Chapter 185

Chapter 185: Each Safe and Sound

An Undead bird made of phantom flesh and crystal-clear bone, a sharp and piercing strange female voice, roaring green flames—and a sentence no one could fully understand.

Shirley’s dazed mind suddenly cleared. She stared in shock at the strange bird that had rushed in. The bird circled once more in the air. As it circled, the figures of the Enders around her froze one by one in mid-motion, locked into weird poses. It was just like what happened in a “cinema” when the people on the screen suddenly stopped moving because the film jammed.

One of these monsters had even been caught while stepping forward, so his body almost hung in midair. It looked eerie and frightening… and a little ridiculous.

The Undead bird circled again. This time, a door and vortex of green fire opened in the air. A tall figure stepped out of it and came to stand in front of Shirley.

“I remember I told you that you can ask for help when you run into trouble,” Duncan lowered his head and gazed at the blood-soaked girl lying on the floor with a calm gaze. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I… I forgot,” Shirley blinked. The moment Duncan appeared, she noticed that the corruption and The curse from the Enders were fading from her at high speed. As the harsh noise and wild thoughts in her mind died down, her head slowly cleared. A strange, tangled look crossed her face. “My head was a mess just now… Right, these guys kept howling like ghosts. They made my head spin…”

Duncan slowly turned his head and glanced at the attackers frozen in midair by AI’s High-Latency Strike.

It was his first time seeing such weird… things. They looked a bit like people and still wore scraps of human clothes, but their bodies had mutated so much they were hardly human anymore. Their limbs were twisted flesh, bone spurs jutted from every joint, and their faces wore crazed yet almost comical expressions—almost even uglier than Dog.

Duncan frowned and looked back at Shirley: “They did this to you? Where did they all come from?”

“They’re the ones who beat me up!” Shirley raised her voice at once. The moment the words left her mouth, she felt like something about that sounded off, but she quickly pushed the feeling aside. “I don’t know where they came from either. Dog said they’re Enders, those madmen who follow Subspace…”

“Enders… the ones who follow Subspace?” Duncan had still been somewhat relaxed, but his expression suddenly shifted when he heard the latter half of her words. It was as if he had thought of something. He looked at AI at once. “Don’t toss them yet!”

While he spoke, the frozen bodies of the Enders began to flicker, but AI quickly flapped her wings. The three attackers who had almost been pushed out of the Mortal Realm snapped back into the Mortal Realm, and AI’s sharp cry rang through the room: “Network connected, network connected!”

“Send them up to the ship,” Duncan nodded to the Pigeon Spirit. “I’ll meet them on deck.”

“Mission received! Mission received!”

AI shrieked twice, then quickly traced a fiery spiral in the air. In the rising flames of her spirit form, the three Enders vanished in an instant.

In the dim room, only Duncan, Dog, and Shirley remained, plus three corpses not far away that had been smashed flat into “preacher pancakes” by the meteor dog.

Shirley stared blankly at the scene before her, watching as those Subspace believers who had almost killed her and Dog disappeared from the room in the blink of an eye. The “battle” had ended in such a strange and easy way that it hardly counted as a battle at all.

Mr. Duncan had not even made a move. From start to finish, he had not cared what tricks or special curses the Enders had. He had simply appeared here, taken a bit of interest in those people, and then casually snatched them away, as if he had picked up a few stones by the roadside.

He might not even have realized that those cultists “had combat power”.

Just then, Duncan’s voice broke into Shirley’s wandering thoughts: “How bad are your injuries?”

Shirley snapped out of the thought of “Mr. Duncan is terrifying”. Her first instinct was to act tough and pretend she did not care about her wounds. But just as she opened her mouth, she bared her teeth in pain with an “ow”. The stabbing pain in her back and the ache in her arm hit her at the same time, and she could not help cursing: “Damn, that hurts…”

Duncan looked at her with concern: “Should I take you to a hospital?”

“Absolutely not!” Shirley jolted upright at once. Still grimacing, she forced herself to sit up. “I don’t have any money…”

Duncan stared at her: “You look like this, and you’re worried about money?”

