RBCT Chapter 45 Is this all there is to the Divine Nightmare?
Chapter 45 Is this all there is to the Divine Nightmare?
The moment Nan'an passed through the crevice, his vision blurred for a moment, as if he were looking through a rapidly flowing curtain of water.
After a brief moment of disorientation, his brows furrowed.
Contrary to expectations, after crossing the rift, they did not find themselves in a desolate wilderness or a chaotic, twisted ruin.
The sky looked like it was midday.
Beneath their feet was a smooth, mirror-like floor of dark marble with cloud-like patterns.
The air was filled with a fresh and delicate fragrance.
The towering dome is painted with bright and gorgeous murals, and the stained glass windows filter in a hazy and ethereal soft light, making the interior shine.
It was not the small chapel I had seen in my previous life in Nan'an, but a large sanctuary that could accommodate hundreds of people and was decorated with exquisite and sacred furnishings.
They stood on the high platform where they preached and taught.
Behind him was a heavy stone pulpit engraved with religious symbols, and in front of him were rows of dark wooden benches, densely packed together, stretching into the shadows in the distance.
The chair was empty.
The entire hall was eerily silent, with only the faint breathing of the three of them.
Crossing the normal state of black mist and entering the chaotic region, the mist breakers had seen bright daylight before, as if the old days had returned, and the black mist had not yet shrouded the land beneath their feet.
Those who have never entered the Chaos Zone can hardly imagine such counterintuitive scenes—deep in the black fog, there is no fog visible to the naked eye.
Nilar instinctively gripped the hilt of his sword at his waist, his sharp gaze sweeping across his surroundings.
Suiyue also put away her playful expression, and the light of the halo dimmed under her control, leaving only a very faint glow.
They felt a vague unease, but couldn't quite put their finger on why.
Nan'an raised his head.
The face of a sword-wielding hero in the ceiling mural.
The face had become blurred by the fading colors over the years, but a pair of eyes still seemed to silently gaze down upon these uninvited guests through the long passage of time.
Nilar followed Nan'an's gaze and lowered his voice, "Senior, do you recognize this legendary figure?"
"I don't know much about religion. When I died, Nora's religions were flourishing," Nanan glanced at the strange totemic symbols on the church walls. "At that time, beliefs were incredibly diverse. Can you imagine anyone worshipping maggots as gods?"
"Alas!"
Suiyue felt a chill, and Nilar also showed a look of disgust.
Seeing this, Nan'an considerately shut up.
After all, if he were to reveal that these maggot believers had actually voluntarily degraded themselves from intelligent beings to decomposers in order to practice their doctrine, and that he had personally witnessed these people gathering around a corpse in the wild, Suiyue probably wouldn't be able to eat the small nuts she brought.
If bookworms really exist, then in my memory, she was indeed so weak from vomiting that day that she needed someone to take care of her.
Compared to that, the violent methods everyone uses when carrying out missions, such as dismantling people's body parts at the drop of a hat, are nothing.
Having witnessed the unusual behavior of this group of people, Nan'an sincerely felt that there was a spiritual disconnect between people. He longed to shed his identity as an adventurer, move to a city-state closer to the ruling center of a great power, buy land, store grain, and live out his days in peace, leading a normal life.
The lingering memories had not yet faded when the silence in the church was suddenly broken.
Nan'an's gaze shifted from the mural to the chairs in the first row below.
The nearest dark wooden chair emitted a soft sound as its legs touched the ground…
"clatter!"
It sounded like wood being pressed down for a long time, but it was enough to draw the attention of the three people in the quiet church.
As if affected by invisible ripples, the hundreds of neatly arranged pews in the entire church began to tremble slightly at the same time.
The chair legs rubbed against the smooth floor, making a sound similar to scratching a blackboard, which sent chills down one's spine.
The chairs in the first row suddenly slid forward.
It wasn't pushed by anyone; it was as if it suddenly came to life and "decided" to move.
The wooden leg scraped across the ground, leaving a faint white scratch on the smooth, glossy marble tiles.
That crisp "creak" sound was like a meerkats on guard alerting their pack to the approaching danger.
Suddenly, the adjacent chairs collided and jostled each other, like a drunkard being roused, staggering and trembling.
Their legs rose and fell alternately in a stiff and eerie posture.
As if endowed with a material flexibility by a strange force, the chair legs seem to be able to bend slightly, making them like newborn, clumsy arthropods, beginning to "walk" towards the podium.
Nan'an's hands blazed with flames: "Nilar, have you ever seen anything like this before?"
