Chapter 1128: 115. Goddess of Night

“What’s going on?”

Muen raised an eyebrow in surprise and looked at the empty space in front of him.

A faint breeze blew past, scattering the smell of blood in the air.

Yet in this battlefield where blood had been splashing everywhere and flesh had looked so hideous just moments ago, there was now nothing except the faintly drifting mist.

Muen looked completely baffled. He had already prepared himself for another [N O V E L I G H T] daily desperate bloody battle, but those evil believers had charged halfway over... and suddenly run?

He had the feeling of someone who had been about to swing a fist with all his strength, only to punch cotton instead.

“Is... is it over?”

With no enemies left, Muen naturally set Marcie down as well.

Poor Marcie had been flying through the air for so long that she finally experienced the steadiness and reassurance of the earth again.

She swore that in the future, even if she had to travel continuously for a very long time, even if she walked until the soles of her feet hurt, she would never complain again. Having both feet firmly on the ground was truly the happiest experience in life... at least a thousand... no, ten thousand times better than being swung around by someone like a sword.

“The enemies are all gone?”

Marcie staggered as she looked around, only to discover that not only those evil believers, but even the corpses of the evil believers on the ground had completely vanished.

Although such a scene after a great battle was actually extremely eerie, her dizzy head was already unable to realize that much.

“Great! Those guys must have been scared away by my exquisite hoe technique! Hmph, they finally know the might of the future great Pioneer Marcie—blegh—”

Muen silently moved a little farther away.

This girl... Last night, she had eaten not only black bread, but stuffed all the potatoes she had brought into her stomach too, right?

She really did not bear to waste even a bit.

But it was understandable... Since this was the final great battle, probably anyone would want to eat and use up their last good things.

After all, no one knew whether there would be another chance afterward.

Muen gathered his thoughts and looked into the distance.

After fighting his way forward and constantly advancing to this position, although his vision was still filled with vast mist, Muen could already vaguely sense that something existed ahead.

A very strange aura.

Not human, and not divine either.

High above, yet also revealing a kind of sorrow like one at the end of the road.

It seemed they were about to reach the Goddess of Night.

However...

“They withdrew this directly. There couldn’t be some kind of scheme, could there?” Even at a time like this, Muen still maintained the most basic vigilance.

Annabawei had not had any true powerhouses so far, but who knew whether a few old scheming bastards were still hidden somewhere?

“You’re thinking too much, right?”

Marcie wiped her mouth and got up with a pained expression. “What if the Goddess is just having a fit? Didn’t they say she’d already gone mad?”

“Being mad doesn’t mean having no brain.”

Muen glanced sideways at her. “In fact, for most people, madness can actually make them a lot smarter, because the thoughts of a madman are often different from ordinary people’s.”

“...That makes sense.”

Marcie was still dizzy. “Then what do we do next? Keep going? Or go meet up with the others?”

“Forward.”

Muen also did not want to waste too much time on this matter. Although he was indeed worried that the Goddess of Night might pull something big, now that they had already come this far, he could only deal with soldiers by sending generals and deal with floods by blocking them with earth.

Take it one step at a time.

And if the situation went out of control... did he not still have Miss Dragon?

The moment he thought of Miss Dragon backing him up, Muen’s waist stopped aching, his legs stopped feeling sore, and he had strength for anything.

Day seven without Miss Dragon. He missed her.

And so the two of them continued forward.

The road ahead went unexpectedly smoothly.

After those evil believers withdrew, nothing strange jumped out to stop Muen again along the way.

Aside from some corpses of evil believers and Pioneers, the flat terrain at the bottom of the valley was practically easier to walk than the route they had taken last time when rushing to Rabuya City.

“Titled Saber-toothed Tiger, identity code 03004. A great Pioneer.”

“Titled Iron Fist, identity code 03032. A newly promoted Pioneer from last year. I even went to watch his pioneering ceremony.”

“Titled..., identity code...”

Every time Marcie passed a Pioneer’s corpse, she quickly wrote a few strokes in her record book to express her mourning.

In this vast night, if no one recorded their names, perhaps they would vanish from this world forever without ever being known.

Of course, if they failed, everything these people had done would still be futile.

So they could not fail.

Marcie subconsciously quickened her pace. The appearance of those Pioneer corpses meant that someone had already walked ahead of them.

Since she was determined to become the greatest Pioneer, she naturally did not want to fall behind others at a time like this.

“Careful.”

After walking for a while, Muen suddenly reminded her, “I feel like we’re close.”

“Huh?”

Marcie lowered her head and glanced at the compass in her hand. “But according to the guidance, we still have at least twenty minutes of road left.”

“This evil believer’s corpse. This is the second time we’ve seen it.”

Muen kicked a completely misshapen corpse on the ground. Because this corpse was too bizarre, he had specifically looked at it one more time.

It was precisely that extra glance that allowed him to discover something was wrong.

“We’re circling in place.”

“But... the compass’s guidance, and the coded positions of the other Pioneers...”

“Since the Goddess can use a little trick like secretly draining our stamina, then setting up a few detours isn’t anything strange either.”

Muen paced a few steps beside the corpse, then suddenly reached out and probed into the mist before him.

