Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

We were so close; we were almost there!

The nun, gripping a giant scythe, emerged step by step from the tunnel. A thick chill emanated from beneath her loose skirt, and the scythe's blade was stained with frost, mirroring the color of the surrounding icy earth.

She saw the gravedigger, sword and shield in hand, rushing towards her, and heard the giant wolf, its bloodline ancient, growling—with a thought, she conjured large swathes of ice crystals in front of her, forming a solid barrier. Then, the giant scythe rose, tearing a long, thin trail of withered blood through the air.

The familiar taste, the familiar blood.

She didn't remember the face of the gravedigger standing in front of her, but she felt that she should have fought with this person before.

So, this must have happened a long, long time ago.

She remembered how she had once used the conflict between divine and royal power to support a king—a man known as the 'Overlord,' as brave as a tiger and as cunning as a wolf. With her assistance, he had expanded the kingdom of Carthus to cover most of the world. Kings bowed their heads, and the White Cult, the sworn enemy of the Black Cult, was utterly crushed. She and her allies should have soon ushered in their destined victory, and then… everything was destroyed by the Farron Undead Legion.

Carthus's army was powerful, and the Black Church's power was immense. Together, they formed a behemoth capable of swallowing the entire world—yet the Undead Legion struck at this monster's fatal weakness with a surprise attack on the capital. They stormed the Overlord's palace, forcing the mortally wounded king to activate the still-imperfect Abyss Ritual to transform his life force. Meanwhile, the remnants of the White Church and the rebel armies of other nations seized the opportunity to rise up, and the Black Church's defeat was inevitable.

The nun tried desperately to salvage the situation. But just as the Overlord suffered a fatal blow from the Undead Legion, when the Undead Legion moved, the elite priests of the White Cult also laid a trap for her. She was besieged and without any help—ultimately, Carthus's capital, along with the Overlord's royal city, sank underground, sealed away by the Undead Legion. She herself, as a defeated member of the Black Cult, was captured by the White Cult and thrown into the Initial Forge, becoming fuel for the world.

The nun didn't care about becoming firewood, because she had lost.

The nun did not hate the Farron Immortals, because she had lost.

The victor lives, the loser dies; the winner is laden with glory, the loser loses everything—this is a truth universally acknowledged by all sentient beings in this world. The nun, naturally one of these sentient beings, would not disagree with this.

She was just wondering about one thing... why did this group of people who called themselves the Undead Legion hate the Abyss so much?

She couldn't understand it, she couldn't comprehend it. Ah, yes, the essence of the abyss is an infinite accumulation of curses and hatred, the most primal darkness opposite to the original light—but so what? Humans can tame, or rather adapt to, the light, so why can't they tame, or rather adapt to, the darkness?

The flame will eventually die out, no matter how much it is passed down or how much fuel is added. The fact remains that the initial flame grows weaker day by day. Humans are destined to become dead, and the dead can become immortal. The immortals, when they gather together, become wandering spirits, which is the inevitable future fate of this world.

She couldn't understand why these Abyss Watchers, who called themselves the Farron Undead Legion, went to such lengths to fight the Abyss. Just as they probably couldn't understand why she had become the leader of the Black Church and made an enemy of the mortal world—and after a long time, she gave up the idea of ​​exploring... In fact, it was nothing more than different paths and different ideals, and in the end, all that was left was a desperate battle.

"Dark civilizations were defeated by light civilizations, the Abyss system was defeated by the Primordial Flame system, one technology tree was defeated by another, and that's all."

She spoke softly. The air in front of her suddenly cleared—only then did she notice that the King's Gravekeeper and the Great Wolf had both fallen beneath her scythe. And her true target was now close at hand.

Fran, the unpaid queen.

