Infinite Journey: Dark Souls

Before Zhi could figure things out, Xiao Yan, holding two guns in one hand, stepped out from behind the cover.

“I’ve always emphasized that I don’t care what changes this world will undergo. My goal is to find the Cursed Tree and obtain the Soul Furnace—that’s how it should be. But now, I think that cleaning up all these guys who have degenerated to the level of ‘corpses’ wouldn’t conflict with my goal.”

Slapping her forehead, Zhi reluctantly stepped out of the cover. She was glad she had enhanced that ability beforehand; otherwise, with so many enemies rushing at them, the only outcome for the two of them would be to become part of the corpses on that vehicle.

“Listen up, Xiaoyan. The villagers are the most numerous, but they pose the least threat. The dogs are the biggest threat. Once they pounce on us, the villagers can launch a deadly attack. I'll try to hold off the executioners. You get rid of the dogs and villagers as quickly as possible, and then we'll work together to figure out how to deal with them.”

"I understand."

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In the villagers' memories, the Undead Settlement had always been a place of dirty work. They received the wandering spirits driven out of Lothric, dismembered these undead creatures, put them in cages, and threw them into the Wraith Caverns, cleaning the darkness from this once-glorious kingdom.

For a period of time, the Royal City rose up, which led to the severing of contact with the Undead Settlement. They were unable to obtain supplies from the Royal City by processing garbage. Fortunately, it is said that the mentors of the Cathedral of the Deep came here. They led the villagers to survive in this harsh environment, and their only task was to help some beast-like knights reach Lothric.

This situation seemed to repeat itself endlessly in a daze. They wandered in the same place every day, doing the same things every day. It was as if they had been killed by something, but after closing their eyes, they would wander in the same place again.

But this situation has now been completely changed. Sometime ago, the mentors brought in new guests, and these guests brought new demands—they needed corpses, large numbers of corpses of all kinds.

So they were finally able to escape this muddled state and get back to their old profession.

Today, they continued this new business, arriving at the broken bridge in the Undead Settlement where there were still many corpses left, dismembering the guys their mentor called pilgrims. They swung their cleavers with all their might, feeling the muscles not moving at all. This feeling had been gone from them for too long; they only vaguely knew that this was called... being alive.

However, to live is to pay the price of death.

A commotion broke out at the foot of the city wall not far away. The burly executioners let out hoarse roars, followed by the heavy thud of the guillotine. Some villagers became excited. One of them pulled out the machete that had been stabbed into the pilgrim's body and, along with his companions, surrounded him.

He saw a figure dressed in bright red clothes darting about under the executioner's blade.

He heard a gunshot in the distance.

The next moment, a faint purple light, accompanied by a whooshing sound, pierced through his head.

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With both hands quickly pressing the trigger, Xiaoyan's magic poured into the pistol, transforming into purple light bullets that embedded themselves into the minds of the villagers.

She crouched high above the stairs connecting to the broken bridge, her cold eyes sweeping over the crowd below, tearing apart any enemies who tried to approach her with bullets from afar.

For a moment, she felt dizzy and fired the bullet into the brain of the skeletal dog that was about to bite her, then tilted her head back and gulped down a mouthful of elemental gray.

The canines' instincts allowed them to pinpoint the threat on the stairs earlier than the villagers. Two white figures rushed up the stairs during this gap, pouncing on Xiao Yan from the left and right.

The gun was thrown high into the air, and Xiao Yan, with her hands free, loosely gripped it and swept it horizontally towards them.

The longsword that suddenly appeared slashed across the skeletal hound's throat, and the sweeping force stopped them.

The two pistols fell to the ground and were caught by Xiao Yan, who had discarded her longsword. She pulled the trigger, and two bullets shattered the canines' skulls, completely extinguishing their lives.

A quick glance back reveals that Zhi, having lost fire support, is now in grave danger.

But it was merely a precarious situation, not a hopeless one.

A dazzling light shimmered in her eyes, and the trajectory of the guillotine was as clear as a slow-motion film reel. She only needed to shift her feet slightly to dodge the deadly attacks by the slightest margin.

But the pressure was ever-present. Under the trajectory of the two guillotines, the occasional pitchfork and mallet thrust out would still cause her to falter in her dodging.

boom--!

