“Your face looks storm-gray.”
A familiar voice rose behind her, a ripple of wind on her neck. Nana Toki turned and met Bei Yuan’s gaze across the short stretch of rubble.
He stood there with a half-smile, like a cat sunning itself in the doorway. He’d planted himself so she would notice.
“Good dogs don’t block the way. Got crap? Spit it fast.”
Nana Toki’s tone was sandpaper on steel.
Bei Yuan: “...”
No time for this Protagonist Lord idiot. Her mood was tar-black and boiling.
His pack of idiots had trashed the side quest she’d sweated over for hours. No reward. Time burned to ash. She had a belly full of fire, and no kindness left.
“Are you from a fantasy realm?”
Bei Yuan watched her sharp, inexplicable irritation. He weighed the words, then cut straight to it.
“No.”
She answered before the breath left his mouth. So that’s the big thing that made the Protagonist Lord grow a spine? That?
Nana Toki was done.
“If you’re not from a fantasy realm, why do you have a teleport Talisman that only exists in our world?”
Bei Yuan frowned, his look taking on a blade’s edge. “Are you lying to me?”
“Who told you teleport Talismans were your realm’s signature dish?”
Nana Toki’s smile tilted. “The universe is vast like a sea of fog. Do you even grasp its drift? It’s not just the few worlds you imagine. You and I are specks in a boundless sea.”
“...”
“What do you mean?”
A chill rose first in Bei Yuan’s chest, like frost on glass. Then the thought moved. The woman before him was not Yu Xi. She might be from a deeper stratum, a world he’d never touched.
A dangerous world beyond his reach or sense.
“Got no brains? Think for yourself.”
She turned away. The Black Great Axe hung from her hand like a crescent night. She headed for the building ahead, step by slow step.
“I’ve got work. Chew on that alone.”
“What work?” Bei Yuan asked.
“Kill Corpse Devourers.”
“...”
He watched her back shrink into the gray distance, standing among heaps of Corpse Devourer remains. His brow drew tight, a fine line across handsome features.
Weren’t the Corpse Devourers already dead? She and he had killed them all.
How was she going to kill more?
...
“Yu... Yu Xi is coming...”
Inside the building, someone saw Nana Toki’s face dark as storm cloud, the Colossal Axe dangling as she walked toward them like slow thunder.
The whole building went hollow with unease.
Bei Yuan was gone. Jiang Xinli’s spirit was frayed like torn silk. The squad had no head, no spine, no voice.
“What... what do you want?”
They kept a long distance from Nana Toki, fear like cold water behind their knees.
To them, she looked no different from a psych ward madwoman, a storm with legs. She did not weigh consequence. She cared for results.
Touch her interests, and even the emperor would get an axe-swing.
“I killed six too few Corpse Devourers.”
She walked straight in. The Black Great Axe cast a shadow at the doorway. She spoke, each word a stone dropped in a well.
“...”
No one dared to answer. Thirteen people pressed into corners, eyes lowered, not meeting her gaze.
“So you came to spit nonsense?”
Jiang Xinli stood slowly from the corner. Her hair was a snarl, her face unkempt, her eyes hollowed out like burned lanterns. The old bright shimmer was gone.
The once pure, cute girl now felt like a chill down the spine.
Nana Toki didn’t care.
“I came to collect interest.”
“What interest?” Jiang Xinli’s smile was a cracked plate. Despair pooled behind it like ink.
Bei Yuan wasn’t here. What could she do against the woman she’d once pushed toward death?
“Six lives.”
When Nana Toki spoke, the room iced over. Breath smoked like winter.
“Wasn’t it enough that you killed so many outside?”
Jiang Xinli lifted her head, disbelief carving her pale face. Her slender hand tightened till veins stood. “Must you wipe us out to be satisfied?”
“They walked into death. Not worth pity.”
Nana Toki’s expression didn’t shift. One thing puzzled her.
What was with this heroine’s mind? She looked perched on the cliff edge of collapse.
System: “...”
Host, killing in front of normal girls is one thing—psychological shadows at worst. Making them watch a Corpse Devourer feed? Of course they break.