“I wasn’t finished,” Shirley finally sat all the way up. “My body isn’t like other people’s. If I go to a hospital, they’ll definitely notice. If I draw the Church’s attention, I won’t be able to explain it. And look—”

She spoke as she raised her arm so Duncan could see her wound.

The wound was healing. After the Enders’s curse and corruption faded, her self-healing had returned. The ugly gash no longer bled. The corrupted matter in the wound was being squeezed out by the writhing flesh, and the growth of new tissue was visible to the naked eye.

The worst wound on her back was also slowly recovering. It still hurt a lot, but Shirley knew she had survived this time.

“As long as those Enders don’t keep yapping nonstop, I’m not afraid of them,” Shirley lifted her chin stubbornly. “On a normal day, a little cut like this would never knock me flat on the floor… ow, ow, that hurts…”

A soft cracking sound came from not far away, cutting off Shirley’s muttering.

She and Duncan both turned toward the noise and saw it came from one of the dead Enders. At some point, his twisted body had turned into a gray-white mass like weathered rock. It began to crumble bit by bit. Fragments flaked off, and before they even hit the floor, they turned to dust and scattered.

As the preachers’ corpses weathered and fell apart, the room that had been wrapped in The Veil also began to change. The Shadows that had clung outside the window vanished quickly. The streetlamps outside returned to normal, and the unnatural Shadows and cold malice in every corner of the house faded away.

“…The Enders gave themselves to Subspace. Now it’s time to pay the price,” Dog answered the doubt on Duncan’s face in a dull voice. “These scum will be devoured by Subspace. They won’t leave even a single speck of dust in the Mortal Realm.”

“…So this kind of cultist is pretty eco-friendly when they die,” Duncan murmured. “Saves the trouble of cleaning up the scene.”

Then he turned back to Shirley: “Feeling better? If you’re a bit better, come with me.”

As he spoke, a flicker of eerie green flame appeared in the air. AI flew out of the fire, circled once, and landed on his shoulder.

“Go with you?” Shirley didn’t react for a moment. “Go where…”

“You weren’t planning to spend the night here, were you?” Duncan pointed at the wrecked room. “Does this place still look livable to you?”

Shirley slowly pushed herself up along the wall. Her gaze swept across the old house where she and Dog had depended on each other for so many years.

Broken furniture lay everywhere. Corroded scraps were scattered across the floor. Anything valuable or not had been destroyed completely.

There had never been much to begin with.

Shirley lowered her eyes and stayed silent for a while.

“It seems the patrolling Guardians didn’t notice anything here. We still have time to pack up,” Duncan sighed. He knew how Shirley felt now, but he had no idea how to comfort her. “But no matter what, you can’t live here anymore. Even if you ignore the smashed things, you have to think about whether more attackers will come later. We still don’t know why those Enders came after you, but they’ve already marked you…”

Duncan did not go on.

He knew Shirley was a child far more mature than she looked. This girl had grown up in a harsh environment. She knew what mattered.

“I’ll… pack my things,” Shirley said in a dull voice.

“Need any help?” Duncan asked.

“No,” Shirley shook her head. “There isn’t… much.”

She really did not have much.

Duncan waited only a short while. Shirley gathered the things she wanted to take from a few dark corners: just some unremarkable old items, including a tiny little doll that was almost falling apart, a few pieces of clothing that had not been destroyed, and two slightly bent little metal boxes that rattled with bits of change inside.

She put everything into a worn little case, then carried it over to Duncan and lowered her head obediently: “I’m done.”

Dog turned his head to look at the little case in Shirley’s hand and muttered in a low voice: “You’re taking all of that… so we’re not coming back, are we?”

Shirley stayed silent.

Duncan looked quietly at the girl in front of him. A gentle smile slowly appeared on his face.

He reached out and patted the girl’s hair.

“Come on. Let’s go home.”

green flame rose into the air. The Undead bird spread its wings in the fire, blocking Shirley’s last glimpse of the little house.