Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 25: A Contract Between Enemies

“I don’t know,” Kalen said.

Then it has nothing to do with you.

Myss couldn’t even wait to take it back. He opened his mouth to bite—his head just halfway forward when a pair of hands reached from behind and fixed his head in place.

Myss struggled forward with all his strength, his face stretched and distorted. Then, remembering he had hands, he tried to snatch the thing. Kalen stepped back two paces in surprise and held the black lump high.

“Don’t touch this. It’s very dangerous. Let me handle it,” he said with complete sincerity.

Those hands restraining Myss—Salaar’s hands—shifted and pulled Myss back into his arms. The great hero wasn’t in good shape; most of his weight was pressed down on Myss, making him feel as if he was being used as a crutch.

Just as the Demon Lord was about to explode, Salaar asked, “You don’t know what this is, but you know it’s dangerous?”

Kalen nodded solemnly. “Yes. I once saw it flatten an entire village.”

Myss immediately softened his struggling. The thing smelled so delicious it made his head spin, but he didn’t want his mouth blown off.

Seeing that Myss had calmed down, Salaar loosened his arms.

Myss’s clothes had been corroded into shreds, but parts of it were still being held up by his belt, so he wasn’t stark naked. Salaar’s clothes, however, had been reduced to pathetic strips, making him look rather unpresentable.

“It’s not convenient to talk here. Let us return to the church.”

Kalen took off his last remaining shirt and handed it to Salaar to cover himself—after all, there was a clear-headed little girl inside the church.

A few minutes later, inside the church.

“She’s Scintilla.”

Seeing the mutilated unconscious girl, Hailey recognized her at once.

Upon entering the church, Salaar had casually torn a piece of white silk from a statue. With quick hands he had fashioned a simple white robe for himself, making him look less miserable.

He then carried Scintilla onto a bench and skillfully cast healing magic. The pale red threads and memory fragments on her body hadn’t vanished, but her face regained some color and her breathing gradually steadied.

Hailey hesitated, then followed Kalen’s example, taking off her outer cloak to cover Scintilla’s curled-up body.

Myss didn’t care who Scintilla was. His gaze stayed hooked on that mysterious object, like a fishhook luring a fat fish.

Salaar sighed and clung close to Myss, prepared for any eventuality. He looked at the unnatural darkness outside the door and then at Kalen. “Would you mind explaining?”

The pale red threads had all broken and Mina was gone, yet that dreadful darkness still remained.

Even without eyes that could see through magic, Salaar could guess the core of this anomaly was not Scintilla or Mina but that strange lump—

Kalen was holding it carefully with both hands and now set it down gently on a flat ritual stone table.

“This time, thanks to you two, the disaster was lifted. Naturally, I owe you an explanation.”

After making sure the thing was safely placed, Kalen let out a long breath. “You two seem quite interested in the strange illness. In fact, Rosha isn’t the only place with ominous outbreaks.”

“In recent years, several places have experienced similar odd events—someone suddenly mutates, then drags everything nearby into hell. Those who mutate often have this thing on them.”

“At present it seems to be highly concentrated pure magic. The more grotesque the host’s mutation and the greater the number of people affected, the purer the magic power extracted into this thing.”

“It sounds like rose essential oil.” Salaar thought of the Magibases engulfed by the pale red threads. To get one gram of rose essential oil one must distill tens of thousands of roses. Then how much magic must be drained to form this?

No wonder Myss only found normal Magibases faintly fragrant yet couldn’t resist this “extracted essence” at all.

Kalen smiled. “Ah, my brother used a similar comparison. He also gave it a name: ‘Abnormal Fruit’.”

“He taught me the trick to dealing with Abnormal Fruit.”

“Deal with it? How?”

The moment the keyword came up, Myss’s ears perked up.

“There’s only one known solution: consume it using harmless magic until it is gone. Only when the Abnormal Fruit disappears will the anomaly fully dissipate,” Kalen said. “But the Abnormal Fruit is highly unstable. If someone tries to cut it or take it by force, it will explode on the spot.”

Myss’s face went pale, and he let out a sound almost like a sob.

Salaar forced his mouth into a flat line. He still had many questions but talking too much might push the Demon Lord into losing control again.

But one thing was certain, he couldn’t let Myss eat that thing.

If Myss got blown up, he might return to his original form; but if he absorbed all that magic, the balance of strength between them would shatter.

