Cling! Clang! Cling! Clang!

  Gold after silver, silver after bronze…

  Shiny coins rolled down from the purse, hit the hard earth and bounced back up. The round metals spun at Eithne’s feet, they were clearly not what she expected from Raphael.

  Eithne: “?”

  What did nine coins have to do with the secret meeting’s location? What was that guy’s intention?

  “Keek…”

  Barty the Fox exclaimed. It was hard to believe that a fox sound could carry that much emotion in its tone, but “keek” wasn’t really helpful in this situation. Eithne slightly furrowed her eyebrows.

  “Keek-…”

  “Are you saying I’m stupid?”

  “Keek!”

  “Keek isn’t the proper answer.”

  “Ke keek…”

  “…”

  Eithne rolled her eyes. Her head was occupying Barty’s neck, so Barty’s head was floating midair around her. The Fox made a sheepish expression, clearly expressing its inability to solve this coin riddle. Eithne frowned. Her pride was stopping her from going back to Raphael to ask what he meant by giving her a purse with nine coins, but her brain wasn’t smart enough to sustain her pitiful pride.

  Eithne and Barty the Fox racked their brains to think. They made several theories, but in the end, nothing made sense.

  “… Forget it… I will come back to ask him tomorrow.”

  Eithne’s current situation didn’t give her a lot of energy to try to act smart. She just wanted a direct and quick solution right now. Being homeless was already bad enough, who would give a shit about how people think?

  A midnight wind blew some dried leaves on their heads. Both Eithne and Barty suddenly shivered. They looked around and realized how cold they were in a pine forest with no roof above their heads.

  “I thought that your body couldn’t feel cold! Why is it so sensitive now?”

  Eithne hugged Barty’s head to keep warm. The nine fox tails appeared behind her back to wrap both of them into a big fur ball, generating some heat inside.

  “Keek… Holy Order…” - The Fox’s weakly yelped while shivering. “Because I’m getting more involved in this world… This world’s fate is accepting me as one part of its massive body… I’m becoming a creature of this world, so I’m experiencing the same feelings from what other creatures experiencing…”

  “Shhh!”

  Another icy wind blew past them. Such terrible weather had worn down both the human and the fox. Despite Barty’s thick fur, the cold clung to its body, or Eithne’s head’s current abode, like a second skin. Every strand of fur stood on end from Barty’s tails to its detached head, all bristling against the chill. Eithne shivered violently, goosebumps rippling across her cheeks as if waves crashing on frozen shores. Her teeth chattered faster than her eyes could blink, as each gust was tightening winter’s cruel grip around them.

  “If you are becoming a real living creature, why isn’t your body generating heat?”

  “I don’t have a heart or blood… I don’t generate body heat from food like normal living creatures…” - Barty said weakly.

  Barty didn’t have any body heat, so both of them relied on the little heat from Eithne’s half-dead head.

  “This wouldn’t do.”

  Eithne picked up Raphael’s coins and decided to run back to Stero town.

  ‘Staying closer to humans should be warmer than the forest.’ – She thought.

  When she took a few steps, another cold wind attacked them. The icy air bit her nose and dried out her nostrils. Eithne sniffed as her nose became runny.

  ‘Shit, it’s getting colder! My nostrils feel sore.’

  Clutching Barty’s head, she hurried in the direction of Stero Town. Suddenly, her foot struck something really hard, sending her falling to the front.

  Thug!

  “!?!”

  Eithne and Barty slammed their whole body against an invisible wall.

  Eithne rubbed her sore forehead. She used all her strength to launch forward so the impact force that she brought between the invisible wall and her head was large. While Barty was seeing stars after the collision, Eithne touched the invisible wall that appeared out of nowhere.

  “What the heck?” – She frowned.

  Did a mage trap them? If this wall was made out of magic, why didn’t she detect any mana movement?

  Eithne studied the wall with her hands touching around, until a white mist descended in her vision.

  “?”

  Eithne looked up and saw three mouths hovering in the air, exhaling the frigid mist that settled over them.

  “What is this? Nature’s fridge?” – She grumbled in annoyance. “An ice monster is targeting us. No wonder why it is so cold here!”

  As the temperature dropped further, a thin layer of ice started to form on the ground around them.

  An ice monster had secretly caught them in its cold trap! The monster’s real appearance looks like an upside-down tall glass that trapped the prey inside and froze them until death. They were extremely sneaky that even people with sharp senses couldn’t detect easily. These masters of camouflage had transparent and exceptionally sturdy bodies, so most of their victims had died because they couldn’t break through the invisible walls.

  “Wow… it’s been a few years since I last saw a monster.”

  Eithne watched three mouths blowing frosty mist above her head in amazement.

  ‘Eithne Noceur’ the War priestess had only been to the North once during her training with the War temple when she was thirteen. After that trip, she had always stayed in the South. For unknown reason, monsters could not survive the Southern air, so Eithne rarely saw any monster.

  “Excuse me, but I’m cold.” - Barty complained.

  “Ah, sorry.”

