Chapter 222

Chapter 222: The Real Shadow

Hearing Hunter say those two words, Yu Sheng froze for a moment, but what rose in his heart was not doubt, alarm, or eagerness. Instead, a memory surfaced: in an earlier dream, Hunter had appeared before him in silence. Curious, he had reached out to touch the empty Hunter’s Garb, only to watch his arm pass right through the sleeve. If the shock had not snapped him out of it, he would have already put on Hunter’s clothes back then.

[So that strange dream was Hunter’s first try? Back then they were already trying to make me wear the Hunter’s Garb?]

He held his caution and did not move further, then he asked in a low voice: “Reason?”

The hollow, blurry voice sounded again in his mind: “We know what you are searching for. The road to the ‘deep layer’ is blocked by Illusion Arts. Only by becoming part of it can you bypass this Forest. We found a way, but we cannot fight its will, so we have had to act by the stage’s script until now. You, however, seem able to resist. Put on this outfit and become the Hunter in the Black Forest, then you will see the real path inside the Forest.

“If you truly have the courage and resolve to face it, then go and face it.”

Yu Sheng noticed the unusual word Hunter used for itself: we.

He spoke in a hard voice: “You are the Deep Dive Squad from back then, and you fused into one being?!”

Hunter answered with the calm of someone recalling a long-ago scene: “Yes, just as you think. ‘It’ cannot tell our individuals from our group, so after the ‘fracture’ we merged while falling. But we still remember many things. That group photo you brought…”

A sudden, rising hum cut across the Forest and broke the voice off. Pressure crashed over every nerve like a heavy wheel. Yu Sheng felt his Spiritual Intuition tremble wildly. The sense of being watched by something boundless made his heart miss several beats. In a flash, he seemed to see a shadow sweep over the Black Forest, a shadow made of countless huge, bizarre eyes, cold and terrifying.

The vision vanished. The Forest fell briefly quiet again. Hunter’s voice returned with a new urgency: “Quick! Our time is short. It has noticed the actors on stage acting without orders. ‘Hunter’ must return to the state from before Wolf Granny appears. You must trust us. We have waited for this chance, and it is about to…”

Yu Sheng stepped forward and thrust out his hand toward the Hunter’s Garb.

He knew he was being reckless.

Hunter’s information was still thin. Their talk was far from enough to build trust. What would happen after he “wore” the Hunter’s Garb, what he should do next, what this so-called “real path” looked like, how to pass that path through the Black Forest, and what it would be like to face Anka Aila… none of this had been made clear. Reaching out now on impulse was not exactly the best way to stay alive.

But there was no time to think.

At that very instant, he sensed Anka Aila again. The shadow of eyes swept over the sky above the Black Forest a second time, like a mechanical scan searching through every storage block. He could almost “hear” everything in the Black Forest responding to a search order and sending out Resonance. The baby’s crying, with its mixed-in static, grew louder. Yu Sheng felt that the Dark Angels trapped deep inside the Fairy Tale had already found him, the “intruder” inside the Black Forest.

He could escape with Door Opening, but doing so now might expose the real world’s coordinates to the Dark Angels.

His hand slid through the Hunter’s Garb again. Hunter was like a hollow phantom, without any trace of Entity at the touch.

But as he lunged for the empty clothes, the “connection” between him and the Hunter’s Garb surged.

Anka Aila’s gaze swung toward him, like a puppet on stage suddenly jerking to life and alerting the hand that held its strings.

He felt the clothes cover him, felt himself hide inside an extra “shell.” His mind dulled for a heartbeat. Feelings and memories not his own rose and flowed past without a sound. Even in that short contact, he still caught messy flashes:

He saw twelve people in heavy protective gear standing together, himself among them.

He heard commands in his ear, and the sound of water flooding into the Deep Dive pool.

He heard a roaring chaos, voices from countless people. The voices tangled and twisted, and under them came the hum of many devices running at once.

He saw himself crossing a dark expanse. He saw his “shell” cracking apart.

