Night Journey

Chapter 2 An Era of Mutual Isolation

Cillian is an optimistic person by nature, even somewhat carefree.

"Hello everyone! This is Cillian Sofrova, the rising star of White Cliff Town!"

Cillian pointed the gun at the demons' heads. "Don't rush, everyone gets an autograph!"

After the explosive gunshot, a stench of blood gushed out.

Cirian ran out of bullets, and the demons, driven mad by bloodlust, wouldn't give him a chance to reload.

The campfire burned fiercely, but little of its essence remained; the pure white flames were almost gone.

Undeterred by the fire, the demons pressed forward, their wildly waving claws like branches swaying in a gale, leaving bloody welts on Ciri's body.

Take a deep breath.

Ciri clenched his teeth so tightly that one could hear the cracking sound of his own molars snapping together.

Draw your sword and behead!
The moment the sword cleaved through the first demon's body, a putrid stench gushed out from the cut.

It wasn't blood, but a black, viscous substance mixed with rust. It splattered on his face like scalding tar. Cillian's tongue swept across the corner of his mouth, and the metallic, sweet taste made the pressure valve in his head start screaming.

Anyone want to dance the tango?

With a furious roar, Ciri kicked over the shovel beside the campfire. The still-burning soul essence, carrying flames, poured down on the demons like a meteor shower, leaving behind charred, burned holes.

Taking advantage of this brief respite, Cillian quickly pulled a blazing torch from the campfire, poured a small amount of soul essence into the flames, and pure white flames rose into the air once more, illuminating the surrounding darkness.

A demon lunged forward, but Ciri held his sword horizontally in front of him, blocking its sharp claws. With a backhand swing, he plunged the torch deep into its mouth.

A piercing scream mingled with the scorching sound of burning as the demon's throat was quickly consumed by flames, and wisps of warm ash drifted through the air.

Seizing this rare opportunity, Cillian's sword flashed like lightning, piercing the demon's chest. It fell backward helplessly, crashing heavily into the campfire.

The flames suddenly surged up, completely engulfing the demon's body and turning it into a wildly writhing fireball.

Cirien held a sword in his right hand and a torch in his left, leaning against the corner of the ruins.

Under the glow of the soul essence, the demons' bloodlust subsided considerably. Like wild beasts fearing fire, they slowly retreated, but their crimson eyes remained fixed on Ciri.

Cillian remained vigilant, slowly shifting his position.

The torch contains only a small amount of soul essence, so it won't burn for very long and the light intensity will be very low.

The previous campfire could create a sanctuary around Ciri, but this torch could only ensure that Ciri wouldn't be swallowed up by the pervasive gray fog.

In his despair, Cillian inexplicably burst into laughter.

"I must survive!"

His smile was extremely unpleasant.

Demons are not the truly dangerous beings in the darkness.

The so-called demons are merely byproducts of that forbidden power, the residue left over after smelting metal.

What truly transforms the night into a living hell is the omnipresent gray fog.

Cillian didn't know where the gray fog came from, only that it would suddenly descend upon the world every night, obscuring the sky and engulfing the earth, and that it possessed a power known as "chaos".

The sword can slay demons, but it cannot cut through the gray mist, much less dispel the chaos.

Only the flames ignited by the burning of the soul essence can dispel the gray mist and resist the corruption of chaos on humanity.

In other words, even if Ciri could kill all the demons in the bloodbath, once his soul essence was extinguished, Ciri would also die painfully in the chaotic corruption of the gray mist.

During his night patrols with Nunn, Cirien witnessed the townspeople who had been unexpectedly corrupted by Chaos.

Their skin was pale, and their veins had a sickly bluish tinge, as if an invisible force was tormenting their bodies, wantonly twisting their healthy limbs into crooked and deformed postures.

At first, the townspeople who were contaminated were able to maintain a certain level of rationality, but slowly, they became bloodthirsty and insane, until they turned into beings no different from demons.

The fire must not be extinguished.

Cillian turned and climbed up the ruins, ignoring the pain in his body, and reached a higher place.

The firelight flickered, and the demons followed closely behind.

Cillian bit the torch and quickly loaded the bullets.

He did not fire immediately, but waited until the demon was close enough that he had nowhere left to retreat before shooting it in the head.

Cillian climbed to the highest point of the ruins, a good defensive position from which he could easily pierce the heads of the demons.

He swung his sword repeatedly.

Exhaustion and pain gradually entangled Cillian's nerves, like a noose slowly tightening.

He held the torch high until his arm ached and went numb, until he could no longer feel the existence of his limbs.

A cool evening breeze brushed against Ciri's cheek, causing him to momentarily lose focus from his tense emotions.

Looking out into the vast darkness, Cirion could vaguely make out a few faint points of light.

Each point of light is a beacon, and each beacon protects a city-state.

"Since the cataclysm of no day, the night has been filled with a chaotic gray fog, which has torn apart the civilized world, isolated city-states from one another, and turned us into burning embers, waiting for destruction."

This is a sentence that Cillian often sees in books, like a warning on the title page at the beginning of an era.

In an era where the apocalypse continues, the gray fog severs the connections between city-states, causing the world of order to collapse and turn into isolated islands.

