It was dark, as always. The same is true of the rain, which never stops falling, as always. Nostramo often rains, but there is no thunder or lightning, only a manic curtain of rain that pours down.

In Nostramo, rain is just that. They don't come from nature. They are the waste water that the nobles dumped from the upper nest.

Between the cascading minarets, countless heaters are waiting patiently.

They are unconscious, but programmed. All their lives, they have been waiting for these rains, waiting for them to turn into condensed clouds. In the last moments of life, these rains will rise again little by little in another form.

They would be transported quietly through ancient machines, rumbling through pipes, and eventually turned into heating for the nobles, who could dance in the ornate courts wearing only human skins.

This is simply the best description of Nostramo's ecology: the benefits belong to the nobility, and the people who descend from the nest deserve nothing more than the scorched skin of the acid rain, the stench, and finally the rotten corpses in the gutter.

Carlil was still crouched on the giant gargoyle, his cloak so hard that the acid rain couldn't hurt him. The smell is still sour, but it's tolerable.

He stared down, and the chaos that greeted him sent a grim smile to his pale face.

As he expected, the Wraith made the same mistake that every fledgling hunter makes—he only cares about the enemies in front of him, and forgets to pay attention to those who remain in the dark.

Carelessness is always the number one enemy.

Hunters can come and go in the dark, but that doesn't mean the darkness contains them. In fact, the darkness will also turn into monsters at certain moments, devouring their flesh and blood.

Carlil stood up, his cloak slightly blown in the wind. He didn't mean to help, he just watched from the sidelines.

Like he said, it's a solitary hunt that belongs only to the ghosts.

But......

He shook his head with a sneer, a deep cold blue light in his eyes flashing.

-----------------

Escape.

Spirits leapt and forth between the dark, damp walls. He climbed one rooftop after another, using his hands and feet, jumping between the bricks and tiles that had become damp from the rain.

Sometimes, small exclamations of apprehension and fear could be heard from the bricks beneath his feet. But most of the time, it's the bullets that greet him.

Occasionally, he would fall, into a puddle of garbage or dirty mud, and then crawl out in embarrassment and continue running.

He didn't stop for a moment.

But to no avail, the pursuers behind him had been chasing him for most of the night. At the moment, it seems that they still have no intention of stopping.

They chased him through the streets, relying on a two-wheeled fast-moving vehicle. The ghost didn't know its name, and it really didn't bother to care. He has more urgent things to do.

The gunfire rang out in the rain and never stopped.

The bullets whizzed by, and on several occasions they even grazed his scalp.

Rough shouts came from the street beneath their feet, mingling with the roar of engines. By the time they made their way through the rain curtain to the wraith's eardrums, they no longer sounded like human voices.

The ghost doesn't understand.

He didn't understand why they were so obsessed, why they were so crazy, and how they had such good eyesight while being on drugs for many years.

But......

The ghost thought, Carlil wasn't wrong.

He really should have kept quiet.

He killed the woman, but more. Carlil said to clean up the entire gang. So he walked out of the door of that room and began to kill inside the gloomy three-story building.

Things were going well, and no one noticed him. He took away the warmth of life like a breeze blowing through the corridor. But he forgot one thing.

He forgot to close the window.

The rain whistled in, and the wind blew the windows, making it bang against the walls. The floor gradually soaked with the sour rain, mixed with blood and seeping under the carpet, eventually penetrating the floor and falling on top of someone's head.

That's where things start to get bad.

The moment the sirens and roars pierced the night, the wraith realized that something was about to happen. His hunch had always been correct, and he immediately chose to leave, but it was too late.

He was still discovered.

At first, just a few scattered chasers. In just a few minutes, they had grown to more than three dozen people.

After just half an hour, that number became triple digits. As for now, the Wraith believes that at least four or more gangs are chasing him.

They don't even know what's going on, but they like to be violent.

It is an acquired right, the opposite of being oppressed, and the end of suffering.

They entered it contentedly, running through the night for the flesh of a man they had never met, shouting with excitement and slaughtering all the innocents they saw along the way.

There is no reason to follow.

