Chapter 711

Chapter 711: Vanna’s “Reputation”.

In the drifting mist, the three small boats slipped in without a sound and stopped at the end of a gentle ramp in a corner of the harbor.

Duncan was the first to step onto the eerie little island that the Annihilators called the “Holy Land”.

All around was silent. The drifting mist carried a chill. Inside the harbor, man-made structures stood at different heights, blurred by the fog. The outlines of the buildings seemed to merge with the terrain in the distance. A few dim yellow lights shone through the far-off mist, but they did nothing to make anyone feel at ease.

“There’s no sound at all…” Shirley felt the cold hanging in the mist. She hugged her arms and rubbed them as she looked around and muttered: “Dog, can you smell any ‘people’?”

“No smell of the living. Just a faint scent of the dead, mixed into a heavy Abyssal Deep aura,” Dog muttered. It carefully felt out the area around them, blood-red light flickering in its empty eye sockets. “…It feels more and more like ‘home’. Not only the aura, even the ‘atmosphere’… is a bit similar.”

It lifted its head and stared with its hollow eyes toward the island’s interior, hidden in the fog, sounding a bit confused: “A lot of things here feel like my ‘home’, but… not quite. I can’t put the feeling into words.”

“So this is what your home is like, Dog?” Shirley’s focus was clearly elsewhere. “No wonder you said the Abyssal demons back home spend their time biting each other or gnawing on rocks. Your living conditions are awful…”

“I don’t like the feel of this place,” Vanna said, frowning hard as she kept watch on the surroundings. “It keeps reminding me of Frostholm back then…”

Shirley waved a hand: “Fog, silent streets, writhing mud, and elements replicants suddenly popping out, right? We all get it…”

Duncan paid no mind to the chatter around him. After he confirmed there was not a single living person nearby, he waved to the marines who were disembarking from the two other boats, signaling everyone to follow. Then he started toward the dim yellow lights glowing in the fog.

The air around them felt eerie and unsettling, keeping everyone on high alert. Before this, they had all imagined what kinds of dangers might hide in the nest that Annihilators called the “Holy Land”. They had imagined thousands of armed, fanatical cultists, countless traps and flesh-and-blood monsters built by demon worshippers, even a powerful fleet secretly forged by the Cult of Annihilation that would ambush the expedition in this mist…

But a “ghost island” with no trace of living people had not been in any of those plans.

Vanna reached back and took down her alloy greatsword, gripping it tightly. This time they had plenty of time to prepare for the expedition, so she did not have to make do with a greatsword of frozen ice like she had in those rushed fights before.

Having her familiar “battle partner” in hand made her feel a little more at ease.

Footsteps approached. A young lady in fitted armor similar in style to Vanna’s, with a greatsword strapped to her back, walked over.

Vanna remembered that she was the leading priest sent down from the Tide, the one in charge of those eleven marines.

Under Vanna’s curious and slightly puzzled gaze, the young priest of the Goddess with the greatsword on her back came up beside her and said quietly, a little excited: “You’re Lady Vanna Wayne, right? The legendary Inquisitor from Pland, the strongest in history…”

“…Legendary Inquisitor? I didn’t know I’d picked up that title,” Vanna frowned, looking a bit embarrassed. “But yes, I am Vanna Wayne. What do you need from me?”

“I…I’m Amber,” the priest of the Goddess said quickly. “I’ve heard many of your deeds… like how you leaped off a cliff to slay the Eldritch God spawn that invaded the city-state. How you jumped from the roof of the Cathedral to cut down the cultist trying to destroy it. And how you jumped from the sea-cliff lighthouse…”

Before Amber could finish, Vanna already felt she could not take it anymore. She waved her hand quickly: “Stop. I don’t have that many ‘leap down and slay’ records. Legends always exaggerate.”

“You’re… you’re very humble,” Amber said with a smile. She then pointed at the greatsword on her back. It was already much larger than the standard steel swords most Deep Sea priests used, yet it was still far smaller than the alloy greatsword in Vanna’s hand. “I’m trying to learn your fighting style too. My mentor says it’s the oldest, yet most practical, killing technique in Storm Swordsmanship… Of course, I’m still far from your level…”

Vanna opened her mouth and managed to squeeze out: “Ah, well… keep it up.”

