Nightmare’s Call

The clouds in the sky of the fourth cave were red. At times they gathered, and at times, they dispersed. The land was dry and hot, full of cracks. Blood red just like the clouds, the land below was endless with no boundary in sight. This place was like no other.

The land was square, suspended in the middle with thick and dark black fog all around. Now, on a mound somewhere on this land, thousands of millions of bones and skeletons piled up to form a mountain of bone which was several hundred meters in height.

Around the white mountain of bones were what looked like translucent bugs. These bugs had a long tail, with wings of the dragonfly and a white skull on their head. When they flew, they produced a buzz that sounded like the cries of humans.

On the top of the mountain of bones rose a long red-haired man with scars all over his body. He was bare-chested, hair tight into a ponytail behind his head. His body had many scars and bloody wounds. But he couldn’t care less.

“All killed… Sigh…” the man mumbled to himself, glancing into the sky. “I just detected living things appearing around here and hurried over. But they did not last… I’m bored…”

He rested his battered great bone sword on his shoulder, scanning around. “It looks like there is nothing to do now… Should I just sleep, then?”

He had ruled this dark spirit cave for too long. At first, he was a good ruler, leading the dark spirits, making them get stronger. But ruling the place could no longer give him the joy. So he destroyed everything he had created. Pain, horror, and anguish filled the place as he massacred everything in the cave and the nearby caves. He then encountered a powerful resistance.

When he came to massacre the dark spirits in the last cave, the stronger ones teamed up and triggered a taboo spell, confining the man in the cave. This powerful spell prevented the man from opening a passage from the inside and kept him from escaping. Then a long time had passed.

A few days ago, an unknown tunnel appeared, then came an army of dark spirits into the cave. As soon as the dark spirits gathered into formation, the man was champing at the bit and charging at them. What followed was a brutal massacre.

“Boring… This is too boring…”

The man straightened his body and was about to sit down again to play the game of counting the bones under his buttocks. Then a faint cracking sound was heard from several hundred meters away on the flat land below. He got to his feet, looking at the sound source, his eyes lighting up.

“Something is coming again?”

He was filled with anticipation. He nearly went insane from the boredom of doing nothing for a thousand years. The arrival of the dark spirit army earlier had reignited his curiosity and anticipation of this world.

“What is that? I’m thrilled… I’m going to take a dive this time, keeping a few of them alive.”

The man licked his cracked lips with his tongue before lunging up into the air, flying in that direction.

Down on the land, another cracking sound came, followed by a burst of red light and the forming of a disc pattern. A vortex appeared in the red light with dark spirits of various shapes and sizes scrambling to get out. Some looked like wolves and cats. Some lions and tigers. Some did not have defining characteristics but mere random combinations of different living creatures. Some had even ridiculous shapes, like the one with the head of a teapot. One dark spirit had a pair of hands that looked soft, like the trunk of an elephant. Some were just in the shape of a lantern.

The dark spirits rushed out like a stampede, flooding the cave that filled with bones.

“Here they come again! Wahaha!”

The man laughed hysterically, his eyes billowing with black smoke. Carrying his great bone sword, he swooped down from the air into the sea of dark spirits. There was no technique needed, just waving his great bone sword. But every swing of his sword produced a terrifying air pressure around the blade. As if it possessed an unknown power, it slashed every dark spirit that came into contact with it in half.

“Hahahaha!”

The man cut a two-meter dark spirit in half, and then with a reverse motion, he kicked away a few dark spirits that came from behind.

“Useless! This is my power! Slashing anything that comes near in half! Wahaha!”

He laughed in a frenzy, swinging his great bone sword and immersing himself in the joy of killing. Nothing, be it the dark spirit, attacks of the dark spirit, or pure energy assaults, could last one round—in fact, they just lasted half a round.

“That is it!”

Just then, bright green light burst out from the red vortex, hitting the man’s great one sword. Then out came the perfectly pure body of the Fairy Empress. She was draped in a full set of beautiful jade green armor, wearing a crystal green frontlet symbolizing the Fairy Empress over her forehead, and holding a natural wand that twisted like a dead tree.

“With your strength and status, don’t you think you have gone too far by massacring the ordinary dark spirits?” The Fairy Empress sneered.

As the man paused his killing, the dark spirits retreated in fear. No one was attacking or fleeing because if they fled, the king of the dark spirits would come after them. By then, their only fate was death and turning into the dark spirit beads and becoming as one with the king.

“Going too far?” The man grinned. “So long as it is fun. What is going too far? Does it mean anything?”

“By the looks of things, you must be the one who massacred our army earlier. Then, I’d have to say, take this!” The Fairy Empress lifted her wand and pointed into the air. A ring of jade-green halo burst from the tip of the wand and expanded for a thousand meters in all directions in a split second.

“Words of Binding!”

The Fairy Empress started to cast a spell. Dark-green vines grew out from the ground within the thousand meters square of land and bound the man’s legs.

“Fog of Withering!”

A ring of blurry purple light formed into an arrow above the Fairy Empress before it disappeared.

“Spirit Beings!”

This time, it was a faint blue light that appeared and vanished in a flash.

“Bloom of Ruin!”

This last one was a pure black flower still with dew on its petals bloomed before the Fairy Empress.