As they drew closer to Cadman City, the two "sentinels" riding on the wagon, A-Cha and Sanwudou, were chatting away when they spotted their NPC hopping over. They immediately got up and hurried over to cozy up to Murphy.
The vampire's eyes shifted. Then, in the tone of an NPC handing out a quest, he said to the two players:
"We'll reach Cadman City in another ten minutes.
"Perhaps I should explain the city's taboos, so you don't encounter any unnecessary risks there. Also, you'll be coming with me to pay your respects to my esteemed elder, Lady Triss.
"She's a rather 'unconventional' vampire. There are a few things I need to make clear in advance."
"Ding!"
The sound of a quest activating—"A Day Trip to Cadman City"—immediately perked up the two players. At once, they followed the instructions and started calling for the others to log in through the game group.
The main quest for the new area had been activated.
Stop slacking and get online! There's a quest!
Their call worked wonders. Within five minutes, the players had dragged themselves up from their prone positions. The eleven players gathered around Murphy, ready to listen to the NPC talk big.
The five guys who'd died in the woodland ambush would be revived tonight. They'd spawn right in Cadman City, saving them the two-day journey. For a moment, everyone felt a little envious.
It was easy to see how interested the players were in the first "main city" to appear in the game.
One by one, they stood on the wagon and pulled out the monocular telescopes they'd looted, gazing toward the city and occasionally sharing their opinions.
Murphy had intended to use the time to tell the players a little about local customs, but before he could speak, the second wagon ahead suddenly shook.
As Murphy watched in surprise, Miss Femis—who should have been sleeping peacefully in her coffin, enjoying her "beauty sleep"—suddenly appeared of her own accord. She even jumped onto the roof of the wagon in a manner unbecoming of her elegant bearing.
"Look! The rich girl's spawned!"
The electronic succubus in the crowd called out, and the players clicked their tongues in amazement.
Over the past two days, they'd figured out the NPCs' spawn patterns. Since Miss Femis was a proper vampire, she only appeared after nightfall.
The NPC had a cold personality.
But if you behaved well and humbly, and knew how to say the right things, she'd occasionally offer the players some pointers on using psionic power. Quite a few of the more convincing players had already learned the basic skill "Psionic Impact" from her.
Though a person's talent for psionic power in this world was set from birth, the players clearly belonged to the category of people who "defied common sense."
Not only could they sense psionic power clearly, they also learned psionic techniques remarkably quickly. Even Miss Femis found that astonishing.
It might not have shown on the surface, but she'd become interested in Murphy's unusual servants, too.
Murphy had said these brave warriors were northern hill folk he'd gathered in Morland Village. Miss Femis didn't believe a word of that, but since Murphy wasn't willing to explain, she wouldn't ask.
In any case, their presence posed no threat to the Blood Eagle Clan.
The moment Murphy saw Miss Femis appear of her own accord, he knew something was wrong. He hurried over and asked:
"What happened?"
"Psionic energy is gathering abnormally! It's happening very quickly. Huge amounts of it have gathered around Cadman City, and have even formed a tide. That may be why my psionic link to the Blood Eagle Corridor has been blocked these past two days.
"Something must have happened in the city!"
Miss Femis looked grim. Feeling a sense of foreboding, she spread her broad blood-red wings beneath the cloudy sky and hovered in place. Then she looked down at Murphy and said:
"I'll go back and take a look first. Hurry up!"
"Understood."
Murphy nodded gravely and watched as Miss Femis folded her wings, leaped into the air, and accelerated into the transonic range. In the blink of an eye, she vanished from sight.
"The rich girl flew away!"
"Whoa, her wings are so cool! The devs really know what they're doing!"
The players erupted into excited chatter.
One of them even tried to record the moment with the built-in function of his game helmet. Meanwhile, Murphy had hurried to the lead wagon and shouted to Maxim:
"Quick! Pick up the pace! Something's happened in the city!"
The loyal servant's expression changed at once. He raised his whip and lashed the draft horses to make them speed up. Yet less than a minute later, Murphy felt for himself what Miss Femis had meant by the disturbance in the psionic energy.
As a Psionic Apprentice, he could clearly sense the free-floating psionic energy in the surrounding environment rapidly converging and growing at a terrifying rate. It was like an invisible storm had reached the point of no return—a monstrous tornado powerful enough to destroy everything and flatten everything in its path!
To anyone capable of sensing psionic energy, the area around Cadman City felt as if a supermassive atmospheric pressure system were spinning overhead.
The pressure of that power made it hard for Murphy to breathe.
