The source of the cries for help was exactly the direction Shade was heading. He quickened his pace, and within the white mist, a massive figure gradually came into focus.
The figure stood at least three meters tall, with a waist thicker than three Shades and a Mia combined. Its body was clad in armor pieced together from terrifying human faces, and its own face was covered in dense, crisscrossing blade marks, as if it had been slashed repeatedly.
"A Wraith!"
The more a soul's appearance deviated from that of a normal human, the more powerful the Wraith became. The creature before him was clearly the most terrifying kind of soul in the traditional sense.
The violent soul also noticed Shade. As it turned, Shade observed that it held a spear over five meters long, and impaled upon the tip was a young man wearing the uniform of the Delarion Royal Army. When Shade and Captain Radis had visited the Veterans' Club, he had learned the dress characteristics of different soldiers and officers; this man appeared to be a corporal.
The cries for help were coming from him. Furthermore, his clothes and skin possessed color, and the blood spurting from his wounds was colored as well, indicating that he was a living human.
The corporal also noticed Shade emerging from the white mist. His right hand attempted to reach out toward him, but due to the severity of his injuries, the young corporal could not even complete the motion.
"An ordinary person who wandered in here?"
Shade thought to himself, coming to a halt. The towering Wraith emerging from the mist turned toward him, violently flicking the living man off the tip of its spear to the side, and then charged directly at Shade. The momentum of the charge stirred the previously stagnant white mist, yet despite its massive bulk, its footsteps made no sound upon the ground.
"The opponent's weapon is longer than mine."
Shade made a rational judgment. He crossed his hands in front of his chest, drawing a silver lunar cross of light, then took a step back and suddenly kicked forward. The intersecting cross of light flew forward; the violent Wraith swung its spear horizontally with a sudden force, neutralizing the attack at the cost of the spear being completely destroyed.
"Stronger than the knight from before. Not just a simple Wraith—is it a derivative of that Grade 0 relic?"
Fortunately, Shade in his current state was also stronger than usual.
As the spear shattered, his figure appeared silently above the Wraith's head. He brought his sword down in a vertical cleave. The Wraith turned and raised its arm to block, but half of its body was cleaved apart by Shade.
Shade landed. The Wraith, now missing half its body, swung its remaining left fist toward Shade's head with an agility that completely contradicted its form. There was no time to raise his sword, so Shade punched upward with his right fist, which bore the Psychic Crystal Ring
"Psychic Blast!"
The massive fist of the Wraith collided with Shade's right fist. For a moment, Shade actually heard a loud "Boom!" However, this wasn't due to the physical collision of fists, but because the power of [Soul Echo], which allowed Shade to touch spiritual entities, stacked with [Psychic Blast]. In this world on the boundary between life and death, Shade's punch produced an effect he had never imagined possible.
Starting from the point of contact with Shade's fist, the burly Wraith gradually dissolved into a cluster of white light particles before vanishing completely.
"I am merely a butcher who enjoys the slaughter."
Once he confirmed the opponent had truly disappeared, Shade ran quickly toward the young corporal who had been tossed aside.
The man lay by the roadside with a penetrating wound in his abdomen. Crimson blood flowed along the ground, but it was quickly assimilated by this world, turning a grayish-white.
"False Undead!"
Shade knelt and immediately pressed his hand against the man's chest, then his eyes widened
"Why isn't the spell working?"
It wasn't that the spell failed because the man was already dead; rather, the spell was completely ineffective on the living human before him.
*[Mortals must eventually die; False Undead is but a laughable consolation.]* (Chapter 52)
"What? False Undead cannot be used in the In-Between?"
*[This place is too close to death.]*
Having no time for further discussion with "her," Shade softly comforted the corporal, whose eyes were gradually losing their luster. He took a wooden tube from his pocket, shook it to fill it with water, and tapped the side of the tube with his finger to imbue the water with the properties of [Satiating Food].
He poured the water onto the young corporal's wound, but such a fatal injury was not something [Satiating Food] could heal. Even if the miracle had an extremely strong healing effect due to the Divine Afterglow state, it was still merely healing.
The corporal struggled to open his eyes and look at Shade. His blood-stained hand rose with the last of his strength to grab Shade's sleeve, his fading pupils staring directly at him.
"Are you... a living person?"
"Yes," Shade replied. He couldn't save him; this world accelerated the process of death. Without False Undead, he could save no one. False Undead truly was nothing more than a consolation.
"Sir, please... please..."
The corporal's other hand reached for his waist. Shade saw a handgun.
"Give this... give this to the First Legion, Windrise Path..."
With every word, it seemed as if his lungs were extracting all the remaining air.
"Captain Ronald... of the Third Company, Redwater Camp."
His eyes remained on Shade. Shade nodded.
"I will."
"Thank you," a faint voice whispered. The color vanished from his eyes; he was dead.
"This is truly..."
