Doomsday Wonderland

Lin Sanjiu was startled. She put up her [Defense Forcefield] and stepped back as she fired her Higher Consciousness at the oncoming shadow, but the shadow in the dark grinned and effortlessly parried her attack by enacting some sort of barrier around her while scoffing something under her breath. Lin Sanjiu felt a pang of intense pain in her brain as if somebody had plunged her head into a pool of freezing water.

She withdrew her Higher Consciousness, crying out loud as she shouted the name of the shadow, “Bohemia!”

“Yo,” the shadow stopped and kept away her Higher Consciousness. She stepped out from the dark and the dusky moon fell upon her, striking her golden blonde ringlets and turning them into a glowing halo.

With a broad grin on her face, she panted, “Well, I suppose my Potential Growth Value must have made quite an impression.”

“It’s really you,” said Lin Sanjiu. She was relieved to see a face she knew in an unknown world full of dangers, even if she was one of her enemies.

“Why are you here?” Lin Sanjiu asked as she looked around with a mixed expression of alertness and anxiousness, “Why did you stop me from destroying the portraits? Can the god detect it?”

As she spilled her thoughts, she turned around and looked into the distance.

The gigantic god did not make any moves after he had flattened the village. He placed his weight and his center of gravity on his front leg and lifted his other leg.

“What a clever girl,” Bohemia giggled, but the smile did not reach her eyes, “If you destroy even one idol, or portrait, whatever it is, those goddamn things will immediately sense the location of where the idol was destroyed—”

She had barely finished her sentence when Lin Sanjiu raised her hand and sliced through the pile of portraits, splitting them in half.

Bohemia froze in place with her mouth opened wide, disbelief written all over her face, and her eyes bulged in horror as the remnant of the canvases dropped to the ground. She tore her gaze away from Lin Sanjiu and peered into the distance. The second the portrait was destroyed, the gigantic god stopped his leg in midair. Then, with a twist of his body, he began to stride towards them. His actions were slow, but he was fast. In an instant, his five enormous toes appeared at the sky above the forest.

“What are you waiting for? Run!”

Bohemia was snapped out of her trance by the words. She turned her head around, and her face was flushed scarlet with anger by what she saw. While she was staring at the gigantic god, Lin Sanjiu had already run away. She was now standing very far from her, waving her hand as she yelled, “Do you want to get trampled to death?”

Bohemia sprang up and jumped into action, darting with speed no slower than Lin Sanjiu toward her.

“Why the hell are you following me?” Lin Sanjiu shouted over her shoulder, “I cannot return your Potential Growth Value! Just give up!”

“Stop bullshitting!” Bohemia sounded angry. Even in the dark, Lin Sanjiu could still see her face turning as red as a beet, “See what you have done, you idiot? I did warn you to leave those portraits alone, didn’t I?”

“My friend is there! I can’t let him loose like that, or he will kill my friend!” Lin Sanjiu yelled at the top of her lungs, yet her voice was instantly blotted out by the cacophony of rumbling mountains and rustling trees the second it came from her lips.

Nevertheless, Bohemia heard it just fine. A mixed expression dawned on her face as if Lin Sanjiu was talking some foreign language.

“You can go ahead and kill yourself if you’re courting death! Why did you have to drag me along?” Bohemia stopped and concentrated on running after lashing out at Lin Sanjiu. The gigantic god was gaining fast on them. The sky was full of fallen leaves, trees, dirt, and grime, causing both of the escapees to choke on dust whenever they opened their mouth.

They had to focus on their feet to run. However, despite their effort, their speed was still too slow compared to the gigantic god.

They were slaloming around the bushes, making use of the lush green around them to hide their presence from their pursuer. Nevertheless, though their speed had considerably slowed down due to the labyrinthine network of paths in the forest, that wasn’t the case for the gigantic god. He never lost his target. The two people suddenly realized their heads were overcast with a shadow. They lifted their heads, and to their terror, the barefoot as massive as a cruiser appeared above them.

It appeared to them that the gigantic god did not want to turn them into duoluozhongs .

Bohemia let out a shriek, and a beam of light surrounded her in a golden aureole. She had activated some kind of barrier similar to the [Defense Forcefield], but she knew such maneuver was like hitting a stone with an egg. The foot was too large and too heavy to be stopped. As she cursed out loud, the cracking of the tree came with splendid clarity into her ears. She tried to dart to the front, only to be stopped by Lin Sanjiu with a tight grip on her wrist.

