Chapter 1 Silver Arrows and Stone Guardians

Silver-white crossbow bolts, imbued with astonishing magical power, crisscrossed the air, drawing bright lines. Wherever these lines passed, shields created by protective spells and ramparts summoned from the earth crumbled like paper, pierced and disintegrated in an instant. Offensive spells, rapidly released by Raita runes, poured through the breaches opened by the bolts as if they were free, layer by layer destroying the witches' defenses in the graveyard. As a group struggling to survive in this dark age, the witches, of course, wouldn't leave their lair defenseless. In fact, they had set up countless defenses here; the collapsed tombstones and twisted dead trees were all products filled with magic. When the demon hunters attacked, they immediately moved to form layers of defense lines. However, for the demon hunters, these things could only delay them for a moment.

After the initial panic and fear, the witches finally managed to calm down. Madam Marie and Heisenna clearly became the backbone of these people, and their loud shouts prevented the other witches from doing anything stupid out of fear. Taking advantage of the magical fog in the graveyard, the group dodged in a panic, gradually retreating to a narrow open space in the southwest corner of the graveyard. The witch Helen chanted a spell, and the tombstones around the open space immediately began to rumble and shake, and then turned into black stone guardians covered in moss. These heavy guardians formed another line of defense, blocking the demon hunters' long-range bombardment.

"Bang—Boom!"

Almost at the same time as these stone guardians stood up, a dazzling silver-white fireball drew a parabola in the air and accurately hit one of the guardians. The stone guardian, which should have been indestructible and had strong magic resistance, was instantly blown to pieces, and most of the fragments were completely vaporized by the holy flame before they even hit the ground!

"These things can't stop them at all, they can only last for a few minutes at most," Heisenna said quickly. "Damn it... this is not an ordinary hunting team at all... Only the most elite demon hunters can cause this kind of destruction!"

Hao Ren glanced at the little bat spirit: "It seems that even if your previous plan succeeded, it wouldn't be of much use—these demon hunters have exceeded your expectations."

Heisenna readily admitted her misjudgment at this time: "I didn't expect the demon hunters to value this place so much... It seems that Vivian's influence is too great, even in a state of slumber."

While Heisenna was saying this, Hao Ren had another question in his mind:

Did these demon hunters really come to hunt Vivian while she was in a state of slumber? Wasn't it said that Vivian had a different kind of "deterrent" effect among the demon hunters, and coupled with the fact that the eldest countess wouldn't take the initiative to cause trouble on weekdays, so the demon hunters generally wouldn't take the initiative to look for her trouble?

So what was going on with this group of elite hunters that suddenly appeared?

The demon hunters seemed to be determined to use firepower to bombard the witches to death, or their extreme discipline made them maintain maximum vigilance even when facing "human wizards," so until now they were only using arrow rain and spells to suppress the resistance in the graveyard, using this foolproof method to consume the witches' and wizards' physical strength and energy.

But this consumption was about to end.

Hao Ren looked up at the west of the graveyard, his line of sight penetrating the thick fog, and saw several shaking figures in the shadows: the demon hunters had crossed the outer fence and the animated treants, and their entry meant that the formal hunt was about to begin.

Heisenna raised her hand and threw out several corrupted blood balls. The blood balls, filled with the power of corruption and death, landed on the demon hunters' path and immediately burst into large patches of poisonous gas. Even demon hunters dared not enter head-on, which slowed their attack pace to some extent.

"We can only passively be beaten here. Those bastards are best at this kind of siege," Heisenna spat. "We must find a way to break through. It's almost a full moon now. As long as we can rush out, I'm confident that I can get rid of them with the power of the moonlight, but this requires two conditions..."

Madam Marie immediately asked, "What two conditions?"

"First, our breakthrough power is not enough. You half-baked people have problems protecting yourselves. Who can break the demon hunters' defenses? Second, we need someone to stay behind and hold back the demon hunters, even if it's just for a moment."

The witches and the wizard Barn looked at each other, but a thought suddenly flashed through Hao Ren's mind.

"These are all no problem," he said quickly, while opening his personal space and taking out the strange weapons in the witches' eyes, "Lily can act as the vanguard of the breakthrough. Lily, come here. You don't have any weapons now, so these are for you..."

While Lily watched Hao Ren change her equipment, she muttered: "But I'm better at close combat..."

Hao Ren waved his hand: "This thing is more useful than you hacking people with a broadsword. You are breaking through now, not fighting the demon hunters head-on. A round of fire bombardment to run out is better than anything..."

