Chapter 1371 - 1336: The Tangibility of Life

For some reason, there was a glitter of sheer disbelief in Maria’s eyes.

Yes, "for some reason".

After all, in Maria’s own subjective sense of time, she had only recently seen sunlight, seen daytime; all the upheaval and the collapse of her worldview in truth stemmed from a single night, merely one night.

Yet for no clear reason, as Maria felt that brightness spilling across the side of her face beneath the brim of her hat, a wistful ache rose in her as if a lifetime had passed.

Just how long... had that previous night been?

How long has it really been since I last saw the sun?

Or rather, have I ever truly... seen the light?

The friction between memory and sensation froze Maria in place the moment she stepped out of the alley.

She lifted her gaze, blank and incredulous, toward the sunlight spearing down through the gaps between Yan’an’s chain-linked Gothic spires.

Then she looked back again into the alley at the Demon Hunter, who seemed so drained he’d fallen unconscious, yet still sat there, head bowed, smiling.

"What did you do?"

Her long legs in knee-high leather boots struck the stone-brick street as she jogged to Lann’s side and dropped to one knee, her voice unwittingly edged with urgency.

Even she herself had no idea what, exactly, she was anxious about at this moment, but that incredulous emotion kept welling up from the depths of her heart.

"What did you do?!"

Without realizing it, Maria had entirely shed that Yan Nan Hunter manner and habit of remaining dead silent even with a blade skimming across one’s throat.

Her voice carried far in the hollow stillness of dawn.

Far enough to draw something near.

The patter of claws on stone—"padak, padak"—finally dragged Maria free from the swell of her turmoil and restored her Hunter’s discipline.

She turned in a smooth, swift motion toward the mouth of the alley, the single-shoulder cape over her left shoulder whipping through the air in a curve both elegant and incisive.

The Cainhurst Fine Worked Firearm in her left hand was already loaded, sighted.

Focused, that peculiar chill killing intent of Yan Nan Hunters locked onto the spot.

But then... "Awoo?"

A dog, a skin-and-bone dog, had just been about to trot past the alley mouth when it suddenly jolted as if jabbed by a needle, leaping three feet high, its scruffy fur standing on end.

Whining, it ran off without looking back.

Maria’s finger was already resting on the trigger, yet she stood there in complete breach of Hunter decorum, staring dumbly after the dog fleeing beneath her barrel.

Because that was... a normal dog!

A dog that, though filthy and emaciated, seeming on the verge of death, was unmistakably a normal creature!

Its ribs were not laid bare outside its flesh; its belly, though sunken, still had a layer of skin sheathing bone and viscera; that tangled fur grew from its skin, not from deeper within—bone, organs, marrow!

To see a normal living thing at first glance felt to Maria like seeing sunlight.

In her subjective memory, she ought to have only just recently seen such things, and yet her present sensations could not align with recollection.

On reflex, the hand holding the gun pressed down on the brim of her tricorn, using the motion to steady her mind against the contradiction and confusion.

"Dream Realm... reality... the past... it’s all too tangled."

The Female Hunter murmured in conflicted low tones.

In the chaotic clash of a cluster of higher-dimensional beings, everything in Yan’an seemed bereft of logic, absurd and deranged.

But fortunately, the Hunters of Yan’an had long since grown used to dealing with such conditions.

Given that the sun had already risen, and even ordinary creatures were beginning to scurry about the city, Maria could at last abandon her earlier plan of finding her own way and searching alone for help.

She hauled the half-conscious Lann upright, slinging his arm over her shoulder as they walked.

If this were one of Yan’an’s perilous nights, Maria would have judged it far safer for them both to conceal the unconscious Lann somehow and then go on alone to seek aid, rather than dragging a dead weight beside her.

Maria supported Lann as they walked through this city washed in the light of dawn.

Even knowing this was the Yan’an of the "future," the sight before her still stunned Maria.

Not because of technological advancement or urban sprawl, but because of... ruin.

This city, several times larger than Old Yan’an, was without doubt a testament to progress and expansion drawn from the flow of time.

Yet in this moment, cold dawn sunlight lay thinly across the ground.

By the roadside stood a female Angel statue, lacking a head yet raising both hands to the sky as if in supplication.

Fine vines had already wound themselves about its body; faintly, one could still discern deep crimson stains—blood long since soaked into the stone.