She had heard this name before, knowing she was a special member who joined the Undead Legion after the fall of Carthus—a mere mortal who joined because of blood ties. When the Undead Legion was forced to take on the responsibility of linking the First Flame due to the machinations of the White Cult, she, because of her status as a living person, was unable to do so, instead becoming the inheritor of the Legion's remaining power. Ultimately, she too was sent on a journey to the Paintings with the last remaining Farron ghosts, all because of the White Cult's schemes. And within the Paintings, the nun never even clashed with her.

This was the nun's regret, and perhaps it was also her regret. But now, perhaps the time has come for both sides' wishes to be fulfilled.

The ghost of Fran will notice this place.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Shen Qi standing at the tunnel entrance, having just finished a sketch, smiling and greeting her—she could vaguely sense that this place had been sealed off by some unknown force, becoming a separate space. And everything that happened here would remain secret until the spatial barrier was broken.

[The artist's power is truly formidable; she can even seal off space... Does she really not have suitable paints? Or... um.]

The thought flashed through Alice's mind, but she immediately urged her will to dismiss it—she was different from others; the only way for her to leave painting was to rely on the painter Shinki's power. And since she was destined to work with her, it would be unwise to focus too much attention on her.

We need to shift our focus to other things... there's no need to waste too much time on this.

“Francine, the unpaid queen,” Alice whispered. “Why call yourself queen when you receive no pay?”

Her gaze swept over an exceptionally tall ancient tomb that came into view—she saw a sword, a sword slightly different from the Immortals' greatsword, closer in size to Astra's greatsword. And, a pale hand holding the sword, slowly rising from the ground.

Perhaps I should make the first move and attack her.

Alice thought to herself, but an inexplicable impulse made her stop in her tracks. She lowered the scythe in her hand slightly and did not swing the giant scythe before the other party was fully awake.

Soon, a girl with short blonde hair and blood-red eyes appeared in her sight.

She suddenly felt that something was wrong.

..........................................

Mokou collapsed once again onto the stone coffin that she had kicked shut.

"The three hundred... to be precise, it should be the three hundred and one, or two?" She clenched her fist lightly, but found she had no strength left to do so, and sighed dejectedly. She collapsed like a lump of mud.

"Hey, you shut-in." She tilted her head, looking at the other side of the stone coffin. "Tell me, how many times have we been turned into two little pancakes now?"

“The three hundredth time, exactly. The time you died crashing into the wall, Turkey, doesn’t count,” Kaguya said slowly. She sat opposite the stone pavilion, elegantly adjusting her collar and skirt, which were disheveled from overexertion—since she had no chance of winning in a fight, as the destined loser, she felt she should at least maintain some decorum. And now it seemed… her results were quite good.

"To be honest, I think we're really wasting our time here." Mokou sighed deeply, resting her chin on her hand. "We've tried everything we can think of. Yet we still can't leave this cemetery. That man... he's just too strong. I suspect we've chosen the wrong strategy."

"A walkthrough?" Kaguya gently toyed with the ends of her soft hair. "Do you still think this is just a game?"

“It’s not a given, it’s just a misuse of words.” Mokou shrugged and replied, “After dying so many times and making so many attempts, I can be certain that I’m not in any illusion, and there’s no mental error involved—we have undoubtedly arrived in a new world that is completely different from Gensokyo and from the outside world of Gensokyo. And here, every death and defeat we face is undeniably real.”

"You know that's good." Kaguya tied up her long hair, then decided to let it down after a moment's thought—since she'd be turned into two little pancakes with one punch anyway, her hair didn't really matter—"But I must remind you again, even those from Penglai who have taken the elixir of immortality will eventually die. We've both died nearly three hundred times already, and if we don't take any measures to prevent further deaths, our spirits will eventually decay and disintegrate. I'm a naturally immortal being, so I can probably endure another three or five hundred times without any problem. As for you… I feel like you've basically lost control of the flames on your body. Perhaps after dying seven or eight more times, your soul will disintegrate."