  Eithne had spent too much time watching the monster without realizing that ice had already formed on her shoulder. Darkness gathered at her hand, she flicked her fingers to shoot a dark blade toward the ice monster’s mouth above. She had invented a trick with the dark domain after Barty transferred its knowledge to her. Now, less time was spent in summoning the dark domain, and damage range of the blades was enhanced!

  Just before the impact of the dark blades, the monster’s mouths quickly vanished. Her blade clashed fiercely against the invisible barrier then exploded.

  Bam!

  The highly defensive monster was unscathed. It shivered and hummed, then began to lower itself to the ground. Its wall-like body dug into the earth, planning to crush the stubborn prey between its sturdy ceiling and the ground.

  Eithne quickly gathered dark power. She unleased it at the wall’s foot to create a series of small explosions that blow up some dirt beneath one side of the monster. She wanted to destabilize the stiff monster’s footing by forcing it to tilt to the blown side.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  ‘This type of monster is tough, but also clumsy because of its toughness.’

  Eithne continued to detonate the ground under the monster until it tipped over enough to create an opening between its body and the ground. Without hesitation, she rolled out of the monster’s trap with Barty’s head following.

  Barty’s head flew into the pocket subspace to hide. Eithne shot more dark blades toward the head of the monster to push it further to the tilted side. The ice monster hummed in anger when it almost fell over. Three mouths reappeared and let out long blue tongues to lash at Eithne, however, the tongues quickly met with her flying blades.

  Slash! Eithne’s blade sliced across the long tongues, causing blue blood to smear on the ground.

  “Heeeeeeek!!!”

  The monster screamed like an animal with a sore throat. Three sliced tongues hurriedly withdrew back into its mouths. The monster fell into the hole that Eithne had detonated before, lying motionless.

  “Easy peasy…”

  Eithne wiped her cold nose with her arm. Barely had she felt smug, Barty’s stern voice transferred to her mind.

  “Look up.”

  Eithne gazed up.

  With just one glance, her irises shrank. She held down Barty’s coat and ran with all her might. The dark domain circled her like a shroud, turning Eithne into a soundless arrow cutting through the forest.

  Swush!

  The pines rustled and brought down their branches as if to stop the hasty traveler from leaving too soon.

  Rustle…

  Rustle…

  Everything seemed so normal, Eithne wouldn’t run away if Barty didn’t warn her. Howling winds lifted some debris up in the air and scattered it on the head of the fleeing one. The cold air was heavy with the scent of damp and decay from the earth, a common thing in the old forest that housed countless beings.

  Well, not all beings were known in front of the naked eyes. In the vast area with nowhere to hide, her attempt to escape seemed forlorn. Her instinct to run somehow had outpaced the fear to form in her mind. Eithne didn’t have time to feel scared, all she knew was that she must run, as fast as she could.

  “Fuck!”

  She cursed, while Barty’s noisy grumbles echoed in her ears. The view in front of her distorted, as the flows of mana crashed each other like the water suddenly trapped in a basin, Eithne knew that a hallucination magic had been applied on her. However, she could not get rid of it.

  “Keek keek keek keek….

  …

  Keeeek keek keek…

  …

  Keek keek…

  …

  Keek keek…

  Keek…”

  Whenever the road twisted before her eyes, Barty would make a sound to temporarily break the illusion. But gradually, the fox’s calling faded, so did Eithne’s consciousness, both were lost in the unknown illusory space slowly suffocating them.

  “Help…”

  Eithne called for help, though not knowing who she was supposed to call for. Her vision became blurry as her knees dropped to the ground…

  …

  Above her, a colossal skeleton slowly moved its ghostly glowing gaze down to the little prey that it had caught. Its jaw moved heavily, as if mumbling something incoherent. Soundwaves rippled from the skeleton’s mouth, twisting and bending reality with every passing second. The colossal skeleton had always been there, teetering between the realms of spirit and reality, roaming in its own unstable timeline that no mortal could keep up with. Two giant bony hands reached toward the motionless preys below—a fragile human and a little monster—before tossing them into its shriveled throat, a maw wide enough to swallow a whale whole…

  “Crunch…”

  “Crunch…”

  “Crunch…”

  -

  -

  -

  As the moonlight dimmed across the marble floor of the War Temple, the High Priest’s gaze drifted upward, watching turbulent clouds swallow the helpless moon. His calloused hand held the shattered remnants of a magic stone seal- once tied to the soul of Eithne Noceur and had crumbled itself into pieces after her death. The stone was supposed to lose its light after the marked soul died, yet the broken fragments were still glowing faintly. It was a pitiful light, fragile and barely visible even in the softest daylight, even losing to the brightness of the temple's marble floor.

  The stern old man kept his expression unreadable as a lifelong habit. Demir Noceur’s gaze fixed straight ahead. With a mere glance, the maelstrom of purple chaos power in his irises had torn the reality, creating a space rift at his height. Storing Eithne Noceur’s broken soul stone in his coat’s pocket, he stepped in the space rift and disappeared.

  The War temple returned to its silence after Demir left.

  Last year, the nights weren't so peaceful in the temple when the two young priests Noceur and Ragnar were still here, squabbling and fighting behind the High Priest's back...

  __

  At the fallen Kole fortress.

