Infinite Journey: Dark Souls

With a flourish of her greatsword, Bing Ning slashed sharply into the fleshy giant arm, slicing it in two amidst a spray of disgusting slime.

"Wow, this knight is really savvy. That hit hurt more than ours, didn't it?"

You'd better worry about yourself.

The two, now far from the tree, still had time to tease each other about their enemies' infighting. But the next moment, Xiao Yan abruptly returned to the base of the cursed tree, while a figure shrouded in icy mist, wielding the Ice Condensation Greatsword, charged toward Zhi.

"Xiao Yan, now it's up to you to take down that big tree quickly!"

Without a word, she turned and ran, determined not to play this dangerous game with the more skilled knight.

The severely damaged tree stopped moving for a moment. Taking advantage of this time, Xiao Yan took out the largest and most powerful weapon out of the 42 weapons she had obtained from the old woman and stabbed them one by one into the tree's eggs.

Chapter 42 Who says two bosses can't appear together!

The battle continues at the temple of the Undead Settlement.

As the Papal Knight and the Weaver pursued, a trail of pure white frost was carelessly smeared onto the ancient floor tiles.

Zhi is now truly grateful for the rigorous training the Ryougi family instilled in her from a young age; otherwise, in this intense chase, she would have long since lost her Mystic Eyes and would have been completely slashed into ice shards by that thin, curved sword.

Fortunately, the Pope Knight's icy blades couldn't be maintained for too long. After Zhi dodged with all her might, the parts of her body that had been frozen before started to move again, allowing her to at least survive a little longer.

Running away will never solve the problem, and in this confrontation, her death is already on the countdown—unless something unexpected happens.

But their target was never this troublesome, and even somewhat invincible, papal knight from the beginning.

All they need to do is destroy the Cursed Tree.

And that's what Xiaoyan is doing too.

The number of weapons stored in the shield dwindled, while the eggs beneath the tree were now riddled with grotesque and deadly weapons.

However, it had recovered by this moment, and the severe damage it had suffered caused it to begin a desperate struggle.

The massive tree trunk collapsed and rolled violently toward the hateful little insects.

Xiaoyan once again reversed time to dodge, and incidentally used her ability to retrieve all her weapons.

After gulping down a mouthful of elemental ash, the tree rolled past the spot where the battle had just taken place, and the time traveled back in time once more.

The tree, covered in barren foliage, continuously oozed thick pus, and the rumbling rolling interrupted the two people who were chasing each other.

It was still Zhi who, with the advantage of her magic eye, found the easiest route to escape the attack. The Pope Knight was not stupid either; she had already noticed that this girl, who was quite skilled in martial arts, seemed to have some kind of predictive ability. Without saying a word, she followed Zhi and ran.

The tree crushed the temple from one end to the other, but gained nothing except filling half the temple with its pus.

It went berserk, propping itself up and slamming its body against the ground repeatedly, as if trying to suppress its pain in this way.

Zhi immediately sensed something was wrong. The danger she saw was not coming from the powerful papal knight, nor from the mad tree, but from the secret buried beneath their feet.

"Little Flame! Quickly climb up that big tree!"

She immediately spoke up to warn him, and then, after the Papal Knight stopped in surprise, rushed toward the raging tree.

Upon hearing Zhi's shout, Xiaoyan immediately traveled back to the temple entrance and ran towards the large tree that had rolled to the vicinity of the entrance.

What did you see?

“I don’t know the specifics, but we’ve only encountered this kind of profound crisis once before! It must be that dangerous blood pool! And that blood pool is right beneath the temple!”

Upon hearing the words "blood pool," Xiaoyan ran even faster. Both of them had faced crises that transcended death, and they always felt that if they fell in, although they wouldn't die, their individual lives would be completely extinguished.

Moreover, based on my memory, that blood pool is definitely about the same size as this temple square. To ensure that I don't fall in immediately, with the fog gate locking onto this area, the only safest place is on that big tree.

"How are we supposed to get up there now?!"

