Chapter 1083: A Black Apparition
The first blast got Danny out of bed before he was fully awake.
Something hit the ceiling. Then chipped stone came raining — a dry, pattering sound, wrong register for weather, wrong register for anything good. The house shuddered. The room went from dark to chaotic before anyone struck a light, voices overlapping in the black.
“What happened—”
“Earthquake?”
Danny had already identified the problem. He grabbed the soldier nearest the door, the one reaching for his rifle and about to go through it, and dragged him flat.
“Don’t move.” He held the man down. “They’re still coming.”
Two more blasts. Something hailed across the roof again.
Someone finally lit a candle.
The needles had pierced through the ceiling in their dozens — black, lusterless, angled down like hair hanging from a scalp. In the candle’s trembling light they looked wrong in the specific way that all demon-made things looked wrong: organic where they should have been mineral, too uniform, too intent. The man on the floor stared up at them and swallowed.
“Spider Demons.”
He didn’t need to say anything else. Most of the sniper unit had been on the first expedition. They all understood what the road outside looked like right now, and they were all lying on the floor rather than standing in it.
“If I survive this one,” someone said quietly, “I’m buying two lamb legs and thanking Miss Lotus in person.”
“You just want an excuse to see her.”
“You want to see Miss Angel Nana.”
“That’s completely different.”
They were arming themselves as they talked, moving through the familiar sequence — weapon, ammunition, check — with the offhand ease of people who had decided, at some point before this moment, that worrying was a less efficient use of energy than killing. Danny admired that about the First Army’s veterans. Death was real. Death was certain. The only productive question was how many of the enemy you could take with you.
He pushed the door open and went through low.
The sentinels were dead. The camp was noise and dark and motion — yelling from the soldiers, howling from something that had no good reason to be inside the perimeter, gunshots sparking at no visible targets. The watchtower that should have been showing a light was showing nothing. As if the demons had not come from anywhere specific but had simply appeared — coalesced from the dark, occupied the camp’s interior through some process that bypassed all the checkpoints.
Danny ran toward the quietest sector.
“I thought you’d go toward the most people,” Malt said.
Danny heard it in his chest first, that warm familiar cadence — and there was Malt, stepping out of the dark at his left elbow, floating just slightly above the ground the way he always did, close enough to touch if Danny tried, which he didn’t.
He liked that Malt only came when he was fighting. It was a clean arrangement.
“Most people means we’re winning,” Danny said, watching the rooflines. “Scattered shots means someone needs a bullet.” He moved between two buildings, running light, picking his route. “I’m fine, Malt. I can see you well tonight.”
“That’s not necessarily reassuring.”
“It never is.” He smiled and kept running.
He found his high ground two minutes later — a tottering stack of iron cases that wobbled under his weight but held. From the top of it, he could see the Longsong Cannon emplacements in a broken open field to his left: three artillery crews under pressure, working with sidearms against demons who fought from cover and speared in short bursts, keeping the artillerymen from reaching the guns. The road from here to the artillery field was scattered with bodies — each one pinned to the earth through the torso or the neck by bone spears, arms spread, already cooling.
“How did they get inside?”
“I have no idea,” Danny said. He raised his rifle.
A demon had worked its way behind a barrack, angling for a position from which it could attack the nearest gun crew from behind. It was focused on the crew. It had not looked back.
Danny pulled the trigger.
Black blood erupted from the back of the demon’s skull. It fell off the roof edge and hit the ground flat.
One hundred meters of clear moonlight. He could work with this all night.
“Good shot. Left side — someone’s coming.”
Five soldiers crouching at a corner, trying to build courage for a sprint across open ground. No shields, no cover. If they broke, the bone spears would take them before they’d gone six meters. Danny watched them bunch for the move and fired three rounds into the dirt at their feet.
They shrank back.
“They’ll want to kill you when they find out,” Malt said.
