Chapter 619

Chapter 619: The Hunt and the Phantom

The small knife, carved from black bone shards, drew a shallow cut across the rough bark, leaving an inconspicuous mark on the trunk of the towering tree. Then blood was smeared over it to pour spirit and blood power into it—each mark had to be painted with blood three times, again and again…

Richard followed his memory as he worked, carving Marks. With the bone shard knife in his hand, he etched runes that symbolized the power of the Abyssal Deep into the tree trunks and smeared his own blood over them. Then he lifted his head and looked at Dumont, who was doing the same thing not far away.

He walked over, as if he meant to speak to him.

“Each mark is weak on its own,” Dumont said casually when he saw Richard come closer. “But if there are enough of them, they will exert a strong enough influence on Atlantis.”

“Still not enough… far from enough…” Richard muttered vaguely, turning the little bone shard knife between his fingers without thinking.

“It is true that these Marks alone are not enough. But once the process begins, it will only speed up. When Atlantis ‘remembers’ that day, that will be the time to reap the fruit,” Dumont said with a smile, seeming full of confidence in the future. “Those so?called Preachers may not be reliable, but at least this time the information they gave us was useful.”

Richard did not answer. He only lifted his head, staring up at the big tree where Dumont had just left a mark, as if he were quietly admiring the scenery. He looked so intent that Dumont also raised his head without thinking, glancing in puzzlement at the crown of the tree.

“What are you looking at? Is there some—”

Richard suddenly lifted his arm in a pose and at an angle no human joints should ever have been able to make—almost as if his right arm had been folded into three pieces. His hand swung in through Dumont’s blind spot, and he drove the bone shard knife hard into Dumont’s chest.

But the little knife used for the ritual was meant to kill the Undying, so this blow only pierced his skin.

A sharp stab of pain burst from his chest. The sudden, senseless attack left Dumont’s mind blank for a heartbeat, but then he reacted. He slapped Richard’s arm away, clutched his wound with one hand, and leaped back.

Black chains flashed into view, and a hideous Abyssal Hound appeared at Dumont’s back. But before the hound could move, the Death-Omen Bird on Richard’s shoulder dove down. Its great skeletal wings stretched and twisted like shackles, and in an instant they wrapped around the hound. With a chorus of creaking, grinding bone, the two demons tangled together, locked in a struggle that could not quickly be broken.

“Are you mad?!” Dumont stared, eyes wide, at Richard, who was standing not far away with a blank face. “You are trying to kill me?!”

“No,” Richard said, shaking his head. He glanced at the Abyssal Hound that the Death-Omen Bird held in check. A strange, hard?to?name disgust flickered over his face, but he still spoke to Dumont very earnestly. “I only want to help you.”

“Help me?” Dumont was stunned. He looked at Richard as if he were looking at a madman, yet a heavy confusion welled up inside him. The ritual knife was meant to kill the Undying; that sudden strike had only managed to cut him. He honestly did not know how he ought to react. Only one thing was certain: Richard was not in his right mind.

Richard nodded solemnly. “Yes, help you. Your body is empty. I have to help you fill it with cotton. That will make you better.”

“…Cotton?” Dumont repeated the strange word in a daze. “What nonsense are you talking…”

He stopped mid?sentence.

He felt an itch at the spot on his chest where the knife had pierced him.

The faint itch quickly turned into a strange feeling he could not ignore, as if something were growing there, squirming there.

He scratched the itchy spot without thinking. Then he forgot to keep watching the clearly unstable Richard and lowered his head to look at his wound.

The blood had already stopped. On his clothes, stained with a little red, he could just make out some white fluff. The fluff was slowly spreading, as if… it were being formed by the blood itself changing.

After a brief hesitation, Dumont pulled open his collar. He saw the tiny wound closing. Between the writhing, shrinking flesh, cotton was slowly working its way into his body.

The Death-Omen Bird and the Abyssal Hound, still locked together, slowly ceased their struggle. The dull?witted demons knew nothing of hatred or anger; their actions were ruled by the emotions and understanding of the ones bound to them by the symbiotic pact. As the skeletal wings folded away, the two demons returned to their respective masters.