“...”
“Then kill me.”
Jiang Xinli stared up. Her voice was raw, scraped by glass. “I’ll die anyway. Do it now.”
“You? No.”
Nana Toki refused without wavering.
What a joke. If killing you worked, you’d be gone already.
She knew the trope map by heart. No matter her strength, no matter her odds, as long as the male-and-female lead halo and Heaven’s luck wrapped them, the leads would survive even if they didn’t fight.
“Live well.”
She glanced at Jiang Xinli with a thin slice of pity, like moonlight over a ruined field.
Such a good heroine. Pity she’s about to snap.
She stepped past Jiang Xinli, axe whispering across air...
“Why...”
Jiang Xinli couldn’t parse it. A rancid stench surged in her gut like bile-tide, slamming at her insides.
“Thud!”
By the time awareness caught up, she heard bodies hit the floor, dull as wet wood.
She looked back, stunned.
Blood spread across the floor like a dark lake, widening in her eyes.
Of twelve, six had collapsed in pure terror. Six lay stiff, eyes open, lives gone like blown candles.
Nana Toki stood silent. The Black Great Axe ticked blood beads, each drop a red star fading.
Jiang Xinli’s stomach heaved. She clamped a hand over her mouth.
The dead faces swelled in her vision, repeating like a lantern parade, each one too close.
Why did it become this?
She clawed at her head, nails raking scalp. Inside, the question howled. In her ears, sound thinned to snow.
A warm tear traced down her cheek, hot as fresh blood from their throats.
A deep chill sprinted through her limbs, ice in every joint. Her whole body locked. Even breathing felt like breaking stone.
“All right... next is...”
Nana Toki eyed the six she’d throat-cut. She flicked her right hand. Six gray-white ability flowers bloomed from empty air, drifting down to their wounds like frost petals.
“Glug-glug... glug-glug...”
People hadn’t yet clawed back from her ruthless strike. The clear, gagging sounds drew every eye.
“Crack... crack...”
Something inside stretched and tore. The six who’d fallen sat frozen as the dead began to rise.
“Pop!”
“Pop-pop!”
“Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!”
Dry, skinny arms thrust from the mouths of the corpses, each push a wet pop. Then, slow, relentless—two arms, a head, a torso, lower limbs—Corpse Devourers crawled out of the dead like nightmares birthed in reverse.
“Crack... crack... crack...”
“W-what... what is happening...”
The six survivors had never seen a scene like this. Their backs jammed together, butt-first into the wall. No space left to retreat.
Bunched like frightened chicks, they looked ridiculous enough to make Nana Toki smile from a distance.
The six Corpse Devourers finished climbing out. They started to feed at once.
The sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bone cut the silence like saw teeth. In this quiet building, every rip was a scream.
The corpses used as media became food, stripped down to nothing.
“prprpr...”
Maybe the Corpse Devourers sensed a flavor in the air. After eating the six clean, they stuck out red tongues and licked their ugly lips with greedy relish.
“Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!”
Nana Toki lifted the Black Great Axe. One swift horizontal cut, a black arc like night lightning.
Six heads burst like watermelons under a wheel.
Green blood and rancid red-and-white brain matter splashed the wall. It sizzled there, eating into plaster with a wicked hiss.
“Hoo...”
[Side Quest: Lord of the Fog City]
[Description: None]
[Current Progress: (1000/1000) (0/1)]
Half done at last.
Nana Toki let out a heavy breath. Her mood rose like sunlight breaking fog.
But...
“Yu... Yu Xi... y-you...”
The six in the corner were almost crying. One with brittle nerves slumped, faint as a blown match.
The rest stared at Nana Toki, faces carved with panic.
Yes.
They’d never imagined she could turn teammates into Corpse Devourers.
From her calm hands, it wasn’t the first time. If a ruthless woman like this left the Fog City and walked into human society...
They didn’t dare imagine what would come next.
“What’s wrong? Scared stupid?”
Nana Toki set down the Black Great Axe. She smiled at the cornered six, a spring-calm curve after a storm.
“No need to panic. We’re civilized folks. We talk. We don’t swing.”
