Does the mechanical girl dream of the Messiah?

The towering tower seemed to pierce directly into the blood-red moon in the sky. The tower was already decayed, and the bronze bell waiting to be rung had been broken and tattered long ago. The wooden structure was decayed, and the stone structure was broken. It was like a tombstone, marking the end of an era and the arrival of decline.

Some things are immortal.

For example, the unchanging spire on the tall tower once existed as a fixed object of some kind of emblem. Now that emblem has disappeared, the long pole still exists, continuing to leave its mark in the river of time.

For example, the blood-red moon exists here now, and in the near future, in the distant future that I can no longer witness, the moon will still exist, spreading its light of uneasiness, fear, and blood to the earth, and be praised, worshipped, driven crazy, and trembled.

For example, that figure.

It's like some kind of mark engraved on the world.

——Whatever you see, you will never forget. Whatever is destined will happen. Whatever you choose will meet.

The holy book records every word that Zelti passed on to the world through the saints. They were listened to by the saints and then written down by the priests, becoming part of the holy book. Some are aphorisms, some are prophecies. There are many aphorisms, but few prophecies. After all, this belongs to the realm of the gods of stars and fate. After the aphorisms and prophecies, there are some strange words that make people confused. This is one of them.

These were also among the last words Lunicea heard.

She just silently recited the gentle words of the god, but her eyes never moved away. The figure had already attracted her attention firmly.

At this distance, looking up at the towering spire, she should not be able to see anything clearly, but at this moment, it was completely different. She could see everything, the black hair, the golden pupils, and those things that echoed the blood moon in the sky.

These were not enough to shock and embarrass Lunicia, but what if, what if... that face looked exactly like her own?

Exactly the same gentle face, exactly the same long black hair.

The difference was that she had golden pupils, extremely beautiful and intoxicating golden pupils. Unlike Lunicia's ordinary brown pupils, those golden eyes had a magical power that captivated people. They were so wonderful that they were like a golden lake that flowed quietly and shimmered with waves.

Her skin was paler than Lunicia's, and because of this, she looked a little different from Lunicia, looking more cold and beautiful, like an exquisite doll made of excellent porcelain enamel, a doll that was more beautiful than Lunicia. Lunicia finally moved her eyes away from the pair of golden pupils, quickly passing through the face that was full of sadness, loneliness and confusion, and then when she saw her body, she couldn't help but hold her breath.

It was not because she was almost naked, wrapped only in a translucent veil like clouds and smoke, but because of her disability.

Only her shoulders, neck, chest, half of her upper arms and waist were intact.

In other places, machines have replaced the living flesh that humans should have.

The black machinery was exquisite and beautiful, delicate and special, far superior to any steam machinery that Lunicia had ever seen. Compared with those machinery that were full of solidity and heaviness, the machinery embedded in the flesh before her eyes was like a work of art. The slender fingertips and the soles of the feet that were like high heels were all the products of the most sophisticated machinery combined in the most exquisite way.

Beautiful, yet cold and cruel.

Lunicia's intuition told her that those were undoubtedly the products of human parts being removed and then mechanical parts being sewn on. Perhaps the seemingly intact half of the body had already been hollowed out, and what was flowing under the pure white skin was not blood, and what was beating was not the atrium.

Her eyes were half closed, letting her long eyelashes sway in the night breeze.

That scene, the lonely Epiphyllum under the blood moon, was like a beautiful painting.

This made her hang her head in shame and repent of her sins.

She knew in her heart that it was definitely not human - that figure standing in the dark night, under the blood moon, that body that had been cruelly transformed, could only belong to the followers of darkness, and the followers of darkness meant evil, even though that figure inadvertently revealed an expression of loneliness and solitude, and gently hugged his shoulders towards the blood moon.

——Poor child...?

She didn't know whether to sympathize with her or hate her as a paladin.

——She was the one luring me here, and the previous trap was related to her?

Not like.

Lunitia had no conclusive evidence to accuse her of this.

Moreover, the remaining mumblings of the Lord of Pure Light were difficult for Lunisia to ignore. Even though she could not tell whether it was true divine revelation or her own hallucination, she still chose to give it absolute trust.

