Echoes of the Past

Chapter 16 Wishes Come True

Without any hesitation, Almahern turned and disappeared into the black mist, her speed catching everyone present off guard.

Having heard the name "E'lu" from her elders, Lia's lips were dry, and she swallowed back all the words that were about to come out.

Several figures sliced ​​through the thick wall of fog and entered the riverbank.

Their movements were swift and quiet, exuding the chilling aura of seasoned veterans.

Standing behind the crow, they formed a silent, undulating mountain range.

"You're not members of the Bamboo Moon Witch's Guild..." The Raven examined Lia's robes, a slight smile playing on its lips as it twirled the hem. "Is it because you yearn for it that you're pretending?"

Leah swallowed hard. Witnessing this living legend, she was speechless for a moment, only able to look up in awe.

"Brave, and responsible." Behind the crow, another slightly hoarse voice rang out, "You could have had better choices. 'Bamboo Moon'... doesn't deserve such qualities."

His tone revealed undisguised contempt for Zhu Yue.

"Everyone has the freedom to choose, let's respect their decision." The Raven didn't intend to continue the topic. "Tell me about what you saw and heard after entering the Black Mist, keep it brief."

Leah described the key points of what she saw after being suddenly swallowed by the black mist.

Upon hearing that a member of the academy had rashly sat down in that chair, all the members of Erlu, their faces hidden under their hoods, couldn't help but show a look of "admiration."

The raven examined the direct victim of the chair, and the coldness on its face melted away.

He straightened up and waved his hand: "Take them out first and handle it according to standard procedures."

Leah quickly spoke up, her voice urgent: "There are still people who have gotten separated from us!"

"Did you get separated?" The crow's tone was flat, its eyes slightly narrowed. "I understand."

He paused, then continued.

"If you're interested in joining Elru, mention it to your headmaster. You'll get credits regardless of whether you pass the audition."

Watching several members of the Elu raise the algae stones that emitted a faint green light, leading Leah and the others along the path of light until they gradually disappeared into the fog, the remaining Elu members silently gathered around the Bewitching Raven.

"Fortunately, the chairs they bumped into were relatively 'gentle'."

"But this level of recklessness... Hmph, what exactly did the academy teach in their Black Mist Common Sense class?"

"The forms of the Nightmare Gods are incredibly diverse, and even the same appearance can produce multiple effects. Relying on either intuition or experience carries risks. Even seasoned Fog Breakers can perish, so let's not be too harsh on the young people. Otherwise, who will join us?"

"Bewildering Raven, are you thinking about that monster that's immune to the Mystic Eye?"

The crow, who had not participated in the discussion, nodded.

"That person has already highly integrated with the fragments of the Divine Nightmare, and the compatibility of the Demon Eye is very high. The downward crushing can take effect instantly, but the opponent can completely nullify her power... There is something extraordinary roaming in this black mist."

……

……

After wandering around in the fog for half a day, having eaten plenty of peanuts but still unable to find a path, Nan'an and Suiyue ended up back in the burning village.

"Huh?" Suiyue stood on tiptoe, shading her eyes with her hand. "Have we come back?"

Nan'an's gaze swept over the still-smoking ruins.

It's too quiet.

Where did those children who decided to stay and bury their parents go?

The cellar was opened, and it was empty.

The bodies scattered throughout the village had vanished completely. At the base of some walls, there were fresh scratch marks, not left by tools, but more like the result of fingernails futilely scratching.

The children seemed to have been snatched away by some entity in the black mist and met with misfortune. The bloodstains, drag marks, and scraps of cloth left on the pile of stones on the ground all formed a logical chain.

"No, that's not right." Nan An took a deep breath. "I feel like something's off."

He couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, but his intuition told him that his surroundings felt "unfamiliar".

Nan'an always trusted his intuition—when he suspected there were cockroaches in the room, he always found them.

"That guy named Alma something is back again?"

Suiyue clearly hadn't understood Nan'an's meaning, nor had she noticed anything unusual at the scene.

As she spoke, she continued to pop peanuts into her mouth: "Nan'an, do you think the black mist can eat things? I mean, digest people and houses bit by bit?"

"You're asking me?" Nan An turned to stare at her. "I've been dead for hundreds of years, my God, what else can you offer me besides magic?"

"Didn't I just lend you my 'body'?" Suiyue protested, her eyes wide as she chewed on peanuts. "Doesn't that count as selling myself?"

"..."