“What the hell are you doing? Let go of me!” Bohemia’s eyes turned red. She spun around, and a sphere—a ripple sphere—appeared in her hand. Lin Sanjiu would recognize one anywhere as Rena and Reno used to carry them around. With one, they had been able to destroy the demonic building.

“I have an idea!” Lin Sanjiu looked at the descending foot and said while running at her top speed. If they did not do anything now, they would be dead in another three seconds, “Say I can teleport. Quick!”

Stunned, Bohemia glanced at Lin Sanjiu’s hand and did what she had asked as understanding dawned on her. She returned the grip with an even strong force as she feared Lin Sanjiu would suddenly let go her hand, “The ability to teleport! You have it!”

Though the sequence wasn’t quite right, it was more than enough. Lin Sanjiu felt her choker warming up.

All of a sudden, when the soil on the gigantic god’s foot rained down, the two people who had been running for their lives vanished. As if popping bubbles, both of them disappeared without a trace.

The gigantic god’s foot fell hard on the ground, the ground shook violently, and he stood there for a while without moving. Then, a thunderous rage-filled roar burst forth from him and echoed over the field. He brandished his two long arms wildly in the air, destroying the few mountains that blocked his path.

Though the size of the god couldn’t be compared to Puella, he was still double the size of Deva. His torso below the white fog looked like a colossal pillar that stood in between the ground and the sky. Lin Sanjiu was now very far away from him, so she could easily block his figure from her sight by covering her eyes with her hand.

Panting heavily, Bohemia took extra seconds to scrape the disjointed remains of her mind together again. She looked around, and her heart spurred to a gallop. Staring at Lin Sanjiu, she asked in a husky voice, “… Can’t you pick a nicer place to land? I really do think you have the tendency to kill yourself.”

Lin Sanjiu grasped Bohemia so tight that she could hardly move an inch away from her. She didn’t want to have a physically intimate moment with Bohemia, but the place for them to put their feet on was minimal.

Lin Sanjiu had blinked both of them on to a pillar of rock that was situated right in the center of two cliffs. The surface area of the stone was small, with only an area equivalent to that of a chair. Huddling together, the two adult women did not even dare to move a single strand of hair. They couldn’t see the bottom of the pit. All they could see was the white fog enshrouding the secluded valley and rolling through the dark.

If they fell into it, they wouldn’t be able to survive even if they had ten lives.

“All that was in my mind was to get as far away as I could from the god,” Lin Sanjiu argued, “Then we’re here.”

“Why didn’t you choose that cliff?” Bohemia pointed an accusing finger at the sheer drop next to them, but never once had she thought such simple action would nearly thrust her into the abyss below. Half-falling, her face blanched in terror.

“The distance I can transport directly corresponds to the amount of Potential Growth I have,” Lin Sanjiu explained, “If you had given me a tad more Potential Growth Value, we would be at that cliff now.”

“Bullshit!” Bohemia sounded exasperated. Her face was contorted by her anger, “Blink again!”

“Alright, hang on tight.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me—”

Lin Sanjiu gave Bohemia no chance to finish her words. She blinked, and both of them vanished from the lone rock pillar.

“Let me hold tighter first.” When Bohemia could finally finish her sentence, she realized that she had changed location again. Pushing her anger aside, she quickly looked around.

The place they were now standing was a ruined land. As if it had been crushed by something, Bohemia could still see the tips of the houses buried inside the soil. She raised her head, allowing her gaze to travel. But all she could see was an open field, encircled by a ring of a flattened forest.

In her vision, the gigantic god became huge again, so huge that Bohemia could see with extra clarity the golden curly hairs on his legs. Understanding instantly dawned upon her as she realized that Lin Sanjiu had blinked both of them back to where the gigantic god was.

Just as she was going to call out to Lin Sanjiu, the latter shouted at the top of her lungs, “Ji Shanqing!”

Since she did not want Bohemia to know about the real identity of her grand prize, so she could only call his name, “Ji Shanqing, where are you?”

Bohemia’s expression turned grimmer every time Lin Sanjiu shouted. After Lin Sanjiu had yelled a couple of times, Bohemia couldn’t hold it anymore and pounced on her, pressing her hand to the other woman’s mouth tightly and said, “Shut up! That god might hear you!”

