Chapter 204

Chapter 204: teleported Out of the Volume

“I’ll help you.”

“Help me?” The young nun frowned in confusion when she heard Vanna’s words. Only then did she suddenly notice some details on the other woman’s equipment.

That really was the Storm Church’s gear and insignia, but it wasn’t any style she knew. She had never heard of any high-ranking female priest in the Church who fought with such an outrageous greatsword. The greatsword was clearly custom-made and absolutely not something an ordinary Guardian could wield.

The “battle sister” in front of her looked as young as she was, yet was anomalously tall. She came from a time the nun did not know.

The young nun was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly spoke calmly: “…Where did you come from?”

“The year 1900.”

“I died in battle today, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” Vanna stepped forward calmly. “It seems you already know what happened.”

“The Enders. I don’t know how they did it, but they opened a Subspace rift inside the cathedral. I sent an alarm outward and received no response…”

They had opened a Subspace rift in the God’s own sanctuary?!

Vanna’s heart jolted. This unheard-of situation sent a fresh surge of confusion through her. Then she heard the young nun speak softly again: “Did I succeed today?”

“…At least this invasion, you stopped.” Vanna raised her head, her gaze meeting the nun’s eyes. “You sealed your own death and their incursion together in the year 1885.”

“Oh, that’s good.” The nun let out a breath and slowly raised the longsword in her hand. At the same time, a low, rustling sound came from the nearby darkness. It sounded as if some wet, sticky limbs were crawling across the floor, as if something were swimming up out of a pool of thick liquid. The naked eye still could not see its shape, but it had indeed begun to step into this Mortal Realm. “Then the rest is simple.”

Vanna also lifted her greatsword slightly. “This is my specialty.”

“By the way,” the nun suddenly turned her head and asked, “are you all prepared on ‘the other side’?”

“…We never received the alarm you sent, so we haven’t made any extra preparations,” Vanna said calmly, letting her breathing slowly settle into its best rhythm. “But… Guardians are always prepared.”

A roar came from the depths of the darkness. The crawling thing from Subspace finally condensed its malicious projection within this sealed-off span of time.

The consecrated lantern at Vanna’s waist reacted at once, crackling into a sudden blaze. Its bright flame almost leaped out of the glass, as if it meant to burn through all its fuel in mere minutes. The longsword and greatsword hummed and shook, and in the ringing of metal there was even the sound of wind and thunder.

Vanna finally saw the shape of that shadow. It looked like a mass of formless slime. In the middle of the slime, the young nun’s figure kept writhing into view, while along its edges deformed, shifting hands and feet grew from the ends of its many tentacles. The blasphemous thing seemed to be clumsily imitating the shape of humans, but because it could not understand the rules of the Mortal Realm, it could only spawn heaps of disgusting, horrifying limbs— and it was crawling this way at great speed!

“This time I’ll leave it to you, sister.”

The young nun’s voice sounded from beside her. The moment the crawling thing appeared, she lowered the longsword in her hand and drew a silver dagger covered in intricate patterns from her side. She glanced at the monster rushing toward them, gave Vanna one last instruction, and then calmly drove the dagger into her own chest.

The instant the nun’s heart stopped, the crawling monster also reeled as if heavily wounded. Dozens of mouths of all sizes appeared suddenly across its shifting surface. A chorus of shrill, jarring screams poured out from every single mouth!

Vanna heard the sound of the nun collapsing behind her, but she did not turn her head. She strode straight toward that mass of “slime” projected from Subspace. As she raised her greatsword, she wore an unusually solemn, calm expression and whispered a benediction: “Please bear witness…”

The battle ended.

It ended even faster than wiping out the leftover of a Sunspawn.

At this node in time, what appeared in the underground sanctum was only a projection that had slipped into the Mortal Realm through the hollow in a low-level cleric’s soul. Even though it came from Subspace, the “passage” limited it, so it did not have much power. The only problem was that, in this sealed-off span of time, that projection was forever born together with the nun and never left her side.

Now, this hateful cycle seemed at last to have ended.

Vanna watched the “slime” on the floor slowly fade away and let out a soft breath. She turned and went back to the side of the young nun who had already died. She knelt on one knee and lowered her gaze. “Thank you for your noble sacrifice.”

The next second, she saw the nun’s body suddenly start to fade as well, vanishing into thin air like a phantom from yesterday.