"Wh-what is this? What the hell is going on?"
Under the pressure of the wildly surging psionic energy, he gasped for breath as he looked toward the city. The dread in his heart grew more real by the second.
He didn't have any particular attachment to the city.
But Triss was still there, so please, no—
"Holy shit! The sky's torn open!"
Meow Brother's cry shattered Murphy's last hopes.
The vampire and his loyal servant jerked their heads up and saw that the overcast sky seemed to have been ripped apart.
Indescribable black energy poured like wisps of smoke from a rift that had suddenly appeared in the sky. The strange substance took shape in the material world, and faint points of starlight flickered within it.
It looked like a dark nebula had appeared in broad daylight.
Murphy had no idea what it was. But the black substance was already shrouding Cadman City from above, as if the city were a solid object being dragged into a black storm.
The vampire expanded his field of vision as far as it would go.
He could even see the statue of Salokdar atop the city's tallest tower, the Blood Eagle Spire, breaking apart into fragments that floated against gravity through a storm of eerie purple light.
But this was only the beginning.
Barely half a minute after the sky split open, a meteor wrapped in black flames came screaming down from the horizon.
As the players cried out in shock, it slammed into the center of Cadman City. One dimensional meteor after another followed, and towering flames blazed amid the dark nebula pouring from the sky and swallowing the city.
In just a few minutes, a third of the grand medieval city before the players had been wiped from the ground, as if some brat had smeared it away with a hand.
Black fissures opened in the earth as it trembled, slashing straight through the city. Collapsing buildings were swallowed beneath the ground, as if the entire city were being dragged into a hellish apocalypse, its gates flung wide.
The meteor strikes brought terrifying, muffled booms. The collision and annihilation of vast amounts of psionic energy whipped up a howling wind that sent the draft horses into a panic.
Murphy saw countless panicked vampires beat their wings and flee the city, only to be ensnared and wrapped up in the dark, smoky wisps. Like tiny insects flying headfirst into a spider's web, they barely had time to struggle before the power of the astral plane swallowed them whole.
"Triss..."
Murphy whispered her name. Then he clenched his fists and sprang toward the draft horse, only for Maxim to stop him.
The loyal servant couldn't bear to watch Murphy rush toward a calamity no mortal could hope to stop. But the vampire slipped free with a strange, graceful sidestep, jumped behind the horse, and drew his rapier, slicing through the harness.
He reached out and slapped the old horse hard on the neck. It whinnied and charged forward.
Murphy knew he had to get back before things got any worse! He had to reach the city, no matter what the hell was causing this disaster.
Because Triss was still there!
The useless monster girl who had saved him a little over a month ago, and who had stayed by his side for a month when he was all alone and at his weakest in another world, was still in that city.
He could tell himself he'd been the one looking after Triss, but the truth was that she'd protected him through the helpless days after his arrival in another world.
"Don't you dare die!"
Murphy gritted his teeth and roared in his heart:
"I won't let you die! I'm back! I'll be by your side soon! Hold on!"
"The devs are pulling another stunt!"
The players were dumbstruck as they watched the "cutscene." Good Pigeon, among the crowd, squealed with his fingers between his teeth:
"We haven't even made it into the city, and they're already pulling something like this! This is totally giving opening cinematic! An entire city just got wiped out? This is insane."
"The graphics are so ridiculously addictive! This looks like a real-time-rendered cutscene. Every frame costs a fortune!"
"Heh, I recorded it. I'll post it on the forums later and make those five unlucky bastards drool."
"But they promised us a main city, and now it's gone. What are we supposed to do next?"
The players burst into a commotion. Then sharp-eyed Cheche suddenly shouted:
"Look! An NPC! Lord Murphy's riding over there!"
They all turned and saw Murphy galloping toward Cadman City on the old horse as disaster ravaged it. Then he was swallowed by a black gale surging toward him, filled with astral psionic energy, and vanished as if he'd disappeared into a sandstorm sweeping across the sky.
"A quest! It must have triggered a quest! Maybe even the main quest!"
Happy Stick shouted:
"Go! Whoever knows how to drive, get after him! Damn, looks like we'll have to learn to ride horses soon."
In the chaotic, apocalyptic Cadman City, the main house of Triss's dilapidated manor had collapsed as the earth split open.
Wearing a red coat, Triss clutched a blade of concentrated psionic energy, her hair disheveled. She pressed a hand to her abdomen and struggled along the wall toward the exit.
Behind Triss lay two bizarre beasts. Their corpses had barely hit the ground before they began breaking down into ashen-gray astral energy, making the foul atmosphere in the dusty, trembling manor even more oppressive.
