Chapter 149#
Free Hunt — Final#
The moonlight remained desolate and pale. From the streets came the intermittent sounds of scrambling footsteps, clashing weapons, and wretched cries from deep in the throat.
“Just what kind of place is this…” Windsor murmured with a soft sigh.
Bai Song’s home world had been blanketed in the gloom of war, and he had been through several instances before arriving here — environments like this were something he could stomach. Windsor, however, had come from an interstellar empire of advanced technology and strict law, so some sighing was to be expected.
Bai Song: “If the Divine Official Murphey was right, then this place is probably where all the desperados of the Eternal Night congregate.”
Windsor: “Power really does drive people to madness.”
They were clearly talking about the Misty Metropolis, yet the name Murphey had appeared out of nowhere. Yu Feichen raised an eyebrow slightly.
Seated together inside the coffin, Windsor and Bai Song recounted how they had come to arrive here.
On that day, after Yu Feichen was taken away by the key and vanished, Klalos had gone to the Dusk Temple in a panic to deliver the bad news, leaving the two of them alone on the desolate rooftop, staring at each other.
After agonizing over it for a while, they decided not to act rashly and to wait for Klalos to return.
“We figured — what if Yu-ge was already dead? Then we’d just be throwing our lives away for nothing. Windsor said he still hadn’t collected on the loans he’d put out, and he couldn’t let Yu-ge’s estate go to waste.”
Yu Feichen looked at them in silence.
Windsor’s gaze slowly drifted away, fixing itself attentively on the inscriptions carved into the coffin wall, as if they were some sacred hymn worthy of deep contemplation.
Once they’d made up their minds, they went to the thirteenth floor of the Genesis Tower. Instead of waiting for the gatekeeper to return, they ran into the God of Time, Murphey, on that floor.
“When Murphey heard that you had gone missing, Yu-ge, he broke into a happy smile,” Windsor said.
However, upon hearing the news about the key, Murphey’s expression gradually cooled and darkened.
At that point, Bai Song had asked: “Where exactly did Yu-ge go?”
Murphey had said: “A very old place.”
“Older than the Garden?”
Murphey shook his head.
“To be precise, we don’t know when exactly it appeared in the Eternal Night. But once the Garden learned of its confirmed existence, it continuously dispatched divine officials to seek out methods of entry and probe its internal structure.” At this, a faint smile rose in Murphey’s eyes. “As you know, He would never overlook any potential danger.”
“Through those who had visited the Misty Metropolis, we gathered some clues. It appears at random — someone walking through the Eternal Night has a very small probability of being pulled inside. Then they enter a grey-misted, brilliantly flourishing city.”
“While walking its streets, the roses offered by flower girls may prove to be extraordinarily effective tools; items casually taken from the department store may hold tremendous power; you can even strike a bargain with the Misty Metropolis itself — hand over power you don’t want in exchange for powerful forces you do. Whether you leave or stay is your choice, and the great cathedral at the city’s center is the exit. I once entered that city myself. Everything rumored about it was true.”
Windsor: “How wonderful.”
Murphey turned to gaze out at the night sky over the Garden, his voice carrying a faint trace of wistfulness: “Too wonderful, really. Those who have visited wish to return, and those who haven’t fantasize about the day its gates open for them. Because entry is entirely a matter of luck, it never caused any real strife… The only conflict it ever sparked, perhaps, was that foreign gods who gained power from the Misty Metropolis always developed the strange confidence to attack the Eternal Day. Naturally, they all eventually lost their lives.”
Bai Song: “Haha.”
That “haha” pleased Murphey. He gave Bai Song an approving look, smiled, and continued.
“So then — imagine that someday the Misty Metropolis announced an entry method anyone could attempt. What kind of upheaval would it unleash across the Eternal Night? How many people would flood into that city, power in hand? And what would the Misty Metropolis become at that point?”
“He foresaw it all, long before it happened.”
“Now the Misty Metropolis has opened its doors, and that day has come at last.” Murphey produced from within his robes a silver old key — identical to the one they’d seen before — and said, “Perhaps that is precisely why the Prime God is the Prime God.”
Upon hearing this, Yu Feichen felt not the slightest ripple of emotion.
So that key was indeed a wholesale item distributed to everyone in the Garden.
Klalos’s secondhand account had been reasonably accurate too, not far from Murphey’s version — except that Murphey’s telling was seasoned with considerably more flattery toward the Prime God.
Bai Song continued recounting what happened next.
“Then I asked the Divine Official Murphey — you’ve taken out the key, does that mean you’re coming with us? Murphey said yes, but not yet. He had to go to the Dusk Temple to await the divine command, and told us to come to his floor three days later, at which point he would send us to the Misty Metropolis. Yu-ge, the Divine Official Murphey is a genuinely good person — he confirmed with Windsor and me multiple times that we really wanted to go, and promised to protect our safety to the greatest extent possible. Although… the look on his face when he was hoping you’d disappeared was also very genuine.”