  Hesata Ragnar had been commanded by the High Priest to remain at the fortress, protecting the injured from monster attacks until reinforcements from the Royal Palace arrived. However, five days had already passed since Hasata received the message about the coming force. The royal mages were plodding on their journey, delayed without any explanation.

  Northern Lumovas hadn’t built any public teleportation portal yet because of how often the monsters attacked and almost destroyed Kole fortress recently - it would take some time for the mages to teleport themselves using magic.

  Even so, the mages could have traveled by boat and arrived in three days. So what in the world had they been doing?

  Hesata rubbed his hair in annoyance. The dried blood on his head had merged in the crimson shade of his hair, his red eyes were still fuming with fire power from relentless fighting against the monsters. He had run out of his personal healing potions, but he could not take more from Kole fortress. So many injured soldiers and commoners needed them more than him.

  “Hiss…”

  Hesata used a tiny fire on fingertip to burn the open wound on his calf. Neither the smoke coming from his own burnt meat nor the pain could change his dead tired expression.

  After the gruesome betrayal, Alos Solinue decided to silence all witnesses by killing them and locking other people in the Kole fortress until the monsters destroyed everything. The surviving soldiers required a large amount of healing potions to be able to stand up and defend Kole again. On top of that, there were tourists who had sought refuge from the onslaught, many of them grievously wounded on their journey to the fortress, equally desperate for the healing supplies now in such short supply.

  Hesata could have broken through the waves of monsters alone, but he had stayed to protect the people. The sheer strength and overwhelming numbers of the beasts made it impossible to safely escort everyone out. Despite Hesata’s effort, the red-haired priest was reaching his limit after many days of excessively using holy power. Worse still, stronger monsters kept rushing over the Kole fortress as if they were running toward the place of salvation for their damned existence!

  Kole’s gunpower was exhausted yesterday. Hesata silently calculated - he could go on fighting monsters for two more days, after two days, he would collapse and the fortress would be annihilated if no support arrived.

  Astraea Solinue was trying to contact the aids on her side, but unpredictable monster occurrences were stopping the outer assistance from reaching Kole fortress. She and several scholars who were trapped in the fortress were trying to investigate the reason behind the monster’s obsession over this place. The betrayer Alos Solinue was highly likely the culprit behind this. Time was running out, and they needed answers before the fortress fell.

  “God of War… please send the rescuers to this hell…”

  Hesata, as a priest, prayed every day. The situation was stressful for a young man to handle everything, but he wasn’t depressed. He fully trusted in the War God, and in the War temple that would not leave him behind.

  His trust was placed in the right place.

  The afternoon of the last day before Hesata’s complete exhaustion, he saw familiar faces of fellow War priests appeared behind the fire wall that he set up around the Kole fortress to wage off the monsters. Marching through the rain of flying ashes, the brave War priests in their sturdy armors quickly subjugated the coming monster waves, bringing in medicines and food supply. The mage-priests swiftly transported people out of the fortress with their teleportation magic, while others fought against more coming monsters. The seamless teamwork gave Hesata a chance to catch his breath.

  He stood on the high fortress’s wall, observing the positive situation below.

  “Hesata.”

  An old voice called out to him. Hesata’s expression brightened up once he saw the man coming toward him.

  “Master!”

  The chief of the War Temple’s Warrior faction, Ignatious Ragnar, was a tall, gaunt figure. The large robe behind him fluttered silently as he approached Hesata, nobody knew since when he had climbed the high fortress’s wall. Ignatious’s age was apparent in every line etched into his weathered face. He was even older than the High Priest and used to be the High Priest’s squad leader when they were much younger. Even though his back was already bent before time, his eyes remained sharp and clear. As the old priest’s gaze covered the chaotic Kole fortress, his immense wisdom had discerned the core of evils – lurking deep beneath the central hall.

  “You have done a good job. Now rest.”

  Placing one of his wrinkled hands on Hesata’s shoulder, Ignatious sent a calming flow of holy power to his tired student’s body. Hesata meekly smiled. He directly sat down on the ground, drinking the new healing potion as water.

  After that, the young priest closed his eyes. His head leaned over as he submitted to exhaustion, leaving everything in the care of his teacher and fellow priests. Every part of his body was strained and pained, now finally relaxed in the knowledge that he himself was safe. The dirt and unpleasant bloody smell couldn’t bother him at all. Ignatious told the other priests to bring Hesata to a room, while the old man calmly strolled toward an underground basement where Astraea had just discovered at midnight.

  At the very end of the basement, there lay an unholy bloody sigil…

  Even so, Hesata no longer cared about the fate of Kole fortress.

  In his long slumber, he dreamt about a close friend from childhood and her bloody death that he couldn’t stop in time. Remorse built up inside him like a growing snowball, heavy and inevitable, slowly pressing down on his heart.

  The priest in the dream mourned for the past, and the loss of all future laughter and bickering together.

  ‘Goodbye forever, Eithne…’

  He whispered the final farewell. The dream slowly dissolved, leaving him in a quiet void of rest.

  ‘Goodbye forever, Eithne Noceur.’

  ‘Goodbye…’