Night

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The night was black as ink, with wind and rain threatening to break at any moment.

A stumbling figure fled through the dark mountain forest.

It was a woman with a pretty face and a graceful figure.

She wore makeup and fashionable clothes, unlike the residents of the nearby villages and towns. She was probably a tourist from a large city.

As she ran through the forest, bushes and branches along the way scratched her until wounds covered her body.

Even so, she did not slow down. It was as if something terrifying were chasing her from the darkness behind her.

And the lights growing closer ahead were, to her, no different from dawn breaking through the night.

'Almost there. I'm almost there...'

'I don't want to die. I don't want to die!'

The woman screamed inside her heart as the lights drew closer. Hope burned brighter and brighter in her eyes.

At last, half crawling and half tumbling, she crossed the final steep slope and reached the open ground in front of the temple gate, a wide area built from pebbles mixed with cement.

"Is anyone there? Help! Please help me!"

She used almost the last of her strength to shout for help. Then she collapsed in front of the closed temple gate, braced her right hand against the old wooden door, tried to push it open, and found that it was barred.

"Open... open the door. Hurry, open the door..."

Her hoarse voice was full of deep despair.

With what little strength she had left, she could only knock against the door with a weak sound barely louder than a mosquito's buzz.

In the end, she no longer had the strength to speak.

The woman slumped in front of the gate, her chest heaving like a bellows.

"Ngh... nn..."

She looked back into the darkness, biting her lip hard as low, choked sobs escaped her throat.

Maybe in the next second, that monster would rush out of the darkness and drag her into the abyss of despair.

"Open the door..."

The woman sobbed.

Creak.

At the moment of her deepest despair, a sound like heavenly music rang out behind her.

The old, mottled temple gate, which looked as if a gust of wind could knock it down, opened as she had wished.

The woman whipped her head around. A straight, gentle beam of light poured from inside the temple and fell across the bridge of her nose.

As the wooden door swung open, the light spread from her nose into her eyes, then finally enveloped her entire body.

Her trembling body froze in that instant.

Then...

She saw a clean-faced boy, and her misty eyes slowly widened.

It was like a drowning person finally touching something, anything, that could give her a sense of safety.

As she caught her breath, her mind went briefly blank.

The person who had opened the temple gate for her was, naturally, Kieran, who had just filled his stomach.

At that moment, everything ahead of him was wrapped in darkness too deep to see through.

Kieran only glanced at the utterly battered woman before shifting his gaze to the deep, oppressive darkness in front of him.

In that direction, a gauze-like glow of aura stirred somewhere in the darkness at a distance he could not judge.

'A person? Or something else?'

Kieran stared at the aura "burning" in the dark and said nothing.

Whatever it was...

If it had driven this woman into such a miserable, desperate state, it was probably no harmless thing.

The woman finally came back to herself. Lying on the ground, she wrapped both hands around Kieran's lower leg and cried in a hoarse voice, "Help me. Please help me. Something is chasing me... My friends were killed..."

"Be clear. Was it a person or an animal?"

Kieran still did not look at her. His eyes remained fixed on the cluster of aura in the darkness ahead.

The other party stood motionless. For now, he could only wait and observe.

Hearing Kieran's question, the woman hesitated, then whispered, "I... I was only running for my life. I didn't see what it was. But I heard my friends screaming. They... they..."

Her broken words trailed off. Then she glanced at the lights inside the temple, which offered at least some sense of safety, and pleaded softly, "Can... can you let me in?"

"..."

Kieran said nothing. He only turned sideways and made space.

The woman understood instantly. She had almost no strength left, but her will to live made her crawl inside like a worm.

Then she raised her head with difficulty, wanting Kieran to hurry and close the gate.

It was only then that she belatedly noticed he was staring in the direction she had come from.

It seemed that ever since he opened the gate, the boy in front of her had never looked away.

'Can he... see it?'

Her gaze went blank. That was the only possibility she could think of.

But to seek more safety, she had no time to think about it. All she wanted was for Kieran to close the gate as quickly as possible and call everyone in the temple out.

"Lock... lock the gate. That monster is almost here..."

The woman begged weakly.

If she had not collapsed from exhaustion, she would never have asked Kieran's opinion. She would have run directly into the temple.

"If your friends were all killed by the thing you described, what use do you think this broken gate would be? A grade-schooler could kick it down."

Kieran's expression was calm, his voice steady and firm.

The woman looked at the wooden gate creaking in the light breeze and could not say a word.

At the same time, she realized Kieran was far too calm, almost nothing like a boy his age should be.

"Then... then call out the people in the temple..."

"There is only me."

Kieran answered casually. At the same time, he saw the cluster of aura in the darkness finally move, slowly pressing toward them.

"Why... why are you the only one...?"

Hearing that such a large temple contained only Kieran, the woman froze.

A broken gate and a boy who could not possibly be older than sixteen.

How could that stop the monster that had killed all her companions in the mountain forest?

The woman sank into deep despair.

Kieran had no attention to spare for her current feelings.

He did not know what kind of thing the monster she mentioned was, but one thing was certain: this so-called monster knew how to use aura.

In other words, it was enough to pose a threat to him.

If this woman had not run here for help and had simply died in the forest, she would not have dragged the trouble to him.

At the same time, he would not have known that such a dangerous presence was in the mountain forest.

In short...

From the moment she collapsed in front of the temple gate, Kieran knew he could no longer stay uninvolved.

Fortunately, he now had a way to fight Nen.

"Come in."

Kieran kept observing the aura's movements as he backed away.

"Can you help me up...?"

The woman looked at him retreating and pleaded.

Kieran said nothing. He only shook his head.

Given the current situation, this helpless-looking seeker of aid was still within the range of his caution.

Seeing how cold he was, the woman could only wriggle forward and struggle to crawl into the temple.

What she did not notice was that under the light, the boy before her had no shadow.

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