Right after that, the door of the underground sanctum slammed shut with a bang. Sword cuts and bullet marks suddenly appeared all over the surrounding walls and floor. Hollow roars echoed out from empty air. Then she saw bloodstains appear on the floor out of nowhere and slowly creep toward the closed door…

The hateful cycle continued. Everything that had once happened in the underground sanctum began to run again as it always had. The interference of this outsider had only made a ripple in fixed history, and that ripple was smoothed out almost at once.

“How can this be…” Vanna got to her feet in shock, staring in disbelief at the marks that had appeared out of nowhere in the underground sanctum. “This is just a piece of history corrupted by—”

Before she could finish, a flicker of ghostly green light flashed in the corner of her eye. A heartbeat later, that tiny flame swelled into a huge vortex, into a standing doorway. A tall, imposing figure emerged from the fire and stepped out.

She heard that tall figure speak to her:

“Because the corruption runs deep, and the culprits have already sensed your awakening and resistance. Simply destroying one Subspace intruder is no longer enough to correct this chain of dislocated histories. Vanna, the source of corruption is no longer this little cathedral, but the entire city-state.”

“…Captain Duncan!” Vanna’s eyes widened at once. When she saw the green flames spreading, she had already known that this ghost captain’s power had pushed into “this side”, but she had not expected him to appear here in person, right inside the underground sanctum. She tightened her grip on her greatsword on instinct and almost leapt in with a jump slash purely by reflex, but at the last moment she forced down the impulse. She only stared at the figure in front of her with sharp vigilance, trying to guess whether this was his real body or just an illusion projected into her sight. “What are you trying to do?!”

“Take you back to the Mortal Realm.” Duncan looked at her calmly. “I even thought you would greet me with a jump slash like last time.”

“…I know that kind of attack is useless against you. Whatever shows up in front of me can’t be your real body.” Vanna’s muscles all settled into their best state. “You said you’ll take me back to the Mortal Realm. What do you mean?”

“Is that so hard to understand? Do you not need help right now?” Duncan raised an eyebrow. “Or do you have your own way to walk out of the Veil? Just charge straight through the whole city-state?”

The corner of Vanna’s eye twitched despite herself. She watched this ghost captain with deep suspicion.

What did this dangerous calamity of the sea really want to do?

But Duncan had no intention of explaining anything to her. He simply lifted his right hand, and a cluster of leaping green fire appeared at his fingertips.

Vanna started in alarm, raising her greatsword and stepping back half a pace. “What are you trying to do?!”

“Send you back to the Mortal Realm, what else?” Duncan said casually. “I’ve never done it this way before, though, so we’ll have to test whether it actually works. If it works, you go back. If it doesn’t… we’ll think of something else.”

“…Test it?” Vanna stared in disbelief at the infamous ghost captain in front of her. For some reason, everything he was doing felt completely unlike the records she had read. But as she watched the fire in his hand spread larger and larger, all her doubts gave way at once to pure wariness and resistance. “Stop, or I’ll—”

“The battle in the Mortal Realm has already begun, Vanna. The storm is ravaging the city-state. Your real enemies are awake.” Duncan suddenly cut off the young Inquisitor. He locked eyes with Vanna, his tone low and solemn. “The battlefield out there needs you more than you being here alone— either come touch this fire yourself, or I’ll move first.”

Vanna stared hard at the fire in Duncan’s hand and did not take a single step.

Honestly, even if she hadn’t known who Duncan was, no normal person would reach out to touch such a sinister-looking thing.

Of course Duncan knew that too. He had only been polite in giving Vanna the choice.

While the young woman was still fully focused, a strand of dimly burning fire spread out from beneath his feet. The next second, a great wall of flame sprang up in front of Vanna and then swept down over her like a crashing wave!

Every hair on Vanna’s body stood on end. Her eyes flew wide. The next instant she swung up her greatsword and leaped high with a roar. “Here—”

The wall of fire swept across, and the young Inquisitor’s figure vanished into the blaze.

On the deck of the Vanished, a mass of ghostly green flame flared briefly, then vanished at once.

In the rain-lashed streets of the city-state of Pland, a tall figure suddenly appeared out of midair, roaring as she swung her sword down: “—tic!”

A trash bin was cleaved clean in two by Vanna’s jump slash, and the strike left a gouged trail of compressed air more than ten meters long across the ground.

Vanna lifted her head in shock, staring blankly at this world of pouring rain and cold wind.