CHAPTER 44: CHAPTER 43: PARADISE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST (17)

Just moments before the spirits transformed into monsters, Lenor the one who resembled Eleanor the one who believed she was Eleanor was wandering the central square.

She felt lost. She didn’t know who she was.

She wasn’t Eleanor and she wasn’t Lenor. She was nothing more than something born from other people’s memories of someone who had already died.

Whenever she looked at her hand, she no longer saw a human shape. She saw a hand made entirely of mist.

And while she was drowning in her own thoughts, she noticed from afar the spirits gathering in the square as they began to twist into monsters.

The moment she saw that, the first thing she thought of was Oliver. Immediately she pushed aside every other thought and ran to look for him.

During that same moment, Oliver was standing in front of the duplicate of the Great Autumn Spirit, which hadn’t moved from its place.

He turned his head around. The scene he had seen once before was beginning to repeat itself.

Seeing that made him freeze. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything. He just stood there, staring at the scene as it unfolded again.

He looked toward the Great Autumn Spirit or rather its duplicate floating silently above the ground.

Its face wasn’t clear, as if a thick haze covered it. Its wings were larger than the real ones, and even its shape felt more terrifying.

He stood still as one of the transformed spirits lunged at him, but his attention was still fixed entirely on the duplicate. On its face.

The monster, or rather the spirit turned into a monster, was inches away from striking him when Lenor suddenly appeared, sprinting toward him from afar, and shoved him out of the way at the last second.

Oliver fell to the ground, but quickly raised his head.

Right in front of him, the monster was devouring her.

Oliver’s eyes widened. He didn’t move. He didn’t react.

His mind was fighting itself. In those few horrible moments, he kept trying to convince himself she wasn’t Eleanor. That she was just an imitation created from their memories.

But Lenor even as her body was being torn apart by that spirit lifted her hand toward Oliver.

"Run Oliver, now!"

It was the exact same tone of voice as the real Eleanor. The same way she used to speak. The same sound in his memories.

That alone was enough to freeze him in place even longer.

He watched her get devoured right in front of him, completely unable to do anything.

He was suffocating in a massive conflict inside his head, until the spirit finished devouring Lenor and slowly turned its face toward him, ready to leap.

But then Aria arrived. She raised her hand and a barrier appeared in front of Oliver, slamming the spirit away.

She rushed toward him, chaos raging behind her as other spirits hunted down people across the square.

"Why are you sitting like this? Do you want to die?"

Oliver didn’t respond. His eyes were still locked on Lenor’s mangled remains.

Before Aria could take another step, the duplicate of the Great Autumn Spirit began moving toward them.

Aria lifted her hand fast, forming a solid wall of stone.

But the duplicate pierced through it in a single strike from one of its massive vines.

Aria jumped back, trying to regain her balance.

Vines shot toward her from every direction.

Each strike missed her by a hair.

On the other side, Oliver still didn’t move.

He sat on the ground, his back slumped, his hands limp on his thighs, his eyes glued to Eleanor’s corpse.

He heard nothing. Not the screaming, not the chaos. Just one image replaying in his head.

Meanwhile, the Sage was sprinting for his life between the spirits.

He never expected things to turn into this... not this violently.

While running, he spotted Lemur fleeing from a large cluster of the twisted spirits with elongated limbs and melting faces.

The Sage shouted for him to run away in the opposite direction, but Lemur for reasons beyond logic decided to sprint straight toward him of all places.

The disaster was that the spirits chasing Lemur followed with him, and suddenly both he and Lemur were being chased by an enormous horde.

Dozens of spirits large and small thundered after them.

Elsewhere, Aria was fighting the duplicate of the Great Autumn Spirit alone.

Every time she lifted her hand, another wall formed. Every time she moved, she floated lightly above the ground, barely dodging the rapid strikes.

Lemur, Allen, and the rest who were celebrating just minutes ago were now running in terror.

Every one of them was looking frantically for a way out.

The square had turned into a second massacre, identical to the one that happened in the real village.

Mariana was running while holding the hand of the man who looked like her father, with her mother pushing them forward from behind.

Then the imitation fell, and the mother rushed to lift Mariana again before continuing to run.

The exact same scene from the first festival repeated itself.

People’s faces grew more and more blurry as time went on.

And in the middle of all of it, Oliver was still on the ground, while Aria stood firm beside him, blocking any attack aimed their way.

She quickly raised both hands and formed a fully closed barrier around them, then turned to him.

"Kid, get up right now, fast. We need to go. I can’t hold this thing off for long."

Oliver blinked twice, lifted his head, shook it hard, then forced himself up.

He barely regained his balance when the barrier shattered under the strike of one of the spirit’s vines.

The duplicate lunged at them.

But from far away, a gunshot rang out.

The bullet hit the duplicate of the Great Autumn Spirit.

A burst of blinding light exploded upon impact, flooding the area for several moments before slowly fading.

Oliver turned toward the source of the shot.

The masked man was standing not far away, holding his gun firmly, arm raised slightly, his eye locked onto the duplicate.