A violent river of power licked the protective layers. Alarms for internal structural failure burned like lava through his nerves. Error after error drowned his head, while a voice shrieked:

“Warning, Umbilical Cord severed. Warning, Umbilical Cord severed…

“Core link lost…”

His mind jumped between viewpoints that did not all belong to the Deep Divers from seventy years ago. He saw “memories” that could not have come from Human senses. The last thing he saw was himself falling out of a storm of wild, scrambled light and shadow.

The End Web ended in an Open Ground. Low, old buildings stood around the Open Ground.

The light went out.

Yu Sheng opened his eyes. Cloaked in Hunter’s outfit, he stood in the center of a dark Little House.

His vision wavered. Many Red Cloaks flickered in that shake like rising flames. The silence seemed to set the night on fire.

Anka Aila’s gaze swept across the sky over the Little House.

He looked up from the edge of Hunter’s hood. For a moment the roof was simply gone, and the shadow packed with eyes moved slowly across the sky and drifted toward the Black Forest’s edge.

It did not notice the intruder hiding inside the Hunter’s outfit.

He steadied himself and asked in his heart: “Are you still there?”

No answer came.

But a hollow, far-off howl brushed his hearing, like a signal meant for him. It seemed they were still there, only hiding to avoid provoking Anka Aila again.

He stood thinking for a moment, then looked down at his body and cautiously lifted his arm.

He saw himself wearing the Hunter’s Garb, and when he tried to move his arm, nothing felt wrong.

So the worst had not happened. He had feared that “wearing” the Hunter’s Garb might be a trap, that the clothes would seize control and force him to follow the Black Forest’s rules as the next Hunter. That would be worse than death. But nothing like that had happened.

He blinked. He felt as if something in him had changed, but he could not say what. At the same time he felt a gaze.

He turned and saw a Squirrel crouching nearby. The little one trembled so hard it was visible, yet had not fled the house.

The Squirrel whispered in a tiny voice: “So… you are a Hunter now?”

He thought for a second, stepped forward, and scooped the Squirrel up, then he said: “Maybe? But it feels like nothing has chan…”

He stopped mid-sentence.

The Squirrel pawed at his finger with worry and asked: “What is it?”

Yu Sheng did not answer. He stared at the wall ahead.

The wall was “flickering” in his sight.

It blinked without a pattern, now there, now gone. When it vanished, he could see the scene of the Black Forest outside. The entire Black Forest was flickering to his eyes.

Every tree, every flower, every bush flickered without order like a bad projector. Everything in the Black Forest had turned into a thin, unreal Illusion Arts. As the seconds passed, that unreal feeling only grew stronger.

Yu Sheng stepped forward with the Squirrel in his hands. He walked straight through the flickering wooden wall and came out of the Little House.

The Squirrel cried out in surprise: “Wow!” She had not reacted in time a moment ago and now stood there stunned, then she blurted: “We just walked through a wall! How did you do that?”

Yu Sheng did not answer. He had seen something else.

A huge Rift stood in the center of the Black Forest, quiet and still. It was like the tear he had seen in Old Zheng’s room when Anka Aila’s tendril pierced the real world.

It was there. It had been there from the start. The path to the backstage hid inside the Black Forest.

No one had been able to see it before.

He lifted the Squirrel higher on his palm and pointed with his other hand as he asked: “Do you see that?”

The Squirrel stared and said blankly: “Huh? See what?”

He shook his head and said: “Nothing. Looks like only a Hunter can see it.”

He drew a slow breath and stepped toward the Rift.

The instant he took the first step, endless wolf howls and a terrible roar forced him to stop.

The Squirrel shrieked with a breaking voice: “The wolves are here!”

The wolves were here.

Wolves flooded Yu Sheng’s sight.

He was sure that even when he had led Foxy through the Black Forest by blasting open a route to go fight Wolf Granny, there had not been this many wolves.

Packed shadow wolves rose out of the air itself. Against the flickering Forest, they filled every inch of space, as if every wolf in the Forest’s history had crowded onto the stage at once. Malice and the desire to kill gathered in the air until the smell seemed bloody.

Yu Sheng sucked in a cold breath, bit his back teeth, and reached over his shoulder for the hunting gun. He gripped it very awkwardly.

He squared himself and said through his teeth: “Come on then.”

The wolves leaped and tore him apart.

Into tiny pieces. To bits and pieces.