Chapter 319 – Kazumi-chan
“Hoo!!!”
Her consciousness slowly recovered from the darkness, as if she had just woken from a nightmare. The young girl struggled to open her eyes, trying to see something clearly. However, the greenness that followed and the suffocating feeling made Kazumi sit up instinctively, stirring up a pool of green liquid and the thick layer of dead white worms floating on it.
“What is this?”
Fresh air entered her lungs again, activating the girl’s groggy brain. The memories sealed by the darkness returned to Kazumi’s mind little by little. Looking at her surroundings, the young girl couldn’t help but exclaim.
“Hiss— I remember before…”
Her head ached from the sudden influx of memories, and Kazumi rubbed her head as she opened her eyes to observe her surroundings. Dim light filtered through her blurry vision.
The girl’s last memory was of her gathering the entire territory’s strength to defend against intruders. As for what happened after that, it was like waking up from a severe hangover with a blank memory, making it difficult to recall anything for a moment.
“Then why am I here now? Where are Lei and the others?”
Halting the retrieval of memories in her mind, Kazumi focused on her current situation. She instinctively tried to use her ability to summon her subordinates, but there was no response.
Kazumi recognized that she was in the repair coffin she had meticulously prepared. So, who had put her in here? What was the current state of her territory?
With these questions, the young girl slowly stood up from the repair coffin. Her slender figure and pale skin were completely exposed to the air. As her vision rose, a black shadow squatting outside the ice coffin came into view.
“Little Black??”
The familiar figure made Kazumi call out instinctively. The ghoul, which had been squatting motionlessly, seemed to hear its master’s summons like a puppy. Its slender head lifted directly, and then its entire body quickly lunged towards Kazumi.
“Ah, good boy, Little Black! Don’t lick, don’t lick!”
She pushed back Little Black’s attempt to leap onto her and tucked its slender tongue back in. She was, after all, naked. Although she still liked Little Black, it wasn’t very comfortable to be licked by its sticky tongue.
While stroking Little Black’s smooth head, the young girl shifted her gaze from Little Black to what was behind it. However, the sight that met her eyes completely replaced the calm in her eyes with shock. Her mouth fell open instinctively, completely unable to believe what she was seeing.
This must be the end of the world.
Although her undead territory wasn’t exactly a picture of normalcy, the scene the girl saw now could only be described as doomsday.
The thick black city walls had been crushed into rubble, with only some wall stumps remaining to prove their existence. All the iconic buildings in the city had turned into ruins, and even the giant Great Graveyard had been cut in half. The ruins of the tall tower had smashed a big hole in the ground.
The ground was littered with unclaimed body parts, their smooth, flat surfaces like art pieces rather than scattered remains, as if they had been cut with the most precise cutting tools.
What truly shocked Kazumi were the cracked earth beneath her feet and the dark sky above, covered in spiderweb-like cracks. From these cracks, traces of dangerous void energy protruded, making it seem as though the entire territory could collapse at any moment.
“Am… am I dead?”
This scene finally awakened all of Kazumi’s memories of the final moments. The heart-stopping slash and the scene of everything shattering played out again in front of her as if reliving it.
The last scene she saw was only the blade named destruction.
“So… you saved me?”
The reliving of the death scene stunned Kazumi for a few more seconds. Quickly recovering, she looked at Little Black, who was rubbing against her hand, and asked.
Little Black, having been addressed by its master, quickly raised its head, seemed to consider for a moment, shook its head gently, and then immediately nodded heavily.
“Hm, is that so?”
Little Black hadn’t yet developed the intelligence to communicate with her. However, due to its long parasitic existence within her body, the young girl could sense some of the emotions it was trying to convey.
What it was saying was probably that it had brought her broken body into this repair coffin, but it wasn’t the one who truly protected her.
“Then how did you survive this attack?”
Puzzled, the girl petted Little Black’s head and continued to ask.
Little Black then pointed a finger at the thick layer of body parts on the ground, and then used its ability to burrow into Kazumi’s body again.
“You survived using your parasitic ability?”
