Dense Forest Borderland

"Sheta." Bai Liu is lying on his back on the ground, he looks at Taville, who has his head hanging down over him, with a rare expression that borders on unresponsiveness, his breathing completely disorganized but his tone still calm, "What are you doing? Let go of me."

Taville's silver-blue eyes showed no emotion as he circled Bai Liu's hands with his whip, holding them down with one hand, and looked at him intently with downcast eyes:

"Bai Liu , there is a price to pay for wishing upon an evil god."

"You claimed my affection, companionship, heart and love from the start, wanting me to be with you all the time." Taville's long hair snaked and trailed down to the floor, mingling with Bai Liu's, as he looked straight at him , "In contrast, you have to give me the same thing."

The pupils of Taville's eyes reflect Bai Liu's shadow in its entirety:

"You are my only believer."

"Your feelings, heart, love, pain and faith can only be an offering to me, not to any other evil god."

The lake, completely dyed red by the fuel, pours more and more joyfully into Taville's back, and a reverse cross appears in his silver-blue eyes, on which Bai Liu is reflected, as if he were imprisoned in Taville's eyes by the reverse cross.

[SYSTEM WARNING: Player Spades' Monster Book Identity "Fallen Old Evil God" Desire is completely out of control, Spirit Value in High Frequency Jumping ......]

Taville's hand slipped into the hem of Bai Liu's loose shirt, the cold touch of his fingertips sliding from the side of his waist, finally spreading his curled fingers and stopping at the heart.

"...... your heart beating fast, is it because of fear of me now?"

Bai Liu covered his eyes with his bound hands, a small gasp in his voice, "--no."

"I can sense you're afraid." Taville's voice suddenly lowered, and Bai Liu could feel the other man leaning in close to him, "An evil god on the verge of becoming a complete monster who won't let you go is scary, isn't it?"

"But even then-" Taville takes Bai Liu's wrist and violently pulls his arm away from covering his eyes, and with a calm demeanor forcibly immobilizes Bai Liu so that he's looking directly at him. "And I will not allow you to run from me."

"You lost the right to fear me from the moment you yourself had to look me straight in the eye."

Bai Liu's pure black eyes reflected Taville's face and tumbling silver-blue curls in slow motion.

The black color on the whip full of bone spikes stalled for a moment and completely exploded upwards.

Bai Liu pulls out his whip to instantly free the hold, wrapping it around Taville's arm and flinging it to the side, throwing Taville off of him.

Taville looked at Bai Liu, who had fled from beneath him, and his eyes emptied as the lake behind him poured wildly into his back as if it were boiling.

He looked up at Bai Liu standing at the other end:

"--Faith in me, abandoned by you, is it?"

"I don't have faith in you anymore, Sheta." Bai Liu spoke very quietly as he gripped the whip that dangled at his side, with only one point on it that was pure white anymore.

"So what is the relationship between us, then?" Taville asked Bai Liu.

Bai Liu stares silently at Taville, his pure black eyes reflecting the red paint from the lake, refracting a vague reddish color as the only white spots left on the whip are swallowed up to a single edge.

"And with the rest of our relationship, with you not being able to exist as an individual by my side, not even being able to retain your memories, your soul, don't you think it would be too unfair for me to explore any relationship, between us, right now?"

"So I've thought about it, and I don't think there's really a need to explore it."

Bai Liu arched her eyebrows and smiled crookedly, "So for now, we have nothing to do with each other."

After saying that, Bai Liu swung the whip in his hand.

The whip full of bone spikes went straight for Taville's front.

"Bang--!"

Bai Liu opened Taville's black whip with his gun, he was half on his knees, his chest heaving violently, his face covered in bruises, his white shirt was completely red with blood, even the sound he made was tinged with hoarseness, "Spades, stop."

Taville lowered his head in a trance, and in his hand he saw the black whip full of bone spikes, with blood dripping from it, and in Bai Liu's hand a silver revolver.

...... And what he just saw in Bai Liu s hand was this whip full of bone spurs.

