Catastrophe Card King

Soon, a taradiddle of gun re-cocking echoed through the space.

“What’s going on?!”

“Mark just had a nightmare.”

“Damn it, I thought monsters were crawling up.”

“Stop fucking shouting, it’s frightening.”

Turns out someone just had a nightmare.

A false alarm, you may say.

There was a quick pacification.

Nobody made a big deal out of it.

There was no light to differentiate between day and night in these ruins.

In the morning, bizarrely, the intuitive hunters happened to wake up late.

Each of them looked fatigued with dark circles under their eyes, and several of them woke up soaked in cold sweat.

“Damn, I was chased by zombies in my nightmare all night, I couldn’t get away no matter how hard I tried. It wore me out completely!”

“I had a nightmare too. Dreamt of jumping off a cliff, nearly scared me shitless.”

“Oh, I thought I was the only one with nightmares. Damn, there’s something wrong with this ghost of a place.”

“Creepy… Could it have something to do with the undead creatures we killed earlier?”

After getting up, the hunters started eating their dry rations, packing up and preparing to set out.

As they chatted, they discovered that most of the nineteen people had varying levels of nightmares.

Leonard Churchill found it very strange.

This kind of collective nightmare must have a trigger.

But having spent the entire night awake, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. He glanced at Catherine Carter who was having breakfast next to him. She shook her head, indicating that she hadn’t had any nightmare. Colin, with his earnest expression, shrugged and said, “I rarely dream.” Elder Clinton, on the other hand, was sloppily picking at his ears with a piece of grass root.

Leonard didn’t need to ask to know that the old man slept soundly before. As his peaceful and rhythmic snores had barely stopped throughout the night. It seemed like only these four people were unaffected by the nightmares. But encountering weird events in these ruins filled with mystery was normal. There are many reasons behind the formation of nightmares.

The likeliness of the environment having an effect is high.

Thinking about the abundance of undead creatures in the ruins, it made sense. The hunters didn’t dwell on it, either.

After breakfast, the team set off, continuing their pathway through the unchartered territory.

Catherine Carter, who started off as a reclusive little doctor, had quietly integrated into the small group of Leonard, Colin and Elder Clinton. Nevertheless, she spoke very little.

To others, she appeared modest and reserved.

But only Leonard knew that she avoided engaging in conversation with Elder Clinton for fear of falling into a chain of cause and effect.

The team gradually made their way deeper into the ruins.

Although they were inching closer to the central area of the city, the surrounding black fog was getting denser.

Dense enough that even with the alchemical lamp breaking through the fog, visibility was only about twenty meters at most.

Further, the frequency of fights was also increasing.

Undead creatures in the fog came at them in droves, and gradually Catastrophe Level creatures started surfacing.

Consequently, the team’s progress was slowing down.

“Bang, bang, bang…”

At 3:15 in the afternoon.

On a ruined street, following another round of gunfire and execution of zombies hidden in the dilapidated buildings, the hunters began cleaning up the battlefield and preparing for rest.

“Alright, everyone take a break now, reload your ammunition.”

“Dog King, your group is in charge of the perimeter alert.”

“Roger that.”

At this point, the hunters’ initial excitement on harvesting Dark Matter Crystals was long gone.

Even though they had reaped more today, their faces displayed nothing but exhaustion and concern.

Because they had lost another man in the recent battle.

The initial group of twenty was now down to fifteen, and many had sustained injuries.

This was despite Leonard covertly eliminating a particularly tricky Assassin Type Catastrophe.

Otherwise, just the ability of that Catastrophe to hide within the fog would have caused massive casualties to the team.

The Flamingo Hunter Group, being an official team of the Lionheart Family, and having accepted equipment supplies, had to fulfill the contract and complete the mission.

They could progress slowly.

But they couldn’t turn back halfway.

Given the situation, and considering the difficulty of the second day, the chances of surviving until they reach the bottomless pit in the city centre for the reward seems improbable.

Leonard Churchill and Elder Clinton were on sentry duty.

The two of them went to a broken wall outside the temporary camp and began their watch with lanterns.

When they had some downtime, Leonard took the opportunity to ask, “Elder, have you noticed anything unusual?”

Elder Clinton: “What did you notice?”

Leonard replied: “I am referring to that nightmare?”

It was usual to encounter and fight undead creatures.

But the collective nightmare phenomenon from the previous night still felt unsettling to him.

Throughout their journey, Leonard observed carefully. Those who had nightmares were languorously spaced-out as if they were drained of their life energy.

This was clearly abnormal.

Elder Clinton listened nonchalantly, “Oh, that seems like some type of fear contamination.”

Upon hearing this, Leonard fell into deep thought.

The essence of “Transcendent Contamination” is somewhat like nuclear radiation, fundamentally assuming abnormal energy levels that the human body can’t tolerate, leading to bodily changes.

Normally, given the burst and release of so much unknown substance after the seal was broken, some form of contamination was expected.

But to Leonard, looking at these symptoms, he suddenly remembered what Tracy Garcia previously mentioned about a “plague” that was prevalent in their Orlan Royal Court!

The symptoms of the plague were frequent nightmares and growing weakness. However, the plague in the Orlan Royal Court seemed far more severe.

When Tracy Garcia left before, she also mentioned that the plague seemed less like a disease and more related to some “High-level rule of extraordinary characteristic pollution”..