Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 153: Half of Tass
Myss tilted his body and nimbly dodged the hand.
Compared with the speed of Salaar during a fight, that hand moved even slower than a sloth changing spots.
By reflex, he wanted to strike back. His power had only just begun to gather when he abruptly froze.
Marcela wasn’t human.
Honestly, that was the worst possibility he could imagine. Whether she was some human god forcibly created with an Abnormal Fruit or some unknown thing of mysterious origin, her strength couldn’t be underestimated.
And there was still all that bizarre fog outside. Who knew what kind of scheme might be hidden within it.
If they tore off the pretense right now, Myss himself would be fine, but Salaar was in poor condition. Something might happen to him.
…Right. Not yet.
In less than a heartbeat, the power at Myss’s fingertips concealed itself once more.
“I didn’t touch you! I only grabbed a handful of fog!” he shouted in a flash of inspiration as he dodged.
Myss didn’t possess Salaar’s glib tongue but he made up for it with sheer audacity. To the Chaos Archdemon, the possibility that “Kingdom Archmage Marcela might not be human” was nowhere near enough to inspire fear.
Seeing that Myss looked completely unshaken, Marcela’s hand paused.
Their contact just now had lasted only an instant, and Myss’s hand had been light and fast. Clearly, she wasn’t entirely certain either.
While Marcela was still thinking sluggishly, Myss stopped directly in front of her under Earl’s dumbfounded stare.
Marcela was roughly the same height as him, but her body was so thin that she seemed to be an entire size smaller. Without changing expression, Myss stared straight into those murky eyes.
He stood deliberately close. In the excessively silent space, his breathing and heartbeat remained unnervingly steady.
“I’ll make this clear first. We don’t like sleeping in the living room with other people.” He made no effort whatsoever to hide his arrogance.
A few steps away, Earl sucked in a sharp breath.
As expected of Kendrick’s lover. This brat was practically the living embodiment of a conceited country bumpkin relying on his pretty face!
Seeing that the “human” in front of her was merely a foolish creature baring its teeth and claws, the strange smile on Marcela’s face gradually faded. She looked at Myss with the lifelessness of a corpse, apparently losing interest in him.
Myss decided he might as well go all the way. With one quick movement, he began looking around the second floor right in front of Marcela, pacing back and forth.
“Are there guest rooms upstairs?”
“That’s enough. Lady Marcela will obviously take care of it.” Earl could no longer bear to watch and reached out to stop Myss from darting around everywhere.
Myss clicked his tongue. “All she did was say ‘good’ to Big Nose Number Two. She never said she’d actually do anything…”
“Leave.” Marcela spoke again, her tone chillingly cold.
Earl’s entire body tensed as he reached for Myss. Before his hand could even touch the hem of Myss’s clothes, Myss had already run downstairs. Sweat covering his forehead, Earl hurriedly bowed to Marcela and rushed after him.
Lawler didn’t move. Wearing his slightly ill-fitting employee uniform, he looked at Marcela standing close by.
“Teacher.”
Marcela didn’t turn her head or look at him, but he knew she was listening.
“They’re all good people. Please don’t make things difficult for them. They didn’t mean to offend you.”
He spoke somewhat timidly. “The fog will clear tomorrow morning, right?”
Marcela stood rigidly for a long time. As though she had remembered something, she took a stone-like object from her pocket. At first glance, it resembled a chunk of pink rock salt wrapped in a sticky piece of coarse paper.
“Eat,” she said. “Eat.”
“Thank you for the treat, Teacher.”
Lawler absentmindedly ate it. The taste was familiar, like mud mixed with salt and sugar.
“Now can you tell me? …When will this fog end?”
Marcela’s hand paused. Her deathly pale eyes swept toward the floor below.
“Until death,” she said expressionlessly. “Until death… Law.”
……
Myss practically slid down the banister.
A streak of silver flashed across Salaar’s vision, and the next instant Myss’s warm presence was directly in front of him. Earl had been left far behind and nearly tripped over the decaying wooden steps.
The first thing Myss did after coming downstairs was reach out and touch Salaar’s forehead. He couldn’t tell whether it was his imagination, but Salaar seemed slightly warmer than before.
The white of his left eye had already turned completely black, and the darkness was beginning to spread toward his right eye.
Myss lowered his hand irritably and spoke in a hushed voice.
“Lady Interesting isn’t human. Her body is made of fog.”
“I saw some spoiled vegetables and meat in barrels upstairs. There wasn’t anything else particularly unusual up there, at least nothing with magical fluctuations… Salaar, are you listening?”
Salaar’s gaze remained fixed on him the entire time. That in itself was normal. What was abnormal was Salaar’s expression. Those lapis-lazuli eyes looked somewhat hollow.