Besides, the other party didn't seem to notice him at all. Even though he had chopped a zombie in half and cut off the heads of four zombies, the noise he caused was not big enough to be transmitted to such a distant tower.

If that’s the case, then what I saw before was probably just a coincidence?

——We can’t draw such a simple conclusion.

The series of events that happened today seemed to be coincidences, but in the end they formed a clue of an ambush, which made her wary of so-called coincidences.

In her judgment, the female figure in front of her and the ones she had met before should not belong to the same kind of dark followers. The ones before could be roughly divided into cultists wearing cloaks and holding rotten weapons, zombies controlled by cultists, and huge monsters. Those cultists were respectful to the monsters, and the cult leader was developing in an inhuman shape. If Lunicia's judgment was correct, the ultimate goal of those cultists might be to transform themselves into those huge monsters.

Corruption and decay are their symbols, and such symbols have nothing to do with that figure.

——Why does she look so similar to me?

Lunicia didn't want to call it exactly the same; that face was more childish and more beautiful than hers, as if it had been optimized based on hers, so she was only willing to call it similar.

This question made her feel incomprehensible, which seemed to prove that she had no connection with those cultists, unless those cultists who loved to torment corpses had already reached into the core of the temple.

While thinking, she raised her knife and chopped a zombie that emerged from the shadows in half.

——But no matter what the situation is, this place is worth exploring.

Lunicia looked around.

Under the glow of the blood moon, the broken walls and ruins were all stained with a faint blood-red luster, and in places where the blood-red light could not reach, zombies appeared from the shadows one after another, some walking on two feet, some crawling on all fours, some had lost half of their bodies, but were still scratching the ground with their hands, slowly approaching.

They smelled the sweet scent of the living.

However, those zombies were different from their companions she had seen in the forest. The zombies before her did not look "fresh" - those zombies in the forest, even if their blood had dried up and their flesh had shown signs of decay, could still be seen as corpses that had not been dead for long or had been preserved - these zombies before her had basically turned into mummies-like dried corpses, with traces of gnawing and strange rituals all over their bodies, their upper and lower jaws opening and closing but making no sound. Lunicia could not understand why the corpses would become like this in such a place that was neither dry nor cold nor a swamp.

What is even more striking is that the bodies of these crawling corpses basically all have strange deformities.

Part of the body was swollen, part of the body was twisted, and part of the body was weirdly hunched.

This reminded her of the huge monster - only partially similar, but equally creepy.

Chapter 13 Dancing with Corruption

Zombies are zombies after all, and they don't have any concept of fair confrontation in their minds.

They won't give Lunisia time to regroup.

Realizing that they have been exposed, they decided to strike first. Such simple thoughts did not even occur in their minds. In their skull cavities that had become empty due to decay, only endless appetite was spreading. They craved fresh flesh and blood to make up for the imperfections in their own existence.

So he reached out his hand, stretched out his claws to try to grab something -

Ding!

The feeling from the sword tip made Lunicia's face grim. She was very familiar with that force. Even though they were far inferior to those monsters on all fours, the strength of these zombies was much greater than that of her knights. If it were the zombies before, those zombies whose strength was comparable to that of adult farmers, whose movements were slow and who could overwhelm people with their numbers, Lunicia could have adopted a nonchalant attitude and defeated them all with a dance-like, playful pace. However, these things in front of her obviously prevented her from doing so.

Ding!Ding!Ding!

The tip of the sword danced, but failed to break through the pair of sharp claws. The zombies in front of him were not only more distorted in appearance and more powerful, but their reaction speed was also several points faster than ordinary zombies. They seemed to be waving their claws like crazy, without any rules, but they appeared extremely sharp with amazing strength and speed, which was completely inconsistent with their dry and decayed appearance.

What’s even more deadly is that there is not only one such zombie here.

There was no roar, no extra sound, just a few light footsteps and a cold wind blowing from behind my head!

Lunicia did not waver. She just took a leisurely step with her right foot and took a step towards the relatively empty road in the town. As the sharp claws brushed against her long black hair, Lunicia's body spun like a waltz.