At this, Bai Song couldn’t help glancing over at his Yu-ge, only to find that his Yu-ge’s expression of wanting Murphey to disappear was equally genuine.
Yu Feichen: “How exactly did he protect your safety?”
“He… he sent us through time. So that’s what the God of Time can do,” Bai Song said.
At that moment, countless translucent hourglass silhouettes had suddenly materialized around Murphey. The grains of sand glimmered with a dazzling radiance, seemingly containing boundless power — so overwhelming it was impossible to look directly at, as though even one extra second of staring would have one’s soul drawn out and swallowed whole.
The hourglasses slowly reversed under Murphey’s control.
“The Misty Metropolis grows more dangerous as its participants increase. I will send you back to the period just after it first opened… but the path from there depends on your own choices. Take out your keys and go.”
And so they went.
And so Yu Feichen realized something.
He hadn’t anticipated that Windsor and Bai Song would come at all — and even if they did, he wouldn’t have expected them to clear the checkpoint outside the Misty Metropolis this quickly.
But Murphey had a cheat code.
If he could send others, he could of course send himself as well.
That made the identity of that “Vincent” all the more suspicious.
After recounting that part of the story, they moved on to the checkpoint outside the Misty Metropolis.
The two of them hadn’t landed at the same entrance, so they’d each had to proceed alone — a process that was, at certain points, extremely convoluted. Bai Song had managed to stay alive throughout the checkpoint, but he never obtained a map, and NPC characters had pointed him in the wrong direction multiple times, leading him ever further from the city gates. In the end he lost all confidence in his own judgment, and every time he chose a path, he turned around and took the road he hadn’t chosen. He finally, slowly, reached the city gates.
He’d spent so much time on the road that despite Murphey’s temporal shortcut, he hadn’t arrived in the Misty Metropolis much earlier than Yu Feichen.
However, the experience of dealing with malicious NPCs had dramatically sharpened Bai Song’s survival instincts. Once inside the city, he was alive — and had stayed alive. On that point alone, he had already surpassed many of GoodNight’s members.
Windsor had fared considerably better. He obtained a map at the third checkpoint, passed through three more, and reached the city gates when there were still very few people in the Misty Metropolis. He moved with caution, and by now had accumulated a respectable stockpile of power and tools.
With the story told, they moved on to dividing up their tools.
Everything they currently had was low-grade or mid-grade; there wasn’t a high-grade tool in sight.
Low-grade tools were ordinary common weapons with no special properties attached — blades, firearms, longswords, and the like. Windsor had even confiscated a fork.
Mid-grade tools came with special effects — concealment, stealth, detection, defense, guaranteed accuracy, and so on — but each one had conditions attached to its use. The assassination dagger Yu Feichen had obtained at the start, which could only be used when striking from behind, fell into this category.
Starting faction was randomly assigned; starting rank was determined by the level of one’s power. Bai Song had been randomly placed in the White faction, Windsor in the Black.
“How did this happen,” Bai Song said.
“Xiao Bai!” Windsor put on a look of anguished sorrow. “So you’re to be our enemy now!”
Bai Song: “Yu-ge, what do we do?”
Yu Feichen told him to take out his captured chess pieces.
Bai Song’s spoils were two Black Soldiers and one White Knight.
Yu Feichen: “It’s fine.”
Bai Song didn’t understand what he meant, but if his Yu-ge said it was fine, then it was fine.
That was what feeling safe meant.
Reassured, Bai Song pricked up his ears to listen to the sounds outside. Windsor, meanwhile, leaned out of the coffin again for another look.
“It’ll be dawn soon. What are we going to do?” He paused. “Also… the clock is nearly full.”
Yu Feichen looked at the three chess pieces in Bai Song’s hand and said: “We’re going to the spawn point.”
When they returned to the chapel wall, the old nun was still muttering her litany about the depravity of the people, and grew even more displeased upon catching the three of them in the act of scaling it.
“Is this any behavior for a knight of the Temple? Did you swallow your knightly vows along with your last meal?” Using her broom as a walking stick, she straightened up and jabbed a finger at Yu Feichen on top of the wall: “I’m going to find your High Priest and report this!”
“How strange,” Windsor said, perched on the wall, studying the old nun with curiosity.
Yu Feichen: “What do you see?”
“She seems to have changed.” Windsor said. “All the NPCs are unsightly, but in the instant she was scolding you, I thought she was beautiful — radiant, even. I’m not targeting you personally, I’m simply stating an observation. For the record, Yu-ge.”
