Undoubtedly, the figure in the bird-beak mask was human—and a radical one at that. Gades, or the mysterious Inquirer whose true intentions remained unclear, would have hardly tried to destroy Anna the mont they saw her.
As for the stranger's identity, it was impossible to determine. She carried no Spirit Gun, so she might not have been an exorcist. It was equally unlikely she was from the Night's Watch; they rarely acted alone.
An Investigator, perhaps?
It was a sha she wasn't Gades or the Inquirer. Otherwise, Lu Li could have questioned her.
“She’s rather nice,” Anna remarked unexpectedly, her voice filled with undisguised admiration.
Lu Li stared at her, silently watching as the ghost praised the masked figure who had very nearly killed her.
“Why are you looking at
like that? Alright, so there was a small misunderstanding, a little conflict... But she did us a huge favor, didn’t she?” Anna reasoned in her peculiar way, ticking off points on her fingers. “She took the invitation from the swamp creatures. That ans she’ll go to the eting instead of us, and all it cost was her wanting to... well, destroy ...”
Lu Li listened to Anna in silence, letting out a barely perceptible sigh.
He noticed sothing was off about her.
“Isn’t it normal for an exorcist to want to destroy a ghost? It’s nothing, really, nothing at all...”
Anna’s voice grew quieter, and she lowered her head. A mont later, her muffled, sorrowful whisper could be heard.
“Are ghosts really so dangerous? Why are ordinary people afraid of us, and why do exorcists want to destroy us?”
“Perhaps,” Lu Li replied.
Anna’s head snapped up.
Although she knew Lu Li was always painfully direct, hearing those words from him was deeply unsettling. Her chest tightened as if she’d been struck. Even the masked figure’s attack hadn’t made her feel this way.
Lifting her head, Anna saw that Lu Li was staring off to the side with a strange expression.
Easily distracted, Anna followed his gaze and saw he was staring at the leg of the wooden table.
“...?” Anna tilted her head in question.
Watching tentacles sprout from the table leg, writhing like seaweed, Lu Li spoke again. “But that doesn’t matter.”
“You’ve probably heard that the main difference between humans and animals is reason. But there’s sothing else: complex emotions.”
The tentacles on the table leg dissolved like soap bubbles. Lu Li shifted his gaze back to Anna, who still looked puzzled. “People aren’t afraid of ghosts. They’re afraid of the unknown.”
“The unknown...” Anna whispered.
“People naturally feel a strong aversion and wariness toward the unfamiliar, especially if it’s dangerous. It’s unavoidable. It’s even true in relationships between people. A tiger that wanders too close to a village will be killed. A shark spotted near a fishing boat will be killed, too. Sotis it’s for profit, other tis it’s simply because of the danger.”
Anna was losing track of what Lu Li was saying. He always did this: spoke of things she couldn’t quite grasp, yet they seed important and profound.
It was as if he were teaching her to think and live for herself.
Fortunately, Lu Li usually concluded with a summary she could understand. “Most of those who want to harm you don’t do it for any specific reason, but simply because you might pose a threat to them.”
“Therefore, you either have to prove you’re harmless, or you have to beco strong enough.”
Having said this, Lu Li looked away again, this ti toward the fire in the hearth.
The flas coalesced into a ring, forming the vertical pupil of a fiery beast. Anna, sitting opposite him, didn’t react at all.
The pupil stared coldly at Lu Li for a few seconds before vanishing without a trace.
Beco stronger...?
Anna thought.
Yes... If she beca stronger, she wouldn’t have to care about those who wanted to hurt her. If she beca stronger, she could help Lu Li, stand in front of him and protect him from all harm...
Her translucent fists clenched inside her sleeves. Anna desperately wanted to shout, “I’m not weak anymore, Lu Li!”
But sha kept the words from leaving her lips.
“Then from now on, it’s all up to you,” Lu Li said suddenly.
Anna was taken aback. “Huh? ... ? Um... yes...”
She was flustered, but a surge of joy washed over her. What had gotten into him? Since when did he say such nice things?
Timidly raising her eyes to steal a glance at Lu Li, she saw that he was staring into a corner again, this ti at the bed.
From Anna’s perspective, there was nothing there but a pile of clothes from the victims.
But Lu Li saw two shirts rise from the pile and begin to flail their sleeves, as if invisible beings were fighting, using the garnts as puppets.
This trip to Tenebrae had forced Lu Li to use the Spirit Gun to a desperate degree.
Back in Belfast, Lu Li had controlled his contact with the Spirit Gun, never exceeding ten seconds at a ti.
But just two encounters with the evil spirits in Tenebrae had cost him at least thirty seconds, and another thirty or so were spent after he entered the swamp.
In a single day, Lu Li had been in contact with the Spirit Gun for over a minute.
Normalcy, hallucinations, insanity.
Of the three stages of Mind Level decay, Lu Li was already in the stage of illusion.
He was the only one who could see the endless hallucinations.
The only good news was that the negative effects of the Spirit Gun weren’t an irreversible fall into the abyss, as Gades had claid.
Although his Mind Level recovered very slowly.
In any case, the Spirit Gun and his other anomalies were unusable for the ti being.
That was why Lu Li had said that everything now depended on Anna.
Anna flew out of the hut to check the sky, then returned to the fire and mumbled, “It’s as dark as night out there. I don’t know when this downpour will end.”
“Have there been storms like this in recent years?” Lu Li asked.
Anna thought for a mont. “There have been, but never this strong. It feels like the end of the world...”
The storm had co from the east, from the direction of Belfast. If the storm clouds were vast enough, then Belfast itself was likely plunged into darkness.
It seed that even the city was no longer safe...
The storm showed no signs of letting up, so Lu Li decided to use the hut as a temporary shelter and rest until the downpour weakened.
Anna, of course, had no objection and volunteered to keep watch.
The thought of becoming stronger and protecting Lu Li had taken root in her heart.
Lu Li nodded without a word. He tucked his still-damp but fire-ward coat beneath him and curled up by the hearth.
His back was to Anna.
It had nothing to do with trust—he simply couldn’t rest with soone watching him.
“Are you asleep?” Anna asked softly after a while.
“No.”
“Thinking about sothing?”
“Yes.”
"I hope the creatures from the swamp will leave us be."
Lu Li thought.
In the quiet, cozy warmth of the hut, his breathing gradually evened out.
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