The falling guillotine once again tore off a section of her sleeve. Taking advantage of the moment when the burly executioner's blade was stuck, Zhi slid to her side, using her body to block another executioner while the katana at her waist revealed its fangs.

Two villagers, covered in spurting blood, fell into the pool of blood they had created themselves.

"Xiao Yan! Help! I can't hold on much longer!" QAQ

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Homura Akemi's Intelligence Compilation Manual

Information regarding special items:

Exclusive Enhanced Weapons: By collecting crystals dropped by large crystal lizards, you can infuse them with your own special power and then hand them over to the blacksmith to enhance the equipment. This will engrave some of your special attributes onto the weapon, making it an exclusive weapon.

PS: Yunxi: 744486102 I accidentally arrived half an hour late (。﹏ 。*)

Chapter Twenty-Five: Gunfighting

"Xiao Yan! Help! I can't hold on much longer!" QAQ

In a fleeting glance, Xiaoyan realized that the situation there was already fraught with danger, and she also had to draw away some of the enemy in order to completely achieve their tactical objective.

With a single step on the stairs, she leaped into the crowd, tumbling and rolling. As she landed, purple magic bullets poured out, and she had once again exhausted her magic power.

The magic bullets cleared a small open space around her. The moment she landed, she drank another mouthful of Elemental Ash Bottle. Then, the crowd surged toward the open space again.

She rose and plunged into the crowd, weaving through the gaps between the knives and forks, and pressed a pistol against a villager's chest.

The purple magic bullet shattered the villager's heart, and her gunfight technique had only just begun.

With his left hand outstretched, he blocked another machete with his shield just as it came down, while the pistol in his hand was pointed directly at his face as he pulled the trigger.

He ducked to dodge the pitchfork, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and struck the villagers who were trying to finish them off with one blow each. With a roll, he stood up and delivered an elbow strike that stunned them, while the muzzle of his gun in his other hand took another life.

The skeletal dog lunged at her, and she kicked it, sending it flying. She then grabbed its throat with both arms and, while spinning, used it to block the attack.

She tossed the skeletal dog into the air, drawing everyone's attention. Then, she moved nimbly, dodging and weaving, her two pistols dancing around her body, spitting bullets from all sorts of tricky angles, swiftly reaping any life that dared to approach.

The magic was depleted once again, but the villagers, who were able to catch their breath amidst the dense barrage of bullets, were hit squarely by a longsword before they could even raise their mallets.

As the crowd thinned out and the pressure eased, Zhi seized an opening in the executioner's defenses and unleashed a bloody Iaijutsu, carving a path through the crowd.

The two men stood back to back, and the remaining villagers, led by the two executioners, surrounded them again.

The first round has ended, and the second round is about to begin.

"Haha, now it's my turn."

The two turned around with their backs to each other, their figures passing each other as they exchanged opponents.

Xiao Yan took over the hatred of the two executioners. Instead of drinking the last two bottles of elemental ash, she used the truck used to transport corpses to circle around them.

On the other side, Zhi was like a wolf among sheep. The remaining villagers could no longer form an impenetrable human wall through their density. She strolled along leisurely, but each time she moved, she faced only one enemy directly.

The light in her demonic eyes swirled, and every time she passed a villager, her katana would be drawn, leaving a trail of blood before being sheathed again.

Draw from the sheath, return to the sheath, draw from the sheath, return to the sheath.

The ghostly figure darted among the knives and forks, passing by the few remaining villagers, carving flowers of blood in its wake.

The area is finally cleared. Now it's time to deal with those two executioners.

"Hehe, shall we have a contest to see who can kill them first?"

"No, bullets don't do much damage to them. I don't want to waste my magic. I'll hold one off for you, and you can take them out one by one."

With the pressure suddenly reduced, the two even had time to bicker.

"Well, what can I do? I'm the main damage dealer. This huge guy reminds me of a classic playstyle."

"Stop talking nonsense and take over."

"Here it comes~"

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How do you pronounce that mnemonic? "Hairy, weak fire; large body, weak door; obese, weak chrysanthemum; knight, weak ladder; invader, mentally challenged."