“What’s wrong, you two? What’s upstairs? If you need anything, I can provide equipment.”
Kai chose the worst possible moment to come over, meaningfully patting the case containing his Divine Blood Puppet.
The moment he patted it, a series of cracking sounds came from inside the case, as though something had shattered.
Kai’s face turned ashen. He quickly hurried into a corner, turned his back to everyone, and furtively opened the case. His complexion instantly became even paler than the wall.
“…If you need anything, I’m afraid I may not have any equipment left.” There was a faint sob in his voice. “My god. I just finished tuning it…”
Salaar shook his head, and his gaze barely cleared somewhat. He nodded at Myss and strode over to Kai.
The Divine Blood Puppet inside the case had shattered.
Its overall structure was still intact, but its limbs were covered in fine spiderweb cracks along with obvious signs of corrosion. Most of the puppet’s hands and feet had already disappeared, as though it had been suspended inside a desert storm for a century or two.
Salaar held the candle in his left hand and pinched up a bit of debris with his right. He rubbed it lightly between his fingertips. The solid fragments behaved like sugar in hot water, vanishing the moment he touched them.
The Divine Blood fluctuations within the fragments weakened rapidly and dissolved into the air together with the debris.
Salaar coughed twice, his voice slightly hurried.
“Do you have any other magical tools? Ones set with gemstones. The more powerful, the better.”
What a strange question. Myss’s brows shifted slightly.
Kai cooperated readily. He carefully opened another case and lifted out a metal egg covered in crystals with both hands.
“This is the best item in my inventory… Fuck!”
Kai swore on the spot, the sob in his voice now almost impossible to hide.
Under the candlelight, the surfaces of those expensive crystals were covered in cracks, more numerous than the wrinkles on Marcela’s face.
This time, Kai didn’t need Salaar to remind him. He hurriedly began gathering his precious belongings.
Myss didn’t know what the little objects had looked like before, but he could say that now they were closer to a heap of cracked scrap. They reflected fragmented light in the darkness, not a single one fully intact.
Come to think of it, the magical candles they were holding also used gemstones…
Pff. Pff. Pff.
The thought had barely crossed Myss’s mind when the candle in Salaar’s hand went out with a soft puff. At the same time, every other candle in the room extinguished as well.
The first floor instantly fell into darkness, leaving only the strange firelight from the fireplace and faint cracking noises of unknown origin hidden in the shadows.
“Your candle… Didn’t you say it could stay lit for several days?”
By the fireplace, Earl had only just caught his breath, and his voice carried some dissatisfaction.
He shook the extinguished candle in his hand.
Thump.
A pale object flew out of his grasp. It traced a blurry arc through the shadows and rolled across the floor until it stopped beside Myss’s feet.
A right hand clutching a white candle.
After it stopped moving, there came a faint crack like plaster breaking. The little finger dropped off with the sound and struck the floor, while the fingertip vanished like sugar.
There was no blood at the severed surface. The dark-red flesh gleamed like paraffin wax.
Earl froze. Slowly, he lowered his head and stared at his bare right wrist, seemingly unable to comprehend what had happened. More than ten seconds later, he raised his head again and looked toward the hand lying on the floor.
He was so bewildered that he couldn’t even make a sound.
Amid terror and confusion, Earl took two steps backward, only for his left ankle to break apart as well. His body stiffly toppled backward, nearly landing directly in the fireplace.
Fortunately, Lawler arrived in time and helped him into a chair.
Earl gasped for breath and uselessly rubbed at the severed end of his wrist. By comparison, Lawler was far too calm. He tore off a piece of his shirt and futilely wrapped Earl’s wrist.
Salaar’s gaze swept across him.
“What’s happening?”
Kai sucked in a breath and hurriedly checked his own hands. Then he discovered that the crisscrossing lines covering his palms were not all palm lines. They were filled with the same cracks as the puppet.
His condition was simply a little better than Earl’s. His flesh hadn’t yet separated.
“It’s too dark here, so small cracks are hard to see. They probably didn’t appear all at once.” Salaar pressed hard against his temple, his knuckles turning faintly white as though he were resisting something invisible. “There’s something wrong with this place… We can’t stay here much longer…”
Myss lowered his head to look at his own hands. All ten fingers were intact. His skin was smooth and clean, without any strange cracks.
Then, almost roughly, he grabbed Salaar and inspected him from head to toe. Aside from the whites of Salaar’s eyes turning black, there were no signs of cracking either.
Salaar allowed Myss to manhandle him, his gaze circling over Myss in return. But Lord Archdemon wasn’t satisfied with checking only once.