Bai Song couldn’t hold back a quiet snort of laughter.
Having finished her scolding, the old nun resumed her sweeping, repeating as she went: “Depraved, depraved sins…”
Windsor: “And now she’s back to what she normally looks like.”
Yu Feichen gave a short “mm” to indicate he had noted it.
The closest newcomer spawn point to the chapel was the department store — a five-story building, with groceries on the first floor and clothing, gifts and sundries, artwork, and mechanical parts on each successive floor above.
As morning approached, the department store had already opened for business. Uniformed clerks worked behind their counters, and customers of all descriptions wove between the shelves and displays. The vast majority were NPCs; a portion of the rest were outsiders bearing grey mist on their shoulders.
Bai Song stood in a wide open area with very high foot traffic.
It was a dangerous spot — easy to be noticed. But since it was his Yu-ge’s orders…
A somber gaze flashed briefly through the crowd. Bai Song’s entire body tensed, and he slipped into a nearby corner.
In the corner, he let his eyes go blank and glanced left and right, and with his age and face working in his favor, he looked precisely like a bewildered newcomer who had just arrived and didn’t know what to do.
Ill-intentioned footsteps quickly sounded behind him.
“Hello,” came the voice. “Just arrived? I’m from outside too. This place is enormous — want to team up?”
“Team up… sure, team up… you don’t kill me, I don’t kill you…”
“But if you try to kill me, I’ll…”
The faltering, forced-calm words drew a cold smile to the corner of the newcomer’s mouth. “In an instance, of course it’s best if we help each other out.”
“Right, we have to help each other to survive an instance…” Bai Song’s back was still turned. He slowly began to turn around, tightening his grip on the long, sharp dagger up his sleeve.
If someone used a casual approach to get close, it meant they didn’t have a one-hit-kill weapon on them.
In that case — strike first—
The gleaming dagger flashed out toward the newcomer!
A sharp clang rang out. The man stepped back one pace, but Bai Song didn’t merely thrust with the dagger — his entire body launched into the air, knee driving into the man’s chest, sending him stumbling backward, then using the momentum to slam him down onto the floor. The dagger drove downward from above, but halted just short of the man’s chest as if blocked by something, unable to land with any force.
This person had a defensive tool on him. No wonder he dared to hunt newcomers without carrying anything highly offensive.
Missing the first strike, the man made a sudden counterattack — kicking forward and drawing a handgun from his waist with his other hand.
— He hadn’t fired before out of fear of drawing stronger hunters’ attention, but when cornered, deal with the immediate threat first.
Bai Song, however, paid no attention to the hand holding the gun. His eyes were focused, dagger in hand, and he drove it down again.
This time the dagger’s tip pierced through the defensive barrier, and a faint trace of bloody crimson shimmered along the blade.
The man had no offensive mid-grade tools — but Bai Song did. He had taken it from the White Knight who had tried to kill him earlier.
The dagger plunged through the chest twice, and the hand holding the gun went limp, blood blooming from the wound.
Bai Song: “What are you? White or Black?”
“…Wh… White Soldier.”
The next thrust of the dagger found the heart. Silently, a White Soldier chess piece appeared in one of Bai Song’s pockets.
In the close-quarters struggle and stabbing, drops of blood had splattered onto Bai Song’s face.
He stared at the body that had fallen beneath his dagger, and for a moment was in a daze.
He said quietly: “I told you… if you were going to try to kill me, then I’d have to kill you too.”
Windsor had appeared silently at his side at some point.
“You are a believer and soldier of the Eternal Day. Killing an enemy requires no hesitation.” Treating the blood as if it were nothing, the Duke of Windsor smiled his usual smile. “And no excuses or reasons, either.”
Bai Song put away his dagger and also pocketed the defensive tool from his opponent, equipping it for himself.
“I know — Yu-ge brought me back to the Garden in the middle of a war,” Bai Song said. “But I’m afraid of becoming a bad person. Have you noticed, since coming here — it feels like you’ve become a little worse?”
“Yes,” Windsor said.
“So what do we do?”
“Believe in something.” Windsor clapped him on the shoulder. “Look — even Yu-ge found that kind of thing. Don’t you think he seems more settled now?”
“Really?” Bai Song tugged the corner of his mouth. “What exactly are your eyes made of? All I see is him looking through the crowd hoping to spot some pretty older or younger brother with long golden hair and green eyes. See — Yu-ge’s scanning the crowd again. When he looks at people, he checks the right eye first. That’s not how he looks when he’s searching for an enemy.”
This time it was Windsor’s turn to ask with genuine bewilderment: “…What exactly are your eyes made of?”
Bai Song smiled without answering, and went back to the busy intersection to serve as bait once more.