“Myss, don’t risk it this time. Its origin is strange. What if it’s poisonous?” Salaar whispered as he steadied a hand on his shoulder.

“Let us do as Kalen said and use a magic spell to consume it. While it’s being used up, you and I can watch carefully.”

Myss’s heart was shattered—yes, what else could he do but make it disappear from sight?

Calming down and thinking it through, earlier he and Salaar together barely subdued that monster… Even if this thing wasn’t toxic, its power was formidable; his human body might not endure it.

Until they found a safe way to handle it, it wasn’t worth dying for a taste.

… But it smelled so good. Damn it, he was starving.

Myss covered his face with both hands and slowly squatted down, not wanting to say a single word. He tried to hide his nose to block out that deadly scent.

“If you two have no objections, I’ll begin eliminating it,” Kalen said. “Please step back a little.”

Salaar didn’t move. “Must it be consumed by a specific magic? Would other harmless spells work?”

Kalen scratched his head. “As long as it is not destructive magic, theoretically yes… Would you like to try?”

He stopped moving and looked at Salaar inquiringly.

Salaar thought for a moment, broke off a small piece of white stone from the statue, and began drawing a magic circle on the floor.

Seeing Salaar, who usually cast spells barehanded, actually drew a proper magic array, Myss couldn’t help raising his head and secretly peeking through his fingers.

That guy must have borrowed Lord Karns’s knowledge. The circle looked decent and contained many runes Myss had never seen.

“Myss.” Salaar seemed aware he was peeking and spoke without looking up. “Don’t you think there’s a problem between us?”

Myss frowned. “Hmm? Is there a problem between us?”

Then he had better quickly address any gaps.

Salaar glanced at him and whispered, “Fine, let me rephrase. Earlier in the fight you got distracted. Were you doubting me?”

Salaar knew he had made mistakes while in his support, but he hadn’t expected Myss’s reaction to be that big. He thought Myss had long since engraved ‘Salaar is untrustworthy’ into instinct.

This realization left him feeling… complicated.

Myss didn’t reply.

Being distracted during battle was humiliating but having your archenemy guess the reason why was even worse. He decided to play dead on the spot.

“I know what worries you. You fear I’ll discover the truth first and stab you in the back. But if we’re always on guard, we can’t fight at full strength. That’s a serious problem.”

Salaar tapped the ground with the stone. “We don’t need to talk about meaningless ‘trust’. Let us just make a contract—using the Abnormal Fruit as material, the magic effect will be absolutely guaranteed.”

A contract?

Myss finally lifted his head and raised his eyebrows.

“Before uncovering the truth about the body-switch ritual, you and I must share all related information and can’t lie or hide anything.”

“Before uncovering the truth about the ritual, you and I must guarantee each other’s safety and can’t act passively.”

“Before uncovering the truth about the ritual, you and I must stay close and can’t leave without permission.”

Salaar stated each clause emphatically while he fixed his gaze directly at Myss, as if he was trying to catch every smallest reaction.

“…Well? This way there’ll be no ‘I found the truth but kept silent.’ After the truth is known, who lives or dies will depend on skill.”

Myss thought for a while, then stood up. “Fine.”

Good enough. The Abnormal Fruit would stay with him in another form; his pent-up grievance eased considerably. And he truly didn’t want to be constantly suspicious, with his mind always on Salaar. A contract would make things simpler.

“But I’ll cast with you. You’d better not pull any tricks.” Myss pointed at his eyes. “I can see things very clearly right now.”

Salaar smiled back.

“Have you two decided?” Since they had lowered their voices, Kalen had politely kept his distance.

“Done, Father.” Salaar patted the white stone dust off his hands. “Please bring the Abnormal Fruit here and teach us the process.”

It turned out to be much simpler than they expected.

Kalen only asked where the center of the array was, then placed the plump Abnormal Fruit right on top.

“It’s a bit like a lost ancient alchemy. I heard this kind of magic is extremely complicated.” He peered curiously at the array. “Are you an alchemist?”

“No. I’m just a scholar who likes researching history,” Salaar said calmly.

At the edge of the round-table-sized array, Salaar and Myss stood facing each other. Salaar extended one hand and chanted a long incantation that Myss couldn’t understand.

The array lit with a gentle, brilliant gold glow, and the pitch-black Abnormal Fruit gave a slight wriggle.

