a vicious blessing: “Thou Shalt Not Heal…”

“Bang!”

“Get the hell out!” Shirley swung the dog in a full arc and smashed this raving preacher, who had already turned into a monster covered in bone spurs, straight into the wall. In the next second, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her back.

A spear-like bone spur stabbed from a sneaky blind angle and drove deep into her back. If her body had not, after years of a Demon symbiotic pact, grown as tough and sturdy as a Abyssal Demon’s, that blow might have pierced straight through her.

Shirley’s body pitched forward against her will. Dog threw himself in front of the attacker who moved in to chase, opened his jaws, and spat out a blast of highly corrosive black flame mixed with acid.

The attacker was forced back for the moment, but Shirley’s state was terrible. She braced herself against the nearby wall, feeling blood run down her back without stopping, and feeling her muscles twitch out of control.

The corruption from the Enders was still working. Even though the Abyssal Demons’ resistance made her endure this Anomaly far better than an ordinary person, she had been caught off guard at the start and hit with weakening and The curse. Now she could clearly feel her body slowly sliding toward… a runaway state.

Her blood was boiling. The noise in her head grew louder and louder. Her muscles kept spasming. She saw smoke rising from the wound on her arm. In that smoke, the torn flesh did not heal. Instead, ugly, disgusting flesh buds grew out bit by bit. Her blood writhed around the wound as if it had a life of its own, crawling and clumping, taking shape.

The wound on her back was probably in the same state.

“…Damn it, all that effort and I only took down three…”

Shirley spat blood to the side and grinned in a pained smile as she muttered.

“Already not bad,” Dog’s grumbling voice came from beside her. The Abyssal Hound sounded weak and listless. As Shirley’s first barrier against corruption, he suffered even more from the Enders’s influence. “These are priest-level ascetics, not the kind of rabble who crowd into a basement and let someone talk them into donating money… Fighting them like this was almost like storming the Cathedral in the city… You did not lose out at all.”

“Damn it, a bunch of grown men this big, ganging up on one harmless little young lady like me—Lord above, that’s shameless.” Shirley lifted her head. Her face was covered in blood as she stared at the Enders gathering around her. Only viciousness shone in her eyes. “What did I ever do to you?”

Three Enders were still standing. All of them had turned into skeletal, blood-soaked monsters. Their tattered robes hung from their mutated bodies like The shroud, making them look even more grim and frightening in the dimness.

They did not answer Shirley, of course. Hunters did not bargain with prey.

Shirley coughed up blood and lifted her head to look around.

There had been a lot of noise in the fight, yet no Guardian had come, and not a single neighbor had been disturbed. Outside the window, the world was still hazy. The street was eerily quiet.

Clearly, some kind of “barrier” covered the whole house. The attackers had done their prep work very well before they struck.

All the furniture was destroyed.

The walls and pillars were ready to collapse.

The only wardrobe had been smashed to pieces by a stray hit in the fight. The few clothes inside, along with the little drawer where she hid her coins, had fallen to the floor, soaked in filthy blood and eaten away by acid.

The most valuable thing in the house, the oil lamp, had also been knocked over. The glass shade lay shattered across the floor.

“I only have so few things, and you still smashed them to bits,” Shirley finally could not hold herself up anymore. Her body slowly slid toward the floor, but she still lifted her head, staring at the enemy who was raising his bone spurs to finish her. “You bastards… I’m going to spray blood right in your face later…”

The bone spurs stabbed down through the air.

Then, in a blink, they slowed, leaving layer upon layer of afterimages, and finally stopped in midair.

A tongue of green flame suddenly flared into being in the room that should have been fully sealed by the barrier. In the fire, a huge, ferocious skeletal bird circled in the air. A shrill, strange female voice stabbed into Shirley’s ears—

“Our warrior is in combat with the enemy… teleportation successful!”

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