White Day still had a few traces left. The sky was about to turn completely dark.
“This time… this time, hic! Even if you damn bastard walked into dog shit luck, tomorrow is still Mr. Walker’s tavern. I’ll definitely let you see my power!”
“Oh~ God, please spare me!”
The tavern was still brightly lit, showing no sign of closing. Yet not a single bizarre creature dared to linger.
The bizarre creatures who often visited the tavern knew that although the Goat Tavern never closed even during Long Night, unlike its normal operations during White Day, once Long Night fell the tavern really would eat people!
Leaning against the outside of the tavern door, bizarre creatures continuously walked out from inside and brushed past her. Theresa never once lifted her eyelids the entire time. She only waited for Bai Tang to arrive for their meeting.
Only fifteen minutes remained until the agreed deadline.
“Not coming?”
Theresa wiped the cold-gleaming short blade in her hand with her sleeve. Under the brown jazz hat, a pair of black eyes flickered.
Was she scared?
After all, the target they were cooperating against was the Blood Robe Level Barrel Butcher. If it was only to save a compatriot she did not even know, the risk was completely out of proportion to the reward.
Or was it because of some other reason?
“Sigh… Looks like I’ll have to handle this alone again tonight.”
She let out a long sigh. Just as Theresa was about to put away the short blade, a series of footsteps suddenly came from not far away, approaching directly toward her.
She looked up, saw the person clearly, and was slightly stunned.
“Why do you look so surprised to see me?”
Bai Tang’s face was full of speechlessness. As her footsteps drew closer, the small cloth bag tied at her waist swayed back and forth. The potion bottles inside collided with crisp sounds.
“I thought you were too scared to come,” Theresa said.
“We already made an agreement, didn’t we? The most important thing when running a general store is integrity.”
The tarot cards had divined that she would die under the demon hunter lady’s rebellious flintlock. Out of safety concerns, the Witch teacher really had not wanted her to leave the general store tonight.
But if she wanted to grow, she could not always stay inside her comfort zone.
Besides, tarot cards were ultimately just divination. They did not mean the future was set in stone. Bai Tang did not completely believe that the demon hunter lady who had helped her would betray her and press a gun to her forehead.
So Bai Tang still came.
“Why are you wearing a hat?”
Bai Tang looked at the jazz hat on the demon hunter lady’s head and frowned. She remembered that when they parted a few hours ago, the other party’s head had been completely empty.
“Don’t you think it looks very cool?” Theresa raised the corner of her mouth and asked in return.
“Whatever you want.”
Bai Tang shook her head and stopped dwelling on trivial matters. She began to act according to the plan they had discussed during White Day, dividing the various recovery potions she had brought from the general store into two portions.
She handed one portion to Theresa.
Although it was a cooperation, the demon hunter lady’s goal was only to kill the Barrel Butcher and claim the bounty. Saving the human compatriot inside the tavern required more consideration. Naturally, Bai Tang took on the main command of their cooperation.
“The main point of the plan is to save my compatriot. Killing that guy is secondary. Even if we fail this time, there will still be other opportunities later.”
“Got it~ Got it~”
Bai Tang softly snorted.
“As for the method, I’ve already thought of it.”
With that, the girl took out a bottle of invisibility potion she had prepared long ago.
…
…
Long Night descended. The sky had turned completely black.
The noise inside the tavern during White Day had completely faded away. It was so quiet that even the faint drip of water droplets falling into the sink could be heard with exceptional clarity.
The flames inside the oil lamps providing illumination flickered, lighting up the entire tavern brightly. This was the only place so conspicuously visible on the entire Undead Street that had fallen into a pitch-black abyss, like an anglerfish in the silent deep sea.
The light it emitted did not bring a sense of security. Instead, it lured you toward death and the end.
“Those two guys…”
The Barrel Butcher wandered inside the tavern holding a blood-stained boning knife, searching for the two girls who had spoken so arrogantly during White Day about taking him down.
He really had not expected that the words spoken by that witch that night would be confirmed so quickly.
That human girl named Bai Tang who had luckily left the tavern alive last time now carried killing intent toward him upon their next meeting and had boldly declared together with the demon hunter that they wanted to kill him.
They were clearly only at the Fierce Ghost Level.
Like a programmed floor-sweeping robot, the Barrel Butcher wandered inside the tavern with the boning knife in hand, stepping through every possible hiding spot.
During this process, as Long Night deepened, the Barrel Butcher’s state was also quietly changing. He became increasingly restless, and even the expression on his face shifted from its original coldness to a thirst for blood.
He even began to look forward to finding that human and demon hunter in the next moment and using the boning knife in his hand to split open their bellies and taste the deliciousness of fresh souls.
If Bai Tang were here right now, she would definitely be able to see that the Barrel Butcher’s alignment had changed from [Lawful Evil] to [Chaotic Evil].
“Could it be that they were just bluffing?”
A low, hoarse voice slowly sounded, as if something was stuck in his throat.
What he had heard during White Day was indeed that they would take him down after Long Night, but they had not explicitly said it would be tonight. Since he could not find the two girls, he could only come to this conclusion.
“Heh.”
Confident in his Blood Robe Level strength, the Barrel Butcher did not take the two’s threat to heart at all. Even if they really fought, the one who would win would definitely be him.
Holding the blood-stained boning knife, he walked into the tavern’s back kitchen and continued with what he had originally planned to do tonight.
The moment his front foot stepped into the tavern’s back kitchen, the next moment two girls’ lowered voices in conversation sounded from where he had just been standing.
“He really didn’t notice us!”
“The invisibility potion’s effect only lasts seven minutes and thirty seconds total. Hurry up and split up to search.”
Using the invisibility potion’s effect, they roughly searched the entire tavern separately. Bai Tang walked out from the storage room and saw Theresa shake her head at her.
The most dangerous place remained — and also the most likely one.
The tavern’s back kitchen where the Barrel Butcher was.
“Meow~”
A cat’s meow sounded from the direction of the back kitchen. A black cat with oily fur on its surface squatted on the back kitchen windowsill. Its body was almost completely merged with the pitch-black outside the window. Its green-glowing cat eyes silently watched everything happening inside the back kitchen.
An ice-cold iron folding bed was placed horizontally in the center of the room. Lying on the bed at this moment was a human girl around seventeen years old, with blonde hair, fair skin, and European features.
Her limbs were tightly bound by pitch-black straps. Her face was deathly pale. A rag was stuffed in her mouth. She shook her head in terror, and no matter how hard she tried she could only let out desperate “mmph mmph” sounds.
The Barrel Butcher violently tore off half of the human girl’s clothing. The snow-white skin from her chest down to her abdomen was completely exposed.
Rough fingers dipped in blood and wandered across the girl’s delicate skin, outlining the lines where the boning knife would dissect.
Cold. A chill that penetrated to the bone!
At that moment, the Barrel Butcher seemed to sense something. His movements suddenly stopped. He slowly raised his head. A breeze made the flames inside the oil lamp flicker. The invisibility potion’s duration had ended. Two blurry human figures suddenly appeared on the white-spotted wall.
Bai Tang had half her body crouched over the folding bed, protecting the human girl below who had been scared stiff. Beside her, the demon hunter lady was holding up a long-barreled flintlock gun. The pitch-black muzzle was less than half an inch from the Barrel Butcher’s forehead.
The demon hunter lady narrowed her eyes. Her index finger rested on the trigger, ready to pull at any moment.
“This shot sends you to the west!”
Bang——!