These true otherworldly creatures had been hurled into the material world when the astral rift opened. Now, as all of Cadman City was being crushed and dragged toward the astral plane, these vicious creatures were taking advantage of the chaos to feast.
Unfortunately for them, they'd picked the wrong opponent.
Triss might be useless now, but she'd once been an elder. Dealing with two mindless beasts was no trouble. But the runaway psionic energy had made her old injuries flare up.
Her whole body shuddered with every step.
"Thump."
Triss's legs gave way, and she fell in front of the kitchen.
She leaned against the dusty wall and gasped for breath, staring past the collapsed wall of the main house at the city, now completely engulfed in black smoke and flames.
"That little brat said he'd be back in seven days. I've been cracking open a bottle of wine at the same time every day to keep myself happy, and now it's already the eighth day and there's still no sign of him. I'm about to die here!
"And there won't even be anyone to bury me."
The useless monster girl grumbled bitterly.
She dismissed the psionic blade in her hand, reached out to tug open the broken steampunk 800 refrigerator lying on the ground, and struggled to take out the last half-bottle of wine.
She cursed little Murphy for being a good-for-nothing, but in truth, Triss was actually glad things had turned out this way. Given how clever Murphy was, he'd surely taken to heart what she'd told him before he left.
Maybe her little Murphy had already fled north, crossed the northeastern part of Transia, and entered the Kingdom of Nordtov. Living in the miserable climate of those northern barbarians' homeland wouldn't be pleasant, but it was still far better than staying in Transia to die.
"Mm, he must've left, right?"
Triss took a long swig of wine to dull the agony of her wounds.
Then she turned her head and saw the bread Murphy had left her scattered everywhere by the tremors. Another small, hard-to-conceal sadness crept across her pallid face:
"It's good that he left.
"Only by staying away from a useless person like me, who brings nothing but misfortune, can you enjoy the life you fought so hard to reclaim. We'll be far apart from now on. I'd be happy if you could write me a letter once in a while.
"If there's even a postman who can deliver a letter to the astral plane."
She made a little joke, then raised her head amid the manor's crumbling ruins and looked at the sky, now completely covered by black, smoky wisps of astral energy.
Faint points of light like a nebula still flickered overhead. The mysterious, chaotic astral plane had opened a passage into the material world.
Triss could clearly feel the foundations of Cadman City being destroyed.
The city would be dragged into the astral plane—or worse, torn apart in its entirety along the boundary between the material world and the astral plane. But this attack had clearly been planned in advance.
After all, the astral plane had been stable for centuries. A destructive surge like this couldn't have appeared without warning.
The enemy must have expended an unimaginable amount of manpower and resources to make it happen. And the "Nocturne" barrier, which should have protected the city, hadn't activated. Something had definitely gone wrong inside the Blood Eagle Clan, too.
Who could it have been?
Triss's expression shifted from pain to thought, then quickly settled into indifference.
Who cared who'd done it!
Cadman City was doomed!
The Blood Eagle Clan would suffer terrible losses, if not be buried along with it. The scene she'd been waiting for for over a hundred years had come true today, without warning.
"Ha! Which passing astral god did this for me, Triss? Hahahaha!"
The dejected Triss tilted her head back and gulped down a mouthful of wine. Keeping her eyes fixed on the changing sky, she murmured:
"This is divine retribution! Salokdar, can you see? This is what you get, you bastard! Everything you built over the past four hundred years will be destroyed today, in just a few minutes.
"You deserve every bit of it!
"Yes, yes!
"I know I won't escape, either.
"I'll die here too, but who cares? Seeing all this before I die is enough for me. Besides, the only person who's cared about me in over a hundred years—the little Murphy who finally came along—has already left.
"My sweet little Murphy...
"Live well, far away.
"When you hear I'm dead, don't grieve too much. For your poor old elder, this is a relief. A clever, adorable little thing like you will surely find someone else to rely on."
"Boom!"
Another tremendous crash shook the manor as the ground beneath it split wide open.
Amid the heaving black-gray wisps, the whimper of some kind of monster rang out from beneath the fallen ruins. Covered in dust and dirt, Triss struggled to pull her leg free from the bricks. She wanted to leave, but foul psionic energy had sealed off every direction.
There was nowhere left to go.
So Triss finally relaxed.
She raised the last of her wine as if bidding farewell to the entire city.
"Good night, Cadman City. Farewell, Blood Eagle. Little Murphy, if you can hear me, don't come back! This city... it's been beyond saving for a long time."
Before you continue