"I Don't Want to Give Up Resisting"

Clang!

The axe struck the neck guard once again, sending up a spray of sparks.

The boundless curtain of rain muffled the dull impact until it was barely audible.

After what might have been dozens of attacks, Zhou Kai finally heard the crisp snap of breaking bone.

He smashed the swordsman's neck clean through. Its helmet, along with the head inside, spun two or three meters through the air before plopping into a puddle.

The swordsman's massive body lurched backward, losing its balance for the first time, and crashed to the ground.

Zhou Kai's vision went black, but he didn't let his guard down.

As soon as he heard the heavy body hit the ground, he pulled back his axe and held it in front of himself, retreating quickly to put some distance between them.

Three seconds later, lightning tore through the clouds, its ghastly white light illuminating the backyard.

Only then did Zhou Kai see the magnificent results of his last blow.

The headless swordsman was still struggling in the mud, trying to get back up.

Losing its head hadn't killed it outright, but it had greatly weakened its ability to fight.

"This ends now!"

The swordsman was utterly helpless. Victory was Zhou Kai's.

He hooked the axe over his lower back and bent down to pick up the two-handed greatsword the swordsman had dropped.

This sword was wider and heavier than the one that had broken in his last fight.

Its weight felt reassuring in his hands. The cold touch of the hilt gave him an inexplicable sense of security.

Zhou Kai gripped the hilt with both hands and raised the greatsword high.

Then...

Shnk!

He plunged it down.

The blade pierced the swordsman's breastplate and sank deep into its already-rotting chest.

A fountain of viscous fluid gushed along the blood groove in the blade, mixing with the rain and giving off an indescribably foul stench.

The swordsman was tougher than he'd expected.

Even so, it was still struggling, even reaching out with both hands to grab the blade embedded in its chest.

"Hmph!"

Zhou Kai snorted, planted a foot on the swordsman's arm, and put all his weight on the greatsword.

With a shrill, grating scrape, the blade sank farther into its chest. Zhou Kai twisted the hilt from side to side, grinding the swordsman's insides into a mass of pulp.

After repeating this for more than a dozen breaths, the swordsman's body finally stopped twitching altogether.

The long-awaited notification finally appeared before Zhou Kai's eyes.

[Defeated "Decaying Swordsman," gained 12 Universal Experience Points]

[Thanks to Occultism Skill Lv. 2, unexpected loot: A Somewhat Valuable Memory Fragment ×1, Strange Skin ×1]

"Occultism leveled up, and the battle rewards really did improve..."

A memory fragment and some skin?

Both sounded interesting.

But now wasn't the time to check his spoils.

Zhou Kai focused and listened carefully to his surroundings. For the moment, there were no signs of other monsters in the rain.

He bent down and hoisted the heavy Decaying Swordsman onto his back. Holding the greatsword in one hand, he also dragged its armored arm along, while his other hand hooked into a gap in the helmet and carried the head.

These were all his spoils.

Whether he wanted to use the fireplace or the Nursery, he had to offer a complete corpse to get anything extra.

The armored arm he'd chopped off earlier had been incomplete, so aside from extending the fireplace's burn time, it had been completely useless.

"Not a single bit... can go to waste."

Zhou Kai took a deep breath and headed for No. 777 Shelter.

The swordsman wore full plate armor and weighed well over a hundred kilograms, but Zhou Kai carried the corpse with steady steps, as if his feet were nailed to the ground. He didn't stagger in the slightest.

His strength was making great strides toward the realm beyond ordinary human limits.

The fire crackled in the fireplace, and the Decaying Swordsman's bones popped in the flames like bamboo.

Zhou Kai had already stripped off its tattered armor. He quietly raised his eyes and glanced at the dialogue box above the fireplace.

[Fuel burn time: 11h]

The complete corpse of a Decaying Swordsman had extended the fuel's burn time to eleven hours.

Zhou Kai felt much safer.