Lying on the ground, Lin Sanjiu had already activated her [Mosaic Censorship] when Bohemia lunged at her. When she heard what Bohemia said, she turned her head to see that the gigantic god had indeed turned his body towards them. She then deactivated her ability.

“I lost my friend here!” She struggled free from Bohemia’s clutches and talked in a low voice. But she couldn’t hide away her anxiousness, “After we have separated, that goddamned god appeared. He stepped on here—”

“If your friend is not a dumb-bell like you,” Bohemia interrupted, “He or she must have escaped already. Right now, what you have to do is save yourself and come back for your friend after we have shrugged that god off.”

Lin Sanjiu did not say anything. She pushed Bohemia away and stood up silently.

She glanced around, and although everything was flattened to the ground, she could hardly register anything that looked like her grand prize. However, she also had no idea what would become of her grand prize after being squashed.

“We have to move now,” Bohemia urged her again, “That god is coming back.”

“What’s he gonna do back here?” Lin Sanjiu raised her head and realized that Bohemia was telling the truth. After he had let off his steam, the gigantic god once again spread his two enormous legs, walking with slow but regular steps and was gradually approaching them amidst the tremor of mountains and rivers.

“He’s gonna lay down and pretends to be a mountain, awaiting his next prey—another god—to walk into his trap,” Bohemia pulled her sleeve, “We really should go now.”

Since the situation did not give any leeway to continue the search for her grand prize, Lin Sanjiu made her last attempt and shouted again. However, her endeavor was fruitless as there was no response from the dark. Once again, she lost her grand prize. When the thought swam into her mind, she sighed. After that, she wrapped her arm around Bohemia’s waist, and both of them blinked again.

Drawing experience from her last teleport, she did not blink far this time. However, the topography of Salvation of God was indeed unruly and strange. One second earlier, they were surrounded by a wild profusion of vegetation, but seconds later, they found themselves inside the heart of a desert. The forest was merely a few hundred miles away from them.

The temperature in the desert after the night had fallen was below freezing, causing the two women to shiver in the cold. After glancing at the rolling white fog overhead, Bohemia snorted, “Well, it’s better than nothing. At the very least, we can see the surrounding clearly and make a decision quickly if something happens.”

After that, the two women fell into an awkward silence. They both eyed each other from head to toe and recoiled two steps back at the same time. Their face was full of wariness.

“There’s no way I’ll give you back your Potential Growth Value,” Lin Sanjiu remonstrated, “… I suggest you give up now. Given our current situation, it won’t do any good to either of us if we fight here. There will be no victor in this struggle for eventually both sides would be ruined.”

Lin Sanjiu had no idea what Bohemia had up her sleeves, but she was fully aware that Bohemia must have far more Higher Consciousness she did.

Scoffing, Bohemia raised her hand and gathered her hair behind her head. Her bohemian blouse slipped back along her arm and exposed a segment of her arctic-white skin.

Lin Sanjiu stealthily opened her [Defense Forcefield]

“It’s not up to you whether or not I want it back. It’s up to me. I have the final say here,” Bohemia hissed through her nose, “Ever since you’ve stolen a quarter of Higher Consciousness from me, I have been preparing for this day… I have sniffed around for your location in the Astral Plane, but who could have known that you would never show up there? Just when I thought all my preparation are in vain, the goddess of fortune smiled upon me and showed me the way. Never once did I ever imagine that I would get the clue for your whereabouts outside the Astral Plane…”

“What do you mean?” Lin Sanjiu’s brows creased in confusion.

In the endless apocalyptic worlds, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll meet your friend ever again once you have split up. However, Bohemia had appeared in Salvation of God at the same time as she was. How likely was the coincidence would be?

“Simple. Somebody told me you’re here, so I came,” When she reached here, Bohemia sounded a little bit regret, “… If I knew this world is such an infliction, I would not come for you.”

“Somebody told you? Who is that somebody that told you I’m in Salvation of God?”

Bohemia did not respond at once to her question. She suddenly sighed, gathering a lock of hair that fell off from her side bun and looked at Lin Sanjiu with her charming eyes. Then, she dropped down and sat with her leg crossed on the sand.

“I’m just returning you a favor, for saving my life. After that, let’s fight,” It seemed that Bohemia was a person with dignity. She had a distinct demarcation line between her grudge and her gratitude. She raised her head to see Lin Sanjiu, and the moonlight cast an intermittent light and dark on her delicate face, “… Do you know Peppy Lil’ Sesame?”