This isn't a souls-like game at all.

"One by one?" Alice stood there in a daze, speaking blankly.

　The gray-green "Cursed Frog" turned its head with two big eyes and gave Alice a mischievous smile.

"How is it? Did I look good in disguise?"

Ye Yiyi showed his face from the curse frog's mouth, reached out and pinched the two big fake eyes on his head, and took out two evil blessing eyes from each of his eye capsules.

"Look what I found? A curse frog hood."

"Hood? Interesting."

Alice sheathed her knife and looked at Ye Yiyi as he pulled the gray-green cursed frog hood off his head, feeling inexplicably funny.

The person who made this is such a genius. How could he have thought of using the head of a curse frog to make a hood?

"Put it on and let me see it."

Alice sat down beside the holy monument, looking at Ye Yiyi beside her with a smile on her face.

"Okay."

Ye Yiyi put on the gray-green hood again, revealing his face from the cursed frog's mouth, and finally stuffed his two eyes into the eye bags on his head.

"How about it?"

He turned his head to look at Alice, and the pair of big eyes on his forehead swayed like two shaking water bags.

With that silly grin on his face, it looks as funny as it can be.

Alice couldn't help but reach out and pinch Ye Yiyi's smiling face.

"Where did you find this?" she asked.

"On him."

Ye Yiyi nodded towards the skeleton in front of him, and the smile on his face suddenly fell.

He sighed and dodged Alice's hand that was rubbing his cheek, then picked up the two parchment scrolls and a long metal stick beside him.

"He is Fana's father... the Knight of the Fire Crown who carries a 'mission'."

Ye Yiyi looked at these items with a complicated expression.

[Document: Regarding the Rupe Castle Underground Site]

Item Description: An internal document of the Fire Sparrow Order, containing brief intelligence.

Something strange happened in the underground ruins.

According to the guidance of the ancestors, the method to open the door can be found in the depths of the Lupe Rainforest.

[Document: Regarding the Cursed Death Tower]

Item Description: A document recording Pisan's words, containing brief information.

North of Lupe Rainforest, the Cursed Death Tower is about to restart.

It must be destroyed to prevent the disaster of life and death from happening again.

Finally, there was the extremely familiar metal stick.

【Secret Door Key】

Item Description: The key to the secret door deep inside the Cursed Death Tower.

After the war, the cursed relic was sealed by the king.

The key to open the sealed place and start the destruction process when necessary,

It is held by Pisan, who is tasked with monitoring and guarding the underground cemetery.

Ye Yiyi told Alice the meaning of these three items, and the latter frowned and fell into deep thought.

"It seems we have to set off." She stood up and looked at the northern sky with a serious expression.

"What is the Tower of Cursed Death?" Ye Yiyi asked.

"A unique creation that can reverse life and death, one of the research and development results of the Lord of Life and Death." Alice's expression was gloomy.

“It was originally an experimental creation used to drive away unnecessary death and maintain the survival of life.

"Later, it was cursed and became a hotbed of darkness.

"Back then, wherever the Lord of Life and Death's cursed army went, they built this kind of creation."

"Once the Death Curse Tower is built, it will deprive all life within a certain range, transforming it into a secondary derivative of the original Stagnation Curse—Deep Darkness.

"The Cursed Death Army is protected by the Deep, making it unstoppable. No one can stop their advance."

Alice said quietly, "That's how the Imperial Guards that Bai Yu belonged to were destroyed."

"Deep..."

Ye Yiyi murmured these two words and took out a black book from behind him thoughtfully.

【Profound Taboo Code】

Item Description: Forbidden Codex.

The result of the long research of the cursed ones.

After handing it over to the magician,

Can learn the deep magic of the cursed.

As the stagnant prophecy says,

In the endless exploration and inquiry,

The damned discovered the deep magic that lay beneath the stagnation.

"Deep magic... deep darkness?"

Ye Yiyi pulled out the simplified light screen again and looked at one of the hymns he had bought from the bearded man.

【Overcoming Evil and Protecting the Dark】

Spell Slots: 1

Skill cost: 20

Requirements: Faith 10

Item Description: One of the hymns praising the glorious Virgin Mary.

It can increase the dark attribute damage reduction rate and enhance resistance to the depth.

Can be executed by walking.

There are countless enemies ahead on the road of escape—

Followers of gods, magicians, cursed creatures, and even descendants of kings.

To survive, you need to be able to adapt and change.

"So, this deep darkness should be the profound magic power discovered by the cursed?

"But Deep Shelter?"