"...Then what can I do?" Mokou reached out, grasping at the vast, gray sky—and unsurprisingly, she couldn't grab anything. All she managed to hold was a wisp of air that quietly dissipated.

"We are not in Gensokyo, but in another world with the same worldview as Dark Souls. Considering Eirin Yagokoro's previous actions and Alice's instructions to me, I guess Gensokyo is currently in some serious situation with unpredictable consequences, and the two of us probably occupy one or two important positions in it."

She exhaled softly, feeling a sense of helplessness as she looked at the invisible spatial barrier surrounding the cemetery.

“I’m certain we weren’t sent here to just sit around doing nothing. We definitely have a mission to complete… Damn it, Alice, can’t you just say what you mean? The two of us have no chance against that strange man. And if we don’t defeat him… how are we supposed to leave this place?”

She collapsed onto the stone coffin with a thud. As she fell, Kaguya also collapsed, and silence fell between them once more.

a long time.

"Hey, Kaguya," Mokou asked Kaguya in a rare serious tone, "Your power is eternity and fleeting moments, right? I remember you once forcibly manipulated even half a night's duration. And since it's a spacetime power, then, is there really no way to get through that outer spatial barrier?"

“No,” Kaguya shook her head firmly. “That space is terrifyingly stable, its solidity is almost equivalent to this world itself—I might be able to open holes, create cracks and passages inside the world. But to directly break through this world… even Eirin, under the right conditions, would probably need to prepare for a thousand years.”

"And we don't have any materials at all," Mokou finished the sentence she hadn't been able to say. The two of them sighed in unison and then fell silent.

Five minutes later...

Mokou suddenly opened her eyes and sprang to her feet. She clenched her fists, her eyes once again blazing with fighting spirit. She lifted her foot and stepped towards the white mist barrier at the cemetery exit. And just like her previous three hundred defeats, she had no intention of giving up this time!

"What are you doing, Turkey? Die again?" Kaguya's cold voice came from behind her. "You can't take many more. If you don't repair your spirit and heal your mind, you'll truly collapse sooner or later, and then I won't be there to collect your corpse!"

“If I really die, then just seal me in that stone coffin.” Mokou said without turning her head, “The enemy is there, and I have no reason not to go. Even if my heart and will are completely destroyed, I will fall on the road to the charge—Kaguya, I am different from you. I am not born immortal. Before taking the Hourai Elixir, my life was like a candle in the wind, which could be extinguished at any time.”

"I am merely a short-lived species with an immortal body, and my philosophy of life is to make my brief life, like fireworks, bloom brilliantly in that chosen moment. And now is the perfect time."

She stopped and suddenly glared fiercely at Kaguya.

"So what if I die? I'm tired of living. This is a golden opportunity for me—to win a glorious defeat and death in a battle against such a powerful enemy. This ending couldn't be better for me!"

..................................................................

The use of the interchangeable terms "nun" and "Alice" was intentional, not random.

Transformation, Chapter Ten: I admit you're stronger in one-on-one combat...

Mokou soon faced her 302nd death.

There's not much to go into the details of the process; in their previous attempts, she and Kaguya had tried every method they could imagine. They'd tried everything: a frontal assault, a flanking maneuver, careful infiltration, even feigning surrender to lull the enemy into a false sense of security. But the result remained unchanged.

One punch, two platters. Two punches, four platters.

No matter what the two girls did, they were doomed, and they couldn't even extend their lives in front of that man by a single second. And this time was clearly no different.

She died the moment she stepped out of the white mist, and her death was swift and decisive. Her body and soul were utterly destroyed, and her will plunged into the abyss of death.

The abyss of death.

It was like a bottomless ocean. There was no light above, only darkness below, and the will of mortals floated and sank in this boundless chaos. Perhaps they were rising, perhaps they were falling, or perhaps they were simply suspended in place. But none of these three scenarios actually mattered in this abyss of death.

The dead have no feelings; only the living do.