However, the tree is currently in a state of upheaval, making it extremely difficult to approach its trunk.

"Climb up from its feet!"

Fortunately, as it repeatedly propped itself up and then crashed to the floor, its supporting legs remained firmly planted in place.

They struggled to climb up to the knees of the tree branch, but were unable to go any further due to the constant movement of their torsos.

The cold air caught up at this moment.

"That Ice Knight has caught up too!"

Seeing that the Papal Knights, who were also climbing up the tree branches, were about to reach them with her curved sword, Xiao Yan immediately pulled out her pistol and unleashed a barrage of magic bullets at the arm she was using for climbing.

The impact of the magic bullet caused the Papal Knight's hand to slip, but in the instant she let go, she plunged the curved sword into a tree branch.

Just as Xiaoyan was about to switch her target to the hand holding the curved sword, the Pope Knight, hanging in mid-air, also launched several Dark Soul-like Tracker spells.

In an instant, the battleground transformed into a thick tree branch, and the battle itself became a series of magical projectiles fired at each other.

Xiaoyan and Zhi kept climbing and changing positions on the branches to avoid the flying pursuers, while the Pope Knight, who was hanging on the branches with his curved sword, dodged Xiaoyan's magic bullets while trying to swing to the branches, and at the same time kept releasing magic to suppress Xiaoyan's barrage of bullets.

As they fought fiercely against the cursed tree, the floor beneath it finally gave way to the continuous impact.

Huge cracks snaked out from under the tree trunk, and with another blow, they quickly covered the entire floor of the temple.

The deafening roar of the tree crashing to the ground ceased, and in that sudden moment of silence, the three people on the branches also stopped moving.

The next moment was an even more frantic barrage of attacks. The three of them scrambled to jump onto the tree that had stopped moving, but the sudden surge of attacks made all three unable to move.

Finally, the ground shook, and slowly sank in, centered on the tree.

At this point, all three of them forgot about projecting bullets and desperately jumped towards the trunk of the tree.

The ravaged ground finally collapsed, and the three people who were still in the air fell into the blood pool below along with the tree.

"Ughhhhh!"

She screamed in mid-air, waving her hands wildly, trying to grab the tree branch that was so close yet had fallen with her.

Xiao Yan calmly found the soft whip among the 42 weapons, swung it forcefully, and wrapped it around the branch at the top of the tree, instantly pulling herself directly above the tree trunk.

She retracted the whip, and after turning around, threw it at Zhi again.

With wildly waving hands, Xiao Yan finally grasped at a straw. She yanked back her whip again, and the two of them closed the distance between them in mid-air until they collided completely.

The tree fell into the blood pool, but because of its previous tumbling, it landed at the edge of the pool, crashing heavily at the boundary between the blood pool and the haunted house. Half of its body slid into the blood pool, splattering thick blood everywhere.

The two, who were about to fall into the trunk of the tree, were caught by Zhi, who grabbed Xiaoyan and turned down to cushion the fall between Xiaoyan and the tree.

A tremendous impact came from her back. She suppressed a groan and, as she was thrown back by the recoil, plunged her katana into the tree trunk, stabilizing both of them.

The Papal Knight wasn't so lucky. She managed to conjure an ice blade in mid-air and slashed at a branch of the tree that served as her limbs, using the force to adjust her posture. However, she still fell into a bad spot, landing right in the lower half of the tree that had slid into the blood pool. After falling, she used her curved sword to stab into the tree trunk to stabilize herself, but her lower body had already slid into the blood pool.

Ring ring—!

The crisp sound of the bell startled everyone who had just breathed a sigh of relief. Xiaoyan and Zhi then remembered that this blood pool was also an extremely dangerous place.

The bell-ringing women who survived the landslide rang their bells, and as the bells rang, the blood pool suddenly boiled. Some limbs, a mixture of countless corpses, emerged and grabbed the large tree that was struggling to get away from the blood pool.