Nilar slowly drew his sword and, without a word, handed Suiyue a short knife for protection.
"The encounters of the Fog Breakers in the black fog are never similar... This is the first time I've seen something like this."
A chair suddenly bounced off the ground, spinning and smashing into Nilar's face.
He swung his sword to the side, the blade cleaving into the wood, but he didn't feel the sensation of hitting solid wood.
As Nan'an sped away, he kept an eye on Nilar's actions out of the corner of his eye.
His sword cut through iron like mud, the power infused into the blade was like tearing paper, easily slicing through wood, and resonating perfectly with magic, sending flying wood chips flying and clearing the way for his next swing.
Nilar lightly touched the ground with his toes, spun around, and used his upper body to generate power, enhancing the force of his sword swing. At the same time, he lightly flung his body to the side and back, the blade drawing a silvery arc that almost covered 180 degrees to his side.
The backhand slash was executed with such fluidity that not a single movement was superfluous.
Where the sword blade struck, three chairs that had come at different angles snapped in two.
His control over magic was equally skillful; he only injected a few sparks into the blade the instant the attack was completed, enough to ignite wood.
A visually pleasing style of play, this is a style of play that never wastes a single bit of magic or energy.
Although Nilar is only Rank 6, his combat skills are definitely top-notch, and he would have been directly recruited during his time in the adventurer's guild.
Realizing that his partner was reliable, Nan'an's operational strategy immediately became clear.
The flames in his hands suddenly surged, transforming into two blazing streams of fire that coiled around his forearms.
As he moved, the flames transformed into a thin, sharp, crimson arc that sliced straight into the surging group of chairs ahead.
Wherever the arc of light passed, the bench burned and carbonized rapidly.
Five or six chairs broke in half during the charge, their upper halves tumbling forward due to inertia, colliding with the chairs that followed and causing a chaotic collision.
But more chairs are still arriving.
They seemed endless, the broken debris writhing and gathering on the ground, combining with other fragments to form even more twisted and deformed chair monsters.
The remains of three or four chairs were pieced together to form a bizarre creature with seven or eight "legs" that crawled and moved with astonishing speed, lunging at Nan'an's lower body from the side.
Without even looking, Nan'an suddenly retracted the flames in his right hand, transforming them into a crimson halo that covered his entire fist, and slammed down with his fist.
"Bang!"
The dull thud was mixed with the crisp sound of wood shattering.
The chair monster was smashed to pieces, and before the fragments could fly far, they were ignited by the residual heat from the fist, turning into several fireballs that fell to the ground.
"Suiyue, take care of yourself. I need to see what the true form of the Nightmare God is!"
She responded obediently, like a child, "Oh."
The pressure on Nilar is increasing.
His swordsmanship was exquisite; each swing precisely severed a chair leg.
The severed chair will temporarily lose its ability to move and collapse to the ground, but it will soon be devoured by its kind that surges in from behind, becoming a new, haphazardly stitched-together chair monster.
His breathing was very steady, and his steps were not disordered at all. However, after smashing more than ten chairs in succession, fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
"There's no way to conserve magic power."
The right hand is commonly seen, while the left hand holds a short dagger.
Nilar lightly touched the surface of the two weapons with his index finger and murmured a chant.
In an instant, the weapon ignited with a near-liquid high-temperature glow, as if it were a blank that had just been forged and was about to be shaped.
He swung his sword.
The sword's arc was dazzlingly bright, like molten iron being splashed into the void.
The three chairs that lunged at the sword light turned into swirling gray-black dust the instant they touched it, without even a chance to ignite.
Taking advantage of a lull in his sword swing, he couldn't help but glance in Suiyue's direction and was secretly astonished.
The number of chairs thrown at her wasn't large, but her response was truly remarkable.
A high-backed chair, nearly as tall as a person, came crashing down from the sky. Without dodging or avoiding it, she raised her leg and delivered a clean and swift side kick.
The crisp cracking sound of the wood breaking under her feet was clearly audible as the entire chair disintegrated in mid-air.
Before the chair could even grab the legs and strike, the strong thigh slammed down, landing heavily on the back of the chair and knocking it over.
Suiyue seized the opportunity to grab the unbalanced bench, swung her arm around it like a giant windmill, and the bench turned into a whistling arc in her hand. The "chair monster" that had just been pieced together along the way shattered again in front of this makeshift weapon with an amazing attack range.
"Uh... this?"
Nilar suppressed his astonishment, swept his longsword horizontally, and the blazing white sword energy plowed a scorched arc in the ground, temporarily forcing back the approaching group of chairs and creating a brief isolation zone.
