Chapter 1 Hassu's Allies

Hassu didn't know what Haoren meant by "reinforcements" at first.

Since entering this Shadow Plane, he had been in a deep coma – or on the verge of one. He had never directly confronted the Soulless Guard. Even though he knew of their existence, he couldn't immediately associate them with the terrifying, immortal legion that roamed the dreamscape. He was also unaware of Hesperian's plan to seize control of the Soulless.

Even when he heard Hesperian's words over the communicator, he didn't take it to heart.

But that didn't matter, because he soon found out where Haoren's reinforcements were.

The moon was completely stained crimson, and the light it cast was no longer bright and pure, but carried a thick, cloying color of blood. The figure descending from the sky had solidified into something almost tangible. She had the same face as Vivian, but her hair was a wild, vibrant red, and her blood-red eyes, devoid of pupils, showed no trace of reason or emotion. Hassu had been preparing to attack, but before he could, another force intervened: a black flame suddenly streaked in from the distance, accompanied by strange howls. In the direction of the flames, a skeletal dragon formed entirely of shadows, nothing but bones, tore through the clouds and dove towards the ground.

Behind the shadow skeletal dragon, more bizarre shadow creatures formed an army, descending like a torrential downpour from the sky.

The Soulless Guard—specifically, those guarding the inner court, the most powerful among the Soulless.

Hesperian was controlling the Soulless, sending them into the battlefield. Shadow bone dragons and mutated gargoyles initiated aerial assaults, unleashing various kinds of terrifying energy storms upon the newly awakened Evil Thought Entity. As the aerial bombardment commenced, the ground of the Great Plains began to tremble faintly. Hassu looked up in astonishment and saw a bizarre array of strange beasts appearing out of thin air, like mirages. Some resembled the animal-headed deities of ancient Egypt, while others resembled the primordial behemoths from ancient horror legends that devoured heaven and earth. Some were simply colossal meat spheres composed of countless limbs and flesh. They had no unified style, but all were composed of amorphous shadows and mist. Even Haoren couldn't help but shiver when he saw them:

Luckily, Hesperian had led him in! Otherwise, without any cheating, if he and Lily had to face this scale of the Soulless Guard head-on... they really might be worn down to death in the endless corridors and courtyards of Shadow Keep!

The Soulless' ranged attacks landed on the Evil Thought Entity first. The powerful energy fluctuations made it seem like the outcome was already decided, as if the Evil Thought Entity was about to be devoured by the shadow bone dragon's breath. But the next second, the shadow breath melted away like snow meeting sunlight. The Evil Thought Entity, floating dozens of meters in the air, opened her arms and tilted her head, letting out a silent scream.

Her mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Only visible ripples swept out in all directions. As the ripples washed over them, the bone dragon's shadow breath, the gargoyle's corrosive arrows, and the various physical and non-physical bombardments from the twisted nightmare creatures all exploded into clouds of smoke and mist. Even the fastest gargoyles were caught in the blast: without any resistance, these powerful nightmare monsters were directly crushed into dust.

But the Soulless Guard was endless. Before the real Vivian awakened, these soulless guardians would revive infinitely, guarding their mistress until the end of the world, or the moment she awoke.

So more Soulless emerged from the air, coalescing into a raging tide and charging towards the powerful Evil Thought Entity.

"This is..." Hassu stared blankly, the scene before him exceeding his imagination. "The Soulless are attacking their own master?"

"This isn't their master," Haoren said quickly. "You've been mistaken all along—what awakens in a berserk state isn't Vivian, but a kind of avatar formed from her negative power. This avatar is born from Vivian's dreamscape, and sometimes it even breaks through Vivian's self-defense, competing with the original body—that's what you're seeing. Although the Soulless Guard has no souls, they know how to distinguish their true master. Originally, these guards couldn't contend with Vivian's Evil Thought Entity due to the difference in their position. Even their leader was banished from the graveyard. But our people managed to gain control of the Soulless Guard, and through external commands, these Soulless finally had the opportunity to return to the graveyard and fight this knockoff who stole their mistress' authority."

"Evil Thought Entity..." Hassu repeated the new term Haoren mentioned subconsciously, then widened his eyes as if realizing something. "You can actually gain control of the Soulless Guard? Is there anyone in this world who can interfere with Vivian Anseista's power?"

"Of course—as long as you find Vivian's blood descendants," Haoren smiled slightly. "We're all family. Isn't it legal for a daughter to borrow her mother's personal guard to clean up her own doorstep?"

"That Countess actually has blood descendants?!" This time, Hassu was truly shocked. "Could she even afford to raise… No, I mean, when did she have the interest to create blood descendants?"

Lily interjected, "So the big bat is very irresponsible, born but never raised!"

Hassu: "...?!"

