Chapter 724

Chapter 724: Reforging

The strangely familiar words threw Shirley into a brief daze. Her memories rose and fell like waves in a faded sea. From the dim, unreal foam, some old warmth and color slowly surfaced. Only after a long time did she sluggishly come back to herself and look at the massive Abyssal Hound not far away, an Anomaly in size.

It was still there waiting, filled with hesitation and nerves, and a bit of confusion.

As if sticky mud covered its mind, Dog felt many wrong places inside its head. Its past memories were blurry. Its thoughts now broke off again and again. It was not sure what had gone wrong. It only felt that… something seemed to be missing from its heart.

A faint light flickered in its hollow eye sockets as Dog stared at the nearby Abyssal demon with the strange bony limbs, a figure that looked oddly familiar. The world around it swam.

It had never met her, yet it knew her – it had known her a very, very long time ago.

[The tiny kid in my memories… why did she become like this?]

After hesitating for who knew how long, Dog finally walked forward, carefully and slowly. It sniffed around first, then stepped past those long, barbed limbs and came to stand before Shirley.

Shirley silently fixed her gaze on the tall Abyssal Hound. After a few minutes she slowly stood up and put her hand on Dog’s head: “Why did you become weird too?”

Dog tilted its head in a dull way. It seemed to want to say something, but before it could speak, it felt a push at the back of its neck – Shirley suddenly reached out, wrapped her arms around Dog’s neck, and pulled it hard into her arms.

“…I thought I wouldn’t be able to find you…” she muttered in a low voice. Her late-coming fear made her voice tremble a little. “You suddenly fell down. I couldn’t hold on to you at all…”

Dog’s head felt even heavier. Its sluggish thoughts broke apart over and over and almost could not form a clear line. But at that moment, Dog suddenly heard a sound.

Thump, thump – that was a familiar heartbeat.

Dog was pressed against Shirley’s chest. Through the grim, crisscrossed bones, the sound of two hearts beating slowly seemed to smash through the haze in its head. It woke up as if from a long muddy dream. With every beat, its memories rushed back. The light in its sockets grew brighter. At last it broke the silence and spoke, struggling a little: “Shirley, I… back then…”

But Shirley did not loosen her arms. Still hugging Dog’s neck, she said softly: “I know, Dog… I already know.”

The fire in Dog’s eye sockets flickered once. It stopped struggling and asked in a hesitant tone: “When… when did you find out?”

“When I first learned that Abyssal demons don’t have hearts,” Shirley answered quietly.

Dog fell silent. It stayed there with its neck trapped in her arms, not moving, lost in thought. Only after a long time did it mumble: “I’m sorry…”

“It’s fine,” Shirley answered almost at once. Then she let go of Dog’s neck a little and looked very seriously at the Abyssal Hound that had stayed with her for twelve years and had almost raised her, nodding slowly as if to make the point clear. “It’s fine – you were always with me.”

Dog nodded in a slow, clumsy way. While a little comfort rose in its heart, a faint haze also suddenly returned to its mind.

That sluggish feeling, the broken memories, came back again in waves.

“Shirley, my head feels all foggy…” it blurted out.

“It might be because of this.” Shirley reacted at once, then lowered her head to look at her own chest. Two hearts were beating inside her ribcage. But soon she frowned. “…But I don’t think I can take them out anymore…”

As she spoke, she reached up and tapped the crossed bone plates on her chest, as if trying to open that sturdy “bone cage” again.

“Don’t touch them,” Dog said at once, stopping her. “You’ll die!”

Shirley froze and stared at Dog, lost: “Then… what are we supposed to do?”

Dog did not answer. Its gaze fell on Shirley’s right hand. The broken chain hung there. At the end of the chain, a faint ghostly green flame still burned.

Shirley followed its gaze. Her eyes landed on the same spot, and they had the same thought.

“…Fix this?” she asked, hesitating. “Would that work?”

“In theory I think it would. We’ve always relied on the symbiotic pact to keep us in balance, but…” Dog muttered, not very sure. “This has never happened before. It’s unheard of for someone with a broken Pact chain to live this long. And to repair the chain after that… even more impossible. To be honest, I don’t know how to do it.”