Everything around them is cluttered, the lake has disappeared, and all that remains where the lake used to be is a large crater, the swampy mud at the bottom of the lake exposed and strewn with tired white bones, and an old wooden carving of the evil god showing diagonally, the head of this carving smirking at Taville.

In the vaguely blurred and cluttered space, Taville heard the old wooden sculpture chuckle at him in a compassionate tone:

[Taville, is an evil god in love with someone still an evil god?]

[The old evil god who was invulnerable is now full of desire for someone, full of feelings, full of weaknesses, full of fantasies.]

[See, your desire to be that part of humanity is already strong enough to hear the oracle I've sent down, oh former Evil God.]

[In your own subconscious hallucinations, are you actually so afraid of being feared and abandoned by Bai Liu?]

[Taville, you're no more than a mere mortal now.]

[You are a hair's breadth away from selling your soul because of extreme emotions, desires, and delusions, and falling from human to monster.]

Taville looks to Bai Liu in front of him.

Bai Liu looked straight up at him, and suddenly rushed forward with his gun, firing several shots into his head, revealing a wry smile, "--Just by sacrificing you, the old Evil God, I'll be able to fully become the heir of the new Evil God."

Taville was knocked down in the mud by the recoil of the gun, when suddenly a torrential downpour of rain fell from the sky, so incredibly heavy that it instantly filled the lake again, and vines quickly grew from the mud underneath the ground and entangled Taville.

The evil god's old carved wooden head rolled up next to Taville, who had been entangled at the bottom of the lake, with the same smile on his face as always:

What's wrong? Completely unresisting Bai Liu's attack on you, it's just an illusion, don't even counterattack?]

[You are afraid to resist this Bai Liu's attack on you even though you know that the probability is that he is a fake because you are afraid of what if it is true right?]

Maybe if Bai Liu really loathes you that much, hates you, fears you, maybe he'll really do this to you, right?

[After all, the connection between the two of you is so thin, just an encounter ten years ago.]

The lake shrinks inward and becomes narrower, deeper and smaller in size, from a large lake to a weir-sized pool, the water becomes clear from turbidity, and there are small fish and shrimps constantly swimming and swaying around it.

Taville had a rope around his ankles, tying him to the bottom of the lake, and the knots were tied very tightly, as if the person tying them was afraid that he would be swept away by the water if he didn't tie them tightly.

Someone jumped into the water and scooped Taville up. It was Bai Liu, with wet hair, who was twenty-four years old, but the surroundings were clearly the orphanage where they had stayed when they were fourteen years old, and Bai Liu was wearing the same clothes that had been issued to him by the orphanage at that time.

"I'm coming to feed you, Sheta." Bai Liu's face paled as he suddenly smiled, "Once you drink this, it'll all be over."

"I'll never again have my life messed up and stay miserable for so long because I met you, the intimidating monster."

Taville looks over to what Bai Liu has in his hand -- it's a bottle of poison.

Witch's poison.

As Bai Liu brought the poison to Taville's lips and looked at him with expectant eyes, Taville opened his mouth after only a brief pause.

After drinking, Taville was unceremoniously thrown into the pond again, and with his eyes half-closed, he sank, and sank, and sank, and touched the bottom of the pool.

The sediment flew away, the bottom of the pool abruptly shifted inward, transforming from a pitted stone bottom to polished ceramic, and the sinking Taville's head was violently pulled out of the water by someone's hair.

The pond in front of Taville was transformed into a bathtub-like baptismal font, and the setting changed from a pond in an orphanage to inside a church.

The faint moonlight shines through the church's glazed windows, creating a beautiful halo over the captured Taville's face, and the god on the baptismal font, which was originally Ye Su on the cross, has been replaced with a reverse cross and a broken wooden statue of an old evil god.

The wooden statue looks over at Taville, who is caught by the hair, and smiles.

Taville had just been ripped out of the baptismal font when someone grabbed him by the head and forced him to tilt his head back to face the idol, and a sharp, distorted female voice came from behind him, "You monster, what strange things have you done again!"

"I will punish you severely in front of God!"

Taville is once again held down, and when he is ripped out again, the sculpture of the god on the stage has changed again.