Haoren coughed quickly, "Ahem... don't just stand there. The Soulless Guard can only play a restraining role. We still have to figure out how to deal with that Evil Thought Entity—Hassu, show your full abilities and fight this Evil Thought Entity to the death!!"

Without his reminder, the old hunter had already noticed the powerlessness and limitations of the Soulless in the face of the Evil Thought Entity. Hassu was already prepared for battle. Seeing Haoren and Lily charging towards the enemy with their weapons, his eyes narrowed, and his figure instantly disappeared from the spot.

The next moment, he appeared less than a hundred meters from the Evil Thought Entity, raising his hand and sweeping a powerful silver-white flame across.

Just as Haoren said, the Soulless were powerful reinforcements, but that was only when they were carrying out containment missions. Relying on them to truly eliminate the Evil Thought Entity was impossible—because this was the Shadow World, and because the Evil Thought Entity was also part of Vivian. Under these two conditions, the Soulless could never inflict a truly fatal wound on the Evil Thought Entity!

So the only ones who could make a decisive attack were intruders from the "outside," like Haoren, Lily, and Hassu.

Each Evil Thought Entity has different forms of power, and their fighting styles vary greatly. Therefore, while constantly moving, Haoren was also quickly analyzing the characteristics of the enemy in front of him: she always stayed within the range of the light column from the moon, rarely moving. This might indicate that her power source was closely related to the red moon above; most of her attacks were silent screams. The screams seemed to vibrate space and destroy energy structures, not only invalidating most ranged attacks but also possessing terrifying physical destructive power. Even Lily's strong body and Haoren's rigid shield couldn't withstand the screams for too long and had to constantly maintain a distance and engage in guerilla warfare; the third characteristic of the Evil Thought Entity was that all of her attacks were area-of-effect attacks, whether it was the silent scream or the directional shockwave. This made her single-target damage slightly weaker than other Evil Thought Entities, but caused huge trouble for encirclement.

The more he analyzed, the more he wanted to curse.

Two of the Evil Thought Entity's three characteristics were obvious advantages, and these two huge advantages greatly affected Haoren, whether in melee or ranged combat. Even disregarding the latter two points, the fact that the Evil Thought Entity was always hiding within the "moonlight column" was also a problem: the moonlight had a mysterious connection with the Evil Thought Entity, allowing the latter to freely disintegrate or reorganize within the area covered by the light, and even achieve something similar to resurrection. Haoren had beheaded the Evil Thought Entity more than once with the Godslayer Sword, and even blasted off half of the enemy's body with the psionic pistol, but all of these injuries were transferred by the moonlight. The Evil Thought Entity shattered in the red light column, but reappeared with the moonlight the next second.

He just didn't know how much this "rebirth" would cost, and how many times the Evil Thought Entity could reorganize under the amplification of the moonlight.

Hassu's figure flashed in mid-air. He rapidly fired a series of crossbow bolts, then took advantage of the time difference when the Evil Thought Entity scattered the bolts to quickly teleport behind the enemy. The holy silver longsword drew a curved arc, cutting the berserk "Vivian" in two.

The Evil Thought Entity, cut in half, dissipated in the moonlight like broken glass. However, the next second, the red moon shone down again, and the Evil Thought Entity's figure re-condensed within the light column.

The negative energy concentration of the entire Great Plains rose once again.

"This can't go on like this," Haoren pulled away slightly and said loudly to Hassu, "Was your previous tactic just to stall for time?"

"There's no other way besides stalling for time," Hassu shouted back equally loudly, "She has no fatal weaknesses, understand? No fatal points! She can't be killed!"

No, the Evil Thought Entity could of course be killed—Haoren said silently in his heart. He himself had personally killed more than one Evil Thought Entity and knew that the reason why this thing couldn't be killed was simply because the dose wasn't enough. As long as he had enough time to unleash firepower, he could kill this strange and terrifying "creature," but what he was most worried about at the moment was the urgency of time.

He looked towards the boundary of the Great Plains, where the distant scenery was already distorted and blurred. The edge of the earth was disintegrating into countless floating fragments as if collapsing, and the fragments swirled and fell into a dark boundary that was constantly approaching, and the latter was rapidly devouring this space.

This Shadow World was about to collapse, but Vivian showed no signs of awakening—not to mention awakening, Haoren hadn't even sensed the slightest trace of her aura.

If Vivian still hadn't awakened after the entire Shadow Space completely collapsed, but the Evil Thought Entity ran to the real world, what would be the consequences?

Haoren couldn't infer the conclusion for a while, but even a simpleton like Lily must know that it was definitely not a good thing.

Perhaps this inherently unstable "sandbox system" would be greatly impacted, and then... then it was probably an event that even Raven 12345 would curse at.

Just then, the space where the entire "graveyard" was located suddenly trembled violently, and this tremor was obviously unrelated to the fierce battle taking place at the moment.