I want to be a faded person for life

The buzzing sound of flies flapping their wings came into her ears, and the girl felt that she had rotted away, or had turned into a motionless doll.

A long time passed again.

The doll moved its sluggish eyeballs, and she finally noticed a place she had overlooked.

There was a small pile of stones in front of the woman's body in the corner.

The stacking style of this stone tower is out of tune with the surrounding environment, but it is a traditional way of memorializing that Xiangzi is familiar with.

On top of the stone towers, there was a blue stone with a lake-like brilliance.

Toyokawa Shoko seemed to have seen something similar somewhere else - no, it was more than just similar.

The engraved memory comes to mind:

[This is a pebble, this is agate, a type of chalcedony mineral, and this is lapis lazuli!]

【As for this child...I haven't figured out what kind it is yet.】

[Does Deng like stones very much? ]

The girl in my memory was stunned for a moment, then smiled shyly.

【I just think it’s a little cute...】

That animal-like girl will show enthusiasm in the field she is good at, which is completely different from her appearance.

She had displayed many strange stones from her drawers and windowsills, and the stone that "looked like a star" was one of them.

The stone on the top of the stone tower is exactly the same as the one he had seen before, both in terms of gloss and shape.

Xiangzi remembered that he did not accept the stone in the end, and it should still be lying quietly in the drawer of his bedroom.

"Is that the lamp...?"

The numb eyes regained their luster.

Fate whispered, and the puppet's spring began to turn again.

Author's message

The novel contains the author's personal settings and erroneous interpretations of the settings of the magic circle. I would like to remind you to avoid stepping on mines.

Chapter 2 The Witch's Last Words

Shoko Toyokawa sat up from the ground, carefully picked up the translucent blue stone, checked it again several times and came to a conclusion.

This was indeed what Deng had intended to give him.

She pulled her stiff facial muscles and revealed a smile that was uglier than crying.

Hot liquid overflowed from her eye sockets. Only now did she feel that her soul had returned to her body. At this moment, she had turned from a corpse back into a living person.

Xiangzi's emotions completely broke down, and he burst into tears in the church where he was the only living person.

After a long time, she barely stopped sobbing and choking, rubbing her red eyes, and said to herself over and over again.

"Calm down... You have to calm down."

She finally had the energy to think about everything that had happened since she woke up in the chapel.

"I came to this place after committing suicide. This building is built on a cliff surrounded by the sea. There is no such place on the map of Neon. And this is not the scale that a prank or reality show can achieve."

She stared at the translucent crystal in her palm.

"This stone is indeed the lamp's. If a person who committed suicide by hanging can appear in this place, then the lamp... could also have suffered the same fate."

"Leaving the stone here to commemorate that strange woman is indeed what the Lantern Festival does."

"So the lamp is probably still alive, no..."

Xiangzi's eyes became firm, as if she was trying to convince herself of this conclusion, and she repeated what she was thinking.

"Deng must still be alive. I'm going to find her!"

Xiangzi took action immediately. It seemed that because he had been lying here for too long, Xiangzi Toyokawa's body was now very weak.

She staggered a few steps, and the collapsed wooden door returned to its original state at some point.

Xiangzi was much more careful this time and did not cause any new damage to the wooden door. Not far from the steps outside the door was the cliff where she had fallen before. There seemed to be something like a stone railing here, but most of it had collapsed, leaving only a small bare section.

This time, she noticed something she hadn't noticed when she fell off the cliff before.

That was a huge, indescribable golden tree in the distance that almost covered most of the sky. It was hard to call it a plant. Even the steep mountain at the foot was just a tiny stone compared to it.

What she had seen inside the chapel before was not sunlight at all, but the light shining down from the giant golden tree.

"What...is this?"

Xiangzi was shocked by the scene before her. She was sure that there was no plant taller than Mount Fuji in the world she was familiar with.

After a moment of distraction, Xiangzi found that she was now more able to accept reality than she had imagined. Perhaps because she had died twice, she had already been mentally prepared for the abnormalities of this world.

None of this matters. The most important thing now is to find the light as soon as possible.

The chapel has more than one floor. In addition to the main hall, there is also a second floor above it.

"Light, are you there?"

Xiangzi shouted a few times towards the top of her head. If the other person was on the second floor of the chapel, he should be able to hear her voice.

There was no response, only a few birds on the eaves flew away into the distance.

"But how do we get up from here?"

Xiangzi looked up at the spire-roofed building that was more than ten meters high. There were no stairs leading to the second floor of the chapel, either inside the room or here.

The sky was gray and the sun was not visible. Xiangzi's body shook a few times. The wind was very strong here and there seemed to be a risk of falling off the cliff if he continued to stand on the edge of the cliff.

The girl turned in another direction and saw two huge statues standing not far away.

They were Western knights wearing armor and holding spears, with thick golden branches wrapped around their bodies. A closer look revealed that they were not vines but part of a statue.

Below the statue is a suspension bridge that connects to another steep mountain. There seem to be more buildings on the other side of the suspension bridge.

Xiangzi searched again but still couldn't find the stairs leading to the second floor of the chapel. Now it seemed that he could only cross the suspension bridge to the other side.

