Demon Hunter (Web Novel)
chapter-41-1

- Difficult To Find the Way Back

It was now nighttime.

Apart from the crazy winds roaring about, the northern continent was deathly still. After the first nuclear winter, the human race that survived and continuously strengthened was still almost completely wiped out by the apostles’ purge. It wasn’t only the human race, large scale creatures no exception. If one surveyed all directions, the mountains and bodies of water, all carried a deathly aura that was different from the past. Under the thorough purging, even the ruins which were everywhere in the nuclear winter, were nowhere to be found. There was only a vast desolate stillness wherever one looked.

Within the boundless darkness, a young lady’s figure was currently frantically running. She was far faster than the limits of what humans could reach, a single jump crossing more than ten meters. Her gray long hair was perfectly straight as it dragged out behind her like silver lightning. Specks of stellar brilliance flickered about, clearly drawing out her trajectory in the darkness. She was running with everything she had, totally unaware of the bone-piercing cold wind, the only thing in her mind was the body within her arms that was gradually becoming ice-cold.

Madeline didn’t know how far she ran, nor did she know how long she ran, to the extent where she didn’t know where she was right now. However, it was as if there was a needle aimed at her back, giving her an extremely uncomfortable feeling. She knew that this was Valhalla’s monitoring, even though it wasn’t clear, it was enough to ascertain her approximate location. The apostles’ connection was on an instinctive level, extremely difficult for her to free herself from it even if she wanted to, let alone the fact that right now, the young lady’s mind was in complete chaos, making it even more difficult for her to escape.

The one she was carrying, was Su.

In the young lady’s memories, Su was always warm, especially his hand. When he led her along, the world’s sky was bright, the wind warm. However now, Su’s body was abnormally cold, the cold extremely unfamiliar, making her panic. She almost didn’t dare lower her head, even more so didn’t dare to use her perception to examine Su’s life traits. It was because even if she used her eyes, she could see the giant wound that pierced through Su’s chest. The narrow wound had stopped bleeding a long time ago, but it was precisely because of this that the young lady didn’t dare look. That wound, was clearly a mark left by a heavy sword, moreover the heavy sword she was most used to using.

That was an extremely ordinary, yet extremely extraordinary heavy sword. What was ordinary was the heavy sword’s material, a heavy alloy even humans could make. However, when this sword was gripped in Madeline’s hands, it was no longer ordinary. The sword’s edge continuously vibrated with Madeline’s power, the frequency extremely high, moreover able to change constantly. This type of vibration possessed fatal destructive power against any living creature, for example, if it stabbed into the Stupa’s body, then the less than five meters long sword would inflict an injury of at least twenty meters in size, while all tissues within a hundred meters would be destroyed, gradually dying in the following days.

Madelines’ full powered strike was something not even Su’s body could stop, easily stabbing through. Moreover, the instant she attacked, she aroused all of her potential. The power of this sword was something even she herself didn’t dare recall! That was why all of the tissues around that wound long became inorganic, no trace of life at all. Meanwhile, Su’s entire body only had a final trace of life force, the young lady only able to sense it if she carefully perceived it.

The young lady hugged Su tightly, running while continuously pouring endless energy into Su’s body. However, Su’s body was like a black hole, no matter how much energy entered, it would immediately vanish, and then his life force could only continuously flow away.

The distant horizon that had always remained the same moved. The young lady immediately ran in that direction. That was an unremarkable small mountain, and there was a hidden mountain cave on its surface, everything as if it was a favor from god. The young lady immediately rushed into the cave, charging to its end. Then, just like a miracle, Valhalla’s surveillance disappeared. The instant the piercing feeling disappeared, Madeline only felt her entire body’s power vanish, her knees going weak. She leaned against the cave wall, slowly sitting down. From start until now, she continued to hug Su tightly, not letting him go.

Su’s body was still ice-cold, just like her current mood.

The young lady leaned against the ice-cold mountain wall, the noise of her gasps for breath echoing through the cave. The roof of the cavern wall released a light tremble, the vibration frequency extremely familiar, the frequency released by Valhalla’s spatial furnace. Due to the serious damage that was received, the frequency of the spatial furnace that could only barely function was different from the other spatial furnaces, so it could easily be differentiated.

Under the curtain of night, Valhalla floated high up in the air, graceful and powerful like a monarch. It silently moved through the night, its investigation waves spreading out like a spider web, scattering across the boundless great earth below. Meanwhile, within the ship, the three apostles’ projections were currently surrounding a sphere, their expressions serious as they watched the earth below. However, the holographic image produced by their spiritual fluctuations was a bit indistinct, expressing that the apostles’ conditions weren’t that good.

“Still didn’t find them?” Rochester asked. This was the first time his tone revealed worry.

“For some reason, just now, her reaction completely disappeared.” Serendela said with a frown.

“Where did it disappear? We can carry out a focused search!” Fitzdurk also lost his calmness.

“Do you really think that I didn’t think of this? I already searched this place over a thousand times, there’s nothing! Absolutely nothing! There is no way she is hiding here!” Serendela suddenly erupted. Fitzdurk’s expression fell, but he didn’t say anything else. Serendela’s injuries from the last battle were the most severe, now, she still had to search for Madeline’s whereabouts with all of her attention, this type of feeling was definitely not good.

“Alright, there is no use bickering amongst ourselves. All feelings of unhappiness are nothing more than tricks of the will of this world.” Rochester slowly said. However, the extremely ugly expression on his face sold out what he was really feeling. Only when Serendela and Fitzdurk calmed down, did he continue, “I believe in Serendela’s abilities. That is why in my opinion, Madeline is most likely already no longer in this region, this amount of time is enough for her to flee several hundred kilometers. We need to broaden our range of search.”

“In which direction?” Fitzdurk asked an extremely crucial question. However, Serendela’s mouth was tightly shut, completely focused on the ground, as if she didn’t hear his words at all.

Rochester sighed, waving his hand and saying, “Let’s search westward first, we’ll stop three hundred kilometers from the sea.”

They all knew that they were playing with a twenty-five percent probability, basically gambling. Hoewver, if even Serendela didn’t notice anything, then the two of them would only be even more unqualified.

Under the heavy and helpless atmosphere, Valhalla slowly turned around, heading westward. Streak after streak of perception waves still diligently swept across the ground, but there was still no reaction at all. Whenever a second of time passed, the atmosphere in Valhalla would become a bit heavier. Even though no one mentioned it, the three apostles all knew that time was important, with each passing second, it would mean that Madeline might recover a bit more of her strength, to the extent where there was even a chance of Su reviving. The seventh apostle, the Destroyer, was even more mysterious than the Creator, in the brief battle, the three apostles only sensed his overwhelming power, apart from this, Su didn’t have time to display any of his more special abilities before being destroyed by a single sword strike from Madeline. During the entire battle, the chance for victory didn’t rest in whether or not the apostles had enough power or if they cooperated well enough, but rather in Rochester’s fine grasp over the human heart, it really wasn’t anything all that glorious. That was why none of the three apostles had any confidence in facing the Destroyer.