“Will the two of you please shut the fuck up for a moment?  Goddamn~… The most important thing is that we need to get the hell off of this island!  If possible, I would like to avoid needing to shoot anyone and what ‘Yao Wei’ scrolls?!  Yaoi?  Your historical documents are probably all hentai manga!”

After I yelled at the two of them, Jasmine gasped in shock and asked “How did you know?!”

Scarlet grumbled “Little Human, it’s extremely impolite to read peoples minds…”

I unconsciously retorted “What the fucking fuck are you talking about!  Aside from the fact that I definitely can’t read minds, as far as I know, haven’t the two of you been doing that to me since the moment we met?!”

“Woah~, woah~, calm down~… I’ve heard that you inferior organics tend to suffer from ailments if they’re excessively aggravated.  So you should try to relax a bit.” That deep voice was soothing, but the fact that he wasn’t even intentionally goading me on was even more annoying than if he was trying to piss me off!

“Levi, who are you ta-talking t-to?  Ewwy~, why is your Qi so gross right now?  It-it feels, ugh~, I don’t feel very good…” I closed my left eyelid really tightly and couldn’t help but have my mouth open wide, as horrible pains shot throughout my face, arms and even legs.  Then I noticed that the veins in my deathly-pale hands were starting to turn black.  A layer of frost was building up on my skin, but it felt like my blood was on fire at the same time.

My hands were shaking so much that I said “Fuck it!” and just holstered my revolver again.  I coughed up a mouthful of bubbling purple and green blood, then vomited out what literally looked like squid-ink.

As I struggled to walk downhill, through a creepy jungle, the ground would rumble every few seconds.  Not only that, but every time that motherfucking wolf would howl, I lost a lot of weird colorful liquids.  Xiaotong nervously asked “L-Levi?  Are you okay?  It feels like… Like you’re dying… Please don’t die!  I don’t want to be alone again!”

“Shit, please don’t jinx me!  Ow~, I really do feel like I’m dying again though… Well, I’ve only died once, so I guess I don’t really have enough experience to know for sure though…” It took a few minutes, but I eventually found a river that was flowing all the way from the top of the mountain, down into the ocean.  For a few moments, I contemplated jumping in and letting the current carry me, but then I saw a gigantic fifteen-foot long, Silver Tigerfish swim by.  It was tearing apart the carcass of a Silver Direwolf; you know, like the kind that me and the others had to struggle to kill?

Actually, I was less worried about that massive bastard and more concerned about the pitch-black piranhas that were traveling in schools.  They weren’t very big or strong individually, but they were small enough that I would have a hard time killing any of them.  No, there was an even bigger reason why I didn’t jump into the water… My bags would get soaked.

“Uh, umm, can’t you just put your stuff into the Lunar Sphere though?” That quiet, high-pitched voice echoed within my brainbox for a moment.

However, Scarlet swiftly answered “No, no he can’t.  It requires an enormous amount of mana for us to just barely activate the Lunar Sphere.  Unless it’s an emergency, or there’s something really cool, we shouldn’t waste our energy on it.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that…” Yeah, well, the two of them weren’t actually Immortals, so it’s not surprising that they couldn’t activate it whenever they wanted to.  Although, that’s just what they told me, so I didn’t actually know if they were lying or not yet.  Considering the circumstances though, I didn’t really have time to worry about them.

I vomited a bunch of nasty dark-green goo into the river and then started briskly walking along the rocks, following it down the mountain.  Although the jungle was thick and the sky was dark, I could still see the ocean from where I was at.  Fortunately, the tunnel I chose let me outside only a few hundred meters above sea level.  There weren’t many animals running around, though there were plenty of ghosts.  Either way, I didn’t have to fight or kill anything.

When I finally reached the beach, I could barely even walk anymore.  Xiaotong murmured “So c-c-cold… Why is it so c-cold Levi~?” At that moment, I fell to my knees and gasped for breath.  Although it wasn’t as thick as within those tunnels, there was a dense black miasmic fog covering the shoreline.  The sand which had been stained with a ridiculous amount of blood and gore, had been frozen solid.