The Outsider was not unfamiliar with death, but this was the first time he had witnessed a soul's departure while looking directly into someone's eyes after False Undead proved ineffective.
The corporal's soul slowly drifted out of the body. It was an ordinary soul, unable to provide any further response. It floated in the In-Between, having forgotten everything, just like all the other souls here.
To say that the death of a stranger brought Shade great emotion would be an exaggeration. However, seeing a pitiful soul who had wandered between life and death die right before his eyes still touched something within him.
He would deliver the gun to Captain Ronald, but the most critical task now was to find Father Augustus.
Turning the corpse into a toy to carry with him, Shade continued to move forward through this grayish-white city—which resembled Midhill Castle but felt subtly different—following the guidance of the holy emblem pendant on his chest.
Since he had encountered a living person, Shade was certain there were other living beings active here. However, he hadn't expected that after walking for only ten minutes, he would hear abnormal sounds again.
But this time, it wasn't a cry for help; it was the sound of combat. Shade looked ahead. Red mist was diffusing within the white fog. As he drew closer, Shade heard the sounds of bats.
"Hmm."
He stood still, putting on his mask to assess the situation before deciding his next move. Unexpectedly, the two combatants unconsciously drifted toward his position.
One party was a Wraith—a female figure with a transparent, blackened body floating in the air, wearing a tattered white dress and a crown, her face decayed. She held a remarkably long cleaver. The other party, if Shade saw correctly, was a blood-kin—a "vampire" in the traditional sense.
This was not an evenly matched fight. The vampire, transformed into a swarm of bats, had to protect a terrified little boy while simultaneously fighting this powerful Wraith. After coming into contact with the blood mist, Shade could be reasonably sure the blood-kin was roughly a 5th or 6th Circle caster. Since xeno-circle casters were generally stronger than human ones, the opponent could be viewed as a human 6th or even 7th Circle.
As a race considered semi-undead, the vampire's power would neither be suppressed nor enhanced in this eerie world, so the power they displayed should be at that level. The Wraith, however, was clearly stronger than the vampire.
As Shade was thinking, the vampire in the form of a bat swarm noticed him, and a plea for help echoed through the blood mist
"Help me!"
It wasn't in Delarion, but in Kasenrick; fortunately, Shade understood it.
Shade took a step back, keeping himself on the edge of the blood mist. He couldn't get too close; if the Wraith discovered him, it would certainly switch its target.
"Do you know the Blood Spirit School?" Shade asked in a deep voice. Every blood-kin he had encountered in this world belonged to the [Blood Spirit School], so he wanted to be sure.
"Blood Spirit School? I know them. Aren't they in the New Continent?"
The Wraith's cleaver swung through the air, the blade light sweeping down large numbers of bats. The blood mist was being eroded by the white mist; the situation was shifting further.
"Are you also with the Blood Spirit School?"
"Oh, I see! You have a grudge against those idiots from the Blood Spirit School? I'm not one of them! I swear on my soul, I am absolutely not part of the Blood Spirit School! It was another clan that joined them! I only came here to save my nephew; I mean no harm."
Shade didn't speak. He took another step back, but before the vampire could call for help again, his figure vanished into the white mist.
Taking advantage of the towering white-dressed Wraith's distraction by the bats, Shade appeared behind the creature. This time, he didn't use his sword; he simply threw a punch.
But the punch did not land. From the sides of the Wraith's body, two more arms suddenly extended, each gripping another cleaver, which slammed down toward Shade's fist. While Shade dared to trade punches with a Wraith, he didn't dare touch a cleaver with his bare fist.
His fist unfolded in the air, then traced a crescent of moonlight that slashed forward.
*Clang!*
The hastily swung moonlight actually caused the cleaver to snap. Realizing the opponent was divided and unable to deal with him with full strength, Shade lunged forward, brushing aside the shards of moonlight
"Moonlight Greatsword!"
A giant sword shimmering with moonlight sliced through the spectral arms swinging before him. Just as he was about to pierce the opponent's body, the Wraith forcibly twisted its neck one hundred and eighty degrees. That terrifying, skull-like face was now staring directly at Shade.
Its mouth opened wide, wider, and wider, then snapped violently toward Shade's head, as if trying to swallow him whole.
Shade had already encountered this move with Darkness. Instead of dodging, he reached out and thrust his hand directly into the creature's mouth
"Silver Moon!"
As brilliant moonlight erupted from the spirit's facial features, Shade immediately withdrew his arm and stepped back. In a place where he didn't know how many Wraiths existed, he didn't dare use "Light" to illuminate the entire city, which was why he had avoided this move. But since the opponent had opened its mouth voluntarily, he had no more reservations.
The soul seemed to freeze in mid-air. The head, struck directly by the moonlight, turned into light particles first, then the entire body turned the color of lime, and finally, it crumbled like a sand sculpture into a layer of ash on the ground.
"I shall become... the eternal princess."
(End of Chapter)