Immediately understanding Little Black’s meaning, the girl’s expression became strange. After all, this guy’s behavior of hiding inside her body to avoid danger instead of helping her should be punished.
But from another perspective, if it weren’t for Little Black, her broken body wouldn’t have been able to run over there and heal. So, considering both sides, she decided to let it off the hook for now.
“Are everyone dead? Even Lei?”
Looking at the terrifyingly desolate surroundings and the completely lifeless environment, the girl still couldn’t quite believe it as she asked the only witness within her body.
Little Black responded to the girl’s question with action. Its grayish-white head emerged from the outside of her forearm, and then, opening its large mouth, it spat out a piece of blue skeletal remains.
Looking at the pale blue skull head, which was only half intact, in her hand, Kazumi’s mood became somewhat complex.
This dedicated governor, even when danger struck, his first reaction was to erect thick ice walls to protect her, while he himself was torn to shreds by that terrifying blade storm.
However, the only thing to be thankful for was that his soul fire was likely still preserved in the Great Graveyard. With that trace of soul fire, he could be revived by consuming resources through the municipal buildings.
Well, if the Great Graveyard hadn’t completely collapsed.
With that thought, Kazumi raised her hand and summoned her territory panel. The damaged panel, with countless red “Damaged” words on it, told the girl the extent of the territory’s destruction.
Not only did all the territory buildings have “Damaged” added to them, but even the territory panel had turned a crisis-inducing blood-red, as if reminding her that it could collapse at any moment.
The widespread destruction of buildings made Kazumi unsure of how to proceed. After all, when things were so thoroughly ruined, it would definitely take less time to restart a game than to restore it.
But in reality, there was no chance to restart!
Casually complaining about her unrealistic thought, the girl seemed to remember something and opened the territory’s tech tree, scrolling to the completed technology for the Great Graveyard.
What the girl saw was the “Soul Link” ability, which was already grayed out and loading.
As the girl suspected, if not for “Soul Link” helping her distribute the damage across the entire territory, her physical body probably wouldn’t have even half of it left for Little Black to pick up and put in the repair coffin.
The cracks in the sky and earth, and the void energy leaking in from the surroundings, represented that the territory, or rather the “Black Coffin,” had squarely endured the attack on her behalf.
“Sigh.”
The image of the Lich governor lowering his head and remaining silent when she opposed Lei surfaced in her mind, and Kazumi felt a twinge of sorrow.
She could only say that it was fortunate she had absorbed so much Death Energy on the battlefield, and that Lei had cleverly used the energy to rush this technology. Otherwise, without any backup, she probably would have truly died at the hands of Shun Muto.
“He should have left by now.”
“Let’s see what else is usable.”
Recalling the god-like terrifying power of “Blade Warrior,” the girl could only shake her head helplessly.
Regretting it now was too late. Kazumi could only say that before undertaking this action, she had never imagined that Shun Muto’s blade could be so powerful as to break through space and enter her territory directly.
She could say that after receiving such a lesson, Kazumi vowed never to easily provoke the top-ranked heroes of the association again, even though this time it wasn’t her who initiated the provocation.
She reached out and picked up the human skin cloak by her side, which had reassembled itself through self-repair, covering her exposed pale body. The girl climbed out of the repair coffin and stepped onto the obvious energy-depleted rotten soil.
The most important thing now was to stabilize the situation of her territory. As for the reason for the entire incident, it had all been sorted out through the girl’s memories and analysis.
Failure was not terrifying. As long as one was alive, there was always an opportunity and hope to change everything.
And the ultimate direction of all this could only be one: power!
Stepping heavily onto the rotten soil, Kazumi’s newly restored body eliminated the feeling of congestion and powerlessness she had felt before. Instead of being defeated by such a setback, it only further ignited the girl’s intense craving for power.
However, there was still one unexplainable question lingering firmly in the girl’s mind. She raised her hand and looked at her pale, slender wrist, her brows furrowing even tighter.
“What was that purple energy that came out of my body after the ice wall, blocking some of the fatal attacks?”
