Chapter 1 Echoes

Sounds echoed in the depths of the corridor, mixed and indistinct.

There seemed to be a chilling wind, muffled murmurs, the sound of dense footsteps, and gunfire.

Everything was mixed together, everything had lost its distinct boundaries, and the whole world seemed to be gradually kneaded into a ball, with no front, back, left, or right, and no yesterday or today—just like the dim corridor filled with mist, drowsy and seemingly able to swallow everything.

A hunched old man walked slowly down the corridor, his footsteps faltering. The large wrench in his hand occasionally struck the pipes on the nearby wall, making a dull, strange clanging sound.

Who am I? Where is this place? Where am I going? Why am I going there?

The attack has begun… midnight is the time for the Queen's Guard to launch an attack, but what exactly are they attacking? And in which direction?

Disjointed and fragmented thoughts, distant and faded memories, surfaced in Old Ghost's muddled mind from time to time, but soon they all dissolved back into his confused brain. He sometimes felt as if he were walking on two diverging paths, with chaotic perceptions and experiences intertwined in his body, but at other times, he felt as if he had been standing still, waiting for orders for fifty years.

The large wrench struck something, making a clang. Old Ghost lowered his head sluggishly and saw that it was a helmet—black, narrow-brimmed, with the insignia of the Queen's Guard, something from fifty years ago, no longer seen today.

He stared blankly at the helmet as it fell to the ground and rolled into the drainage ditch to the side. Something seemed to struggle to climb out of the ditch, but it quickly merged with the surrounding darkness and disappeared.

He grunted incoherently and continued to walk into the darkness, as if gradually entering a pool of condensed, black mud. After an unknown amount of time, he finally stopped at the end of the corridor.

Intertwined pipes, collapsed rubble, and smoke and black matter surging between the rocks—these things blocked the old man's path. He stopped here, looking around in confusion.

He didn't recognize this place; he didn't even remember there being such a place in the Second Waterway, but he stopped here because… there was something waiting for him to complete.

Old Ghost lowered his head and looked at a pool of water next to the rubble. In the water, his confused eyes were reflected.

What did I come here to do?

Just then, a strange scene was suddenly reflected in the water—

Queen's Guard soldiers trampled through the endless swarms of monsters in the corridor. The guns and bayonets in their hands turned wave after wave of counterfeit freaks into cold, dried mud. Where they passed, no more sludge seeped from the walls, and even the darkness in the corridor seemed to recede.

Everything was as Lawrence had guessed: the existence of the Queen's Guard itself was suppressing the "pollution" in this mirror city-state.

If the events in this city-state were seen as a confrontation between two forces, then the sludge monsters and the Queen's Guard were clearly the manifestations of these two opposing forces—and this kind of opposition and entanglement may have lasted for half a century.

Lawrence led the Marine squad, running swiftly through the corridor. Following the path opened up by the Queen's Guard, they covered a distance in ten minutes that had previously taken them hours to break through. Along the way, Lawrence was constantly observing and thinking.

He was trying to understand the nature of this Queen's Guard and to establish communication with these phantoms, but all his attempts failed.

The Queen's Guard couldn't see him and didn't even notice the presence of these uninvited guests. The soldiers were like a memory projected from a distant history, mechanically repeating a battle that had taken place decades ago. They advanced, shot, fought, fell… and all of this probably happened every day for the past few decades.

Martha's intelligence about the Queen's Guard was correct, but obviously not entirely correct.

He couldn't establish cooperation with these "helpers."

"Captain! They can't see us, what should we do?" A sailor ran over and said loudly beside Lawrence, "Just running along with them, a dozen of us, doesn't seem to be helping much, does it?"

Lawrence looked complex, and subconsciously looked at the small mirror on his chest, but Martha's voice came from it first: "Don't ask me, I don't know what to do about the situation in front of me—I just know about their existence, I haven't dealt with them..."

As she spoke, the faint sound of artillery fire came from the mirror: Martha was obviously busy, and the situation was no simpler than it was in the sewers.

"The Queen's Guard has just been repeating this battle all these years?" Lawrence asked loudly, "Then the outcome of each battle is the same?!"

"Yes, the outcome is the same every time. They appear at midnight and recede at the next hour. They can't break through the obstacles at the end every time!"

Can't break through the obstacles at the end?

Hearing this, Lawrence subconsciously looked up at the direction the phantom soldiers were charging.

They were rushing towards the depths of the corridor. In that dark and chaotic space, the浓郁 malice was like substantial sludge, churning in his perception.

"I understand!" Lawrence suddenly said loudly.