While Ye Yiyi was thinking, he suddenly thought of the [Deep Dead Man "Kelekas"].

The body is made entirely of black mist and can even be restored after being broken.

More importantly, that was a dead person!

Once you have anything to do with the Lord of Life and Death, you can’t get rid of the word “dead”!

Ye Yiyi immediately understood the seriousness of the Cursed Death Tower.

Once that thing restarts, maybe everyone in the entire Lupe Castle will become "the Deep Dead!"

"I understand, let's get ready to go!"

With a serious expression, he stood up, then looked down at the skeleton beneath him. After a moment of silence, he took out the wooden plaque with a crude fire sparrow engraved on it from behind him and placed it in front of the skeleton.

"This is what Fana asked me to bring you." He whispered in the golden light of the holy monument, "Let me complete your unfinished mission."

As soon as he finished speaking, the pair of rusty swords beside him suddenly emitted a faint light.

Under the astonished gazes of Ye Yiyi and Alice, the skeleton attached to the cursed black fog turned into ashes and dissipated, with pale white stars floating up and falling into the wooden sign.

Ye Yiyi picked up the wooden sign in confusion and looked at it, but inexplicably felt that the simple fire sparrow suddenly became lively.

The next moment, a light curtain jumped out from the wooden sign.

【Oath of Mission】

Item Description: A crude wooden plaque with a simple carving of a fire sparrow.

Can enhance the attack power of combat skills.

The firefly carved on the wooden sign,

In it one can see the light of the spirit soul,

That is the blessing of those who uphold their vows and missions.

"Qier doped phosphorus々IV (nine) + doped ~ silk phosphorus〧 dream卄 So, that's how it is..."

Ye Yiyi slowly stood up, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

"Let's go and complete our unfinished mission and oath."

Chapter 203 Alice's Rampage

Before leaving Lupe Rain Forest and heading to Lupe Castle, Ye Yiyi returned to the outpost to pick up the dung beetle.

Then return with Alice along the original route and find Virgil at the holy monument outside the Lupe Rainforest.

Dung Beetle and Virgil were unable to teleport through the holy monument, which made Ye Yiyi feel very troubled.

This meant that he couldn't take both of them directly to Fort Lupe via the Holy Monument.

If they want to go back, they can only return by the same route.

Since Alice had not lit up the holy monument other than this one, she had to rely on her legs to walk to Lupe Castle first, light up the holy monument, and then teleport.

Therefore, it was already noon the next day when Virgil was found.

"Fortunately, I've walked this road before and am familiar with it. Otherwise, I don't know how much time I would have wasted."

Riding on Virgil, whom he hadn't seen for several days, Ye Yiyi sighed and said.

"I think this is quite good."

Alice was wearing a black windbreaker and sitting behind Ye Yiyi, with her arms around his waist and her chin resting on his shoulder.

"After fifty years, walking the same path again, don't you think it's extremely meaningful?"

The girl's lips curled up in a happy arc, and she narrowed her eyes slightly as she recalled the past which seemed very long ago to her.

"In the Lone Star Swamp, I was being hunted by the Stone Gold Earth Dragon King, but you saved me from the claws of a giant crab. And that dark, rainy night, deep in the rainforest, I met you while you were hunting the Bay Sea Deinosuchus. At that time, the Deinosuchus had been snatched away by a night owl...

“Those things are already very distant memories for me, but at this moment, the memories are still vivid, as if I had just experienced them.

"Do you know why? Yi Yi?"

"You..." Ye Yiyi was silent for a moment, "Why?"

"Because I wrote down those experiences with a pen, and I would take them out and read them every once in a while. When the war came, they became my most precious treasures."

Alice sighed slightly, and her arms around Ye Yiyi's waist tightened even more.

"That war lasted for nearly thirty years." She murmured softly, her tone sounding like she was talking in a dream.

"During such a long war, nations were destroyed one after another, and races and ethnic groups were wiped out at a rate exceeding any mass extinction in history.

"I watched them die, watched everything wither, watched vibrant life being eroded by the curse and transformed into monsters before my eyes.

"Later, we began to artificially carry out mass extermination before the curse took hold... Rather than waiting until they became cursed creations, we killed them before the curse took hold.

"At that time, I wondered: would this war that would end all life, all war, ever truly end? Did the Borderlands truly have a future?

“But every time I pick up that notebook, I will think of you, the promise we made to you, that short day and two nights, and our walk in the rainforest that had regained its vitality ten thousand years later.

"To me, you are the future I hope for. Your promise is the only glimmer of light in the darkness, my Yiyi..."