"..."

"Why are you silent? Is my description wrong?" Suiyue pressed, her expression innocent.

Suiyue undoubtedly has a remarkable effect on maintaining adrenaline secretion; chatting with her will inevitably excite you.

"If we have to talk about selling yourself," Nan said, "the only value I can think of is probably making beef balls out of your flesh, which might have a pretty chewy and bouncy texture."

"I'm a deer!" Suiyue immediately corrected excitedly, as if this were the most crucial and fundamental issue at hand. "I'm a deer! If I'm going to make them, they'll be deer meatballs. The flavor and texture are completely different from beef meatballs!"

Does this guy even realize that in this conversation, she's the one who's going to be eaten...?

A strange sound, like a wet, sticky lump of meat being gently squeezed, came from a half-collapsed house not far to their side.

Nan'an and Suiyue turned their heads at the same time, their muscles stiffening uncontrollably.

The incredibly impactful visuals left them speechless, only shocked and... goosebumps.

"Ferocious and terrifying" is the first adjective that comes to mind for Nan'an.

A bizarre silhouette, standing on four hooves atop ruins burned to ashes.

It is both a deer and a cow.

Thick, forked horns and antlers, stained with dark red dirt, pierce haphazardly from the top of the head, growing wildly and haphazardly, like branches crisscrossing, as if crudely inserted by an invisible hand.

Its body was not covered with fur, but with longan-sized, bright red, and juicy-looking meatballs, as if they had just been squeezed and shaped, "growing" on its body, trembling slightly with its stiff, lifeless movements.

Tiny beads of blood slowly seeped out from the fake "fur," emitting a strong, raw meat odor.

Thanks to this deformed and terrifying "beef ball," it is like a parasitized host. With every step it takes, the swirling tumors on its body seem to suggest that something disgusting might burst out of its cocoon at any moment.

"Quiet down!"

Nan'an realized the seriousness of the situation and ordered the chatterbox to shut up.

Upon returning to the village, the strange and unfamiliar feeling he had been searching for all along clearly resurfaced.

Everything in the village, every sign and trace, was just as he had feared when he left.

Nan An swallowed hard. If her worries came true, then...

A name flashed through his mind uncontrollably.

Not far away, shadows wriggled, and something was being "woven" out.

It was very fast; the shadow was like black clay being kneaded by an invisible hand, contracting inward and then suddenly expanding outward to take shape.

The hybrid werewolf, over two meters tall and with an arm circumference larger than Nan'an and Suiyue's heads, completely emerged from the shadows.

It was an exaggerated physique that completely surpassed that of a regular werewolf. Gray-black and silver-white fur covered most of her body, but it could not hide her muscles that contained explosive power.

With a body that is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, forming a perfect inverted triangle, this wild and imposing physique inspires fear even from afar, let alone standing in front of you.

Suiyue couldn't believe that she could connect the lines of a person's shoulders, back, and arms to the crenellations of a city wall.

She had no doubt that her arm circumference could easily fit Nan'an's head inside.

"Don't tell me this is Aslipan."

"It's her." Nan An swallowed.

The wolf, the deer, and the ox moved.

Almost instinctively, Nan'an crossed his arms in front of his chest, executing the most standard blocking motion, while simultaneously absorbing Suiyue's magic power to complete the elemental drive.

He had a premonition...

"Thump!"

"really."

The premonition came true; what came was not a wolf's claw, but a tightly clenched, hair-covered giant fist that struck Nan'an's arms heavily.

The force, enough to shatter boulders, penetrated into flesh and bone.

Those who haven't been tempered are easily crushed by Aslipan with just one blow.

It felt like traveling through time, returning to when I first arrived in Nora.

Aslipan's training is always at maximum intensity.

"It's better to be injured by me than to die some unknown corner out there, little one!"

"Stand up! What's with those trembling legs? Can't you even stand up straight? Don't make a fool of yourself. The battlefield won't give you time to rest. I don't want to have to dig you out of a pile of corpses!"

"Get stronger! Get even stronger!"

"Sooner or later...it will be your turn to save us!"

The light and shadow from bygone days flickered like a slideshow.

However, unlike when she first arrived in Nora, she was weak.

Even without Suiyue's full magical support, Nan'an's legs were still driven into the scorched earth like wedges. Although his body slid back and left two furrows, he was not knocked down by the punch.

only……

"Pfft~~~"

Blood gushed out like a torrent, spraying freely at close range, staining Nan'an's body red.