Even those who have been dormant in the Abyss of Death for billions of years will not feel the slightest impatience. Unless they can successfully reincarnate, they will not be able to relive the loneliness and bewilderment of floating in the Abyss through memories. However, because the memories of the Abyss of Death do not actually exist in the real world and are not truly imprinted in the brain, even those extremely rare resurrected individuals will at most retain some vivid impressions of their time in the Abyss of Death. And naturally, those who have had such an experience usually only have two outcomes—either they overcome their fear of death, or they are imprisoned by the fear of death.

Alice is the former, and so is Fujiwara no Mokou.

This wasn't Mokou's first time here. Unlike Alice, as an immortal being from Hourai, Fujiwara no Mokou had arrived here at least tens of thousands of times over the past thousand years as an anomaly. Death was commonplace for her. And it was precisely because of this familiarity with death that she was able to acquire a seemingly useless but unique ability in this countless cycle of death—even within this abyss of death, she could continue her thoughts.

All she could do was think.

She pondered a phenomenon that had long felt unsettling, but which, like Kaguya, she had tacitly kept silent after their first eye contact: 'Why is it that only after both people die simultaneously can the one who dies first experience the spatial reset and resurrection?'

Ah, that's right. The fact that the entire "game scene" was reset after Fujiwara no Mokou and Houraisan Kaguya both died is indeed a logical and reasonable phenomenon that fits this world perfectly, like water flowing downhill or the sun rising in the east. If they were just ordinary mortals or cultivators, they certainly wouldn't feel anything unusual, but the problem is—they are not ordinary.

They are from Penglai, and people from Penglai are said to be able to come back to life.

Yes, that's right. Killing a person from Hourai isn't impossible. Both Fujiwara no Mokou and Houraisan Kaguya have witnessed the methods of outsiders. They know that the Hourai people's so-called immortality is utterly helpless against methods like 'being launched into an artificial sun' and 'being connected to a generator to act as a living battery.' Even cells and souls capable of infinite regeneration will eventually decay completely. Moreover, in their understanding, even before outsiders cracked the Hourai secret medicine, many Hourai people had already met a long and painful death through these two methods.

The people of Hourai can die, but only in this way can they truly die. And that blind man wielding the crimson sword, though incredibly strong—strong enough that Fujiwara no Mokou had no doubt he could bring her to true death with his bare fists—had never suffered a blow of this magnitude in the 302 times she had faced so far, including the initial death by crashing into the spatial barrier.

[That's right, this level of death wouldn't have delayed me for much time. It's just physical decay and a shattered shell. If I were in the Lost Bamboo Forest, I wouldn't even need half a minute to revive from this level of death... I should have been resurrected within the short time after death. Instead, like now... dying once is the end, and I can only be resurrected after Kaguya and I die together.]

[Is something suppressing my and Mount Penglai's immortality...? Why would it do this, and does this mean it's covering something up...? Ugh, damn it, I'm not good with my brain. Especially not in this situation where I don't even have a brain... Tsk, why hasn't that shut-in girl gone to find that man to die this time? I don't want to stay in this abyss of death for too long!]

She thought with a touch of annoyance... although she might not even possess the ability to be 'annoyed' anymore. But that didn't stop her from having this thought.

Sigh, I wonder how far that shut-in girl has progressed in her research on spatial barriers... Tsk, spatial barriers. This thing feels even tougher than the Great Barrier of Gensokyo, but unfortunately, resources are so scarce. Even trying to concoct some research equipment by hand is incredibly difficult... I wonder if this mastermind really exists. What if everything we've encountered so far is normal, and we're just too weak to clear this first hurdle...?

"...That would be far too tragic."

Fujiwara no Mokou's eyes widened abruptly—she opened them abruptly after realizing she didn't have eyes at all. The dark, deep abyss of death seemed to transform in an instant into a tangible ocean, and before the feeling of drowning even arrived, a shock and alarm that shouldn't be present in an inanimate object filled her mind and body!