The last time Baiya Town had any contact with the outside world was more than 20 years ago.

Cillian didn't want to live in this small and impoverished town of White Cliff. He often gazed at the night sky, imagining the magnificent and bustling cities that were the points of light at the edge of the horizon.

But now, he is about to die here.

Do not!
His eyes, which were on the verge of dimming, hardened again. Enraged by the darkness of the world, Ciri glared, his chest burning with fury. "I won't die in this insignificant place!"

With a low growl, Cillian pulled the pin on the last bullet. The bullet pierced the demon's throat, shattering its spine. Its deformed head drooped as it crashed into the darkness, carrying its entire body with it.

As if to reward Ciri's perseverance, a ray of light shone on Ciri's face.

Cillian turned his head and saw a faint blue halo rising at the edge of the horizon.

It's almost dawn.

Unbeknownst to him, Cillian had been fighting all night. If he could just hold on until dawn, this nightmare would come to an end.

Cillian was overjoyed, but a sharp pain brought his ecstasy to an abrupt end.

"Damn..."

Cirien lowered his head, and a long, thin spike pierced his abdomen. The end of the spike was a blood-soaked tail that stretched into the darkness below and disappeared behind a demon.

The spike was pulled out suddenly, spraying blood everywhere, and the tearing pain almost made Ciri convulse.

Before Ciri could put up any resistance, his body was swung into the air by the force of the tail spike.

In a dizzying rush, Cillian tried to recall his life in a flashback, but all he could see in his head were snowflakes of pain.

Ciri slammed heavily to the ground, a metallic taste rising in his throat. He suspected he had broken several bones and was suffering from severe internal bleeding.

"Cough cough..."

After vomiting up puddles of blood, Ciri haphazardly reached out and grabbed his longsword again from the dry sand.

The familiar touch of his palm against the sword hilt gave Cillian a strange sense of relief, but when he stood up, he realized that the torch had disappeared into the night, along with the jar containing the soul essence.

“Cillian…”

"Bone and blood, flesh and soul..."

Suddenly, eerie and profound words echoed in Cillian's ears.

Cillian saw the townspeople walking towards him, led by his teacher Nunn, followed by his brothers Tim and Mick, and the town's most beautiful girl, Ava.

Everyone came, just to welcome me.

Even the usually cold Nunn smiled and extended his hand to Cirion.

Cillian's vision blurred, his body temperature dropped rapidly, his fingertips turned white, and tiny ice crystals oozed from under his nails.

"Damn it! Damn it!"

Ciri cursed inwardly.

He retained a sliver of consciousness, knowing that what he saw was all an illusion, but his body was unable to move, as if frozen in place by the low temperature.

The will to survive and a sense of despair were intertwined in Cillian's heart.

Chaos erosion doesn't mean that you'll be unharmed after just a few seconds of contact; rather, the moment you make contact, everything is already set in stone.

Cillian still remembered the carpenter who was executed by Nunn, who claimed that he had only accidentally touched the gray mist and even took off his clothes to show that he had not undergone any changes.

But Nunn still insisted on cutting off the carpenter's head. In the severed throat, Ciri could clearly see rings of wisdom teeth, like the overlapping blades of a meat grinder.

"what……"

Cillian exhaled a breath of cold air.

The blood surging in the veins congealed into tiny ice crystals, each surge bringing a sharp, stabbing pain.

His pupils were veiled in frost, and the sound of his dying heartbeat echoed in his ears, like a bronze pendulum striking a rusty copper wall, each beat heavier and more turbid than the last.

Before he could see the wider world, Cillian was about to die in this cruel, desolate night.

Just as the last trace of warmth was about to dissipate from Cillian's fingertips, a sudden burst of fiery pain erupted from his left palm.

A force more violent than magma was coursing through Ciri's veins along the lines of his palm, and molten gold patterns appeared on his skin.

Cillian saw it.

The tattoos of snake scales, with their heads and tails biting each other, emerged, weaving an ancient halo beneath the skin. Every inch of the new totem emitted a hissing sound as if it were being quenched with a branding iron.

Suddenly, Cillian heard the sound of the tide, not from his eardrums, but from the depths of his soul.

A vast, turbulent, and restless sea.

In an instant, the frost covering his body shattered into dust.

Cirien staggered to his feet, the arc of light from his sword shattering the frozen air. Just as the blade pierced Nun's distorted face, the first rays of dawn broke through the horizon.

The warm sun descends upon the world.

The silhouettes of the demons were frozen in the bright light, then disintegrated like sand paintings being blown away, their wails turning to dust before they could even take shape.

A burning demon burst through the ashes, its sharp claws slashing toward Cirion's throat, but he was powerless to retaliate.

Death was imminent, yet hurried footsteps echoed in the morning light.

The blade cleaved through the demon's mangled body, causing its sharp claws to stop atop Cillian's head. Ashes danced in the beam of light, resembling thousands of transparent moths drawn to a raging fire.

After the ashes dissipated, a familiar figure raised a sword against the light.

Ciri looked at the newcomer and murmured.

"Nun...Teacher?"

Immediately afterwards, Cillian fainted weakly in the warm sunlight.

(End of this chapter)