The majestic and vibrant werewolf head suddenly separated from the body, drooping limply, then rolling around, landing precisely in her hands, which she had naturally retracted after completing her attack and was now holding in a cupped shape in front of her chest.

Suiyue, who was wrestling with the large antlers of the deformed deer-ox, got goosebumps all over her body.

The severed head did not lose its life; it floated up from the giant hands on its own, hovering above the headless corpse, its jaws opening and closing, its sharp teeth grinding together, making a teeth-grinding sound.

"Nan'an, what exactly is going on?!"

"It's imagination!" Nan An gritted his teeth. "Your imagination will add details to 'it'."

In the shared memories with Asripan, there are too many scenes of headhunting together. The memories rise unexpectedly from the depths of her heart, moving without wind, like a rushing and roaring river of imagination!

Suiyue said anxiously, "I don't understand!"

Nan'an elbowed the flying head, and the barbaric Aslipan, taking advantage of the headless body's attack not yet landing, quickly glanced at the silly Niu Niu.

He was facing Aslipan, who had successfully completed her "second job advancement," while Suiyue was facing the same Deer-Bull as before.

Suiyue's voice trembled: "Stop sucking, stop sucking, Nan'an, you're really sucking all my strength out of me!"

Nan'an also wanted to save effort for this "dumb cow", but he was dealing with Aslipan, a werewolf known for his explosive power.

In order to conserve Suiyue's rapidly depleting mana, Nan'an gritted his teeth and reduced the elemental drive output covering his entire body.

Without the added speed of the elemental boost, the effect is immediate.

Nan'an was a beat too slow. Aslipan's head swayed left and right in a strange arc, its sensitivity maxed out, with parameters good enough to dodge bullets.

The headless, majestic wolf body resonated with its head, and just as it swooped down, poised to bite Nan'an's throat, its massive body suddenly shifted to the side. Its right leg, as thick as a stone pillar, drew a semicircle in mid-air, blocking most of Nan'an's escape space.

Caught between two forces, Nan'an felt like he had stepped into a trap.

If he takes a sweeping leg head-on, he'll definitely end up in a folded position.

Retreating would expose one's undefended back to the swooping, sharp teeth of the attacking beast.

In the blink of an eye, Nan'an faced a desperate choice between two options, but before she could finish, it was as if an invisible stone had been thrown into still water.

The fluctuation came without warning; invisible ripples spread across the restless Aslipan, causing a negligible momentary stagnation.

For Nan'an, who had struggled on the brink of life and death countless times and whose fighting instincts had become second nature, this was enough.

Use limited magic to perform the most extreme operations.

With arms outstretched, aiming at the trajectory of the head, he leaps into the air in a classic goalkeeper's save of a one-on-one opportunity.

"Pfft."

Nan'an's body crashed heavily onto the scorched ground, kicking up a cloud of dust. He rolled on the spot, dodging the sweeping legs and stomping of the headless wolf's body.

Invincible rolling frames really exist!

Gripping the head that was still viciously tearing at him tightly in his hand, Nan'an took advantage of the brief stiffness of the headless wolf's body and instead of retreating, he advanced and slammed the clean cut at the neck of the headless torso.

The moment the "connection" was completed, Aslipan froze and crashed.

He immediately turned around and unleashed a simple fireball at close range, striking Lu Niu on the head. Nan An grabbed the exhausted Sui Yue and ran away.

Being able to generate physical entities based on imagination, Nan'an didn't think that this level of attack could destroy its true form.

Moisturizing!

"Nan'an," Suiyue weakly raised her hand, pointing into the distance, "the tower, the tower!"

In the black fog, where people and animals should have been indistinguishable at a distance of 10 meters, a building stood out clearly at the edge of the line of sight, piercing through the mist.

It was vaguely recognizable as a clock tower, extremely tall, its spire seemingly piercing the low-hanging sky constructed of black mist and disappearing into the deeper, unfathomable darkness.

Strange things keep happening one after another!

Nan'an also did not believe that the tower that suddenly appeared in the eerie environment of the black fog would be a safe house.

"Thump!"

While pointing at the tower, Suiyue's legs gave way and she fell straight to the ground.

"What is this?"

She didn't get up, completely ignoring the danger that might follow her, and stared blankly at the ground.

Nan'an turned back anxiously. He wanted to pick up the silly boy and continue running away, but when he followed Suiyue's gaze, he was stunned.