novelraw Chapter 854: Better Not to Mess With Him
Chapter 854: Better Not to Mess With Him
The group gathered on the windswept deck.
On the distant shore, the outlines of sprawling buildings came into view.
Twenty-four years later, Lu Li laid eyes on the port of Himmfast once more.
The port had long since been completed. A once half-ruined street had multiplied into three, and the primitive harbor had grown to an impressive scale. Yet, not a single ship was moored at its docks, and its wooden piers had collapsed into the sea.
"Anomalies... are hiding... there."
As the Andrea neared the port, Ophelia sensed a faint aura radiating from all around.
"Many..."
Clearly, the area was now overrun by anomalies.
"I can... go and investigate," Ophelia offered.
"There's no need."Lu Li declined her offer. Vengeful spirits were far from the top of the anomaly food chain, and their corporeal form was their greatest weakness.
Should they run into heretics who hunted anomalies, a vengeful spirit would be little stronger than a human.
The Andrea kept its distance, silently pulling away from the harbor.
The port wasn't their destination; Himmfast was. Venturing recklessly into a harbor overrun by anomalies was hardly a wise move.
After sailing a few more miles down the coast, the Andrea dropped anchor near a stretch of shore where the water ran deep.
Leaving the Andrea to wait, Lu Li and the others took a small boat to the shore and began their journey toward Himmfast.
...
Himmfast.
A graceful, slender figure, the Shadow Maiden, stood at the pinnacle of a tall spire.
Wind swept through the silent city below. A black shadow lifted the hem of her dress, making it seem as though a beautiful girl stood there, calmly gazing down upon the dead city spread at her feet.
An unknown amount of time passed before the Shadow Maiden tilted her head slightly, her calm gaze fixed on the distance.
A cluster of insignificant black dots had appeared on the city's outskirts.
...
Himmfast, the former city of arts. Its fame had long stretched from the Allen Peninsula to the Main Continent.
Here, even the paupers in the slums could speak of every master, every painting, and every sculpture—anything and everything related to art.
Art was etched into the very lifeblood of the century-old city.
But art had never been a necessity for survival.
When disaster struck, the city of arts—and the ideals it represented—swiftly faded from public memory, mentioned only on rare occasions.
"Himmfast was destroyed from within, a wake-up call for all human settlements."
So began the first line of the report on the fall of Himmfast.
"When the steam battleship 'Asazel', hailed as the backbone of human civilization, appeared in a port fifty miles from Himmfast after an absence of nearly a century, most of the locals descended into a kind of madness. The few who kept their wits about them were drowned out by the hysteria."
"The battleship 'Asazel' and its crew received only a cursory inspection before being welcomed into Himmfast as conquering heroes. They should have been more vigilant... though, back then, humanity had not yet developed effective methods for combating an invasion of anomalies."
"As a massive city with a population of nearly a million, Himmfast saw hundreds of anomaly-related incidents and deaths every day. For a city so large, the daily loss of several hundred lives was considered within an acceptable range when factoring in the birth rate; the population decline was almost negligible. In fact, to put it cruelly... this trend even helped Himmfast control its bloated population."
"But the upper echelons of society could not ignore it. The daily deaths of loved ones could plunge the populace into a state of torpor and despair. This was especially true because anomalies did not discriminate based on social status."
"They desperately needed anything that symbolized hope to motivate the despairing populace. We can understand... after all, when the exorcists returned, we behaved little better. However, we also have reason to suspect that the shadow of an anomaly lurked behind their unquestioning madness."
"The return of the 'Asazel' was perfectly timed. The crew, who hadn't aged a day in a century, were given a grand welcome. Their families and descendants greeted them with tears in their eyes..."
"It all came to a head three days later. The entity behind the 'Asazel' lacked patience. It could have executed its plan perfectly, leaving no one alive in the entire city of arts, for instance... but it didn't. This oversight allowed a few survivors to escape after the sacrifice, and the catastrophe struck without warning."
"The returning crew members dropped their disguises. Along with the Himmfast elite they had infected, they transformed into grotesque, foul-smelling monsters resembling fish-men. They sacrificed the entire city to an unfathomable Deep Sea God, one they had sealed in the depths of the ocean."
"This was the same entity that had been suppressed by a mountain of Deep Sea Stone—the very entity that had drained the stone of its power."
"The number of survivors was likely small."
"But we should be grateful that the freed entity did not continue to devour our lands, leaving only its followers to spread its corruption."
"It was as if it wore a leash, one that forbade it from attacking us directly. It could still harry us by throwing stones, spitting, and cursing, but it could not annihilate our desperate world."
"That is why I support the 'Grazing Theory' of the Horvat Faction: our world is merely a pasture for anomalies, and they come to reap the harvest from time to time."
The end of the report included a personal note from the author. Perhaps the reviewer missed it, or perhaps they too subscribed to the 'Grazing Theory,' for it was passed on to Lu Li verbatim.
Lu Li had encountered the 'Grazing Theory' before, but debating "humanity's place in their eyes" was meaningless.
At least, the 'purpose' he was currently seeking lay elsewhere.
Ophelia, much like Anna before her, radiated an aura that announced her presence. Consequently, Lu Li's 1.3 units of humanity would not attract the avarice of anomalies.
Katerina sometimes found herself thinking that if more anomalies possessed intelligence and power like Ophelia, humanity's predicament might not be so dire.
With the help of such anomalies, humans could traverse the wastelands in relative safety, and perhaps even clear the areas around their settlements of other threats.
Then she would scorn her own foolish thoughts. In over a decade of surviving in the wastelands, she had never encountered an anomaly that possessed both power and intelligence.
Intelligence, power—to gain one, it seemed, you always had to lose the other.
Ophelia was the only intelligent anomaly she had ever seen; Andrea could, at a stretch, be counted as well.
And then there was Anna, the one Lu Li was searching for.
The journey was long and wearisome. As evening approached, the silhouette of Himmfast finally appeared in the distance.
Now, only an empty shell of the city remained.
The corruption of the Deep Sea God poisoned the sacrificed land. Perhaps some foolhardy anomalies and survivors still dwelled there, but the place was certainly not as bustling as Belfast had been.
"Why do you think Anna is here?"
Katerina frowned.
She would rather face the desolate wastes than set foot in a city ruined by anomalies.
"It was her home once," Lu Li answered.
His calm, dark eyes swept over the log palisade surrounding Himmfast, past the silent streets hidden within, and settled on the tall spire of the church in the western part of the city.
And toward her final resting place.