Chapter 85 - 6,800 Kilometers

Light streamed backward around him. The world wheeled through flashes of brightness and shadow.

Fragments of a vision flickered before Lin Yan’s eyes—

The land was burning. Trenches scarred the plains. Tank treads ground through towns, and heavy artillery tore mountainsides apart. Countless people slaughtered one another in the mud beneath a sky choked with death.

In a flooded corner of a trench, soldiers in ragged greatcoats crouched over a comrade’s frozen corpse, tearing at it with their teeth. Black patches spread across their skin as they fed. Bones lengthened and pierced through flesh, twisting the men into gaunt, skeletal creatures. Elsewhere, beneath a relentless barrage, terrified soldiers clutched their heads and screamed. Their fingers clawed bloody furrows through the mud until their limbs bent backward and their skin split away, leaving blind beasts of bone...

War consumed the world.

Its people cried out.

Across scorched, broken fields, bodies lay heaped like harvested grain. Thousands upon thousands, left unburied, frozen together into masses of blue-gray flesh. In a ruined village, a dead infant lay in its mother’s arms, its shriveled mouth still pressed to her frozen breast. Deep inside a collapsed air-raid shelter, the old, the women, and the children huddled in corners. Their eyes were hollow as dry wells. They listened numbly to the guns pounding overhead.

Then the shellfire, the screaming, the shriek of buckling metal—all of it receded, as though drawn away by some unnatural tide.

Through the silence of the burned-out ruins came a child’s voice.

Young, but hoarse. So faint that the wind and snow kept breaking the song apart.

"Close your eyes, the cold will go,

In your dreams, Mum’s at the stove.

Don’t be scared and don’t you cry,

Dad’ll be home when you open your eyes.

When the snow melts and the grass grows green,

No more shells will fall from the sky..."

The song drifted with the snow. It passed through broken walls, over fields piled with corpses, across the churned mud of the trenches, and rose toward the leaden sky.

Lin Yan’s view rose with it.

Below, the shellfire, the wailing, the cries and prayers resolved into something he could see. Wisps of gray-black vapor rose from every battlefield, almost too faint to make out. They resembled smoke drawn from the earth, then long, twisting threads. Death, hunger, terror, despair—all flowing in the same direction.

North.

Over cities, mountains, and straits, they streamed toward the frozen wastes at the continent’s end. An immense ice sheet stretched beneath the leaden clouds, swept by ceaseless blizzards. There, everything rising from the suffering world sank beneath the ice.

CRUNCH!

Lin Yan’s boot crushed a steel helmet half-buried in yellow sand. The shell buckled, flipping out a bloodstained scrap of canvas trapped beneath it.

Bombers roared through the clouds overhead. One trailed a thick plume of black smoke. Far away, heavy guns fired in succession, their dull reports rolling across the desert. Fine sand trembled beneath his boots with each concussion.

Trenches cut across the barren landscape. Wrecked trucks, broken gun carriages, and shell craters littered the sand. Bodies lay pinned beneath collapsed earthen walls. Rifles, spent casings, and bloodstained greatcoats stretched as far as he could see.

[Reverse transit complete.]

[Current location: Source World — outskirts of the Southern Front.]

[Distance to target region: approximately 6,800 kilometers.]

[Eldritch Progenitor’s causal coordinates locked.]

Dizziness and nausea rolled through him. Lin Yan stood braced against his scabbard in the blowing sand, swallowed the acid rising in his throat, and finally let out a long breath.

"Fuck... that was one hell of a ride."

Once his stomach settled, he glanced at the distance on the mission panel.

Six thousand eight hundred kilometers...

"Half a fucking continent." His mouth twitched. "What do they think I am, a pack mule?"

A faint scrape of shifting sand reached his ears.

It was almost lost beneath the distant guns, but a breath of foul air brushed him from behind.

His left hand drew the scabbard back as his right pulled the blade free. He turned through the hips and cut across behind him.

Steel flashed through the blowing sand, cleaving into the gray shape’s waist. Flesh and spine parted beneath the edge, and the airborne body fell in two.

The pieces hit the sand with wet thumps, spattering black blood.

A tattered uniform hung from its withered torso. Pale bone blades, each two feet long, protruded from the outside of its forearms. Its fingers curled into claws, and sharp hooks jutted from its backward-bending hind legs. Its face had split into a gaping mouth crowded with broken teeth. The upper half crawled on its claws, dragging a length of intestine from its severed waist. Behind it, the detached legs kept kicking.

Scrape. Scrape.

The same sound came from all around him.

From bends in the trenches, behind overturned wrecks, and inside sand-filled craters, claws scratched against the ground.

Twenty or so gaunt gray shapes crawled into view. They moved on all fours, spines sharply arched, the blades along their forearms trailing through the sand. They spread to either side to surround him.

At Lin Yan’s feet, the severed torso dragged itself another few inches, then sagged into the sand and stopped twitching.

[Trait Plunder triggered.]

[Trait obtained: Agility II — Green.]

Lin Yan unequipped Agility I and replaced it with the new Trait.

[Agility II — Green equipped.]

[Current equipped traits:]

[Trollblood I — Pseudo-Green.]

[Fleshseed — Gold.]

[Blade Arts II — Green.]

[Brawn I — White.]

[Agility II — Green.]

[Battle Instinct I — White.]

The nearest bone beast sprang from its hind legs, crossing both blades as it slashed at his faceplate.

Lin Yan stepped in. His sword moved second and struck first.

The sweeping edge shattered the bone blades and carried through the creature’s waist. Black blood showered over him.

Two more shapes struck from behind, driving their blades into his shoulders and back.

CLANG! CLANG!

Sparks scattered across the scales. The bone tips splintered.

Lin Yan rode the impact forward a step, turned, and swung. His heavy blade cut both creatures through the chest, hurling their remains aside.

Another clamped its jaws around his bracer, broken teeth scraping against dragon scales. He swung his left arm and smashed it into the creatures charging him. His sword came down after it, splitting the tangled bodies and spilling blood and entrails across the sand.

The remaining dozen swarmed him.

Claws hooked over his shoulders. Bone blades hammered his chest and belly, impacts ringing against the black armor. Lin Yan advanced over the bodies, wielding his sword in both hands. A horizontal cut flowed into a diagonal stroke. One creature after another tumbled beneath the blade.

Limbs flew. Everything within reach was cut apart.

The last beast crouched at the lip of a trench and leaped.

Lin Yan stepped forward and brought his sword straight down. The bright edge passed through skull and spine, splitting the creature lengthwise. Its halves fell to either side and rolled into the trench.

A dark sheen lay across the scales. The armor remained intact beneath the foul black blood that trickled between its plates and dripped into the sand.

Severed limbs, shattered bone, and spilled entrails covered the ground around him.

Lin Yan stepped across the trench, sword in hand.

Behind him, the last twitching remnant fell still.

More than a dozen plunder notifications scrolled through his vision. Every one named the same Trait.

[Trait obtained: Agility II — Green.]

[Trait obtained: Agility II — Green.]

[Trait obtained: Agility II — Green.]

...

Lin Yan flicked the black blood from his blade and looked toward a plume of dust rising between the dunes.

A military jeep was racing toward him.