【Ding! Weekly Commission update failed.】
【Summary of the previous commission cycle.】
【Commission Name: Fortress City of Shield → Carter Royal Capital letter delivery】
【Letters received: 126】
【Final sign-off rate: 10%】
【Reason for failure: Timeout】
【System Judgment: Commission failed. No rewards will be settled.】
In Lin Gui's mind, that mechanical voice reported the results calmly.
He wanted to move.
But he couldn't. Every bone and every inch of muscle in his body was screaming in agony.
The intense pain from his left arm made his vision go dark, and every breath felt like a blade scraping against his ribs.
He could only lie there, listening to the voice continue.
【Ding! The Weekly Commission for the new cycle has been generated.】
【Commencing retrieval of the number of letters currently held by the Host.】
【Retrieving...】
【Retrieval complete.】
【Current letters held: 5,512 (Along the New Covenant City → Avalon route)】
【Would you like to activate this cycle's Weekly Commission?】
【Commission Route: Carter Royal Capital → Caran City → New Covenant City】
【Note: This is the follow-up route to the unfinished previous cycle. The status of recipients has been re-verified.】
A hint of confusion flashed through Lin Gui's blurred consciousness.
Activate? Caran City?
Caran City's location was closer to the center of the Dark Tide, the Withered Rift, than the Carter Royal Capital was.
It was already a miracle among miracles that the Carter Royal Capital had survived.
Activate? he asked in his heart, his voice so weak it was almost inaudible.
Caran City has been destroyed... the people who would reply are all dead... How could the Weekly Commission even proceed...
The system's voice rang out calmly.
【System detection indicates that, at least for now.】
【It has not been destroyed.】
Lin Gui's consciousness suddenly stalled.
What?
【The Weekly Commission can still proceed.】
【The replies for the route from New Covenant City to Avalon can be dispatched normally.】
【The next stop, Caran City, has not been destroyed.】
【The Host's letter sign-off can reach the target.】
That's impossible!!
Lin Gui shouted in his mind. The voice almost exploded from the depths of his soul.
Caran City was closer to the center of the Dark Tide than the Carter Royal Capital.
It was a small border city. It didn't have the Seven Walls of the Carter Royal Capital, it didn't have those Legendary Knights, and it didn't have a presence as unfathomable as Catriona.
It was just an ordinary, weak little city that should have been defenseless against demons.
How could it have survived a demon riot?
The survival of the Carter Royal Capital was already an outlier among outliers.
But Caran City... that was something that simply could not happen.
Lin Gui snapped his eyes open.
He wanted to argue. He wanted to question. He wanted to figure out what was going on.
But just then, a female voice came from beside his ear.
"Yo, you bastard, you're finally awake."
The voice was raspy, exhausted, and carried an indescribable... sarcasm.
Lin Gui suppressed his pain and turned his head.
Then, he froze.
There was a face. A filthy face.
It was covered in mud, grass bits, and dried scabs formed from the juices of things he couldn't identify.
Her hair was a tangled mess, looking like a haystack with several pieces of dried grass and unknown feathers stuck inside.
Her clothes had long since lost their original appearance, hanging off her body in tatters.
Her exposed skin was covered in scratches, bruises, and red bumps from insect bites.
The entire person looked as if she had climbed out of a mud pit, rolled on the ground three times, and then taken a nap in a trash pile.
????
Lin Gui's brain hadn't quite caught up yet. He asked subconsciously, "Who... are you?"
The savage looked at him expressionlessly.
Then, she spoke. "Your lover."
Lin Gui: "..."
He stared at that face for a few more seconds.
Those eyes. That tone of voice. That punchable attitude.
He squinted, trying his best to find familiar traces beneath the mud and ash.
After several seconds... "...Elvia?" he asked tentatively.
The woman nodded numbly.
Then, she lowered her head and spat out what she had been chewing.
It was a mushy, grayish-green blob of who-knows-what.
She used her fingers to pinch the mush, rolling it into a ball.
Then, she brought the blob toward Lin Gui's mouth.
Lin Gui looked at the mass, and his entire soul felt unwell. "What... are you doing?" His voice carried a clear sense of alarm.
Elvia looked at him without expression. "Feeding you," she said naturally. "To stay alive, you have to eat. Don't you agree?"
Lin Gui stared at the glob of mush and fell silent. "What is this?"
"Food."
"I'm asking specifically what it is."
Elvia was silent for a second. Then, she began to explain.
The dry rations Lin Gui had given her were finished as early as the third day.
From the third day to the eighth day, how had she survived?
Eating grass roots. Eating tree bark. Eating sour wild fruits. Eating bugs. Eating rats. And eating other things she couldn't name.
One time, Shadow Blade Lynn told her to find a certain grayish-white thing growing on the back of rocks. She didn't know what it was, but that woman said it was edible, so she scraped it off and ate it.
That thing tasted like flavorless dry mud. It was hard to swallow, but she forced it down her throat. Because she only knew that if she didn't eat, she would die.
So she ate.
For eight days. She had lived like this for eight days.
Sometimes she ate grass roots that were bitter and astringent like chewing on tree bark.
Sometimes she ate wild fruits that were sour, sweet, bitter, or tart—every taste imaginable.
Sometimes she ate bugs; those bugs were still moving in her mouth, and she had to close her eyes and chew hard before she could swallow.
Sometimes she ate meat of unknown origin, raw meat that left her mouth full of blood.
She didn't know how many disgusting things she had eaten. She only knew that she had survived.
To keep the unconscious man on her back alive, she had survived.
Elvia looked at Lin Gui and pushed the ball of chewed root pulp a little closer.
"To keep you from starving to death, I can only treat you like a grandmother taking care of a newborn."
"Chewing it up and feeding it to you."
"So..." She spoke with no expression at all. "Open up."
Having said that, Elvia intended to stuff this unnamable object into Lin Gui's mouth.
Lin Gui grabbed her sweaty, sticky hand.
Then, he produced a roll of white bread with his right hand.
Elvia: ????
Rate on N.U.