But it had been too long; even with the heightened senses of a Yan Nan Hunter, who could stand several meters away and smell the blood pulsing in someone’s veins, it was almost impossible now to tell what kind of blood this was.

A few corpses, weathered down until only bare skeletons remained, lay slumped by the fountain at the little plaza.

Logically, once the corpses had been stripped clean down to bone, the clothes on them should have long since rotted into dust.

Yet the clothes of those Yan’an townsfolk still sat neatly upon the skeletons.

Filthy, yellowed white shirts, frayed suspenders, straw work hats or worn, wide-brimmed hats...

And beside them, pitchforks, the crude firearms civilians used, torches.

All of these things were still intact.

Maria followed a road that felt faintly familiar, and after she passed the fountain she spotted, on the ground, a desiccated skeleton that must have belonged to a Hunter.

Once again, the pairing of a long-dried skeleton with unnaturally well-preserved clothing.

Only, this one wore a wool overcoat over a suit, and an impeccably proper tall top hat on his head; in life, this Hunter must have been quite fashionable.

Even from Maria’s perspective, this ensemble would have been stylish in any age; she decided to call him the Fashionable Hunter.

Yet on this Hunter’s corpse, Maria saw no firearm, no weapon; she had no idea what his circumstances had been when he died.

She circled around and saw a large iron gate, shut tight, and only then did Maria realize she must have come round to Gascogne’s home.

A Female Hunter, half-carrying a man far taller and more massive than herself—Maria was no weakling, but the bumps and scrapes they were making were anything but subtle.

Lann’s boots, with Dragon Scale plates biting into one another, knocked and scraped against the stone-brick ground with clattering sounds.

On the buildings flanking the little fountain park, one window was barred by thick iron grilles, chains coiled several times around the bars; the curtain behind them, sensing sunlight, seemed to hesitate—or perhaps cautiously—drawn back just a fraction.

The person inside did not seem to notice Maria standing in the fountain park.

Or rather, his mind was so clouded that he no longer understood what he was doing at all.

Once he was sure that what lay beyond the curtain was true sunlight, he all but tore the drapes off the window in a single yank.

He stared blankly, helplessly, at everything before him.

Under the bandages wrapped around his head, there were traces of black hair from the beast plague, but very faint—faint enough that one might take him for a man with extremely thick eyebrows.

Just like Maria earlier, when she saw the sunlight and that normal dog, he clutched his head in this scene.

As if he had forgotten too many things, as if he simply could not process so much information at once.

But in the end, his nerves were nowhere near as iron-hard and tenacious as a Yan Nan Hunter’s; after he turned back and shrank into his room, he let out a cry of pain and horror.

Too many had died.

This Night of the Hunt had lasted far too long.

Even those lucky beyond all reckoning—who had neither turned into beast-plague victims, nor had frenzied beasts or Hunters break down their doors—could barely survive the hunger and thirst alone.

In Yan’an now, having even one survivor out of several hundred would be considered ideal.

Unbidden, she tilted her head, glancing at the still-dazed Demon Hunter.

If not for him... this city now might not even have the chance to feel sorrow.

"Creak!"

The rusted steel hinges shrieked as the mechanism turned and the gate moved.

On any other night, that sound would have been an unbearable death-knell.

But in this moment, the man operating the mechanism merely stood by the lever, muscles relaxed.

Henrik pressed down the brim of his tricorn and raised his head; his eyes, peering through the thin slit between hat and face-mask, stung in the light, yet still greedily devoured that morning glow.

Only when his eyes watered from the brightness did he sniff, then grunt a muffled greeting with a nod to Maria as she stepped in through the opened iron gate.

"I figured it’d be this road you knew best."

The Old Hunter first lifted Lann’s head with practiced ease, flipped open an eyelid, then checked his mouth.

In the end his tone remained as even as ever.

"Nothing serious. Looks like blood loss? But I don’t see any wound big enough on him."

"I’m no proper doctor, anyway. Come on, let’s get him back to Oton Chapel."

The cold light of dawn slowly gathered warmth as time passed.

But in Yan’an, the sounds only grew more clamorous—voices expressing collapse, and pain.

Yet Maria, bearing Lann’s weight, and Henrik, who had moved to support the Demon Hunter’s other arm, found within that growing tumult a sense of real, lived existence.

Not blood-soaked absurdity like the Dream Realm, but something true, something that belonged to Human life.