I want to be a faded person for life

Neferi said nothing as she spun her weapon again, gathering storms and arcs of lightning around her.

"Is that all..."

Disappointment flashed in Greg's cloudy eyes. He still didn't move, but simply deflected his arm and used the axe handle to block Nepheli's attack.

The storm and thunder stopped instantly. The old man finally became tired of such attacks.

"You are a worthless faded creature, you are not worthy of being used in [Limb Reattachment]."

Sensing the danger, Nepheli immediately pulled back, but Greg's deformed right hand, which was made up of countless arms, suddenly stretched out strangely, strangled her body in mid-air, and slammed her to the ground.

The female warrior spat out a mouthful of blood and rolled on the ground for several times. This impact almost dislocated all of her internal organs.

She had to take the red drops immediately to restore her fighting power, but just as she reached for the Holy Grail bottle, Greg slammed his golden battle axe into the ground again.

This time, the axe blade almost completely sank into the ground, and waves of earth swept in all directions with the demigod's feet as the center.

After the huge earthquake, even the castle shook slightly, and the courtyard became quiet again.

Greg turned his gaze to Toyokawa Shoko, who lay motionless on the ground.

"...You're still okay."

-

Xiangzi's body was thrown into the air by the earth waves raised by the earthquake and fell heavily into the mud.

The world before her eyes was plunged into a crimson color, but the pain was fading away, and her consciousness was becoming blurred again.

Stonewell, Nepheli, even Greg disappeared.

She returned to the cramped rental house.

The stench of corpses in the room became stronger.

【You're back again.】

The dead man on the old ceiling fan greeted her, still with that frivolous look and irritating habit.

The dead should look like dead people.

Xiangzi thought.

There was a leak somewhere in this unfortunate, dilapidated house, and the sewage from unknown origin mixed with the unfinished beer made the floor moldy.

Xiangzi slowly sat up and looked at the other person's feet swaying slightly in the air.

"You are just my fantasy. Now I am actually living in another place."

Everything she experienced during this period could not be faked. If you think you can shake her with such a simple method, then you are underestimating her.

Beige and black bugs were wriggling and drilling on the dead man's purple calves.

【But...what's the difference? Aren't we all in the same hell now?】

indeed.

A moldy and smelly dilapidated house and a rope, or a terrifying city and a king with limbs attached - these two situations did not make much difference to Toyokawa Shoko.

[You try to escape everything by dying, but in the end, you still can't escape.]

"No, I never ran away from that."

Xiangzi just frowned slightly and answered without hesitation.

Whether it is a harsh environment, physical fatigue or pain, these are all tolerable for her.

Otherwise, she wouldn't have moved into such a place to take care of her bastard father.

[Of course, how could you be afraid of such a thing? ]

The dead laugh in a mysterious way.

You are truly strong. Whether facing massive debts or powerful enemies, as long as there's still a chance of a comeback, you'll fight to the bitter end... and you'll always win.

[So what if it's a borderland? Whether it's beasts, ghosts, or zombies, it only takes a while to adapt. But you know very well...that's not what you're running away from.]

The uncomfortable feeling became even stronger, as a worm crawled out of the dead man's rotting mouth and climbed onto her eyeball.

[You are me, and we are afraid of the same thing.]

【That is... 'despair' itself.】

The room suddenly became dark, leaving only the sound of the dead.

[...That is a fact that can never be reversed. No matter how hard you try, it will be useless... Whether it's the death of your mother or the death of Takamatsu Deng, it's the same.]

Your biggest fear is that you can't do anything about what's happening.

That's why we're all in hell now. The lights are dead, both here and at the border.

Xiangzi's feet suddenly felt empty, the moldy and damp floor suddenly disappeared, and she was instantly engulfed in endless darkness.

There was nothing to hold onto, not even a strand of spider silk.

The eardrums were squeezed, followed by a strong feeling of suffocation, and I just kept falling towards the endless darkness. Falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling—

Time may have passed for only one second, or it may have passed for ten thousand years.

In the darkness, a little blue starlight appeared.

Someone who almost forgot his own existence had a question.

Why is there light in this dark seabed?

Did she see that ray of light? It was so faint, so thin, but she was unwilling to let go.

-

Xiangzi suddenly opened his eyes.

At this moment, she was lying in a pool of blood and mud. When she was blown away by the earthquake, a green pyroxene was lying quietly in front of her.

Under the starlight, the surrounding mud and blood turned into clear water.

"Ah—so you've always been with me."

At this moment, the light of the stars was reflected in the girl's eyes, and her glass-textured eyeballs seemed to be connected to the distant night sky.

Xiangzi stretched out her hand with difficulty and grasped the treasure that allowed her to take her first step at the intersection.

The girl's throat rolled up and down, swallowing the thing that was a bit too heavy for her throat.

-

Greg, who was walking towards here with his battle axe, suddenly stopped.

He glanced around in confusion, only to find that the limbs that made up most of his body were all in a state of tension.

——This is the warrior instinct left by the original owners of this body.

