novelraw Chapter 819: Conversation by the Fire
Chapter 819: Conversation by the Fire
The campfire crackled.
Its warmth pushed back the chill in the drafty shack.
Night had shrouded the silent village, and outside, a swirling, anomalous fog consumed the brainless corpses.
The shadow of the Poison of Knowledge had receded, but at a terrible cost...
Katerina, the Fallen, and Prusius huddled on one side of the fire; Lu Li sat alone on the other.
From within the shadow Lu Li cast, came the unsettling sounds of something vast and hollow writhing. Katerina and the others deliberately avoided looking in that direction.
The Swarm of Sufferings was right behind Lu Li.
Its presence made them afraid to look, but it also had its advantages.
They no longer had to worry about other anomalies approaching from the fog.
The shadow failed to conceal the Swarm of Sufferings, its form as wide as a barrel. Glimmering, spinning eyeballs materialized in the spaces between light and darkness, transforming Lu Li into something akin to a deity depicted against the bizarre backdrop of a stained-glass window—a figure that inspired both awe and dread.“It really won’t eat us?” Prusius asked for the seventh time, his suppressed whisper barely drifting over the campfire.
Even Elder Sister, nestled in Lu Li’s hood, felt uneasy. She decided to climb down and sit on his lap.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Why not?”
“The ritual.”
The evil spirit and the villagers who had approached just minutes before had caused the flustered Prusius to forget the “knowledge” Lu Li had shared.
“The Swarm of Sufferings only strikes back at those who harm it.”
“But we harmed it too...”
Prusius’s whisper, fearful that the Swarm of Sufferings would hear him, was swallowed by the flames.
If not for Katerina sitting nearby, and the Book of the Apocalypse amplifying Lu Li’s senses, even he wouldn't have caught what Prusius had just said.
“Harm has a threshold. The damage from thrown stones isn’t enough for the Swarm of Sufferings to retaliate.”
They didn’t understand the meaning of the word “threshold,” but that didn’t stop them from grasping the general idea.
“Why is it still following us?”
Knowing the Swarm of Sufferings wouldn’t harm them, Prusius spoke a little louder.
“The same ritual.”
The fire flared brighter, blasting them with heat. Lu Li shifted away from the flames, moving even closer to the Swarm of Sufferings behind him.
“We harmed the Swarm of Sufferings, which brought us into its ritual. But since the threshold wasn't reached, it can't strike back.”
“I get it! It's like the Poison of Knowledge, right? The poison wants to eat the villagers, but the villagers with no knowledge can't be eaten.”
Prusius chirped excitedly, and upon receiving a nod of confirmation from Lu Li, he began to wag his tail, pleased with his own deduction.
“I thought returning to your homeland would be safer, but now I see the Main Continent is far more dangerous than the Wastelands.”
Katerina hated this kind of life. At least most towns in the Wastelands were relatively safe and welcoming. As long as you stayed within the designated safe zones, you were out of danger.
In these past few days, she had faced more mortal peril than in her entire fifteen years of surviving in the wilds.
“Go crawl back to the wastelands and cry to your mommy.”
The Fallen struggled to control his features, preventing them from dissolving under the influence of the evil spirit within as he sneered at Katerina with pure malice.
“He needs your animosity,” Prusius said hastily, afraid Katerina would get angry.
“Don't pretend to be so smart, you little animal.”
Prusius whimpered, tucking his tail between his legs.
Although he knew the reason for the Fallen's words, they still hurt him deeply.
Of course, Katerina knew why the Fallen spoke that way. After he'd stayed behind to cover their retreat, her opinion of him had changed. She found it hard to muster any real animosity toward him now.
“Don't bother. It’s hard for us to hate you now.”
Stray strands of hair fell across her forehead, shimmering in the heat. Katerina raised a hand to sweep them back, and in the same motion, jabbed her elbow into the back of the Fallen's head.
Not hating him was one thing, but punishing him for his foul mouth was another entirely.
“So you're actually a good person.”
“A good person...?” The Fallen scoffed, no longer using venomous words to absorb their negative emotions. After a moment of silence, his mouth twisted into a grin.
“I’m dying.”
Prusius looked up, stunned. Katerina, who had just tied her hair into a ponytail, lowered her hands.
“What did the villagers do to you?”
“It has nothing to do with them. My contamination is severe.”
Just then, Lu Li extended his hand, raising a single finger.
The Fallen, understanding his intention, extended his own palm, covered in burns and scars, and touched the tip of Lu Li's finger over the campfire.
The Fallen's distorted, anomaly-like face made it impossible to read his emotions, but his trembling hand showed that he was in pain.
Silently watching them pull their hands back, Katerina asked:
“So you decided to follow us?”
“To spend my last moments traveling with the last exorcist... it's a fitting end, wouldn't you say?”
The Fallen, shedding his rough exterior, revealed another side of himself. Perhaps before he had come into contact with the power of an anomaly, he had been an educated man.
“Maybe you'll turn into a mutant inhuman and keep your mind,” Prusius offered comfortingly, hoping he wouldn't give up.
Lu Li's group was growing—they were even joined by an evil spirit. They were inadvertently forging their own epic.
“Not everyone gets that lucky, kid,” said the Fallen. Now that the truth was out, he dropped the irony and vitriol, becoming much more agreeable.
Severe contamination in those who wielded the powers of anomalies was worse than in ordinary people.
They had ways to suppress and control the contamination, but everything had its limit, or as Lu Li put it, a “threshold.”
The “threshold” could only be raised, never eliminated.
And when those with deep contamination reached their limit, they didn’t turn into mutant inhumans. They became anomalies themselves, or even sources of contamination that poisoned the very land.
“I can still hold on for a while, but you’d better find who you’re looking for before then,” the Fallen said to Lu Li.
“How long?” Katerina asked.
“A whole week.” The sarcasm had already become a mask the Fallen couldn’t remove.
Using his abilities worsened the Fallen's contamination, as did being too close to anomalies.
“Can you move it further away?” the Fallen added.
The last person to harm the Swarm of Sufferings was Lu Li, so it followed him.
Lu Li nodded, picked up Elder Sister, and moved to a corner of the house with the Swarm of Sufferings in tow.
It quickly grew cold around them, and the distant campfire was like a sun setting on the horizon.
“You’ll go to Vinnelag for news,” Lu Li said to the Merchant.
Two days had passed; Vinnelag should have gathered clues about Anna by now.
“Wait, what if Barry shows up?” Katerina exclaimed, stopping him.
“The Swarm of Sufferings is here. Barry might not appear.”
Lu Li wrote on the wall with a piece of charcoal: “Barry is an evil spirit.”
The Fallen was writing on another wall.
Katerina was illiterate, and Prusius couldn't hold the charcoal.
Barry could distort memory and perception, but he couldn't change the essence of things.
Just in case, Katerina asked the Merchant to hurry, since getting the clues shouldn't take long.
The Merchant didn't reply. His figure dissolved, sinking into the layers of the In-Between.
Silence fell over the hut, leaving only the scratching of charcoal against the wall.
“Your ancient markings are so ugly.”
Katerina looked at them with disgust, unable to believe these primitive drawings could protect them.
“The ancient markings don't look quite standard...”
Barry, holding the charcoal, turned around and scratched the back of his head with a simple-minded smile.
The walls were covered in a multitude of distorted ancient markings.