“Let them.” Danny was already swinging back to the Mad Demons, firing controlled bursts, driving them off the barrack wall and into cover. The soldiers at the corner were alive. They could kill him later. “You worry too much.”
“One of us has to.”
A sound above — not a whistle, not the pitch of a bone-spear volley. Something heavier. Wrong.
“Watch out—” Malt said, urgent. “There — look—”
Three shadows dropped from the sky.
They hit the ground and the impact ran through Danny’s legs even from this distance. The earth didn’t just shake — it rang, like a struck bell. Three black stone pillars, each the height of a building. They stood in the open field beside the cannon emplacements and hissed — releasing something that looked like steam but smelled of blood, thick red vapor drifting from their cracked surfaces.
For one moment Danny thought: machines. Some new demon weapon.
Then the stone split.
Thick slabs sheared off each pillar, and what ran out with them was not steam but fluid — dark, viscous, the color of old blood. Each pillar divided into three sections, and in each section, encased in a translucent sac still filling with that fluid, was a demon.
They floated inside like infants.
Then the sacs drained. The fluid pulled away. And the demons woke up, blinking into the moonlight, tusks catching the light as their mouths opened.
Danny put a bullet through the nearest Mad Demon’s forehead as it stepped clear of the pillar. The demon staggered. Its legs buckled and it pitched against the black stone, catching itself with one arm, and slid down.
He was reloading before the sound arrived.
“So that’s how they deliver them,” he said. He worked the bolt, seated a fresh round, found the next target. “I’ll tell you this, Malt — if you’re going to be delivered in a blood-filled pod and dropped from altitude, you should at least be awake when you land.” He brought the muzzle up. “Come ahead. I’ll put every one of you in the ground. Watch me.”
Chapter 1083 - A Black Apparition
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Danny leaped out of the bed when he heard the first blast.
In the next moment, something splattered against the roof before crumbs and chipped stones started to rain down from the ceiling. The whole house began to wobble violently.
“W-what happened?”
“Is it an earthquake?”
His companions were all startled. The pitch-black room soon sank into chaos.
“No, it’s a raid!” The soldier closest to the door yelped as he snatched up his rifle. He was about to rush out when Danny pinned him down to the floor. “What are you doing?” the soldier barked.
“Don’t move. They’re still attacking us!” Danny growled.
As Danny had expected, soon a few more blasts reached their ears, and something hailed down at the roof again.
“D-Damn it, that is…”
In a cloud of dust, someone lit a candle. After the dark was dispersed by the dim candlelight, everybody sucked in their breath in horror.
Thousands of sharp black needles had pierced the ceiling. In the flickering light, they looked like human hairs hanging upside down.
“That was a Spider Demon…” The soldier on the ground swallowed hard. Most members of the sniper unit had participated in the first expedition, so
they knew the Spider Demons pretty well. The soldier on the floor immediately realized what would have happened to him had he rushed out of the house.
“If I survive this battle, I’ll buy two lamb legs and thank Miss Lotus in person,” another soldier promised as he patted his chest.
The soldiers normally lived in a tent during a battle; but this time, the witches built a few concrete houses for them. Although they were not sure whether it was a decision made by the management team or not, the concrete dwellings had definitely saved them on this particular occasion. If they had lived in a tent, they would have been long dead by now.
“Don’t be so pessimistic. I’m still looking forward to my wedding.”
“You just want to fawn over Miss Lotus, don’t you?”
“Nonsense. If he intends to fawn over someone, it has to be Miss Angel, Nana.”
It was a narrow escape, but none of them looked very concerned about this raid. They quickly armed themselves with weapons and ammunition while jabbering.
Because they all knew one thing.
Death was unavoidable and inevitable. Rather than worrying about their unforeseeable future, it would be more practical to kill the enemy.
As the campsite became gradually alive with noises, Danny pushed open the door and dashed out of the room while ducking his head.