Shirley listened with a serious, thoughtful look. Then she picked up the broken piece of chain, found the other end near Dog’s neck, and held the two breaks together, fiddling for half a minute. She looked up: “…Putting them together like this doesn’t work.”

“Of course it doesn’t – even a normal chain needs a blacksmith to mend it!” Dog shook its head right away, then dropped down because of the dizziness swaying in its mind. “This thing might need a strict ‘recasting’ process… The important part isn’t the chain itself. It’s the symbiotic pact between us…”

Shirley listened hard and tried to think, but she still could not help grumbling: “In the end… how did the chain suddenly snap in the first place? I only remember you suddenly saying you felt unwell in that cavern, and then you sank into the ground…”

“I’m sure it’s tied to the Abyssal Lord, and it’s also tied to those ‘truths’ you suddenly ‘saw’ on that plaza before,” Dog said. It fought the haze in its head while forcing itself to analyze. “There were prophetic omens before the chain broke. The first changes happened right after you ‘saw’ the memories of Holy Land Island…”

It suddenly stopped halfway through, as if it had caught some possibility. A moment later it went on: “…Those cultists were twisted by corruption the instant they learned the ‘truth’. They turned back from humans into ‘Rough Husks’. You were under the Captain’s protection, so it looked like you weren’t affected by the corruption at the time – but what if the corruption still worked anyway?”

Shirley froze and lowered her head to look at her current body.

Dog kept thinking aloud beside her: “You formed a symbiotic pact with me, a Abyssal demon, from the very start. That was long before you met the Captain. So the ‘corruption’ had already taken root in your nature. The memories of Holy Land Island woke it up. They awakened your Abyssal demon side. Because that power was already inside you, it partly slipped past the Captain’s protection…

“The chain between humans and Abyssal demons is, in truth, a ‘symbiotic pact contract’ between two living beings. This kind of contract has strict conditions to exist. In other words, when your nature changed, it broke the conditions for the contract…

“It’s like a business contract. If one side loses the ability to fulfill it because of some force they can’t resist, the contract naturally fails…”

Shirley listened, stunned and dazed. After a long moment she finally asked: “So… what then?”

Dog thought it over: “If we can’t fix it, we make a new one. Maybe we can build a new symbiotic pact contract – not based on how you used to be, but on how you are now.”

This time Shirley understood.

Hope lit up again in her chest, and her energy came back at once: “Then what should we do? How is a symbiotic pact contract normally made?”

She and Dog had been “in a symbiotic pact” for more than ten years, but from the start it had never been a normal contract. She had never held a summoning ritual like the usual Annihilators, so she knew almost nothing about this.

But Dog clearly knew a lot more than she did.

“For Annihilators, the hardest part of a ‘symbiotic pact contract’ is the preparation. They usually have to reshape themselves with a whole series of ritual acts, including all kinds of bloody ‘surgeries’ and mental remolding. This is mixed with many dark and evil dealings, all so their life form becomes closer to the ‘primordial’ state. Only then can they withstand the power of Abyssal demons. But for you, that’s actually the least important part.

“You can skip it completely. You’re already closer to that so-called ‘primordial’ state than any Annihilator, and you’ve long adapted to the power of demons.

“So all you need to do is carry out a simple summoning ritual – that’s actually the easiest part.”

As Dog spoke, it staggered to its feet and began walking slowly across the rubble-strewn wasteland. With its claws it carved deep grooves into the ground. It was drawing a complex set of runes, writing the “text” of the contract.

“Form a link… summon a demon… That part is simple for us. I can prepare all the runes and the site for the ritual. I’ll also provide the power needed to start the array. All you have to do is stand on the node at the edge of the ritual field. When I’m ready, you picture the demon you want to summon in your mind.”

It looked up and met Shirley’s eyes as she watched with curiosity. Dog continued very seriously:

“Normally this summoning can take a full day or even longer. It opens a rift, and you wait until a demon willing to answer appears at the center of the rune matrix. Then the contract is formed. But…”

As it spoke, Dog slowly walked toward the center of the runes. Around it, more and more symbols began to light up.

“But Shirley, you don’t need to wait that long – I’m already here.”