It's like a carnival, and he's not the one who participates, he's just a prize for the carnival, so he starts running.

Every human being has to learn to walk, and then learn to run, and he is no exception. He had learned to run a long time ago, without a teacher.

It's just that, in the past, his superhuman physical strength made him never feel the fatigue of running.

Now, the ghost feels it.

Breathing became difficult, and his heart was beating so fast that it almost made it difficult for him to keep his body balanced between exercises.

His hearing also began to fade, leaving only a monotonous noise. The rain fell from the sky, soaking his clothes and leaving sinuous lines on his pale skin.

Many of them even crossed the corners of his eyes and dripped from his chin. They make ordinary people feel burning pain, but to the ghost, he only feels warmth.

But he didn't want that. He didn't want to be warmed by them.

Running, the ghost unconsciously let out a low growl.

It was born from his throat, but not familiar to him. At the first second of the voice, he mistakenly thought it was some monster yelling at him in the dark.

It wasn't until the next second that he realized it was his own voice.

- And then came the pain.

Swept away from his back, the pain was dying, the pain made him almost unable to resist, unable to breathe, unable to keep his mind calm.

Unable to balance any longer, his hands fluttering in the rain before he fell hard, slumping on a sheet of asphalt roof.

I'm bleeding. The ghost thought bitterly.

He would not miss the cruel fact that blood is somehow indistinguishable from life. He values them, but he can't keep them away.

In a trance, the ghosts heard their voices.

"Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Silly child, we are leaving you, and darkness will embrace you. Welcome to it. ”

No. Don't leave. Please.

The ghost let out a faint roar from its throat again.

This is not the first time he has been hit by a bullet.

Back in the day, when the ghost was still living on rats in a mine, he was shot by the mine's owner with a low-quality firearm.

Seconds after the projectile touched his flesh and caused him pain, the ghost, who couldn't even speak, realized that he was being shot.

He didn't even need to think about it, and the matter suddenly popped out of his mind. Then there were more cold words – the type of gun that shot him, the caliber of the bullet, what to do after being wounded......

This time was no exception.

He lay on the cold roof, and a few strange terms welled up in his mind. One of them was what he needed so badly right now, but the ghost didn't bother with them, he just wanted to get up and keep running.

It was the biggest mistake he made tonight.

I have to leave.

I have to ...... Get away from the darkness.

His mind was confused, and it was only after he felt a tugging and pain in his back that felt as if even his flesh was about to be torn apart.

And I realized one thing.

The thing buried deep in the flesh of his back was not a bullet.

"Got it!"

No. No. I can't—

The ghost's eyes widened and he let out a terrible growl. The pain clouded his eyes with a blood-red mist, and to make matters worse, something was pulling him down.

What's underneath?

He didn't know.

Is it the ground? Or a trash can in a dirty alley? Or maybe it's hundreds of gang members with guns in their hands, waiting for him?

He didn't have time to think, and he began to fall. The ghost landed heavily on the ground, and he quickly got to his feet, using his hands and feet, and climbed up the wall again, trying to escape in panic.

"You can't run away!" Someone said with a sinister smile. "Let's try this, you bastard!"

The screeching sound of the engine rang out in the next moment, and the tugging sensation hit again.

The wraith roared and was pulled down from the wall again, the corner of his eye catching three of the kind of bipedal vehicles used to chase him. A pitch-black cable ran from his back to the front of the three vehicles.

The pull he felt came from them.

"Kill it!"

At the mouth of the dark alley, someone shouted violently: "Skin it, hang it, let it bleed to death!" ”

"I want its head, I want its head!"

"Shoot it! Shoot its legs! Let's see if it can run! ”

"Why don't you roast it, I want to eat meat!"

Must leave.

I have to ...... Get out of here, out of the darkness.

In a chaotic mind, only these two thoughts floated and fell. The ghost roared and waved his arms, trying to keep the monsters away from him. But he didn't, his hands sliding through the air, sharp nails digging into the walls, failing to touch any flesh.

"It's still moving!" Someone yelled.

"Then give it some color!"

A sharp pain came, and then his consciousness went dark.

The wraith watched in despair as it arrived.