“So, you’re here.”
“Finally, I’ve found you.”
The bird-masked man’s voice tore open and went mad in that instant. The mont Vinny spoke, the bird-masked man lowered his head, and the long beak that had rged with the mask twisted in a bizarre arc.
His cloak billowed without wind, and his body swelled rapidly in the rainy night, like a sponge sucking up water. The cloak was forced open from the middle, exposing countless sharp fangs, like rows and rows of short, razor-edged knives.
Vinny’s pupils shrank as he realized sothing was wrong. His gaze sharpened, icy light flaring in his hand. Frostfang was released, the spear-blade trailing a path of snowflakes and frost as it hacked toward the monster lunging at him.
The gaping maw that opened wide to bite him was jamd by the ice crystals ford by Frostfang, and the barbed, vine-thick tongue stretching out from within was frozen solid by the surging ice elent.
[Rifrost Full-Moon Slash]
The instant Vinny froze the swollen bird-masked monster, a ferocious ice-ghost mask appeared over # Nоvеlight # his face. It spewed out a blistering breath of absolute cold, blasting the fanged maw on the bird-masked man’s abdon into a spray of burning ice shards.
[Frost and Snow Engulfing Fla]
With [Sixfold Inferno] boosting it, Vinny’s [Frost and Snow Engulfing Fla] had its duration significantly extended, more than long enough to keep pouring out until the bird-masked man’s body was burned until not a patch of it was left intact.
Those ice shards hit the ground and lted into pools of black sludge, giving off a nauseating stench.
What the hell is this thing??
Does sothing like this really exist on the Tyrelis Continent??
Gritting his teeth, Vinny thought that as he watched the bird-masked monster—its navel and chest gone, yet still clawing toward him with bared fangs.
Even having lost its abdon, the bird-masked monster’s head kept butting toward him, trying to bite his head clean off.
Vinny lifted Frostfang, the shaft of the spear catching the bird-masked man’s stabbing beak.
In the next instant, [Armor Fortress] overlaid his body. Vinny’s whole figure was drenched in ice crystals as he raised his head and smashed it headfirst into the bird-masked man.
“Crack, crack!” Frost and snow flew; cold surged in all directions. The bird-masked man’s head was smashed to a pulp and froze over, leaving it frostbitten.
However, that didn’t make the bird-masked man flinch back in pain. His beak hooked onto Vinny and yanked him up off the ground, then slamd him savagely into the floor.
Vinny took a hard hit. Just as the bird-masked monster tried to press the attack, Vinny released [Congealed-Ice Shackles] toward the top of the bird-masked monster’s head, then yanked on the shackles, using them as leverage to step on the bird-masked monster’s skull and vault over it into the air.
The mont he landed, Vinny imdiately drew [Sixfold Inferno] and pulled the trigger at the bird-masked monster’s head.
“Boom, boom!!”
With a massive recoil, a bullet of fla shot out from the barrel, swelling rapidly in the air until it beca like a small corona, blooming into a sea of fire on the bird-masked monster’s head.
Vinny held [Sixfold Inferno] in his hand, the barrel still smoking, and calmly watched as the bird-masked monster’s head burned, its lower body suffering severe frostbite, its upper body severely charred as it dropped out of sight.
“Oh, right, forgot to tell you—this young master has two weapons. One’s a fla gun, and one’s an ice gun.” Vinny blew lightly at the muzzle smoke, handsoly holstered [Sixfold Inferno], and took the chance to pose.
This was him in his male body at peak condition—state at its best, no injuries on him, every enchanted weapon on his person.
Just as Vinny was about to pull off the classic “expert never looks back at the explosion,” he suddenly sensed sothing was off.
Previously, the bird-masked monster that had been blasted into nothing but pus by ice and fire didn’t actually die just like that.
The black rain from the sky fell on the bird-masked monster’s body, and the black, sludge-like muck that had dropped off it earlier grew out again, condensing on its body into the previously shattered, exploded outer shell.
“Damn it! This thing can revive??” Vinny was glad he hadn’t fully turned his back. Otherwise, he would’ve gotten blindsided.
No, seriously, what the hell is this thing? Why won’t it die??
He’d just gone through basically every spell he could use in this rotation.