He looked up, trying to confirm the location of Nan'an.
Nan'an leaped high into the air, holding a giant chair monster nearly two people tall, made up of countless chair fragments.
The hazy light filtering through the stained glass fell precisely on the trajectory of his leap.
Instead, at the very moment he reached the highest point, he suddenly exerted force with both hands, accelerating his descent.
"boom!"
The remains of dozens of chairs and shattered pieces of wood scattered in all directions like exploding fireworks.
Even gods descending to earth couldn't be more impressive than this.
The scattered fragments did not immediately fall silent.
They tried to rejoin and reassemble themselves in mid-air, but this time, the speed was significantly slower.
Some fragments, after landing, merely trembled in vain, unable to find their companions as quickly as before.
Nilar had lost interest in those minor details.
"Wow...that's a really brutal fighting style."
He murmured to himself, his gaze almost unable to leave Nan'an's figure.
After the Black Mist Era, Nora's main threats primarily came from the Nightmare Gods and the Living Eclipse, which were associated with the Black Mist.
Melee skills are often ineffective against these two types of enemies, resulting in a significant gap and degeneration in many exquisite combat techniques inherited from the Gray Star era.
Only a very few mages who have mastered both magic and martial arts have successfully transformed into magic-martial artists capable of adapting to various environments, barely managing to balance both.
Nilar doesn't consider himself a true magic warrior.
He practices physical skills primarily to cope with extreme environments where magic is extremely scarce or unavailable.
He was stunned to see Nan'an rampaging through the dense cluster of chairs like a humanoid chariot, crushing and dismantling all obstacles in his path.
If we disregard the extremely dangerous and difficult-to-approach Nightmare Gods, Nan'an's fighting style, which relies purely on strength, is a model of efficiency and simplicity, worthy of study and emulation by any warrior.
"Are these the veterans from the Gray Star era?"
In that brief moment of distraction, the scene inside the church subtly changed.
The scattered fragments of the chair seemed to have simultaneously received a silent command.
Instead of trying to reassemble into giants, they slid toward the open space in the center of the church, as if drawn by an invisible magnetic force.
Fragments collided and merged with each other.
The speed is getting faster and faster.
At first, it was just a small hill that kept rising, but as more and more fragments were incorporated, its shape began to become more regular at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The chair legs are joined together to form a robust supporting structure resembling a colonnade.
The shattered seat surface and backrest merge and extend to form a flat and wide seat surface and a towering backrest.
Countless carved patterns emerge and connect on the surface of the wood, eventually forming a dazzlingly intricate black relief.
The entire process lasted less than ten seconds.
When the last piece of wood shavings was embedded in the main body, the dust settled.
What appeared before the three of them was a colossal object that almost filled the entire church hall—a sight that defied description as a chair.
It is entirely black, with a cold, hard metallic sheen on its wooden surface.
The four chair legs, like four giant pillars supporting a temple, are deeply embedded in the ground.
It is spacious enough to accommodate dozens of people sitting side by side, and the towering backrests almost touch the dome of the church, completely blocking the light from the stained glass windows behind.
Suiyue subconsciously took a half step back.
Nilar took a deep breath, his longsword and dagger blazing with intense light once more, his muscles tensing as he prepared for a fierce battle.
This is definitely the true form of the Nightmare God.
Defeating it might end this bizarre attack.
Perhaps he should cooperate with Nan'an and help divert attention...
"well?"
Nan'an sped forward, sprinting, transforming into a streak of light, flying away at a speed that was difficult to capture.
"Element-Driven Wind".
When Nilar heard the sound, Nanan's fiery fist slammed into the front of the giant chair, onto the thickest leg.
"Thump!"
The moment they made contact, time seemed to stand still for a second.
The chair didn't move an inch.
But then, a crisp, even somewhat thin, cracking sound rang out.
The sound wasn't loud, but it carried with exceptional clarity throughout the silent church.
Centered on the point of contact between the fist and the chair leg, a dense network of cracks spread like a spider web, instantly covering the entire thick chair leg and rapidly extending upwards along the wood grain.
The scorching white heat from the fist penetrated, and the giant chair instantly disintegrated into a cloud of charred dust.
The giant chair was engulfed in flames.
Nan'an scoffed, "That's it?"
Before Nilar could even marvel at Nan'an's astonishing fighting prowess, he raised his hand in horror and pointed towards the church door.
Behind the passageway that was originally blocked by the giant chair, a rocking chair, moving automatically without wind, blocked the entrance to the church.