The few sentinels outside the barrack were long dead. The whole encampment was raucous: people were yelling; demons were howling; there were also gunshots and explosions everywhere. Nobody knew the number and whereabouts of the enemy. The watchtower was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness with no lights on to point them direction, as though these demons all had come out of nowhere.
Danny clambered straight up to the roof and sprinted in the direction where he heard the least gunshots, totally ignoring his desperate companions shouting behind him.
“I thought you would look for the place where most people are.”
He heard Malt chuckle in his head.
This was the reason he liked fighting.
His partner would only appear when he threw himself into a battle.
“If there are many people, it means our guys are in an advantageous position. My presence would just help them finish off their enemy faster,” Danny replied. “However, on-and-off gunshots indicate someone is having a bitter fight. They tell me that my bullet is in need.”
“I’d told you before that it wasn’t your fault— you can’t save everyone on a battlefield.”
“But at least I can save the ones I see,” Danny said with a smile. “Don’t worry. I feel good. I can see you better now.”
Danny looked around. As he had expected, he saw his old partner float out of the darkness, running next to him.
Danny soon found a high point of the battleground as he proceeded. After he climbed up a tottering pile of iron cases, he immediately spied some Longsong Cannons standing in an open field in his vicinity. A few demons were using bunkers to have physical altercations with some artilleries. Apparently, the artilleries, not equipped with heavy weapons, were having a difficult time subduing the demons. They could not easily recover their encampment while the latter was spearing.
Many people were lying sprawled in pools of blood, penetrated by bone spears on the road leading to the artillery field.
“How did they get here?”
“I have no idea, but I’m now going to finish them,” Danny said as he raised his long gun and aimed it at a demon who sneaked up behind a barrack. If this demon succeeded in his attempt, the artillerymen would suffer an onslaught. However, the demon was now too focused on its own undertaking to realize that a sniper was right behind it.
Danny pulled the trigger without the slightest hesitation. As a cloud of Red Mist erupted from the back of its head, the demon fell off the roof and plummeted to the ground.
Danny could literally hit anyone within 100 meters in the moonlight.
“Good job. Watch out for your left-hand side. Someone’s coming.”
Danny then saw five or six soldiers crouch at a corner, inching toward the edge of the wall, planning to have a desperate struggle with the demons despite the raining spears.
“Very brave fellows but pretty silly as well. Without a shield, you can’t possibly survive the spearing attack,” Danny muttered under his breath, his lips curling up into a smile. “How about hanging in there for a bit longer?”
He quickly fired three shots, and the bullets landed right beside the soldiers’ feet just when they were about to make their move. Frightened by the whistle of the bullets and resultant dust, they shrank back.
“They would bite your head off if they knew it was you,” Malt said apprehensively.
“Hahaha.” Danny broke into a laughter. “Let them be.” He re-aimed his gun at the Mad Demons and shot in rapid succession. Deterred by the gunshots, the demons stopped attacking the barrack and hid themselves.
Just then, a loud noise cracked through the air above.
“Watch out! Look over there!”
No sooner had Malt finished his warning than several shadows descended from the sky and dived to the encampment.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The earth quavered when the shadows hit the ground.
In the moonlight, Danny found out in his great dismay that they were actually three giant black stone pillars! The stone pillars started to billow clouds of Red Mist after they landed. They sizzled just like the steam engine invented by His Majesty.
But he soon realized they were not machines.
Three thick slabs peeled off the big pillars, producing a ton of “blood”. The pillars were then divided into three parts, each of which contained a demon! These demons were enveloped in a fluid-filled sac, just as a baby floated in its mother’s womb. After the sac was drained of blood, the demons awoke, revealing their gruesome tusks.
A bullet landed precisely on one of the Mad Demons’ head when it walked out of a black stone pillar.
“Crack!”
The demon staggered and then slumped against the stone pillar with a thud.
“So this is how you came here,” Danny snorted as he reloaded his gun. “Why didn’t you just stay in there since you weren’t fully awake anyway? Come as you like, but I’ll kill every single one of you. Watch me, Malt!”