Dumont lifted his head and gave Richard a peculiar look. He remembered that their relationship had never been very good, especially in recent times. They did not have any great enmity, but small frictions between them were common.

That was exactly why, when he had decided they would split into pairs, he had asked to keep Richard with him—he did not want Richard pulling any “little tricks” out of his sight.

He had never imagined that this fellow would do something like this to him.

After hesitating for a long time, Dumont finally spoke, sounding awkward: “You are… surprisingly kind.”

Richard smiled. In that moment, the trivial rift between him and Dumont vanished—cotton had mended the brotherly bond between him and his fellow.

“We should help the others as well,” Richard said earnestly. “Everyone is hollow inside. They all need cotton.”

“Yes, everyone needs cotton…” Dumont still was not used to this new self, and his expression was a little stiff as he spoke, but he agreed with Richard’s idea. “We can start with Sariel’s group. He is an honest, hardworking man.”

“No problem, but we need a plan. People without cotton are not rational. They may not yet understand how important cotton is—just like you a moment ago. We must think carefully about how they will react…”

“Yes. Rabby also thinks you need a plan…”

“We can discuss it as we walk.”

“Then let us set out.” “Set out.” “Set out.”

Richard and Dumont lifted their heads at the same time and looked down the mist?shrouded forest path. Then they stepped forward and walked toward the foggy depths of the dream.

Rabby went hunting.

…

The ground, covered in ash and black cinders, creaked underfoot and always felt as if it might collapse at any moment. Fallen, broken branches lay crisscrossed everywhere, more troublesome than undergrowth and vines in any forest.

Nina and Morris moved with difficulty through this vast tangle of wreckage, which seemed to stretch on without end. After a long time, they were still only skirting its outer edge.

“This is even harder to walk through than the forest outside,” Nina grumbled. “At least the forest has little paths trampled out by wild animals… Here it is all ash that your foot sinks into with every step.”

As she spoke, she lifted her foot out of the ash and cinders. Her filthy shoe made her frown.

She steadied herself against a charred branch, pulled off her left shoe, and shook it hard. Several bits of stone and black grit fell out.

“And I feel as if we have been circling the edge of this scorched ground the whole time,” she went on. “Can we really find a way into the center of the wreckage like this?”

“The collapsed crown of the tree is blocking the path to Atlantis’s main trunk… It is troublesome indeed,” Morris said, frowning as he looked at the jagged, overlapping black branches in the distance.

They called them branches, but their size was already beyond what “branch” should mean. The broken limbs that had fallen from the top of the World Tree were truly gigantic. Even the twigs that were small only by comparison were often a hundred meters long, with diameters close to that of a tower. They had crashed down in a tangled heap over this scorched land, forming a structure so huge it was frightening. From a distance, it looked less like a mass of charred deadwood and more like… a gigantic city that had collapsed from the clouds.

With such a mountain of “fallen leaves and twigs” in front of them, trying to force their way through with brute strength was simply not something mortals could do. The only choice was to go around and around, or risk squeezing into the gaps between branches to look for narrow paths that the ash had not yet completely choked off.

“If Miss Vanna were here, she might just charge straight through,” Nina muttered when that thought of “brute force” crossed her mind. “All this wreckage in the way would not be able to block even one of her punches.”

“Vanna does not rely on brute strength alone,” Morris, who had known Vanna for many years as her elder, could not help saying. “And even she, facing something like this, would probably…”

He stopped halfway through his sentence, seeming to hesitate.

A moment later, he shook his head. “Very well, perhaps not. She might really be able to do it.”

“Actually, I could do it too…” Nina muttered under her breath.

Morris gave the young lady a look, as if he wanted to say something. But just as he was about to speak, a light breeze swept over the ashen ground. Dust billowed up, and through the sudden haze he and Nina both saw a vague shadow flicker not far ahead.

It looked like someone standing blankly in the wind… an elf?

Nina froze for an instant, then quickly turned her head. “Mr. Morris, did you just see over there—”

“I saw it,” Morris said before Nina could finish, his expression turning serious. “It looked like an elf.”

“It did not look like Celine…” Nina said, uncertain. “The way it was dressed was more like… more like…”

She hesitated, unable to draw a conclusion for the moment, but Morris gave a slight nod.

“Like a resident of Lightwind Harbor.”