With rhythmic steps, he raised the tip of the sword in his right hand and swung out a beautiful sword flower, while his left hand was raised in a completely opposite way, as if using up all his strength, he stabbed the sharpest part of the shield heavily downwards!

puff--

With a sound like leather breaking, one zombie was cut into two parts from the ribs to the shoulders. The other zombie was unstable and was hit by Lunicia from behind with a shield, breaking its spine and piercing its chest. Lunicia couldn't help but frown.

Both the sound and the touch made Lunicia feel uncomfortable. The feeling was very different from that of ordinary mummies. They did not appear to be too moist, nor were they dry and fragile. The empty abdominal cavity gave Lunicia a strange feeling. She felt that it was not as empty as it seemed. On the contrary, she felt that it seemed to be filled with something, as if the abdomen of those mummies was not shriveled, but swollen like pregnancy.

Judging from the visual point of view, it is just an illusion.

Judging from the sense of touch, vision is an illusion.

She didn't understand which side was more reliable.

A strange and disgusting touch came from the sword along the contact surface. Even though it was only an indirect contact, the feeling made Lunicia feel uncomfortable and she couldn't help but shiver.

There was no slowness in the movements of her hands.

Three more shriveled zombies jumped out from the shadows, one of them had no left arm, one's waist was unnaturally stretched to more than one meter, but his limbs were only the length of a normal person's, and the other's left and right halves were completely asymmetrical, with the right side of the body dry and shriveled, while the left side was weirdly swollen, but completely inconsistent with the muscle structure.

Their eye sockets were either empty or filled with gray, turbid, shriveled orbs, like figures walking out of a nightmare.

Seeing more and more shriveled zombies emerging from the shadows, Lunicia began to move her feet and look around at the environment in the distance.

She took a step forward, almost voluntarily throwing herself into the attack range of the zombie with half of its body deformed. If it was a living person, it might be frightened at this time due to lack of experience, but the zombie had no such concerns. It just felt an empty joy for the food to be thrown into its arms, and then swung its abnormally swollen left claw and chopped down at Lunicia.

There was no panic, and even her expression did not change. She just walked quickly past the zombie.

He raised his hand, swung the sword, and split the rotten head diagonally.

She noticed that the zombie's eyeball did not stay in the left eye socket. The gray turbid lens was split in half along with the skull. Countless gray and white thick nerves had spread out, entangled in the cranial cavity like a spider web. They did not swell or wriggle, but just curled up quietly like a rotten object, turning into foul-smelling black mucus.

Lunicia still didn't stop, no comments, only a tense expression.

The left hand swung back vigorously, accompanied by a teeth-grinding sound of metallic friction. The sharp claws were deflected from their trajectory by the shield and were sliding on the shield, but they could not leave the slightest mark on the silver mirror-like surface. Then he slashed with the knife with the backhand - the zombie with an overly elongated waist had a large number of ribs growing on its spine. Those extra ribs were sticking out from the dry flesh and skin, waving like the legs of a centipede, but they could not prevent it from being pierced through the head by a sword, and then cut in half from top to bottom.

Its abdominal cavity was indeed empty.

There were no internal organs, no more blood and flesh, no gas and fluid filled with corruption.

But there was also a strange feeling of fullness, as if some invisible maggots were huddled together and wriggling and swelling in the abdominal cavity, making a terrifying rustling sound.

She had no extra energy to focus on the strange feeling. Instead, Lunicia leaned forward, took a short leap, and swept a sword diagonally upward while rolling.

With a flash of silver light, a shriveled head dislocated from the neck, and then began to swell and bulge. Whether it was the skull, the root of the tongue, or the cloudy eyeballs, they all protruded weirdly outward until a certain critical point, when the expansion turned into a rupture. The exploding dry flesh and rotten bones turned the oncoming zombie into a sieve, turning it into a scattered, withered corpse.

Lunicia was not willing to get too entangled with these dried zombies. Thanks to her strict training, she stood up quickly after rolling over and escaped from the encirclement of the zombies. She came to the road of this dilapidated town from the house near the stone waterwheel. There were no houses to block her view, so she could judge the surrounding situation without any hindrance by the light of the blood moon.

The zombies behind him didn't seem to have the ability to search for enemies. After Lunicia left for a distance, they wandered around aimlessly. After a short wandering, they lay down on the ground again and turned into ordinary mummies again.

This gave Lunicia some time to observe the place.