No, even the waves in the distance were ice sculptures.  I muttered “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…” In the distance, I could see the Stingray sailing away from the island.  After a few seconds, I sighed dramatically and said “Well, at least Mei and the others were able to escape.”

Then I heard a familiar voice scream “Look, he’s over there!” I turned my head to the left and saw a shitload of bright-red skeletons.  Of course, since they were all Spirits, they were invisible to the group of four who were running over to me.

Mei was in the lead, while the three giants were a bit slower.  As she came closer, the black-robed woman shouted “Levi!  What in the hell happened to you?!  Did that bitch do this?!  Damn it!  You promised me that you would be fine!” She knelt down next to me on the frozen sand and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me into a tight embrace, while rubbing her hands across my back.

I told her “No, well, I don’t think so… I’m not totally sure.  Anyway, don’t worry about me!  We need to get off this island within five hours or we’re all going to die!  No, actually, we have less time than that…”  When I looked up towards the mountains, I noticed that all seven of them were spewing out black smog into the sky.

That whale was gone, but I kept hearing explosions and howling coming from the peak that was closest to us.  I noticed that Liara was carrying both of my cases, so I immediately said “Thanks!” and ‘safely’ put away my shotgun.

When I stood up, I wobbled a bit, but Mei was able to keep me from falling.  Granny Arin let out a long and depressing sigh, before grumbling “Those bastards were already gone by the time we got here!  We were completely abandoned!  Well, it’s good that they were able to escape from getting stuck in the ice, but there was a good forty-five minutes where they could have still sent a small boat over for us…” After staring at my face for a while, she abruptly asked “Do you feel like your blood is boiling?”

I nodded and Liara gasped, muttering “Doesn’t that mean he’s suffering from Death Qi Corruption?”

“What?!  No~!  How could Little Levi… It’s not like he fell down into one of those nasty holes right?!” Mei screamed right in my left ear, but my hearing was getting kind of dull, so I barely even reacted.

“Ah, no, actually, I took a wrong turn and ended up going really far down inside of the mountain… Some weird shit happened and then I found my way out pretty close to the shore.” I took a few deep breaths, while trying not to vomit out any more blood.

Granny Arin frowned, explaining “Death Qi is extremely beneficial to those who practice Yin Qi Cultivation Methods but… For those who don’t, it’s essentially poison.  No, perhaps it’s more sinister than a simple poison.  It corrupts the living and slowly transforms them into… Well, just look over there!” Then she pointed to a group of twenty or so half-frozen, zombie-looking motherfuckers.  I mean, that’s pretty much the best way to describe them.  They were probably newbies and villagers who got killed or seriously injured during the invasion.  Each of them had gruesome injuries, but their wounds were frozen over.  However, it was still possible to see the inky-black blood that was leaking from their drooling mouths.  Their eyes were pure white and it didn’t seem like they could even see us.

“Seriously, aren’t these guys a little… I don’t know, maybe I’ve just seen too many zombie movies and T.V. shows.  Shouldn’t they be trying to eat us?  Or at least doing something…” Most of them didn’t even move; they just laid on the frozen ground or sat atop a small dune.

The Ginger Giant chuckled, “The Yin Qi is so thick on this island, that they don’t even need to eat.  Alright, enough talking… Like the little brat said, we need to get the hell off this island!  Here, give me the cases; Liara, you carry him.”

As I was lifted up into those massive and super-hard arms, Mei asked “Wait, how are we going to leave without a ship?”

Granny Arin smirked and Johan pointed towards the enormous frozen waves in the distance, using my rifle-case.  It was hard to see, since it was so far away, but there was a small sailboat bobbing up and down in the distance.  My sight was getting hazy, so I hadn’t even noticed it until then.