Night Journey

Chapter 1 Prologue: The Apocalypse in Progress

In the 434th year of the city-state's history, on the outer frontier.

The boy crushed a dried-out skeleton underfoot, then leaned against the rock wall and gazed into the distance.

A mirage-like white light floated on the distant horizon.

According to his teacher, it was the "second blazing sun" of the Fire Guardian Sect, the largest beacon of light in the civilized world today, whose burning could still be seen even in the distant outer frontiers.

The air was filled with the pungent, sweet smell of rust and rotting flesh, like someone sticking a rusty knife into a rotten apple—a common odor in the wilderness.

The boy took a deep breath and shouted his teacher's name into the wilderness.

"Nun!"

"Nun Soflowa!"

The sound echoed across the empty wilderness, without any response.

After a long time, the boy reluctantly accepted the truth—the strange sandstorm had caused him to lose contact with his teacher, Nunn.

The boy glanced at the setting sun, then at the shadows slowly spreading across the horizon, calculated the distance between himself and White Cliff Town, and thought of the dead zone that would emerge from the wilderness after nightfall…

He relived his experiences over the past ten years since he came into this world, and angrily drew his longsword, slamming it against the cracked ground.

"Cillian shouted hoarsely."

"I've had enough!"

……

As a time traveler, Cillian Sofrova's memories begin when he was seven years old.

At that time, Nunn took seven-year-old Ciri from the wilderness and brought him to White Cliff Town.

The townspeople praised Ciri as a lucky child.

In the perilous wilderness, Cillian was neither devoured by demons nor corrupted by chaos. Apart from being slightly dehydrated by the sun, he was otherwise unharmed.

Nunn adopted him, named him Cirien, and gave him his own surname.

The townspeople sang and danced around Ciri, and young Ciri was filled with anticipation as he welcomed his new life.

One year later, one night, Nunn said, "It's time to show you the cruelty of the world," and led Cillian to the high walls of White Cliff Town, where he looked out into the pitch-black night.

Recalling his past life's various ideas about time travel stories—what about a life of triumph, invincibility, and carefree travel—it wasn't until that night that Cillian realized what a cruel joke fate had played on him.

"Is this journey to another world a little too difficult?!"

Amidst loud complaints, Cillian finally found a sheltered spot just before nightfall.

It was the ruins of a building. Cillian had no time to ponder the former grandeur and history of the ruins; such ruins were everywhere in the wilderness of the Outer Flame Frontier.

Cillian gathered dry grass and twigs, moved stones, and built a simple campfire.

The warm firelight slightly calmed Cillian's sense of crisis, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, the last ray of sunlight on the horizon disappeared into the darkness.

Cillian paused for a moment, then opened the jar, poured out wisps of dust-like red crystals, and threw them into the campfire.

The crystals burned along with the flames, producing a kind of flame color reaction. The flames turned pure white, soothing the chill that came from the night.

That chilling cold that could freeze the soul.

After securing the basic security, Cillian began checking his remaining equipment.

Besides guns and swords, food and water, there were only small jars containing red crystalline powder.

After confirming the equipment, Cillian breathed a sigh of relief. Spending the night in the wilderness was practically suicidal, but with these things, he might be able to survive.

Maybe……

Grabbing his longsword and gripping his gun handle, Cillian sat down against the corner of the ruins, a campfire burning in front of him.

As night deepened, he showed no signs of sleepiness, his gaze fixed intently on the darkness before him.

"You've arrived, haven't you?"

Cillian muttered to himself, his expression turning serious, and all the muscles in his body tensing up.

A series of mournful howls echoed from the darkness, as if responding to Cirion's greeting.

The world was once struck by a catastrophe known as the Dayless Catastrophe. Since then, whenever night falls, a thick gray fog covers the world, and chaotic creatures emerge from the fog to sweep across the land.

Cillian called their names in a low voice.

"demon……"

Darkness boiled outside the firelight!

In an instant, eerie roars filled Cillian's ears.

The sound did not come from the throat or tongue—it was a chaotic symphony of bones rubbing, organs writhing, and shells cracking.

The outlines of the demons twisted like molten metal in the firelight, sometimes swelling into mountain-like tumors, sometimes collapsing into spheres with hundreds of compound eyes.

The deformed, clawed forelimbs tentatively pierced the light of the campfire.

In an instant, the demon's flesh and blood began to burn strangely, as if scalded by the flames. The scales immediately curled and peeled off due to the burning, revealing the bloody flesh and bones underneath. However, more thorny appendages sprouted from the wound in an instant.

Cillian held his breath.

A spark crackled from the fire, illuminating the face closest to Cirion.

Where the head should be, a row of jawbones stands upright, each mouth holding half a human finger bone, and the mucus dripping from between the teeth erodes the ground, creating honeycomb-like holes.