“You don’t kill me, I don’t kill you, I’m a good person…”
“But if you try to kill me, I’ll…”
The sounds of a scuffle rang out. A defensive tool barely, just barely, blocked one attack.
A dagger pressed flat against the enemy’s throat: “What are you? Black or White?”
“…Black. Does it matter?”
“Then go.”
“?”
Bai Song swiftly melted into a nearby row of shelves: “Don’t thank me. I’m a good person.”
Not far away, Windsor was doing the same thing. Yu Feichen had told them to make sure their collected spoils contained more white pieces than black.
Under normal circumstances, they would never have dared to hunt this openly and brazenly.
But right now —
In one sudden, unavoidable face-to-face encounter, Windsor felt himself locked in a lethal killing intent for just one instant — and then the other person crumpled without warning, ceasing to breathe.
Across the distance, Yu Feichen’s silhouette flickered for a moment on a ceiling beam, then silently dispersed.
Windsor suddenly understood why this person’s rates for taking on missions were so high, and yet endless numbers of people still came to pay.
This, perhaps, was what feeling safe meant.
Dusk was drawing in.
Yu Feichen stood by a window on the third floor.
He had pried a small hanging picture off the wall in the fourth-floor art gallery. As evening gradually fell, the painting transformed into the likeness of a black slate, and messages began refreshing across it one by one.
In the department store, customers were thinning out and staff were beginning the shift change. Bai Song and Windsor also wrapped up their work and made their way over to Yu Feichen. After a full day of unrestrained hunting and fighting, they both smelled of blood, and something had shifted subtly in their bearing and their eyes.
No one spoke. Even on the black slate, the idle chatter had grown sparse.
The messages came in orderly rows — they were counting down.
“11.”
“11.”
“11.”
In the sky above, the massive inverted clock had only 11 intervals left before reaching twelve.
“10 now.”
“10.”
“10.”
“AAAAAH, 9!!!”
“9.”
“9.”
“9.”
The atmosphere grew gradually tense and fraught — though the people on the black slate were copying one another as usual.
Bai Song said quietly: “Should we find somewhere safe?”
Windsor straightened his appearance in a full-length mirror, his composure utterly unshaken: “I’ve come to understand one thing — being beside Yu-ge is the safest place there is. Xiao Bai, where did you get the luck to get picked up by Yu-ge? You’ve saved yourself a fortune — spare some for my lending business.”
Bai Song: “How are those two sentences even connected?”
The text on the slate suddenly erupted in commotion.
“Holy crap, it jumped three at once, it’s 6!!!”
“5! It’s 5!!!”
“Oh no oh no, I looked up for one second and it’s already 3.”
The system chime sounded: “Good night, I don’t want to be alive anymore.”
The second hand ticked back one notch.
“??? Killing people at a time like this — have you no sense of decency!!!”
“The countdown crowd has feelings too! The countdown crowd has love too! Why would you waste the emotions of the countdown crowd!”
“Don’t you all want to know what happens when it reaches twelve?”
“No I don’t, things are perfectly fine as they are.”
“Stop arguing, stop arguing — 4.”
“Back to 3.”
“3.”
“3.”
“2.”
“2.”
“1.”
[Acri]: ZERO!!!!!
[BlockFour]: ZERO!!!!!
[BrainDoctor]: ZERO!!!!!
[UnitOne]: ……
**[RedDoll]: What the hell, why didn’t you use a number?
**[CraneGame]: My OCD is ending its own life, it’s ending its own life.
**[Vincent]: Acri, I’m coming for you.
**[Acri]: Come on then, babe — I’ll be waiting at Table 3 in the underground casino~~
**[GoodNightMistyMetropolis]: Let’s not misreport the countdown now ^ ^
At those words, people lifted their heads from the black slate — only to find there was still one interval left before the final twelve.
As if sensing the weight of so many eyes upon it, the blood-red hand trembled against the pale clock face and quietly ticked forward one last notch.
The NPCs stopped moving. The black slate ceased refreshing. Silence fell over the entire city in an instant — as though all the air had been sucked away and time itself had been pressed to a halt.
Only the deep darkness of the night moved. The clock’s hands and markings silently vanished from the face, replaced by a line of blood-red characters slowly coming into view.
At the same moment, an eerie system voice read the words aloud into every person’s ears.
“Welcome back to the Misty Metropolis.”
“Free Hunt has ended.”
“Ordinary kills will no longer yield rewards.”
“The Encirclement Hunt begins.”
“Prey category one: guests with green eyes.”
“Prey category two: guests with golden hair.”
“Prey category three: young guests.”
“Kill reward: high-grade tools.”
“Time limit: three days.”
“Notice: if any prey is missed, all participants will be penalized.”
Having heard all of this, Bai Song found himself suddenly at a loss.
“This…”