Martha's voice came from the mirror: "What do you understand?!"

However, Lawrence couldn't bother answering the question of the person in the mirror. After vaguely realizing what he should do, he immediately took his men and ran forward at a faster pace.

At the same time, the battle in the corridor was also becoming more intense. The Queen's Guard was launching a final charge—countless warriors condensed from phantoms roared, using the weapons in their hands to eliminate the monsters blocking their path. Soldiers fell one after another, turning into bubbles dissipating in the air. Monsters also fell one after another, turning into sludge flowing into the drainage ditches on both sides. As this fierce battle continued, the entire charge gradually reached the end of the corridor.

Lawrence finally saw the end of this fierce battle, saw the obstacle that had been blocking the Queen's Guard for half a century—

It was a door, a door covered with countless overgrown thorns and turbid black mud, its appearance frightening and terrifying.

On the surface of the door, the crisscrossing thorns were like a crown formed by dry branches, and dim specks of light wandered irregularly in the depths of the thorns, as if countless eyes were hidden in the depths of the thorns. Ordinary people would be seized by fear and madness in their hearts with just one glance in that direction.

Even Lawrence, who had now transformed into a spirit fire carrier, couldn't help but feel a jolt in his mind and a buzzing in his head when he saw the door blocked by the thorns.

And that was the target of the Queen's Guard's assault.

In front of the door, countless black sludge was gathering, and countless monsters were appearing in the sludge—they were clumsily imitating the appearance of humans, with soldiers wearing city-state guard uniforms and navy uniforms, as well as pirates and armed civilians with all kinds of equipment, and even… ancient cannons and demon-like monsters piled up from skeletons.

These monsters relied on the crude fortifications in the hall, guarding the Thorn Gate as if fanatically guarding their master.

The final battle began.

The Queen's Guard poured all their firepower onto the monsters on the opposite side of the corridor. The latter's counterattack shook the entire Second Waterway. Both sides lost more than half of their combat power in the blink of an eye, and Lawrence and the mere dozen sailors he brought could only try to find a hidden place on the edge of this devastating and tragic battlefield.

In such a dense barrage of fire, even Lawrence, protected by the spirit fire, didn't dare gamble whether he would really not die.

But he wasn't just hiding—he was observing.

He was observing the extent of what the Queen's Guard had accomplished in this battle.

As the battle continued, and as both sides suffered constant attrition, the defensive forces in front of the door finally weakened—those deadly cannons and demon creatures were torn to pieces, and gaps began to appear in the line of defense in front of the thorns.

"Demolition team! Go!"

Lawrence, hiding next to the Queen's Guard position, suddenly heard a voice, the voice of a commander of the Guard.

The next second, he caught a glimpse of several figures crawling forward on the edge of the battlefield.

A squad broke away from the main position and entered the drainage ditch on the edge of the hall in the blind spots of those monsters, moving little by little along the ditch towards the hidden side of the Thorn Gate.

At the same time, the firepower from the front position suddenly intensified, with dense bullets pouring over, trying to suppress and attract the attention of the monsters in front of the door.

Lawrence suddenly held his breath unconsciously—even though he knew that this might just be a phantom that would not be affected by the outside world, he still did so subconsciously.

But what he was worried about still happened as scheduled.

The demolition team approaching the Thorn Gate along the edge of the battlefield was discovered.

A series of bullets struck the drainage ditch, and several soldiers carrying demolition equipment fell into the ditch in an instant.

But almost at the same time, another demolition team entered the dark channel on the other side of the hall, continuing to crawl towards the door covered in thorns.

They were also discovered—the second demolition team fell only a dozen meters away from the Thorn Gate.

Just then, a sailor's low cry suddenly entered Lawrence's ears: "They're disappearing!"

Lawrence immediately looked up, and the scene in the corridor came into his eyes—

The Queen's Guard was disappearing.

After the second demolition team's action failed, all the Guard soldiers suddenly froze for a moment. Then, the figures of each of them began to fade and dissipate. A third of them had become translucent phantoms in the blink of an eye!

What Martha had said suddenly floated into Lawrence's mind:

"...They can't break through the obstacles at the end every time..."

Lawrence suddenly understood the meaning of this sentence, understood the ending of each battle—the Queen's Guard had failed. Despite fighting all the time, despite stubbornly repeating, the unchangeable fact was that in this "last counterattack" at midnight, they had failed.

This operation failed fifty years ago.

Every repetition after that was repeating this failure.

Lawrence was momentarily dazed, but just then, he suddenly saw another figure appear on the battlefield.

It was a figure rushing out from the corner of the hall, a phantom that had not yet begun to dissipate.

