Chapter 67 Flame Sword

The adventurers were fast.

Even though most of them had been deeply asleep in rooms still thick with the smell of alcohol, the instant Xia Nan and Alton burst into the corridor, noises erupted from both sides.

Clothes rustled.

Metal clattered.

Beds creaked.

Doors rattled.

The sword hilt in Xia Nan’s hand was growing hotter.

So was the urgency pounding through his chest.

His heartbeat quickened, but his mind became strangely focused.

He swept his gaze along the empty corridor, searching for anything out of place.

At the same time, he gave [Green Pine] a slow swing in front of him, carefully feeling for any change in the heat coming through the hilt.

Then he stopped.

His eyes locked onto a door near the middle of the corridor on the southern side.

Everywhere else, the inn was waking.

That room was completely silent.

[This is… Jeff’s room?]

Xia Nan remembered clearly.

Jeff had barely drunk the night before, just like him. When they parted, there had been no sign of drunkenness on the man’s face.

And after two days on the road together, Xia Nan had seen enough to know Jeff was not careless.

There was no chance a man like that would sleep through a warning like the one Xia Nan had just given.

[Something’s wrong.]

The thought had barely formed before Xia Nan was already moving.

No hesitation.

Bang!

His boot slammed into the door.

Wood exploded inward.

Splinters flew across the room.

The night outside was deep, and the only light came from a weak oil lamp burning beside the bed.

But it was enough.

Enough for Xia Nan to see Jeff.

The caravan leader lay rigid on the bed, his face utterly drained of blood.

His expression was twisted in silent agony, like someone trapped in a nightmare he could not wake from. His pale lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes tightly shut, and sweat had soaked nearly the entire pillow beneath his neck.

Then Xia Nan saw the leg.

Jeff’s left leg had been lifted high by a hand emerging from the darkness beside the bed.

The bones were being stripped out of him.

From the metatarsals upward, through the tibia and fibula, pale bone gleamed with a cold, dead sheen as it silently separated from the surrounding flesh.

The unnatural process was already climbing past the knee and into the thigh.

A thin, ragged-looking man stood beside the bed.

He wore battered scale armor caked with mud and dust. In his left hand, he held Jeff’s exposed leg bones. In his right was a short blade covered in obvious rust.

But the most disturbing thing was his face.

His eyes were a dead gray-white, almost entirely swallowed by the whites.

His skin was pale with a bluish cast, dry and lifeless, more like rotten wood than living flesh.

The sight hit Xia Nan hard enough to instantly dredge up what the adventurers had discussed over dinner.

The recent strange incidents in Kalanfor.

His expression sank.

He lifted [Green Pine].

The hilt burned in his palm.

His thick leather boot struck the wooden floor with force, kicking up a faint puff of dust.

Behind him, a fierce, rising melody suddenly burst from Alton’s lute.

Xia Nan charged.

The attacker had always moved in secret.

Many victims apparently never noticed anything before their skeletons were stripped away and they died in their sleep.

The thin man had clearly believed tonight would be the same.

Heavy rain.

Thick clouds.

An inn full of sleeping travelers.

A perfect night.

He had not expected someone to smash through the door in the middle of his work.

The man reacted fast.

His rust-stained blade flashed downward.

Jeff’s left leg came off cleanly below the knee.

The weapon looked blunt and corroded, yet it passed through flesh and bone with unnatural smoothness.

The cut itself was even stranger.

Perfectly clean.

No ragged flesh.

No shattered bone.

And no blood.

Some invisible force seemed to cling to the wound, sealing even the blood inside.

Jeff did not wake.

Even with his lower leg severed, his face remained locked in the same silent struggle, as if his body no longer belonged to him.

Xia Nan was already within striking range.

Bang!

His right foot stamped down.

The floorboards dented beneath the impact.

Sword up.

Wrist turning.

No testing strike.

No restraint.

He opened with everything he had.

[Spinning Slash]

Whsssh!

The wooden blade tore through the air.

Its whistle was shorter and sharper than steel, but no less deadly.

As the sword closed on its target, the temperature surged again.

Tiny droplets condensed all around the blade, shrouding it in a layer of faint white mist.

For a heartbeat, Xia Nan almost felt as though he were back in the Misty Forest, cutting through fog.

The dark-brown wooden sword became a curved streak of black.

It screamed through the air.

The thin man had only just severed Jeff’s leg and still held the exposed bones in his left hand.

He had no room to dodge.

All he could do was jerk the rusted blade up in front of himself.

Clang!

Sparks burst through the darkness.

Half the rusted blade spun away and buried itself in the ceiling.

[Green Pine] had always seemed rather ordinary.

A Rare (blue) weapon, yes, but under normal circumstances it still behaved like a sturdy common sword.

Not now.

Against the undead power clinging to the creature before him, the sword finally revealed what its quality truly meant.

The scorching blade churned the mist around it.

The instant it struck the rusted metal, a line of fiery red light erupted along its edge.

The broken weapon had no chance.

Neither did the man’s scale armor.

The armor looked ruined on the outside, but metal was still metal.

It simply did not matter.

The dark wooden blade, burning red along its edge, cut straight through the scales as smoothly as a knife through tofu.

Xia Nan felt the impact through the hilt.

A brief catch.

A flicker of resistance.

Then nothing.

The blade sank in.

Sizzle!

“Aaaagh!”

The thin man’s dead face finally changed.

Disbelief twisted across it.

Then white smoke poured from the wound as though his flesh were being roasted from the inside.

He screamed.

Xia Nan felt the sword sink deep into the man’s body.

He did not stubbornly continue the original slash.

Instead, he shifted his stance at once.

His hands twisted around the hilt.

His body turned.

The chopping motion became a thrust almost seamlessly.

He leaned in and drove forward, aiming to punch the blade straight through the man’s chest.

The enemy was in agony.

But not mindless.

His mouth opened.

A dense cloud of gray-white mist poured out.

Something dark and murky seemed buried within it, a faint, oppressive glow that made the already dim room feel even darker.

The fog writhed as it came.

Danger screamed through Xia Nan’s instincts.

The mass of mist shot straight for his face, trailing a long smoky tail behind it.

Xia Nan stopped his thrust instantly.

He yanked [Green Pine] free and swung upward.

Fwoom.

The effect was immediate.

The strange mist met the sword’s fiery glow like prey meeting its natural predator.

It collapsed.

Burned away.

The entire cloud scattered in an instant.

Xia Nan snapped the sword aside, sending the last fine traces of smoke dissolving into the air.

But that brief counterattack had done what the thin man wanted.

It had bought him time.

By the time Xia Nan looked back, the man was already at the window.

Footsteps thundered down the corridor behind them.

The other adventurers were almost there.

The thin man glanced over his shoulder at the growing crowd.

One hand clamped over the smoking wound in his chest.

Then he jumped.

Xia Nan immediately gave chase.

There was no reason to let an enemy like this escape, especially now that the others had arrived.

Several adventurers rushed with him to the window, weapons already drawn.

They looked outside.

And saw nothing.

Only darkness.

Only rain.

A fine drizzle fell through the night, swallowing the streets below.

Far along the horizon, the first hint of dawn had begun to spread, turning the black sky faintly gray.