“I’m still working hard,” Amber nodded vigorously. Then she hesitated and asked: “But… how can I get power like yours? I’ve heard so many of your battle stories… Do you have some special training method?”

Vanna’s expression grew even more awkward. She glanced toward Duncan without thinking, but saw that the captain had no intention of stepping in. After holding it in for a few seconds, she finally blurted out: “Eat more meat.”

Amber: “…Huh?”

“And drink more hot water, go to bed early, get up early, keep a regular schedule,” Vanna added, as if even she felt her answer was not very convincing.

Amber’s expression slowly shifted into something one “huh?” could no longer cover—it was more like blank shock: “Th-that’s… all it takes?”

“Yes. And remember to pray every day. Tell the Goddess your doubts and confusion. Don’t carry that pressure and hesitation over to the next day,” Vanna nodded. “And last, the most important thing—”

Amber’s expression changed at last. She became very serious at once: “The most important thing?”

Vanna thought for a moment, then looked at the junior in front of her with a very serious face and said earnestly: “Don’t make random vows when you have nothing better to do. And if you’ve already sworn one, don’t add more to it just because you’re fired up. You’ll trap yourself.”

Amber’s face went blank again: “…Huh?”

But Vanna had already walked away. Leaving the junior who embarrassed her behind, she took a few quick steps to catch up to Duncan, head down.

But Duncan had been listening to the talk behind him the whole time. When he saw Vanna walk up, he finally smiled and said: “Sounds like you’re very popular among your own people—even though you’ve officially stepped down as an Inquisitor and left the public eye.”

“…I run into this sometimes. It happened even more back in the city-state,” Vanna said with her head down. In front of the captain, she could finally complain a little about these “little troubles not worth mentioning to outsiders”. “And no matter how many times it happens, I never get used to it.”

Morris took a pipe from his pocket and held it between his teeth without lighting it. After hearing this, he muttered: “And I don’t know why, but the ones chasing after her are always young ladies…”

Duncan immediately gave the Inquisitor beside him a very odd look, only to see her wearing a deadpan, hopeless expression: “…Please don’t look at me like that… I don’t know why either…”

What could Duncan say to that? Right now he only felt that it was a miracle this beautiful maiden warrior could still have a normal friend like Heidi… Maybe it had something to do with Heidi being a science student?

In any case, it had little to do with him. It was just interesting to see that the usually calm and reliable Vanna also had such a flustered, awkward side.

Just then, on the other side of the group, Shirley suddenly seemed to trip on something and stumbled forward: “Whoa, what the—”

Dog reacted at once, jerking its neck back and yanking on the chain to stop Shirley from pitching forward: “What happened?!”

Shirley steadied herself and turned back, grumbling: “What kind of lousy road is this? Something just tripped me up and I—”

She stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes widened at the spot where she had almost tripped, and the rest of her words turned into a short yelp: “What?!”

Several gazes instantly followed her line of sight.

Duncan also saw what had almost tripped Shirley—it was an arm.

Strictly speaking, it was an arm “set” into the road, fused with the surface around it, a pitch-black “arm” that looked as if it was made from hardened sludge!

Duncan’s eyes narrowed at once. He strode quickly to the black arm.

It was a bent upper arm, elbow, and forearm. Its black, muddy texture blended completely with the road around it, as if it had grown straight up out of the ground.

It was hard not to imagine that beneath the surface of the road, hidden from sight, there might be a whole body connected to that arm.

Almost at the same moment, Amber, the Deep Sea priest of the Goddess walking not far away, spotted something in the fog and called out: “There’s one here too!”

Amber had found a section of torso sticking up from the road, attached to a damaged head and an arm that seemed to be straining forward. The arm and head looked just like the humanoid rough husks the joint fleet had seen floating on the sea near Holy Land Island—black as sludge and lacking clear details in their limbs and facial features.

But its pose was enough to make one picture the horrors of that “humanoid rough husk” struggling to drag itself out of some devouring substance.

Duncan stared grimly at the body “set” into the road. A scene rose in his mind. The ground had softened like mud. The owner of this body had been swallowed by the road beneath his feet. His body had melted like slurry into another mass of mud. His desperate struggle had only delayed death for a moment. Then, after that short and useless effort, he had been left here forever…

But what Shirley and Amber had found was only the beginning.

Within half a minute, as the marines widened their search, they found more human bodies… all fused into the surroundings.

They were everywhere in the fog, dense and countless.