"Eleven hours... Looks like I can just turtle up for the next six days and still make it through the night of the mandatory draft..."

Zhou Kai grinned, then shook his head.

It was only a passing thought. He wasn't the type to run from trouble.

Besides, the fireplace wasn't the only thing keeping him alive.

Finding plants, cultivating the Nursery, hunting monsters, earning experience, leveling up skills, reinforcing the shelter...

There was still plenty to do if he wanted to survive the Nightmare.

With that in mind, Zhou Kai glanced at his status panel.

[Character: Zhou Kai]

[Status: Erosion, Clear-Headed]

[Skills: Comprehensive Combat Lv. 3 (0/50), Light Footwork Lv. 3 (10/50), Soraka Swordsmanship Lv. 2 (6/25), Occultism Lv. 2 (0/25), Falcon Strike Technique Lv. 1 (8/15)]

[Items: Residence Permit, Blood-Stained Axe, Morning Star's Journal (Part Three, Part Two), Moonlight Orchid Seeds (Plump), Exquisite Moonlight Orchid Amulet, A Somewhat Valuable Memory Fragment, Strange Skin]

[Universal Experience Points: 14]

The last two items in his inventory were glowing faintly.

These were the rewards he'd received for leveling up his Occultism skill.

Now that he was back at the shelter, he was completely safe.

It was time to find out what these two things were.

First, the piece of skin.

With a thought, Zhou Kai took it out of his inventory.

"Fucking disgusting."

The first time he saw the skin, Zhou Kai felt a wave of physical revulsion.

Its edges were dry and curled, with yellow fat still clinging to them. Its surface was covered in countless large pores, and it gave off the sour stench of sweat.

If this was human skin... it had probably been torn from the back of someone's neck.

"So... what's this thing for?"

Instinctively, Zhou Kai felt that anything the system classified as an "item" couldn't be completely worthless.

But no matter how he turned it over or examined it, he couldn't figure out what it was for. In the end, he decided to pin his hopes on the memory fragment.

"Since they dropped together, maybe they're connected."

"Use Memory Fragment."

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, several wisps of thick black mist appeared out of nowhere. They seemed alive as they drilled into Zhou Kai's nostrils and exploded deep inside his brain.

"The Nightmare is coming. I have no choice... I don't want to give up resisting."

"As a member of the Soraka Family Guard, you know what you bear responsibility for! The trial is at hand. Prepare to show your loyalty to our great Lord!"

"▒▒You are the Word made flesh, ▒▒You are the holy awakening of Nirvana... ▒▒who takes sin from mortals, please hear..."

Frenzied, jumbled whispers echoed in his mind, and the world spun before Zhou Kai's eyes.

It took a long while for the dizziness to gradually subside.

The owner of the viewpoint raised his head.

Before him stood a dark church that towered into the clouds. Its jagged Gothic spires rose like bones, piercing the lead-gray sky.

"Come, Soraka."

A priest, shrouded from head to toe in black robes, led the owner of the memory and a dozen equally silent men around the church.

They headed for the mausoleum behind it.

Zhou Kai watched it all numbly, like a spectator unable to escape.

Deep in the mausoleum, the black-robed priest blessed the men, then led them one by one toward the tombs that had already been prepared.

From Zhou Kai's perspective, it felt as if he were waiting to be judged, yet also anticipating something. The conflicting emotions washed over Zhou Kai, as if they were his own.

A few minutes later, it was finally Zhou Kai's turn.

"Come on, don't be afraid... Take a big step forward."

"The heroic spirits keep watch before their tombs."

The black-robed man reached out and patted Zhou Kai's head. Only then did Zhou Kai realize that the person whose viewpoint he was seeing from wasn't very tall—probably only about 1.6 meters.

As they followed the black-robed man through the mausoleum, Zhou Kai's gaze swept over the gravestones. But the inscriptions, which should have been easy to read, were impossibly blurry.