Bai Liu smiled and stood on the stage, he crouched down on one knee, lowered his eyes, lifted Taville's hair from his forehead with a gloved hand, cupped Taville's wet face and whispered, "It's painful, isn't it?"

"I was at the back of the church, hiding behind the curtains when I saw this scene and it was oh so painful."

Bai Liu smiled very gently, and the moonlight through the window dropped a layer of colorful halos on his eyelashes:

"--But the pain you, a monster who won't die, feel at this point in time is probably not even a tenth of the pain I feel for you."

The shrill female voice interrupts their conversation hysterically, once again holding Taville underwater.

"-- Bai Liu, that weird kid who's willing to hang out with you is more than likely no good!"

Taville is dragged out of the water again, and the statue above the altar changes again, the orphanage director drained of his blood, his body hanging in facial horror from a cross, his knees on the ground as if he were confessing to them.

And the person who pulled Taville out of the baptismal font became Bai Liu this time.

Bai Liu gently wrapped his hands around Taville's neck and slowly began to morph, his nails becoming sharp and black, turning into two powerful monkey claws before gracefully interlocking in a virtual grip around Taville's throat.

Thief's Monkey Paw.

"You know, without you." Bai Liu's claws embedded in Taville's veins, his tone so soft it was like a whisper, "I'd just have to be an ordinary person who follows his desires wholeheartedly."

"What a blessing that would be."

Taville's blood spurts from his throat into the baptismal font in front of him, instantly staining everything red as spiky blood reishi vines emerge from the bottom of the reddened font, circling Taville's limbs and dragging him down.

Bai Liu stood by indifferently and watched Taville being dragged into the baptismal font, blood dripping from the fingernails of his hands:

"Sheta, the faith you have bestowed on me is worthless and just keeps me in constant pain from start to finish."

"Even so, are you selfishly asking me to keep believing in you?"

The vines churned at Taville's limbs, dragging him deeper and deeper into the unknown, the blood and water around him becoming redder and redder, like some sort of red paint seeping into his body.

Taville was fished out of the lake by some peculiar-looking natives, hung up by his limbs in vines, fastened to an inverted cross and made into a wooden statue, and then walked around him, singing songs of peculiar accents in a jubilant manner, and surrounded by Bai Liu, who had stepped out of the crowd in front of him.

Bai Liu, with a short sharp dagger in his hand, smiles and walks step by step to Taville, who is tied to the reverse cross, and puts the tip of the dagger against Taville's heart, whispering softly:

"Sheta, from the time I met you until now, I've only been free for the ten years I completely forgot about you after you died."

"Without faith in you, without affection for you, without missing you, I'm just a mundane person in the mundane world who agonizes over money desires once in a while, what a vulgar happiness."

"You talk about wanting me to be happy, but you never let me go when I enter the game, clinging to me again and again, guarding me during every game, impatient to put the mark of your one and only believer on me, afraid that I'll abandon you, forget you, and walk away from you."

"You kissed me, seduced me, influenced me." Bai Liu lifted his eyelids, his expression softening, "You selfishly allowed your only believer to fall in love with you, to sacrifice his love and soul to you, not moving to take possession of his decade-long suffering as a sacrifice."

"Is there any essential difference to me between your vile possessiveness of me and this evil god you are now?"

Taville lowers his head, he gasps slightly but doesn't deny anything this Bai Liu says, droplets of water dripping from his long, drooping eyelashes.

Bai Liu smiles and plunges the dagger /into/ Taville's heart, bright red paint dripping out and onto the nearly all-black whip Bai Liu holds up in his other hand.

Assassin's Dagger.

The only white spot left on the whip was blackened bit by bit by Taville's blood.

"You see, your blood is all equally evil." Bai Liu's smile deepened, "It acts as the same taint on me."

Bai Liu holds Taville's face in his bloodied hands and smiles softly with downcast eyes, "Sheta, when it comes down to it, do the only thing that's good for me before it fades away."

Taville looked up at Bai Liu, his face bloodless.

Bai Liu The smile at the corner of his mouth was wide:

"- As a sacrifice to the new evil god, break free of all bonds to become a god for me, and die in a horrible vision of your own making, Sheta."