Watching the monster’s injuries slowly knit back together right in front of his eyes, Vinny had a feeling like his hands were tied.
“You are—here!” The bird-masked monster revived, a rasping roar coming from its throat.
Vinny paused for a mont. He’d noticed a detail. Back then, before the monster attacked him, what was the condition? Was it that unless he walked right up to the monster, it couldn’t attack? Or that it was unable to attack at all?
Thinking back to how the monster had said “So, you’re here” before attacking, Vinny arrived at a possibility.
Could it be that this monster can’t see, and can only track living things by sound??
But then why didn’t it hear my footsteps??
Or is it that this monster’s hearing also has limits, or that it can’t hear at all, and only the voices of the living—due to so reason—happen to catch its attention??
With that thought, Vinny shut his mouth and rolled to the side.
Once the bird-masked monster fully recovered, it fired the barbed, vine-like giant tongue from the gaping maw in its abdon, slamming it down at where Vinny had just been. The ground was pounded into a savage groove.
Realizing it hadn’t hit Vinny, the bird-masked monster continued to wreak havoc, but none of its strikes landed. Vinny had already slipped away to who knew where.
“Co out!” The bird-masked monster’s voice was sharp and tearing. From a human’s perspective, Vinny could hear a bit of fluster and frustration in it.
Just as I thought.
Vinny’s judgnt was correct. This monster was powerful, and he still didn’t know how to finish it off completely, but as long as a living person made no sound, it couldn’t determine where that person was.
“Co out!!” The bird-masked monster’s voice grew even more urgent, and Vinny picked up a faint sense of wrongness in it.
The sound this monster made was like so unknown lifeform deliberately imitating human language and vocal cords, which was why its voice carried such a bizarre and off-key quality.
It was like a false human—just looking at it gave you an extrely uncanny feeling.
Vinny mulled it over for a while and finally noticed what exactly felt strange. From start to finish, this bird-masked monster had never used any kind of emotional interjection when it spoke.
Vinny said nothing, silently slipping even farther away.
Seeing that it still couldn’t catch Vinny, the bird-masked monster grew even more agitated. Vinny had no idea why it was so desperate to kill him—was there so motive behind it, or was this just the instinct of an extrely malignant creature??
“Co—out!!”
Very soon, the bird-masked monster could no longer maintain its form. The sludge fell rapidly from its body, washed apart by the rain.
The bird-masked monster let out a series of cries in the rain that Vinny’s hearing couldn’t even parse. If he had to describe it, it was like infrasound—inaudible, but the harm it did to people was very real.
It made Vinny seriously wonder if this was really a sound that any Tyrelis creature could make??
Or rather—could this even be called a “sound”??
In the rain, the monster lted away like ice cream under the sun, dissolving rapidly and reverting into a puddle of black sludge on the ground.
Vinny didn’t go closer. Curiosity killed the cat, and in a situation like this, the best move was not to get near it. Getting out of here as fast as possible was the smart play.
He strode quickly forward, never looking back.
This place was just too eerie. Including the “natives” living here.
As he walked, Vinny ca to what looked like a collapsed mine entrance, with a few ruined buildings standing nearby. The architecture looked very unfamiliar—Vinny felt like he’d never seen this style of building anywhere on the Tyrelis Continent.
But at the sa ti, these buildings didn’t feel like sothing conjured out of thin air either.
So what exactly was that black cube earlier, and why had he suddenly been transported to this place??
For now, all of that was still unknown.
On top of that, this world felt like it had been randomly stitched together. One mont he was walking down a street lined with lampposts, and the next a mine entrance just popped up. There was no sense of normal transition between one scene and the next at all.
Vinny stepped into the mine. Visibility inside was incredibly low, and he could just barely make out a swaying lamp ahead, so he felt his way toward it.
When he could see that the lamp was hanging near what seed to be a cliff edge, Vinny wondered if the path ended there. Then he saw that not far from the lamp, there were two wooden bridges.
What instantly put him on guard was that in front of each wooden bridge, a human silhouette was standing.
Vinny backed up a few steps to avoid getting pincered, but neither of the two silhouettes made any move to rush at him.
The lantern on the box in the middle suddenly grew brighter, illuminating the two figures in front of the wooden bridges.