Although Greg is a demigod, he does not have much practical experience. In critical moments, he would trust the intuition of these battle-hardened heroes who were spliced ​​into his body more than his own.

"How is this going?"

"...My body is actually—on guard?"

Long ago, Greg had seen the same situation as this one.

Shortly after the initial limb-joining ritual, Greg, feeling powerful, challenged the undefeated Marlennia of Mikaela's Blade.

In his eyes, the slender Valkyrie did not look like a strong person at all, but the limbs of the warriors who made up her body were also tense and issued a warning.

The result was that he failed before he could even touch the other party.

There is a huge contradiction between what the eyes see and the body's instincts.

The surroundings dimmed, and a blue starlight rose before Greg's eyes.

Bathed in starlight, the severely injured Faded One twisted his body as if being pulled by invisible threads and stood up like a strange puppet.

She raised the sword and pointed it at herself, just like she did back then.

Chapter 38 Storm and Flame

"No... It's impossible. You're just a weak fader. You're not a monster like Marennia."

Greg couldn't help but take a step back, but this realization made him even angrier.

"...I actually retreated, and you dared to ask me to retreat?"

He clenched the golden battle axe and pounded it on the ground three times in a row. Each time the vibrations and earth waves became more violent than the last, spreading violently along the earth.

The ground in the courtyard was already covered with spider-web-like cracks, as if it had been hit head-on by a meteorite.

But Xiangzi seemed to be pulled by a silk thread and rose into the air strangely. The vibration on the ground posed no threat to her in the air.

"Can you fly... Then try this!"

The old man raised the battle axe diagonally over his shoulder, and a hurricane far more violent than before gathered on the axe blade.

The trees in the courtyard were pulled by the storm, making creaking sounds under the heavy weight.

He swung the double-edged axe violently, and the storm rolled up countless gravel and soil. If Eric's storm blade was a sharp sword, then the storm blade used by Greg was like dozens of heavy cannons firing at the same time on the city wall.

Xiangzi's body was in mid-air, floating like a feather without any force, avoiding the force of the storm. Only occasionally would he use a strange posture that was not very suitable for the human body to swing his sword and deflect some pieces of gravel flying towards him.

A piece of gravel suddenly brushed against her cheek, leaving a small scar.

"I knew it, I knew it! You're not Marenia—you, can't be avoided!"

Seeing this, Greg laughed heartily and raised the axe blade again.

The scar on the girl's face did not bleed, but instead quickly grew a thin crystal.

"It's really a trouble."

She suddenly rang the summoning bell in a nearly sideways position in mid-air. It wasn't Pumpkinhead, it wasn't Kulala, it wasn't the three wolf spirits, and it wasn't Gotok—

After thousands of years, the loud cry of an eagle returned to Stonewell.

The flock of crows hovering over the ancient city flew back - no, those were not crows, they were the eagles that Xiangzi had seen before.

A huge shadow condensed in the air.

Those were the ashes that Xiangzi had obtained on the second floor of the Houwang Chapel. No matter how he tried before, he could not get any response from the soul within.

But now, she can easily summon the soul of the ancient king sleeping there.

The storm condensed on the golden battle axe suddenly stopped.

A giant eagle with red and black feathers spread its broad wings in the air, but at that moment, the shadow of the eagle's wings obscured the brilliance of the golden tree.

"...the Storm King's beast!"

Greg's cloudy eyes gradually turned into a dazzling golden color due to anger.

"How dare you, how dare you come back to Stonewell!"

"I'm not afraid of you!"

"You are but an ancient ghost. My ancestor, Ge Fulei, was able to kill the Storm King. Today, I can kill you too!"

Greg let out a frantic battle cry and charged for the first time, the already dilapidated brick surface shattering under the old man's feet.

His bloated and huge body could roll flexibly on the ground. Greg used the extra limbs on his shoulders and legs to support the ground, and then he rotated his body and leaped into the air.

Although he was furious, the old man still retained considerable combat wisdom.

He knew very well that the Ancient Storm Eagle King was just a spirit summoned by the Faded One using the ashes, temporarily maintaining the appearance of his fighting form in life.

Slaying the Faded One will cause any summoned spirits to vanish.

But Xiangzi had no intention of fighting Greg head-on. She just let the invisible starlight pull her backwards.

The knowledge that Serlian taught me, which was originally incomprehensible, quickly took shape in my brain.

The closer she got to the essence of the starry sky, the further she could go on the path of pyroxene magic—she could call upon starlight without any need for understanding.

She waved the wand that had appeared in her hand without her noticing.

Meteors with blue-green flame tails, sharp arcs of stars, and scattered sharp crystals took shape in the starlight and shot towards Greg who was unable to dodge in mid-air.

The old man's deformed right arm strangely extended again, but even so, the axe blade only missed the girl's body by an inch.

A strange and stiff smile appeared on Xiangzi's face, and more pyroxene crystals grew from her cheeks and wounds.

"A futile trick. I've seen it once before."