The Hunter and the Hunted (Continued)
This is history. History that the current inhabitants of this land know very little about.
However, the ancient history has transformed into an unparalleled power in the world of consciousness.
—If that harpoon hits my heart, I will die.
—I won't have time to escape my consciousness; I'll die in this trap-filled fishing village.
Skadi breathed softly. She knew she had seventeen wounds from those harpoons. And each wound harbored a curse that weakened and exhausted her—she raised her sword, and the other merman who had thrown the harpoon earlier lunged at her face. Its hideous mouth gaped open, emitting a foul stench. And behind this hateful ambush were more hunters.
Fishman.
The merman whose abdomen she had previously cleaved healed within seconds. And then, a hundred more mermen swarmed in, nearly a hundred in number. They might not be as strong as the most robust four-armed ones, but they were just as ferocious and valiant.
Half an hour ago, Skadi followed the scent of the messenger released by her companion and arrived at this abandoned fishing village.
Half an hour minus five minutes ago, a rain of whale-hunting spears shot from the walls, from the earth, and from the black seawater, trapping her here.
Her gaze shifted slightly, and the wound on her thigh, inflicted by the first, sharpest, and most accurate harpoon, came into view. It was the deepest wound, the one most potently poisoned. She gradually felt her left thigh slowly losing sensation. And it was this very injury that prevented her from escaping.
She knew who she was—among the Abyssal Hunter, she was among the top, if not the strongest. Yet, even so, she knew that her position within the group was not indispensable, and that she was by no means immortal.
She simply couldn't understand why there would be such a trap. Why there would be such an army. Why would her past enemies be willing to expend such a vast force just to deal with a mere deep-sea hunter who had ventured far from the dark ocean and set foot on the land inhabited by terrestrial species?
Is it worth it?
—I don't know. But I won't just sit here and wait to die.
She gritted her teeth and raised her sword forward. The fishmen pounced on her, and she slashed, severing an arm and dodging a javelin. A massive anchor crashed down on her head, but she used her right leg to dodge to the left.
She smashed through the walls of the abandoned fishing village and rushed in, only to find soldiers lying in ambush with fishing nets. She cut the nets, but this time there was no way to avoid the harpoons thrusting out from the side.
A sharp pain shot through her, and blood oozed from her shoulder. A wave of weakness washed over her, but she decided to widen the wound and continue forward, bringing her greatsword down on the attacker's head.
A fishman's head was flattened.
But her body, though its head had been flattened, could still move—the harpoon was twisted violently, sending up a cloud of blood and foam. And then, more fishmen surged towards her like a collapsing tide.
If you kill one, the killed one will not die; it will quickly heal and regenerate.
For every one defeated, three more immediately fill the gap.
They smashed through the wall and rushed into the streets of the abandoned village. They fought and retreated.
Then--
She saw a volley of harpoons coming straight at her.
"There was a massacre here five minutes ago."
The Flame's carriage came to a stop, the driver's form vanishing upon reaching their destination. The moment Miss Surtr stepped into the fishing village surrounded by the black sea, the stench of blood in the air made her frown.
She stepped down from the carriage, which transformed into flames and then converged in her hand—her gaze shifted, revealing a landscape of crimson and dark green, filled with frost and scorching blood and earth.
The dark green blood was unfamiliar, but the red blood was very familiar—she had fought Skadi more than once in the past, and because she did not intend to leave Skadi's blood on the ground, whenever Skadi was defeated—which was inevitable—and unfortunately gained one or more wounds, her flames would strike first, completely erasing Skadi's blood from the surface of the earth.
She is much stronger Skadi, always has been much stronger, so she can do it—in fact, she can't even hurt Skadi, and the few times she was injured were all due to Skadi's own mistakes.
And it was during those rare mistakes that she remembered the fragrance of blood.
"It's Skadi. She's here fighting an unknown enemy." Miss Surtr picked up a drop of blood and lightly rubbed it between her fingertips.
"Her condition seems to be bad."
"But they shouldn't be dead." Persephone had also gotten out of the car, touched the air in this layer of consciousness. "There is no smell of death in the air. In this battle, no one, no living thing, lost its life."
"She ran away?"
"I think so." Persephone nodded, his gaze sweeping over the battle marks on the ground. "She was surrounded. Her opponents were humanoid creatures weighing between 300 and 500 kilograms and no more than three meters tall. These creatures used blunt weapons or javelins, and they were quite strong."
"The footprints are strange; they have traces of fish, but they also look like human footprints." Miss Surtr saw a complete footprint. Then she quickly extended from that one to more.
She saw many footprints converge, then a small portion dispersed while the majority pointed towards the black ocean not far away—an ocean that gave her a familiar feeling, as if she had once stepped into it and fought with some unknown behemoth.
But she didn't remember it—she didn't remember the war, the battle. And this vague sense of familiarity quickly faded from her consciousness, because she felt there were more important things to do now.
"There were about ninety of them. Seventy left, and twenty scattered to some nearby place. There were no corpses. They were the victors, so they left quite calmly. But I'm not sure if Skadi escaped successfully or was captured by them, because I didn't find any trace of Skadi's departure."
She blew on the bloodstains on her fingertips, hoping that the Aegir's blood would become a messenger of her search—but the blood rejected her here. It did not become what she needed.
"Her aura has been cut off," Persephone concluded, assuming the role of a master sorcerer. "Or perhaps Skadi herself cut off her aura. Maybe her aura was blocked by those... seafood-like things. The only certainty is that she is a loser, and it seems inconvenient for her to return directly to the real world."
"It seems we have to part ways here," the Maiden Doctor said. "One of us stays ashore to deal with the weaker ones. The other goes out to sea. Dealing with the stronger ones might even lead us back to their lair... Surtr, are you going to make a choice?"
"I'll go check out the sea," Miss Surtr replied, reaching out to grasp the sword that had appeared around her before turning her head toward the girl beside her. "Persephone, are you alright on the shore?"
"Degradation Synchronization only prevents me from exerting my full power, it doesn't weaken me to the point of being useless. Surtr. I can break free of these constraints and return to my own consciousness at any time," Persephone replied with a smile.
This is an affirmative answer.
This answer eliminated all my worries.
Miss Surtr nodded, took a step forward, sword in hand, and stepped into the sea. The black sea parted beneath her feet, creating a path. And nothing hindered her movements in the water.
She disappeared.
Persephone stood still, quietly waiting for her to disappear from sight.
The Doctor from Rhodes Island then turned his head.
As she surveyed and observed, countless details, large and small, many and few, came into her view—she saw the beginning and the end of the war, saw the battered and bruised Aegir imprisoned and taken into the black sea. The scattered branch followed a faint flame, departing and disappearing into the distance.
It was a very faint flame, but it bore a slight resemblance to Surtr's fire... If that red-haired girl had lingered here for a few more seconds, she would have definitely noticed it.
She recognized the flames because she had sensed them on Ludmila during her consciousness exploration experiment the day before.
"I see. It was just a test, a probe into the nature of the Goddess, to find out if her will had turned to the deep sea because she had placed her kin there... I see."
She flexed her fingers.
Should we try to stop it?
Shouldn't we stop it?
No, there's no need to stop it. Because testing is a two-way street, and now that Skadi has joined Rhodes Island, the struggle between the present gods and the ancient gods is only a matter of time.
She let out a soft breath.