Lawrence's and all the sailors' gazes were instantly drawn to that figure.

He wasn't a soldier, but a young man who looked like an army engineer, wearing deep blue coarse cloth overalls and a slanting-mouthed soft hat that was popular half a century ago. On his belt, in addition to a pistol and bullet pouch, hung a large wrench.

He rushed towards the ditch, towards the explosive device left by the second demolition team, and then, holding the wooden box full of explosives, quickly crawled towards the Thorn Gate.

In that instant, Lawrence almost thought he was going to succeed.

However, a bullet flew over, and the young man seemed to have been hit hard on the shoulder by an iron hammer. Half of his body shook violently, and he fell a few meters away from the Thorn Gate.

The entire hall seemed to fall silent in an instant.

The final counterattack was over.

All the Queen's Guard soldiers began to dissipate faster, and this phantom that had been repeating for fifty years returned to its origin.

Perhaps, this was the last repetition.

Lawrence stared blankly at the young man who fell last.

The "last Queen's Guard," the last casualty, his fall seemed to be the "focus" of this constantly repeating battle.

But suddenly, Lawrence woke up from his daze.

He jumped out of his hiding place, and amidst the sailors' gazes and exclamations, the old captain ran like the wind towards the place where the last person had fallen.

The hall, which had already fallen into silence, was "disturbed" by his sudden "intervention." Those monsters that had not yet dissipated reacted almost instantly, and chaotic, noisy roars and the roar of weapons firing suddenly rang out!

The sailors' shouts came from behind: "Cover the Captain!"

However, Lawrence seemed unable to hear these sounds. He just lowered his head and charged forward. He seemed to have been shot several times, but that was unimportant to him. He rushed through half the hall, jumped into the ditch, and lunged at the final explosive device, reaching out his hand—

Then, his fingers passed through the box of explosives.

Lawrence fell somewhat awkwardly into the ditch, looking at the scene in front of him in a daze.

Like the surrounding Queen's Guard, the box of explosives was also a phantom to him.

The explosive device that had not been detonated fifty years ago could not be detonated today by him, a "latecomer."

Bullets whistled over, hitting the ground nearby. Roars grew louder, and some sludge monsters had rushed into the ditch to tear him to pieces.

Lawrence, however, was still staring blankly at the box of explosives, only feeling a great sense of absurdity and mockery.

But at that moment, something suddenly moved in the corner of his eye.

The old captain looked up in astonishment and saw that it was the young man who had just fallen who had suddenly moved.

The young man with the large wrench hanging from his waist trembled, slowly raised his head, and fixed his gaze on the person in front of him, who was covered in strange green flames and dressed as a captain.

Lawrence was stunned for a moment before suddenly realizing, "You can see me?!"

The young man, however, seemed not to have heard the question, and his lips were moving, as if he were rapidly repeating something. He repeated it several times before Lawrence could barely hear what he was saying—

"...Seen it, that's right, I've seen this flame... I've seen it..."

"Seen it? Flame? What are you talking about?"

Lawrence widened his eyes in astonishment and couldn't help but ask.

The young man didn't answer, he just kept repeating, kept repeating, and in the midst of this repetition, he actually climbed up little by little, covered in blood, but slowly climbed up!

Under Lawrence's incredulous gaze, the blood-soaked young man picked up the final explosive device, grunted and climbed up the retaining wall next to the slope, muttering something while staggering towards the Thorn Gate.

Lawrence heard what the other party was muttering, but it was all content he couldn't understand. It sounded like a series of names—

"Nemo... General Tirian... Raven..."

The blood-soaked figure staggered and muttered like that.

But he didn't even take a few steps.

Just as he climbed onto the flat ground, several gunshots came from the opposite side, and the blood-soaked figure fell.

But almost the moment he fell, an old, hunched figure suddenly stood up from the place where he fell.

Lawrence watched this scene in disbelief. He saw the position where the old man appeared—he stood up from a pool of blood.

He was the reflection in the blood of the young man when he died.

"Ah, I've finally arrived..."

The hunched old man bent down, picked up the last box of explosives, and then a smile suddenly bloomed on his face, a smile that was incomprehensible and extremely bright.

"I've arrived!"

He said loudly, he laughed loudly, he picked up the box of explosives, happily lit its fuse, and then rushed towards the Thorn Gate almost gleefully, holding it.

"I've arrived!"

"Engineer Wilson reporting for duty!"

"Engineer Wilson requesting to return to the team!"

"I've arrived!"

"Boom!!!"

A earth-shattering explosion shook the entire hall, as well as every corridor connected to the hall.