Lily let out an "Oww" in a daze. By the time she reacted, she had a huge ammunition box on her back, and she was holding a six-barreled Gatling gun in each hand. Hao Ren had turned a literary husky into something like a Terminator...

While hanging these things on Lily, Hao Ren leaned over and whispered: "Wait a while, just take people out directly, don't get too entangled with those demon hunters, I have a use for keeping them."

Lily blinked: "Landlord, are you going to fool the demon hunters after fooling the witches?"

"I have some things to ask them—I always feel that it's not right for a group of demon hunters to suddenly come looking for Vivian's trouble," Hao Ren opened the safety device of Lily's Gatling gun and confirmed that the ammunition box was in good condition. "Leave a code along the way, and I'll catch up soon."

Heisenna curiously looked at Hao Ren hanging a lot of iron lumps on the werewolf girl who didn't seem to have a good brain, and couldn't help but ask, "What are these things? Can they be used to deal with demon hunters?"

"It may be a little difficult to kill those guys, but it's no problem to break a bloody path," Hao Ren grinned at the little bat spirit, thinking that the munitions maniac bear kid six hundred years later was still a pure girl who hadn't seen the power of guns and cannons at this time. "You follow Lily and rush out, I'll stay behind."

"Are you sure?" A hint of surprise appeared on Heisenna's face. "This is very dangerous..."

"I'm sure, don't worry," Hao Ren gave the little bat spirit a confident expression. "Anyway, I'm a character who can get along with ancient bloodlines like Vivian, do you think my strength will be weak?"

Heisenna bit her lip and stared at Hao Ren for a long time before nodding: "Then be careful, Vivian rarely has a few friends, and there will be one less if one dies."

Hao Ren: "..."

Was this child so bad at talking back then?!

The last few stone guardians collapsed in the demon hunters' holy flames, and the shaking figures in the fog began to speed up. Feeling the increasingly strong magic fluctuations in the air, Hao Ren pushed the little bat spirit hard: "Let's go quickly, it's too late if we don't go!"

"I owe you a favor!"

Heisenna and the witches, led by Lily, found a direction and rushed out of the fog-shrouded graveyard. After a moment, their figures disappeared from Hao Ren's sight. A few seconds later, Hao Ren heard a burst of dense machine gun fire coming from the opposite side of the fog.

As expected, the demon hunters had also set up a blockade on the periphery, but Hao Ren believed that Lily, carrying two Vulcan cannons and entering a mad dog state, would have no problem breaking through such an encirclement.

While Lily and his party rushed out, Hao Ren was also quickly preparing.

He quickly changed his clothes, hung several demon hunter equipment given to him by Hasson, and then took advantage of the chaos created by Lily to transfer his position. After confirming that the time was right, he took out a badge from his arms and poured his mental power into it.

It was a silver emblem, only the size of a palm, with a cross-shaped blade carved on it. After the mental power was injected, a layer of bright light immediately appeared on the surface of the silver emblem.

This was an amulet often equipped by demon hunters. After injecting power, it had the effect of dispelling low-level magic erosion and enhancing self-healing ability. And on the chaotic battlefield, it could also be used as a tool for demon hunters to remotely identify each other—Hao Ren specifically learned from Hasson how to activate this thing with mental power.

Sure enough, as the emblem released a special magic wave, Hao Ren sensed that some of the demon hunters in the graveyard who were originally preparing to rush out to pursue the witches stopped, and the actions of other demon hunters also showed obvious hesitation: they never expected that a strange "ally" would suddenly appear in this "evil nest."

After a while, several demon hunters approached through the thick fog. When their signature black combat uniforms just entered his sight, Hao Ren took the initiative to jump out and shouted loudly: "In the name of Corpus! You just destroyed half a month of my results!"

It sounded particularly righteous, particularly full of energy, and particularly occupying the moral high ground! And it also mixed with three points of annoyance, three points of helplessness, and four points of irritability. Hao Ren felt that his shout was worth at least twenty Oscars...

When the demon hunters heard Hao Ren shout in the name of "Corpus" and sensed the magic wave of the badge, they immediately ran over quickly. Then they saw Hao Ren, dressed in demon hunter garb, leaning against a crooked tombstone, with an unhappy expression on his face.

A demon hunter who looked like the leader stepped forward and looked Hao Ren up and down: "You are..."

"A wandering hunter," Hao Ren said with his arms folded, while maintaining the mental power activation of several pieces of equipment on his body to simulate the aura that a demon hunter should have. "I've been following these witches for more than half a month, and then you screwed everything up!"