Vinny saw clearly that the two figures were two knights—except their appearances were completely different.
The knight on the left was clad in a lavish suit of golden plate armor, a helt adorned with extravagant ornants on his head, and a refined knight’s sword in a scabbard at his waist, its hilt wrapped in patterns and roses. The knight’s long crest plu was splendid and textured, making him look majestically awe-inspiring, as if nothing could stand in his way.
Vinny felt that if protagonists from knight novels really existed, they’d definitely look like this.
As for the other knight, well, his getup was... hard to describe politely.
A suit of battered, tattered armor, a fully enclosed iron helt with a cross-shaped slit, and both hands resting on a very ordinary-looking knight’s greatsword. He stood there motionless.
This look—rather than a knight, he was more like so low-powered grunt. In a ga, he’d be the kind of cannon-fodder mob that dies in one hit.
It was rare to see two beings that actually looked sowhat like normal people. Vinny didn’t hesitate long before walking over—because one way or another, he had to cross a bridge, whether it was this one or the other one.
“Honored sir, it seems it hasn’t been easy for you to make it all the way here. Hurry and cross the bridge—I’ll escort you out of this place.”
As Vinny approached the knight in splendid gear, the knight gave him a graceful knight’s salute and then pointed at the bridge ahead.
“I am a Temple Knight of the kingdom, Joseph Ginifis. By order of the king, I ca here to rescue you all. Quickly, before the monsters co, let’s cross the bridge. You are a very important survivor, and I will escort you to safety.” This knight—who at a glance was clearly no low-rank scrub—spoke respectfully.
Monster attack? Survivor??
Vinny didn’t understand. That was way too sharp a turn. He had no idea what track this was even supposed to be on anymore.
He glanced at the wooden bridge behind this knight. It looked sturdy, with a very high degree of intactness.
And just then, Vinny caught sight of the words written on the wooden placard under the lantern.
“Two knights. One sanctimonious fraud has told a lie and harbors malice.”
“???”
After reading that line, Vinny looked at the splendid knight in front of him. The other party didn’t seem to notice his gaze on the placard at all, and waited gracefully for him to cross the bridge.
But after seeing that sentence, how could Vinny still step onto the bridge? He thought it over for a mont, stepped back, and, after carefully examining the placard under the lantern, walked toward the other knight.
This knight’s “market value” was far inferior to the previous one. If knights had market value, then this tight-lipped knight in front of him was like expiring stock on a supermarket shelf—man and gear both looked cheap at a glance, completely incomparable to the knight next door.
Can they not see each other?
Vinny glanced at the knight in splendid gear. Once Vinny moved about five ters away, the knight’s gaze no longer landed on him at all, as if he couldn’t see him.
By contrast, the knight in front of him—equipped so shabbily he looked like a grunt, making you wonder if he was reliable at all—also seed unable to see the other knight.
When Vinny walked closer, this knight noticed him and stepped aside, only saying two words.
“Hurry across.”
The knight’s voice was low and muffled, giving off a stuffy feeling, like he normally didn’t speak much with other people, making him seem dumb and dull overall, like a walking tin can.
“Why should I cross?” Vinny asked, baffled.
“Behind you. There’s a monster.” The knight gave a concise explanation.
“A monster??” Vinny looked back over his shoulder and found that the path he’d co from was long gone. Behind him was shrouded in pitch-black, nothing visible at all.
In the faint sense of it, it really did feel like sothing was writhing in that darkness.
“There’s a monster behind ? But I ca from there in the first place,” Vinny said.
“Leave this place at once, boy.” The knight didn’t explain much else and simply repeated what he’d said before.
Seriously, this guy is way too weird, isn’t he??
Vinny’s gaze toward this knight grew even stranger.
Taciturn, eccentric, saying things that didn’t match up at all, refusing to answer him straight, with a weird, inexplicable stubbornness.
No matter how you looked at him, this knight just didn’t seem normal, right??
Compared to him, that full-gold, well-spoken, high-tier knight over there was on a completely different level. It was the difference between a city’s great general on the walls and a grunt on the front lines.
“Sir Knight, what’s your na?” Vinny couldn’t help asking.
“?”
“Is there anyone else here??”
“Red Saintlen,” the knight answered slowly.
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