Chapter 293

Chapter 293: Hunt and Escape

The moment Duncan said the words “Ignorance is bliss,” the woman in the black dress reacted.

But this time, she did not try any more useless attacks. She grabbed the chain at the Death-Omen Bird’s feet with one hand, swept her other hand behind her, and summoned a veil of hazy black mist in the air. Then she turned and ran toward the graveyard gate.

She no longer cared about the partner whose body had been taken, or about the other two companions still dealing with the Warden. The strange events of this night had already gone beyond what she could understand. Even as an Annihilator who had signed a symbiotic pact with a Abyssal Demon, she was close to the limits of her reason and courage.

She had to get away, as far and as fast as possible. She could not stay any longer under the unseen, unspeakable gaze of those Intruders, or remain in the company of those terrible Shadows.

Duncan frowned. He had not yet fully adjusted to the body he had just taken. He could feel that this body was clearly healthier than the one from the coffin, but it was still hard for him to keep up with her as she fled.

Even so, he still set off after her. As he walked, he casually tore apart the strange black mist she left in her path, got used to his new body, and kept his eyes on her fleeing back.

Under his gaze, the gas streetlamps the panicked woman passed began to flicker. A smear of deep green suddenly tainted their once steady, bright flames.

The lamps corrupted by the Flame Usurper were like invisible footsteps. They followed the fleeing cultist’s shadow, spreading quickly toward the graveyard gate and scattering more and more green sparks along the way.

But just as the green flames from the lamps on both sides were about to catch up with the cultist, the strange bird built from black bone plates suddenly shot into the air with a shrill scream. Its skeletal wings flung clouds of smoke across the night sky. Its sharp cry seemed to rip open a small patch of space and time. Duncan saw dark cracks suddenly split open in the shadow beside the cultist. Those blurred, twisted cracks then merged into a huge black hole.

The skeletal bird screamed in mad terror and hurled itself toward the dark opening that had appeared from nowhere. The chain that extended from its feet snapped straight. With a harsh clatter, the woman in the black dress was yanked toward the hole.

“Damn it! Stop! You bastard! You beast!” The cultist thrashed and screamed, her voice breaking with sheer panic and despair. “No, no! Don’t! Don’t take me to the Abyssal Deep… help, help! No! No—”

With one last scream, the cultist was dragged by the chain into the black void. The hole closed with a howl and vanished into a trembling field of Shadows.

The faint green glow from the lamps on both sides fell on the now?empty graveyard path.

“That was a very special escape route,” Duncan said, a little stunned by the sudden scene. After a moment, the corner of his mouth twitched. Something seemed to come back to him. “Wasn’t this how Shirley and Dog ran off back then too…? But as I recall, she wasn’t scared at all at the time.”

Duncan frowned and stared in the direction where the cultist had vanished. He thought about it for a moment, but learned nothing, so he had to look away.

As he withdrew his gaze, the lamps on both sides, stained green, quickly returned to normal. The crisscrossing dim lights drew back through the darkness like retreating tendrils and gathered again at his feet.

A faint crackling sound reached Duncan’s ears.

Puzzled, he looked toward the sound, only to find it came from his own body. The soft crackles rose from all over him. Thin streams of black smoke seeped and curled out through the gaps in his clothes.

For a moment, Duncan was a bit confused, unsure what new problem this was. Then he yanked open his shirt at the chest and finally saw what was happening to this body.

His flesh was slowly turning into some kind of black, charred material. His shrunken skin was already full of gaps, and black smoke and ash rose from those gaps like smoke from a pile of burning wood.

If he had not undergone the “open your heart” Baptism at the very start, this strange and frightening sight would have shocked him badly. But by now, he was used to such weird and uncanny things, so he stayed very calm and even reached up to touch his neck.

The change seemed to begin at his throat—the place that had once held a symbiotic pact with a Abyssal Demon, where the chain had been attached.

Duncan at once thought of the jellyfish?shaped Abyssal Demon that had just burned itself up out of nowhere.

After he had taken this body, the “jellyfish” had gone on strike as if it could not bear the pressure. Now this cultist’s body was starting to collapse from the point where the chain of the symbiotic pact had been. Could it be that as soon as the Demon in a symbiotic pact died, the body tied to it would fall apart as well?

Was this a trait of Annihilators?

Duncan jumped to the most likely guess and even thought of Shirley and Dog. Did those two have a similar link between them?

He could ask Shirley about it properly after he got back.

But first, he had to decide what to do right now.

Duncan looked helplessly at the body that was breaking down faster and faster. He could not help thinking of the shell he had used when he first climbed out of the coffin.

That body had fallen apart in the end too, even if for a different reason.

“…Why is it so hard to find a usable body?” he sighed, complaining about his bad luck. “Things went much more smoothly back in Pland.”

He lifted his head and looked at the iron fence at the edge of his sight. Ahead was the graveyard gate. Past the gate lay a long stretch of cold, empty road. Beyond that empty stretch was the bright and bustling city.

The civilized world of Frostholm was right in front of him, but this collapsing body would struggle to make it that far. And even if he did drag himself into the city, with smoke leaking from him and bits of him falling off as he walked, he would never be able to quietly gather information. What he would do for sure was draw the attention of the patrolling Guardians at once.

He looked back at the graveyard.

There were plenty of bodies lying in the mortuary. But first, there was no way to know if the next one would also be poor quality. Second, opening the boxes took work.

This was blind?box shopping in the truest sense, and he had already gone through enough tonight.

After a brief weighing of options, Duncan raised his head and looked toward the lights at the other end of the path.

That should be the Warden’s cottage.

He remembered that two other cultists had disguised themselves as priests of the Death God and gone to that cottage with the Warden. The Warden might seem stubborn and unfriendly, but at least he was loyal to his duty.

cultists were not such decent people.

He started down the path toward the lights at the end.

…

There seemed to be some noise outside.

In the warm cottage of the Warden, the kettle on the stove was hissing. A gas lamp beside it filled the room with bright light. The Old Caretaker slowly arranged the jars and bottles on a wooden shelf. His trusty double?barreled shotgun hung from an iron hook beside the shelf.

Two men in black clothing watched the old man’s movements inside the cottage. One stood by the door. The other stood by the window.

But their attention was clearly not all on the Warden.

They were listening for movement from the graveyard gate, waiting for a certain signal.

They never got the coded message of “job done, withdraw.” Instead, they only heard some faint, strange noises drifting from the path outside.

The last unclear scream was especially unsettling.

“Did you hear something?”

The Old Caretaker suddenly stopped and looked up at the window, now dark and grimy with age. He tilted his head, listening to the sounds outside. In the night, there seemed to be nothing but the hollow murmur of the wind.

“Nothing,” the tall, broad?shouldered man at the door said at once when he heard the Warden. He felt uneasy too, but keeping the Warden honestly inside the house mattered more right now. “It was probably just crows.”

“Oh, crows,” the Old Caretaker muttered. “Crows are very annoying things. They steal your food and then stand proudly on a branch, laughing out loud at you… I hate thieves the most, and awful uninvited guests. Crows have both of those traits.”

The two men in black exchanged a confused look, feeling that this stubborn old man had suddenly started talking nonsense.

The Old Caretaker did not seem to notice their reaction. He just went on: “By the way, do you know why I followed that Lady’s advice and brought you two to my cottage?”

The shorter man in black seemed to grow vaguely wary and fixed his eyes on the Old Caretaker: “Why?”

The Old Caretaker finally found what he wanted among the many jars. As he twisted off the lid and sprinkled some crushed herbs into the stove, he said casually: “Because, usually, two people are easier to deal with than four.”