“Blood…flesh…” A muffled voice came from its mouth as the demon approached Ciri with thirst, only to be blocked by the firelight and unable to advance even an inch.

After a mournful, dejected sound, the restless darkness calmed down, and the hideous face disappeared into the shadows.

Cillian was not relieved. The demons hadn't left; they lurked in the darkness just meters away, silently watching him like predators, patiently waiting...

Waiting for the moment when the soul essence burns out and the campfire goes out.

"This world is terrible."

Cillian picked up the small jar with a grumbling expression and poured some more of the red crystals called Soul Essence into the campfire.

The flames leaped up a few times, and the demons retreated further, disappearing into the hazy gray mist.

After confirming that it was temporarily safe, Cillian looked up at the night sky.

Unlike the land shrouded in gray fog and demons, the night sky was exceptionally beautiful.

Whenever he looked up at the deep night sky, Cillian would clearly realize that this was no longer the world he knew.

In Cillian's memory, there was only one moon in the night sky, but in the world now, the sky is split by two cold moons.

A pale, infantile-like crescent moon hung high in the east, its cracks emanating a ghostly blue glow, like poison injected into a vein.

A crimson blood moon, like a decaying organ, loomed in the west, its surface covered with asphalt-like shadows. Whenever the shadows surged, a metallic hissing shriek pierced the atmosphere.

A faint ring of stars runs through the two moons, like a clear dividing line, spanning the night sky and encircling the planets.

If you forget about the terrible situation, it's actually quite a nice view.

Ciri added some more soul essence to the campfire to ensure the flames could still keep the demons away.

The Soul Essence is extracted from the blood of the Torchbearer and, after being burned, possesses the power to resist the invasion of Chaos.

Cillian's teacher, Nunn, is the only torchbearer in White Cliff Town. When night falls, he will inevitably return to White Cliff Town to conduct a night patrol in order to ensure the safety of White Cliff Town.

Therefore, when Cillian realized he would have to spend the night in the wilderness, he had no expectation that Nunn would risk coming to search for him.

Nunn clearly cared more about the survival of the entire White Cliff Town than his own life.

Looking out into the vast darkness, after searching for a while, Ciri could vaguely see a faint point of light, which was the light emitted by the Lighthouse in White Cliff Town.

The Lighthouse will burn a large amount of soul essence, and its light will envelop the entire White Cliff Town, preventing the invasion of chaos and allowing the town's residents to spend the night in peace.

But this does not include Cillian.

Ever since he was eight years old, when Nuen introduced him to the existence of demons, he had never had a good night's sleep.

Nuen took on all the security work in White Cliff Town, and Ciri, the adopted child, naturally became his student, accompanying him on night patrols.

Thanks to the experience accumulated over many years of night patrols, an ordinary person stranded in the wilderness would probably be devoured by demons as soon as it got dark. However, thanks to his rich experience, Cillian managed to survive until the latter half of the night.

Having a wealth of experience alone cannot solve real-world problems.

"It's almost empty..."

Cillian rummaged through the jar; only a shallow layer of soul essence remained inside.

At this rate of consumption, the soul essence that Cillian carries will burn out completely before dawn.

In order to extend his battery life, he reduced the amount of soul essence he invested, at the cost of reduced burning brightness.

As if the firelight had faded, the pure white light gradually disappeared.

At the same time, the outlines that should have been dissolved by the night became clear again, appearing indistinct and shadowy.

The demons sensed the weakness of the flames and once again tried to cross the firelight, enduring the intense burning sensation, and desperately stretched out their deformed hands to grab at the fresh and delicious souls before them.

Cirien pressed himself against the wall, maintaining a standoff with the demons.

"You all look so thirsty and lustful, it's really sick... Stay away from me!"

When it came to telling the bad joke, Cillian spent more than ten seconds going through an extremely tough internal struggle.

finally.

Cillian successfully convinced himself not to let the bullet in the gun barrel be the ultimate solution to his current life predicament.

Cillian would rather shove bullets down the throats of demons than send them into his own head.

But he was still forced into a desperate situation.

His five fingers dug into the sword hilt, the knuckles rubbing against the rust on the hilt with a rough sound.

"People always say that the endless catastrophe that erupted in one dark thousand years ago has ended."

Cillian questioned the horrifying faces, but all he received in response were meaningless groans.

"The cataclysm of endless days has ended, so why are you still walking on the earth?"

Ciri swung a twisted, pale blade, the sharp metal calmly severing the claws and embedding itself into the demon's skull.

Rather, it's more accurate to say—

As he cleaved the demon's skull with his blade, Cillian finished uttering the last syllable.

"The apocalypse is still ongoing!"

In the instant the flames dimmed, the trigger was pulled!

Dark red blood gushed from the demon's eye sockets, casting a bronze mask-like scab on Cirion's face.

(End of this chapter)