Although the executioner wasn't fat, his massive physique meant he was just as weak... cough cough. Anyway, flanking him was a good option, but because his powerful swings would adjust the direction of his attack after each move, and with those wooden planks that deliberately prevented you from backstabbing, flanking him required skill.

Zhi said that none of this was difficult for her. All she needed to do was find the opening when the executioner swung his guillotine after activating her magic eye, take a step behind him, and she would have a chance to strike while dodging the attack.

Meanwhile, Homura, who was dodging the guillotine's slashes by rolling and circling around obstacles, said that this fighting style was too pretentious and could only be used in one-on-one combat. But then she thought, if she encountered the same type of enemy in the future, wouldn't Homura have a hard time dealing with it?

Yeah, if I encounter an enemy like this in the future, I'll just suppress them with bullets until they die. I don't believe anyone can play with bullets at her rate of fire.

So, in the end, is the total amount of magic power still troubling me?

She began to reminisce about a time when she could squander her magic.

The garbage time ended quickly, and the second executioner also fell quickly under Zhi's knife.

She twirled her sword, the blood spurting, sheathed it, and casually flashed a peace sign at Xiaoyan.

However, she quickly lost interest in being silly, simply because she couldn't find another campfire.

"What the hell? There should be a campfire here."

They were standing under the first building after entering the Undead Settlement. Based on Zhi's previous experience, the first campfire in the Undead Settlement should have been here, but now, there was only a cart full of corpses piled up in a mess, and nothing else.

"Actually, if you think about it carefully, it's quite normal. You're the one who told me that 'the area around the campfire is absolutely safe,' but look."

Xiao Yan pointed to the ground, where bloody tire tracks stretched across the road, past a detached building, and led to an empty square, where, from a distance, people were still bustling about.

“Indeed, this is a place that hearses will inevitably pass through. If we don’t clear out those villagers and executioners outside in one go, they will definitely keep coming back and forth to transport the bodies here. Therefore, setting up the campfire here is far from ‘absolutely safe’.”

"So we just need to think about it from the opposite perspective. In this area, only that building is probably considered absolutely safe."

"So we guess we'll just have to go in and take a look."

They carefully avoided the villagers lingering along the route for transporting the corpses next to the wooden building, because just a glance at the dense crowd of people in the square was enough to frighten them. They were eager to find a campfire to calm their nerves.

Upon entering the cabin, the visibility was poor, and there were many mummy-like objects hanging from the rafters, giving the impression that there were many tricks involved. Xiaoyan silently downed the second-to-last bottle of Elemental Gray.

Thinking about it this way, it seems a bit of a waste. In one battle, she used three bottles to restore her mana, while Zhi hasn't drunk a single one yet. Or is the bleeding she inflicted actually Bloodlust, which also has the ability to restore health? Is she really some kind of berserker warrior?

As it turns out, wherever there seems to be a pattern, there will definitely be a pattern.

The light emitted by Xiao Yan pouring the elemental ash bottle immediately attracted the Gentlemen on the roof beam. They moved quickly, and for a moment, the dimly lit room was filled with eerie footsteps.

"Damn it, when did these rat-like slaves learn to use psychological tactics like this?"

The dazzling light began to swirl in her eyes again, and Zhi instantly grasped the movements of the creatures in the room.

"Little Flame, you have one on your head!"

Little Flame, who was emitting light and then lost in thought, was indeed being targeted. She felt a chill on the top of her head and instinctively rolled away to avoid it.

"Worst choice! Xiaoyan, quickly revert to your original position!"

The first thief's figure flashed by. After his attack missed, he used the mummy-filled room to swing back to the roof. At the spot where Little Flame tumbled, another slave delivered a falling slash.

The wooden floor was pierced instantly. Xiaoyan followed Zhi's advice and returned to the door. Zhi, who had been watching from the side, raised her knife and cut the slave, who was still trying to run away, in half along with the mummy.

The thumping footsteps still echoed on the roof beams, clearly showing that the remaining slaves were not afraid of the deaths of their companions.

"Tsk...this is not good. We can't just run up to the roof beams—wait, we can run to the stairs! Xiaoyan, you run ahead!"