Chapter 145: Ambush

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A moonless, windy night, the kind that makes even the toughest guys cry.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the streets tonight feel especially, especially crowded, noisy as hell and driving me insane. Passing by the market with all its hawking and shouting was like having ten thousand Goat Cheeses cawing right in my ears, making me want to tear the cotton out of my sanitary pad just to stuff my ears with it.

I deliberately took the long way around, sticking to the less busy streets, but the uneven, bumpy road jolted my backside raw. Waves of dizziness hit me, and I felt like throwing up. It got noticeably worse as I approached the area near Alix Alley, and more than once I was tempted to just turn around and head home.

Irritating.

Irritating, irritating, painful, irritating…

Even the moon hanging up in the sky looked dim and dull, ugly, not pretty at all.

After barely making it to my destination, I ran into a new problem.

Alix Alley was much wider than I’d imagined, and a lot more secluded. There must have been residents around, quite a few of the buildings nearby had faint candlelight flickering in the windows, and I even spotted a pork stall that seemed to still be open not far away. But because there were so few streetlamps along the road, there wasn’t much of anyone walking around.

Most of the northern district of the royal city was like this. Sure, the church district and Cataloma were both located here, but that didn’t change the fact that the north side was economically behind the rest of the city. And that, in a way, said something. The Holy Church’s actual grip on the Order City, or even all of Isenbell, was weaker than it looked. Outwardly revered by the people, but in reality… at least when it came to money, they weren’t getting a big slice of the pie. Even if this place was called “the homeland of the chosen by God” and supposedly watched over by the so-called “Divine Relics.”

Maybe that’s just the long-term result of those nobles pulling strings behind the scenes…

I gave my head a gentle shake, trying to clear the dizzy, bell-like ringing clouding my senses, then unfolded the note I’d been clutching in my hand and stared at the ugly handwriting on it for a long, long moment.

You could tell Abel had been in a hurry when he wrote this. I figured he probably hadn’t thought it through at all, just made a snap decision, tore off a random scrap of paper from somewhere, scrawled on it, and shoved it into my hands. He’d probably picked this spot because it wasn’t far from Cataloma… or maybe it was somewhere familiar to him?

Either way, I was here. But I had no idea where to look for him, because he hadn’t written that part down.

“Haah…”

My lips parted slightly in a soft sigh.

Headache… in every sense of the word.

I pinched my sleeve and raised my arm, dabbing at the fine beads of sweat on my forehead… then my brow furrowed, and I let go of the sleeve, opened my palm, and pressed it to my forehead… Sure enough, it was a little warm.

I think I have a fever.

The moment I realized that, my eyes went wide.

You’ve got to be kidding me… I’m the Abyss, I can get a fever? That’s ridiculous…

But there was no denying that my body felt weak.

Pushing through it, I forced myself to walk along the wide road on foot, making myself stay alert, looking around everywhere for any sign of Abel.

Gradually I noticed that my breath, once merely warm, had turned scorching hot. The pain in my lower abdomen flared up again, and my vision started going blurry. For the first time since coming to this world, I felt cold.

Not the comfortable coolness I used to feel when exposed to low temperatures, this was a genuine, bone-deep cold, cold enough that my body started trembling uncontrollably. I hunched my shoulders slightly and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to get a little warmer.

Just a little longer… if I still can’t find Abel after this, I’ll head back.

I feel awful.

I should find a doctor… I want medicine… Are the doctors in this world even reliable…

Before long, 3 shadowy figures appeared faintly in the distance ahead, leaning against a wall, seeming to chat among themselves.

It was too dark, and my eyes were a little blurry — I couldn’t make out their faces… could it be Abel?

I walked toward them.

“Abel…” Once I got closer, I called out his name softly.

The 3 men turned at the sound. I immediately got a clear look at their faces… and saw 3 ugly, sleazy-looking men. All of them were over 20 years old, their hair clearly unwashed for who knows how long, greasy and plastered flat against their heads, obviously none of them were Abel.

“Sorry, wrong person.”

I turned and walked away.

I’d barely taken 2 steps when the men behind me, after a moment of shock, seemed to snap back to their senses. One of them immediately called out to me in clumsy formal speech: “Wait, this… um, beautiful lady, don’t go! It’s so late, it’s dangerous to be out alone!”

At the same time, I sensed one of them reaching a hand out toward me.

Don’t touch me…

I sidestepped lightly, and my feet instinctively picked up their pace.

I heard them giving chase.

“Don’t be scared, we’re not bad guys… Hey sis, do you live nearby? How come I’ve never seen you around?”

“Idiot, look at her clothes, does she look like a woman who lives around here?”

“True… look at that fabric, tsk tsk… must’ve cost a lot of copper coins, huh?”

“And her hair’s black, first time I’ve ever seen that… haha, she’s gorgeous!”

“Hey sis, big bros are talking to you, why aren’t you saying anything?”

I took a deep breath and told them, without turning around: “Stop bothering me.”

I’m already annoyed enough.

If this kept up, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from hitting someone. But my body was in bad shape right now, and my mood was terrible, in this state, I might not be able to control my strength once I started fighting. One careless moment and I could actually kill someone.

I really didn’t want something like that to happen…

“Oh, got a temper, do we?”

One of them chimed in, his tone flippant. Then, shockingly, he actually leaned his face close and deliberately took a long, loud sniff: “Mmm— smells so good! Rich girls really are something else… I like it.”

I stopped in my tracks.

A surge of rage rose up from the bottom of my heart. I turned around and looked at them with cold, expressionless eyes.

“What exactly do you want.”

“Nothing much.”

The 3 men, seeing that I’d actually responded to them, exchanged glances. Then the one in the middle grinned at me, opening his mouth to reveal a full set of yellow teeth: “Just wanna have some fun. You looking for someone, sis? Let big bro keep you company.”

“No need.”

My stomach hurts so much… my head is spinning…

“Aw, come on! It’s not safe out here this late, there are way too many bad guys nearby! Don’t worry, come with big bro… his name’s Abel, right? Big bro knows where he is.”

…You don’t know jack, you think I’m a 3-year-old?

But even as the man said it, I caught him quietly exchanging glances with the other 2, and they began slowly closing in on me.

The naked, disgusting desire in their eyes stirred from deep within me an impulse to kill them.

I’m so annoyed, so annoyed, so annoyed…

Crack crack crack—

A faint blue light lit up in my eyes, and I raised my right hand slightly — an extreme ice short scythe formed in an instant.

Freezing air rapidly spread with the wind, sweeping across the faces of the 3 men, coating their eyebrows and hair with a thin layer of frost.

The men froze.

What had just happened seemed to be beyond anything they’d anticipated. Their simple brains had no idea how to process it, and they stood rooted to the spot, not daring to move again, the expressions on their faces gradually shifting to pure terror.

My head was splitting.

I forcibly suppressed that inexplicable surge of violent rage inside me, reminding myself that they were just ordinary people, just beat them up, that’s all, just one beating and stop…

Right at that moment, from the rooftop of a building in the distance, a brief and rapid hushed exchange suddenly broke out.

“Black-haired girl… 16 years old… Frost Order…”

“She’s here.”

“3 on the left… 3 on the right… split and flank… May the God of Truth watch over us.”

“God of Truth… watch over us…”

And in the next instant, fire erupted.

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