The ground was covered with withered bushes and weeds. Xiangzi hugged her arms tightly. She was still wearing summer clothes, but the climate here had clearly entered autumn.

After confirming once again that this was definitely not the world he was familiar with, Xiangzi walked onto the suspension bridge holding the rope.

Although it was a little shaky, the wooden planks on the suspension bridge were very sturdy, and she reached the other side safely.

Not far away on the shore is an archway, on both sides of the archway stand statues of knights holding swords. Golden plants are all over their armor and stone arches. Behind the door looks like a large courtyard.

As you walk into the courtyard, the first thing that catches your eye is a stone statue of an unknown goddess. If you were to ask why it is a goddess.

There is really no better way to describe that graceful and holy posture than with this word.

Xiangzi walked into the courtyard and called out the name of the lamp again.

Then, immediately, something answered her call.

A handsome young man's face peeked out from behind the statue. He wore a golden crown and a black robe embroidered with silver and decorated with peacock feathers, looking either rich or noble.

"that..."

As soon as Xiangzi opened his mouth, he noticed something unusual.

The other person's body under the black robe was extremely bloated, almost making the black robe swell into a ball, and the head seemed a little too big compared to that of an ordinary human.

The handsome boy tilted his head and stared at Xiangzi's direction from a strange angle. His strange posture reminded people of a snake or some insect.

Suddenly, it shot up into the sky from behind the goddess statue, and then fell heavily into the center of the courtyard.

Dozens of abnormally long arms and legs stretched out from under the bloated black robe. It was not Gao Songdeng or even a human being, but a huge monster with a body like a spider.

The monster used three of its arms to hold a large golden shield and two slender rapiers, and then it crossed its body like a crab and pounced in front of Xiangzi at an extremely fast speed.

The frightened girl was completely frozen. Before she could even scream, the rapier pierced her chest and her whole body was lifted up like a rag.

Then another cold touch penetrated her body, and another rapier pierced her lung from another angle, and a burning pain surged from her chest.

Xiangzi struggled a few times in mid-air, but the sword only messed up her wound. She coughed up a mouthful of blood and opened her mouth to say something.

"Wait--"

The next second, the two swords crossed each other inside her body like scissors.

Then, the girl saw her waist and hips from a perspective she had never seen before, and the scattered blood blossomed into bright flowers.

The world spun upside down several times and then grew dim.

This was the third death that Shoko Toyokawa experienced.

-

Xiangzi woke up in the chapel. She lifted up her shirt, revealing her white and soft belly.

After checking several times, there were no signs of sword cuts on her waist, and her lower body was still well connected to her upper body.

Falling off the cliff was not an illusion, and being cut in half by the sword was definitely not fake.

His heart was pounding in his chest and Xiangzi was having difficulty breathing. Every breath he took was like that of a dying fish on the shore.

She wanted to calm down but couldn't. The events she encountered were too strange. She experienced real death several times but woke up in this chapel.

Although the pain of death did not resurrect with her, the intense memory continued to accumulate in her mind like a thorn in the bone.

but--

Compared to the despair back then, death is not something unacceptable, and the current emptiness is just a continuation of the latter.

Finding the light was a priority over anything else.

"If the light has also been to this place, that monster..."

She didn't dare to continue thinking along this line of thought. The girl's expression became ferocious, and she forced herself to think more.

The current situation is that after death, she will be reborn in the chapel, but she is not sure whether this is a simple resurrection or time has returned to the beginning.

The key to the problem is that she is not sure whether there is a limit to the number of resurrections she can perform, and if so, how many times she has left.

“Die, respawn…it’s like a save point in a video game.”

Although she had not played it many times, Shoko Toyokawa had some understanding of this form of entertainment that was popular among her peers.

If this were a game, was there a possible strategy to overcome her current predicament? Was she missing something essential to complete the game?

As if remembering something, Xiangzi walked towards the female corpse in the room.

By now, having personally experienced death three times, she had become somewhat accustomed to the bodies in the chapel.

The other person was still lying there quietly, as quiet as a sculpture.

The penetrating wound on the chest of the corpse felt very familiar to Xiangzi, because she had been stabbed by the same weapon not long ago.

The difference is that the opponent was not cut in half, and even dragged his seriously injured body into this dilapidated chapel to hide.

"The monster didn't chase in."

Judging from the state of the wooden door, the spider monster definitely did not enter the first floor hall of the chapel.

After carefully observing the body, Xiangzi discovered more things around her.

The lady held a withered finger and a copper-brown dagger in her left and right hands respectively. On the ground in front of her, a short sentence was carved in an unfamiliar language with a faint white light remaining.

Although he was certain he had never seen this kind of writing before, Xiangzi somehow understood its content:

Even if the guidance is broken, please become the King of Elden.

Although she couldn't understand the meaning of the sentence, the girl vaguely felt the emotions of the person who wrote it from the marks.

Sadness, regret and a faint hope.

"I'm so sorry, Miss, I don't know your name, but I need to borrow these things for a while."

Shoko Toyokawa took the severed finger and dagger from the other person's hand.

-

【Witch Dagger】

A dagger bestowed upon those who embark on a journey for a mission.