The blackened whip in Bai Liu's hand spreads out its bone spikes, and the thorn-like bone whip climbs and twists around the reverse cross, coiling around Taville's hands and feet.

Bone spikes pierced the snow-white skin, and the tip of the bone whip came to rest on the part of Taville's heart, then stabbed in hard.

Blood seeped out and dripped onto the whip, the last white spot on the whip disappearing and becoming pitch black.

Bai Liu reaches out to embrace Taville, who is wrapped in a bone whip, and he whispers with a smile against Taville's ear, "-- Sheta, it is your death that will be the most valuable thing to me."

"I like things of value, so I will fall in love with you the moment you die, and then pursue and miss the dead you forever."

"After dying, you had my love forever, isn't that what you wanted?"

"Want to make a deal with me?" Bai Liu smiles. His hand pressed against Taville's heart, "Your death in exchange for my love?"

Hearing 【Everlasting Love】, Taville's heart, in which the end of the whip was inserted, suddenly beat sharply.

The oracle of the Evil God came from far away, smiling:

[Turns out that's what you fear and want most, Taville.]

[The person you were once was not afraid of anything at all, nor did you have any desires.]

But now your fears and desires are full of Bai Liu, you are afraid that he will abandon you and forget you, that Bai Liu will fall in love with someone else and believe in someone else, and that you want to take possession of his feelings and gain his faith.

[You see, once a god has feelings to become human, he is filled with desire and fear, and that's not far from becoming a monster.]

[It's amazing that you would fall in love with a human being full of lust and reason who, with a high probability, would only use you for his further degradation, knowing full well that this would be the case.]

[It was ...... so much fun.]

Taville's blood dripped from the bone spikes and he blinked slowly, the shine in his silver-blue eyes fading.

By the time he opens his eyes the next second, Taville is back in the town tavern.

He was surrounded by a jubilant crowd, yelling and screaming, but on closer inspection these people were green and white, with stitches all over their bodies, all corpses.

And as Taville, dressed in a black groom's suit, was neatly tidied up, he looked up to see Bai Liu, standing on stage in a white shirt and suit pants, smiling down at him as he held up a brightly colored bouquet of flowers.

The corpses around the room laughed scornfully and shouted, "Now will the groom please put the ring on the bridegroom, and then the bridegroom may kiss the groom."

So Bai Liu steps down from the high platform holding a bouquet of flowers, and he walks over to Taville and pulls out a ring in the shape of a bone whip from the pocket of his suit pants, with a ring of thorns all around it.

Bai Liu smiled and looked up at Taville : "After wearing the ring, I will love you forever, let's get married."

Taville looked at Bai Liu, not a trace of light left in the silver-blue pupils of her eyes.

When he was a kid, he and Bai Liu had a casual conversation about marriage.

[Two people bound to each other by love and law, making a promise to be together forever is marriage.]

[Bai Liu, have you ever thought of marrying anyone?]

Bai Liu propped up his chin and dozed off in boredom, when he heard Sheta ask him, Bai Liu turned his head and let out a laugh, as if he found it amusing, [No.].

Sheta was silent for a long time before she continued, [Why?].

I won't love anyone forever. Bai Liu gave a very diffident laugh and replied, [Because that would be too worthless.]

Sheta was quiet for a long, long time. Bai Liu seemed to notice his abnormality, and leaned over to look at his expression with interest, Sheta slightly averted his eyes, not meeting Bai Liu's face.

Bai Liu leaned against the bookcase, holding his chest and smiling meaningfully, [You don't want to marry some woman and form a family, do you?

Sheta didn't look him squarely in the eye, but lowered her eyes, [Can't I have such thoughts as marrying someone?]

You could have. Bai Liu arches his eyebrows in a harsh, unmistakable smile, [But that's just a fantasy.]

[Because an undead monster like you can't even get on a household account and have someone marry you.]

You'd better be honest and give up your strange ideas and follow me forever. Fourteen year old Bai Liu squatted down and grabbed Sheta's chin and turned her around so that Sheta could look directly at herself.

Bai Liu smiles maliciously, [Because I'm the only one who's willing to take you in and play games with you, little monster].