Observe this strange town that was abandoned and destroyed by no one knows who.

Chapter 14: Historical Relics

Lunisia had no knowledge of architecture in her mind. This kind of knowledge was essential for the followers of Nazar, but unnecessary for the followers of Zelti. Don't get me wrong, the followers of Zelti were certainly not experts in optics. They were just more focused on the study of divine arts, or studying astrology and astronomy with the followers of Shahar in the same temple.

She pondered for a while, but still couldn't figure out what era this architectural style belonged to. She could only barely judge that these stone buildings could be traced back to the junction of the fifth and sixth calendars, and that they probably became ruins in the sixth calendar.

Lunicia briefly browsed through the history in her mind. Even though her knowledge was not more than those "history lovers", she still hoped to discover something from the knowledge that seemed unimportant to her.

If her judgment was correct, according to the records in the book, these buildings should have been built in the fifth calendar when the gods were born and all darkness retreated.

That was the golden age in the memory of all intelligent life.

There are constant disputes between nations, people are displaced in wars and disasters, and flee to foreign lands, but the population is growing amid fluctuations. The Church of the Twelve Gods leads believers and non-believers to fight against the followers of darkness. No one can deny that this is an era that belongs to all those who walk in the light.

During her long years in the temple, she could not help but memorize a lot of big books in her head, including relatively interesting books like "A Brief History of the World" - almost all of Lunisia's knowledge of the world came from the books she had read, most of which were myths. She didn't read many history-related books like "A Brief History of the World".

The more I learn about history, the more uneasy I feel about this world entering the "Sixth Calendar".

Especially after the voices of the gods faded away, uneasiness swelled into fear and prophecies became reality.

"Well……"

Lunicia shook her head, shaking off the chaotic thoughts from her mind.

As she recalled the knowledge, she also sorted out the clues she saw at the moment. Lunicia was not very sure that this town should have been built in the fifth calendar and destroyed in the sixth calendar. This place did not belong to the inland border of the Principality of Mariai, and the coastline of the Principality of Mariai was surrounded by cliffs and mountains. All of this made it unlikely that this town would be affected by the war.

As evidence, Lunicia did not see many signs of human destruction in the destroyed houses, nor were there any remaining weapons - there would be no shortage of rusty old weapons on ancient battlefields, and if you are lucky, you can even see some traces of siege equipment.

Judging from Lunicia's superficial knowledge, these houses were destroyed by fire and natural collapse caused by disrepair.

Of course, she was not so confident in her own judgment. What she did was actually just reading from the book. It was quite rigid and could not be corrected by knowledge from other sources. In the end, how big the gap between her and reality would be was not even clear to her herself. When she lived in the temple, her swordsmanship teacher and senior felt that her way of thinking was a bit rigid, probably because she read too much and lacked practical experience.

Back to the matter of the ruins: before being destroyed, this place must have been abandoned first.

As for why...

There were corpses all over the ground.

It was not a half-rotten mummy, but a corpse that had completely turned into a skeleton. The owners of these skeletons had undoubtedly passed away for quite a long time.

The skeletons retained some of their original state, and they seemed to have tried to escape before they died, which made them appear quite scattered, with some piled up on the road and others piled up at the entrance of the building, and it was unclear whether they wanted to leave or go in for shelter. They were weathered quite thoroughly, with some already turning into part of the scarlet soil, and the rest were in tatters, either because of the trampling of later generations or because of the fatal injuries they had suffered before they died.

The flesh was torn and eaten, so the bones left behind were incomplete, and one could even clearly see the marks made by the sharp teeth.

As for who the latecomers were, Lunicia thought they were nothing more than those cultists.

This was proof of the coming of the Dark Ages, this town, everything in it.

She raised her head.

Under the scarlet moonlight, the slender pale figure still stood there, not noticing her, and without any unnecessary movements, as if everything that happened in the town had nothing to do with her. Even though their eyes were not meeting, those magical golden eyes still made her heart beat.

--What a nice view……

Just like the end of a beautiful dream, a gust of cold wind brought her thoughts back to reality. Realizing what she was thinking, she couldn't help but shake her head again and again, trying to get rid of the distracting thoughts from her mind.

She wanted to forget, but she simply couldn't.

She wanted to be upset, but she couldn't.