Myss cupped Salaar’s face between both hands, then anxiously tugged open his collar and sleeves, checking him again and again. Salaar became slightly dizzy from being squeezed and struggled a little before reaching into Myss’s pocket and pulling out the Dragon Fae.
Fortunately, although Tass was small, all four limbs were intact. He hadn’t shattered inside Myss’s pocket.
Only after confirming there were no other problems with Salaar did Myss release him.
From the corner of his eye, he glanced toward the priest. Kalen looked somewhat confused, but at least he hadn’t lost any arms or legs.
No wonder Marcela hadn’t prepared beds for them. Apparently several of them were going to crack apart ahead of time, making it difficult to count how many guests there would be.
…So why exactly was there such a difference? Myss narrowed his eyes.
Forget gemstones and Divine Blood.
Even living people like Earl and Kai were breaking apart, while everyone on their side remained completely unharmed.
This group contained entirely different races. Was it simply because they were stronger?
And with something this bizarre happening, this cursed place should obviously be some kind of Divine Realm. Yet Myss had sensed it repeatedly and still couldn’t find the aura of one.
He was almost starting to miss the simple process of catching Abnormal Fruits and dismantling Divine Realms.
“Since Sal… Kendrick says it’s dangerous, we can’t stay here anymore.” The eternally healthy Kalen swallowed and raised his voice. “How about this? I’ll go outside and take a look.”
“There may be a road out there. As long as I can find a direction, we’ll definitely be able to leave.”
He patted his left hand, the one that “foretold ill omen,” then secretly glanced toward the second floor.
The previously closed door had been opened, revealing only darkness inside. There wasn’t a sound beyond it. Archmage Marcela seemed to have completely forgotten they existed.
In a sense, that was even more unsettling than being closely watched.
“Wait.” Salaar spoke hoarsely.
He lowered the hand pressing against his temple, tore his gaze away from Myss, and laboriously looked over everyone present.
As elites, Earl and Kai couldn’t move freely. Lawler was merely an innocent employee.
Kalen’s constitution was too unusual. The fog having no effect on him didn’t mean it wouldn’t infect anyone else. As for Tass, there was even less to say. He was already burning with fever and completely incapable of moving.
Myss… Myss was impossible. Salaar would worry so much that he would be unable to think properly.
And for some reason, there was a strange thirst in Salaar’s throat. He found himself missing that fog.
“…This isn’t merely about finding a way out.”
Salaar swallowed again and forced himself upright, even though it made him look even more exhausted.
“This place seems to be digesting things that are ‘rich in magic’… whether objects or people.”
“For some reason, we currently have some resistance. I’m the most affected and also happen to be capable of moving, so I’m the best test subject…”
“Hey!” Myss’s eyes flew wide open.
What a joke. He had only just dragged Salaar back out of the fog!
“Marcela’s approach is very effective,” Salaar muttered. “She gives no guidance and uses no unnecessary threats, letting us waste time in confusion and chaos… If we want to leave this place, someone has to go outside and test it. I’ll leave the indoor investigation to you and Kalen, Myss.”
“Relax. I still have to kill you. I’m not going to casually throw my life away…”
By the end, even his breathing had become somewhat disordered.
Myss decisively blocked the doorway. “If you insist on going out, then I’m going with you. It’s written in the contract.”
“The contract isn’t that strict.”
Salaar reached an arm past Myss and groggily pulled at the door.
Using his advantage in height and weight, Salaar directly forced the door open a crack. Fog like a blue tongue licked its way inside again.
Myss was convinced his enemy had gone insane. A Salaar whose mind was functioning normally would never be this reckless.
Furious, Myss reached into his pocket, grabbed the utterly confused Knife and Fork along with the protesting Tass, and stuffed all three directly into Salaar’s arms.
With these fragile little creatures hanging off him, Myss refused to believe Salaar would dare force his way outside.
During their struggle, the gap in the door widened.
The hand Myss was using to hold Tass happened to be right beside the doorway. As though possessing a will of its own, the fog reached deeper inside. Tass was brushed by the blue-white mist, and his figure immediately became indistinct.
Myss and Salaar both froze.
For that instant, nearly half of Tass’s body had been submerged in the fog. The half outside the mist was the Tass they knew.
He had a delicate, androgynous face and exquisitely formed wings like those of a flying dragon, a beautiful creature that belonged in a fairy tale.
But the part inside the fog had no gemstone-like scales and no smooth human skin. There was only a twitching, sticky mass of flesh.
The half of Tass outside the fog was looking at them in confusion.
He seemed completely unaware of what had happened.
The author has something to say:
This team is really full of hidden monsters (…
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