Almost towering at 12 meters average, the titans of the Void began flooding the forest. Familiar traits from a modern era's equipment could be seen possessed by them, such as grayish dark trench coats, tall trench boots muddied by dark substances, and a helmet of an infantryman.
What made their appearance even more striking are the gas masks they breathed through. Yet, it felt as if there was no air that got inside the filter of that breathing instrument.
While the description of these titanic humanoids were eerily close to the one on earth, there was one thing that I was assured about.
They aren't humans.
Even though the space barrier deflected any sound to come in, we could still hear the dreaded screams.
A silent one.
Yet it was there.
Screaming its existence through the concept of fear and ineffable causality.
It had been an hour since we isolated our space to the outside world.
But the fatigue that was smoldering our mind began to show cracks as time went on.
Seeing Shujang and I tried our best to maintain this safe haven of ours, Micca started to get restless too.
She might have felt a little bit pressured too for not being able to help commencing this plan, as her concentration level was not enough to perform a Transfering Blooming for an indefinite amount of time.
That girl was a prideful one after all.
Two hours had passed.
We might have reached 02:00 beyond midnight.
Our mechs were stationed lifelessly outside of the barrier, yet none of them were touched by the ongoing rampage of the Screamers.
It made me wonder on what kind of criteria that fits the requirement to be their prey.
Maybe because the mechs didn't possess a shred of soul.
Nonetheless, the tormenting discomfort that was latching on the back of my mind had been growing relentlessly since we passed the first hour mark.
Despite that, I still focused my Blooming like every bit of my life had been happening just for this moment,
Maintaining the opening of the soul.
Vacuum the ENEs out of the space's knocks and cranny.
Harvesting the energy, along with the fused ENEs and transferring them directly to Shujang's power plant of a soul like a relentless courier going back and forth.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
We only needed to reach the five hour mark.
Three hours left! And everything will end up just fine. I'll make a much more decent breakfast than the feast we had back then. This is my second life! And it is the fantasy world that I have been dreaming and longing since the day my humanity cradled my fool's gold heart!
We better survive or else, to see a better tomorrow and the blazing sun engraving its warmth on our skin like it was any normal day. Listening to the story bits that Shujang proudly preached, there should be a civilization outside of this forest, along with their culture and application of magic for their daily mundane life!
Maybe there is a magic academy! I will very much want to go there! Maybe enroll Micca and have the two of us bond over magic together, wouldn't that be great?
And it wasn't only me, Micca seemed to be brighter than the first time she said her first word to me. She might be the one who wanted to survive this more than anyone else.
Shujang was also trying her best. Veins were ever so tightened for an unhealthy amount of duration. Blood was streaming down from her eyes, ears, and gritting teeth. Yet, the determination to be the one to carry the three of us out from this hot mess appeared to be brighter than the view that Icarus saw when his wings were burned down by his hubris.
I held my optimism high every second, my soul getting chained to the underground and the billow. That optimism was a strength. It was also unclouded and free beyond any reign.
But a single shiver of a familiar feeling enveloping my mind was enough to shatter that determination. Once again, just like that time when the Unruly One appeared right before my own eyes, a malaise of ineffable existence began to slide inside the back corner of my soul, taking a first class seat just to let me know that it was there.
This time however, that entity came with a much more detailed message than a single word.
It spoke to me, like an old mate who I met in the starlight bar.
"Tell me, friend, have you heard the call to peep beyond the veil?"
One of the Screamers near the barrier began to point their giant rifle into the ground, shooting a round into the surface of mother nature.
Patch of darkness began to expand from the hole created by the bullet, splitting and converging again and again as it began to cover more ground.
Eventually, one of those darkness touched our spatial barrier.
The edges of the spatial barrier were immediately corroded, covered by the squirming tint of darkness as it slowly blurred the whole hue to the outside world.
"Tell me, friend, do you hear the shadows sing?"
Numerous incendiary wisps began to pass through the barrier as if it didn't exist, before each of them transforming into a fidgeting eye branch latching to the barrier.
Shrieks of the damned began to reel into our ears in a momentum faster than the speed of a machine gun barrel, attempting to put everyone inside the barrier into madness.
Yet we held on.
"Tell me, friend, do you think one day the calamities might prevail?"
Micca, being the only one who could move at the moment, began leaning forward with a readied claw as she pulled out one of the automatic rifles on her bag, immediately performed a short Blooming to enhance her body using the Enhancement Magic.
Flurry of devastating attacks were unleashed by the tiny demon, as the eyelets dropped one by one onto the floor, tainting the reality that they touched.
Amongst the eyelets, a bright silhouette of a tendril began to manifest from the ground. The moment they appeared in Micca's sight, they were immediately reaped by her claws, sprayed by her volley of penetrating bullets.
"Tell me, friend."
But there were too many of them. Eventually, a single tendril managed to slunk through the desperate defense that Micca displayed.
And it began lunging at me.
"Do you believe in such a thing?"
Bloods were scattered in the air, painting a radiant arc onto the surface of the tree we leaned for our dear life.
And as I didn't possess an ounce of blood within my bodily system, someone must have taken the bitter shank for me.
It was Shujang, with her knightley back showcasing her graceful existence forevermore.
Without wasting a single moment, I forced my usual blunt end into an extremely sharp edge, searing a hot disdain akin to a ripped muscle. The steel was swung, amputating the tendril from the ground. Following after, was the same very steel I formed into blade splitting, branching, and piercing the remains of the tendril on Shujang's body, making sure that every impurity and tainting molecules were completely extracted from her physical vessel.
"You appear to be a person who treasures his memory." Blood was coughed, yet her smile was etching on her face, immovable. "It would be sad if you were to lose them more."
"Silly goose."
With the barrier gone, connecting the three of us once again to the world of horror beyond our former haven of hope, every attention of the Screamers in the vicinity began to shift into our position.
Simultaneously, I activated all of the eleven mechs.
"Micca!"
"Yes!"
The two of us began to perform our Blooming.
We performed them in a much more volatile manner than usual, attaining the needed energy within a faster time than usual.
At one second mark, I gave all of my energy into Micca's soul.
Using our combined volatile energy, Micca cast a massive firestorm all over the vicinity, turning the age of darkness into an age of blessing pyre and undaunting revolution.
The mechs were also quick to disturb the Screamers' attempt to aim their guns at us. Some of them managed to extract a chunk of their otherworldly flesh from their throats despite them relentlessly regenerating.
Immediately after performing an exhaustive Blooming, I performed another subsequent Blooming.
This time, it was to reconstruct Shujang's body and to clear as many taints done to her soul.
Shujang giggled. "Looks like it's do or die, huh?"
I managed to heal the wound and the hole on her armor was brand new. As for the taint on her soul, it wasn't anything serious, as Shujang immediately cast a healing spell to remove all of them, almost painstakingly even.
"What do you think, Micca?" I shouted.
Her heart was in fervent beats. "Why die if we can survive?" she said with an annoying smug, despite looking like a fish who was gasping for breath.
"It's settled then." I performed another blooming of mine. This time, it was faster than the usual thanks to the adrenaline that had just kicked in. I manifested two automatic turrets like in that one game I played on earth, along with an exorbitant amount of explosive to lighten up the night. "We will survive."