"Who! Who's speaking!" she roared suddenly—a furious roar that, despite having no tongue, produced a sound like a real-world sonic boom. Just as she realized how abnormal this was, the uninvited female voice returned. This time, the voice was much clearer than before!

“Alice Margot Royd!?” she couldn’t help but exclaim.

Her consciousness, which had been hovering in the abyss of death, suddenly became as clear as when she was alive, and an unmistakable image appeared in her mind. After experiencing more than three hundred deaths, she finally met Alice again, and before she could even ask her questions, the figure that had appeared in her mind spoke first.

"First of all, this is a message, so if you have any complaints, there's no need to vent them to me. This message is set to be triggered in the Abyss of Death only after you and Kaguya Houraisan have both died more than three hundred times, and your mood has been below a certain threshold for a long time, and many other hidden conditions are met. Logically speaking, you shouldn't have been able to access this message until this 'Great Anomaly' ends. But since you've already seen the message, it means that the current environment is in a very bad state."

“I’ll be frank,” the witch in her mind suddenly sighed in frustration. “If you can see this far, then it means my plan has a terrible flaw beyond imagination. There’s some unknown third-party force interfering severely with this operation. And if I’m not mistaken, my will may have already been lost. And my companions probably are as well.”

Mokou was dumbfounded.

"Wait, wait a minute!" she couldn't help but shout. "Weren't you acting all shrewd before? You came up to me and played a bunch of riddles, then forced me into this real-life Dark Souls world. And now, before I even have a chance to settle accounts with you, you're telling me you've been tricked? Are you kidding me?! And isn't that old woman Yagokoro helping her with the plans at Mount Hourai? Could she have been tricked too—can something like that even happen!?"

"I know you must be very angry right now, even quite incredulous. But unfortunately, the plan falling apart is something I can't control." Alice's message image shrugged helplessly, miraculously completing a conversation with Mokou across time and space. And her words didn't end there; she went on to reveal more information to Mokou.

"I believe you should be able to confirm the reality of this world by now—yes, you are in a real world. A world that partially conforms to the background setting of Dark Souls III. And the reason I say partially is because the other part is Gensokyo."

"Yes, that's right. The sages and I cast a spell to merge the world of Gensokyo and the world of Dark Souls. You may not understand why we did this, but it's not a bad thing—through this fusion, this world will grow, and the inhabitants of Gensokyo will be directly reincarnated into many important characters in the Dark Souls world. I brought you and Kaguya Houraisan here and helped you break free from the interference of the world's will so that you could participate in the fates of these heroes, whose lives are intertwined with those of the inhabitants of Gensokyo, as you walk the earth as 'protagonists.' You will awaken everyone from the haze caused by the world fusion through battle. This will gather and solidify our destiny, making this world become us... or rather, making us a part of this world."

"But we're stuck at the door and can't get out at all," Mokou couldn't help but complain. "Me and that shut-in girl still don't even know what the world is like! We haven't even met a third person we can talk to!"

"Unfortunately, the plan has fallen apart. So now we can only activate the backup plan—I'm not entirely sure which part went wrong. But I'm about 70% certain that if the problem lies with me, then the external force that caused all these changes is likely right next to me—the character I'm covering should be Elfried, the nun in the painting world. Therefore, once the backup plan is activated, you must avoid meeting me as much as possible. If I deviate from the original script and leave the painting world, then be very careful about the characters standing next to me. In short, ignoring me is the best strategy. I'm not sure if I'll still be the normal 'me' at that time."

"Alright, after hearing so much, I think you must be getting a little impatient. Now I will input the execution steps of the secondary plan into your mind. And you only have one chance, so I hope you will cherish it." In the girl's mind, the image of the individual 'Alice Margotrovid' quickly faded and blurred, and then a series of complex sentences rapidly resounded in her mind.

"First, you must..."

....................................

Mokou opened her eyes.