Not to be outdone, the tree sprouted many more pale arms from its body, which intertwined with the limbs formed by the corpses.

In the chaos, thick pus and putrid flesh flew everywhere, seemingly ignoring the three little insects.

No, the Papal Knight who fell into the blood pool was still taken care of; other pieces of corpse grabbed her body and tried to pull her into the blood pool as well.

How could the proud knight willingly become part of these monsters? The giant blade of ice condensed once more, and she fiercely pounded the frost into the pool of blood.

The small pool of blood froze. She forcefully pulled her lower body out of the ice, and with drops of blood still falling, walked toward the culprits on the tree trunk who had caused all of this.

The blood pool split open, and an equally enormous monster, a hybrid of corpses, raised its head. It let out a piercing roar and slowly dragged the struggling tree into the blood pool.

Zhi casually slashed the arm of the pale, large tree beside her, and thick pus splattered out. She tossed the katana that had unleashed her power to Xiaoyan, caught another katana, sheathed it, and slowly walked toward the Pope Knight who had escaped the blood pool.

Amidst pus and rain of blood, in a lull between the battles of the two deformed monsters, the murderer and the knight of ice clashed once more.

The clash of swords and blades was so faint amidst the noise caused by the two enormous creatures, but each clear ringing of the blades reminded Xiao Yan that she needed to end the battle quickly.

Holding the katana imbued with the power of the weaving, she plunged it into the chest of the cursed tree, where pale arms grew in abundance, marking the tree's most vulnerable spot.

The sword slashed down.

The tree trembled, but the two duelists remained unmoved by this change in terrain. They stepped down, merely to gain leverage from the tree, and swung their swords, all with the aim of taking each other's lives.

Ice covered Zhi's body again, freezing the fine wounds before they could bleed.

The heavy clash between the knife and sword, after sending up sparkling ice shards, briefly separated once more.

The katana was sheathed, while the withdrawn curved sword circled the knight once, and the icy blade reappeared the next moment.

This was the final blow, and both of them knew it.

The tree's trembling had gradually subsided, and its resistance to the monsters in the blood pool was becoming increasingly weak.

Finally, the corpse-like limbs snapped off the pale giant arm, and the tree's body was tightly gripped and dragged towards the pool of blood.

At that moment, two other figures also moved on the slid-down tree trunk.

They swiftly moved out in a crisscrossing pattern, their swords flashing, icy blades slicing through the air. The next moment, the two who had switched positions slowly sheathed their swords.

A scratch appeared on the Papal Knight's magnificent armor, the wound beneath which was firmly frozen by frost.

Zhi stroked the icy fracture that stretched from her shoulder to her waist, and helplessly collapsed slowly.

Xiao Yan coldly watched the Pope Knight approaching her, raised her katana, and plunged it heavily into the core of the Cursed Tree.

The movement of the cursed tree completely stopped, and the monster in the blood pool seemed to have foreseen something, frantically trying to drag the tree, which had begun to radiate light fragments, into the blood pool.

Xiao Yan laughed. She felt something gather in her hand from the scattered light fragments, and she knew clearly that the Soul Furnace she had longed for, mixed with the soul of the Cursed Tree, was now in her hands.

The icy blade slashed out.

The next moment, the tree completely turned into light fragments, leaving the two without any foothold.

An ice blade grazed her face, lifting her black hair which was covered in frost.

She watched as Orihime's body turned into flames and vanished, and before falling into the pool of blood, she plunged her katana into her own heart.

Flames surged up.

Let's fold a flag during our seven-minute break.

Bright sunlight streamed through the treetops, birds chirped and hopped among the branches. There were no flashing swords or bloodshed here; it was simply a quiet park, enjoying a peaceful afternoon.

In a corner of the park, dense shade covers the area, dappled sunlight falls on the lawn, and two girls, who had just finished a fierce battle, are lying here, drifting off to sleep after a long time.

A gentle breeze blew by, dispelling the lingering scent of blood and fire on their bodies, leaving only a faint fragrance of grass that lingered among them.