It had originally looked like nothing more than ordinary mist, but when Muen’s hand reached inside, ripples actually spread across it like water.

“I gathered a little magic in my palm. Can you sense the direction?”

“Over... here.”

The direction Muen had reached toward was one direction, but Marcie pointed in another.

She blinked in confusion and lowered her head to look at the compass... only to find that the compass was also pointing in that direction.

This... what was going on?

Space... was disordered?

“A spatial displacement trap. The direction and location indicated by the compass are both correct, but if we can’t find the true entrance, we’ll only circle around this area forever.”

Muen said,

“It’s a very troublesome thing. I didn’t detect the problem immediately either, but I feel that quite a few people have already passed through. Your experience is still a little lacking.”

“So that’s how it is...”

Marcie scratched her head, somewhat angry... but not too angry, because she truly was not a real Pioneer yet.

She had to keep working hard!

“I’m afraid even the Goddess didn’t expect how difficult those Pioneers, tempered in the boundless mist, could be.”

Feeling the precision of this mist, Muen could not help sighing.

The delaying trap the Goddess had set up this time was still extremely hidden. Even he had only discovered the abnormality here by relying on his sharp senses. But for those Pioneers, what they could rely on really was only the skills and experience they had tempered in the mist.

Yet relying on those things, they had actually gotten ahead of Muen, who had attacked straight from the front...

Ahead?

Muen’s thoughts stirred, and he vaguely understood why those evil believers had retreated earlier.

It seemed the Pioneers’ attack had not only exceeded his expectations, but also exceeded the Goddess’s.

“Let’s go in.”

Thinking of this, Muen dragged his arm horizontally along the outline of the mist, accurately found a certain position, and then shook it with force.

In an instant, that mass of mist actually scattered directly, and a gap resembling a door opened in front of the two of them.

Muen took the lead and walked inside.

“If my guess is right, it should be quite lively inside right now.”

...

...

What rushed toward them was the dense smell of blood.

A nauseating, foul stench of blood.

How dense was that bloody smell?

It was difficult to describe. Just now, Muen had fought fiercely with dozens of evil believers and had cut off the heads of one evil believer after another, yet the scent of blood he had sensed then was somehow not as strong as it was now.

Perhaps it was because he had been advancing at the time and had not temporarily paid attention to those unmentionable smells of blood. But now... an intense battle seemed to have only just stopped, and everything presented an eerie state of stillness. That dense bloody smell was able to spread to the greatest degree.

It was like a slaughterhouse.

Corpses.

Corpses.

Corpses.

One corpse after another lay scattered chaotically across the road ahead. Some belonged to Pioneers, and some belonged to evil believers.

Facing these evil believers with comparatively stubborn vitality, the Pioneers naturally would not show mercy.

And every move from those mad evil believers would send flesh and blood flying.

So the scene was especially tragic.

“Blegh...”

Behind him, Marcie dry-heaved again. She had just experienced those things, but this sight still made her unable to adapt.

Muen’s expression remained as usual.

He had seen scenes far more terrifying than this. Even if the bloodiness here were ten times stronger, it would not shake his heart in the slightest.

And so his gaze followed those mostly maimed and ruined corpses upward, forward, toward the direction they had continuously pioneered, and slowly looked over.

This was a space shrouded in mist, but within the space, there was not a single wisp of mist.

It was like Annabawei wrapped by the Fog Wall.

The sky and earth were clear.

Because of that, Muen’s gaze was able to easily cross a very far distance.

Together with those surrounding lights that seemed to have been lit like a declaration of war, with only a slight lift of his head, he saw the existence located at the very center of this space.

Some existence there had been drawing him in from the moment he entered this place.

First, what entered his eyes was a black stone throne.

A throne... or perhaps it could be called a divine throne. It was majestic and towering, carved with complex patterns that could not be understood. It seemed to have been made from obsidian, but the darkness of that throne was clearly even purer and deeper.

Firelight flickered, yet it did not reflect even the slightest brightness.

And upon that stone seat, a thin female figure reclined askew.

The hazy night enveloped her body, outlining her silhouette... That seemed to be her clothing.

But that silhouette was not beautiful, nor did it stir any imagination at all. It was like a pile of wind-dried bones casually stacked together. Beneath the wrapping of night, the crossing grooves and hollows had no beauty whatsoever, only making one feel an incompatible strangeness.

Farther up was a head full of white strands.

White hair dotted the black night, bleak and silent. It was not the glossy white Muen was used to seeing from a certain old little girl. From that white hair, Muen saw only dead silence and withering.

And through the gaps where those white strands hung down, Muen finally saw that face.

An aged, wrinkled, pale, withered face.

Muen could not outline the specific image of that face in his mind, as if another layer of mist still covered that unbeautiful face. But as those wrinkles shifted and those cheeks writhed, Muen could still clearly sense the other party’s emotions.

Rage. Hatred. Madness!

Like a swaying volcano that had suppressed that terrifying ferocity to its limit... and might erupt at any moment.

A familiar aura of madness rushed toward him. Together with the branch-shaped “sacred artifact” deeply piercing her chest, it had already shown Muen the other party’s identity.

“That is... the Goddess of Night?”