Wave after wave of magic surged out like a tsunami, blowing both their hair sideways.

Countless gold motes danced above the array, drifting around the two of them and forming a splendid band of light like a Möbius strip.

Soundless information flooded into Myss’s mind. It was the three terms Salaar had just stated.

Salaar hadn’t tampered with it. The information was even more precise and detailed than his spoken wording, watertight in every respect.

If either of them broke the contract, their power would vanish immediately and wouldn’t return until the other party chose to forgive them.

“…Contract confirmed. Offer perfect metal imbued with essence,” Salaar intoned.

What’s that supposed to mean? Myss looked at him, puzzled.

Salaar didn’t bother to explain. He took out the ritual dagger made of pure silver and sliced open his own palm. The silver-white blade, covered in blood, dropped into the gold light of the array.

It didn’t hit the ground but melted into a small silver-white sphere and floated slowly on one side of the array.

Myss suddenly understood. He felt around in his shredded clothes and pulled out the nearly ruined silver dining fork.

The warped fork pricked his arm, then fell with his blood into the array and immediately became a silver sphere of the same size. The two spheres orbited the array, circling closer and closer. The Abnormal Fruit dissolved at high speed, and the two spheres grew ever more dazzling.

At the instant the fruit disappeared, the spheres merged into one and turned into a silver… egg.

Myss: ?

Crack.

The array slowly dimmed. The silver egg split open in front of him and two tiny silver snakes crawled out. They floated in midair and slithered toward Myss and Salaar respectively.

Myss instinctively held out his hand and allowed the snake to coil around his right arm. It had eyes like garnet, its skin shone with a dark silvery gray, and it carried a faint metallic texture.

Just looking at it gave Myss a strange sense of intimacy, as if it was a part of him.

The other snake flew into Salaar’s hand.

With a flash of silver light, that snake turned into a single-serpent staff. Its length matched an ordinary walking stick, its color a subdued silver gray. A slender silver snake coiled at the head of the staff, its eyes like inlaid lapis lazuli.

“The air outside is really fresh.”

The snake, which looked like a mere ornament, actually opened its mouth and spoke.

Myss stared at it in shock, then looked at his own snake. His snake was busy yawning, exposing tiny fangs, with no time to talk.

“This is the embodied symbol of the contract. In a sense, it is one with us,” Salaar said. “I thought the Magibases were an interesting idea, so I tried something similar.”

“You can turn it into a weapon, like this—”

Salaar flicked the serpent staff. The snake instantly formed a hilt-like structure at the head, while the lower half of the staff was wrapped in brilliant gold light and became a slender blade.

A delicate lightsaber appeared before Myss. The power of the Abnormal Fruit had fused into it perfectly. A faint pressure emanated from it, far stronger than that ritual dagger had ever been.

Tap. Tap.

The tip touched the floor twice. The gold faded at once, and the lightsaber returned to a plain serpent staff.

“That tickles,” the snake said again.

…This is amazing! Salaar actually had such a miraculous use for it!

Myss immediately looked at his own snake and began considering what to make it become.

A dagger?

No, not quite right. He mainly used magic to eliminate enemies, so a wound from the slightest stab from a dagger was negligible. The earlier use of a dining fork had only been to provide an anchoring point for his magic.

A bow and arrows?

That would fit his ranger persona, and long-range attacks suited him. But a longbow was bulky, and drawing and shooting was troublesome. Myss felt a headache just thinking about it.

If only he could combine the two.

In a flash, the image of Salaar raising a dagger and firing flames crossed his mind.

The silver snake moved on its own, coiling around Myss’s right wrist. A moment later it fixed its body in place, its head resting on the back of Myss’s right hand.

At first glance it looked like a silver bracelet in the shape of a serpent. Myss, however, caught the idea at once. It was essentially a refined wrist crossbow.

He lifted his hand and moved his will. A jet of pitch-black magic shot from the snake’s mouth like a viper spitting venom.

The shot grazed Salaar’s foot and ate a bottomless little hole into the floorboards.

Myss and the silver snake both cried out “Wow!” at the same time.

This thing was even more handy than he expected, and its attack coverage was quite flexible. In close quarters he could even have the snake bite directly.

“How is it?” Salaar winked at him.

“I’m naming it ‘Fork’.” Myss stroked the silver snake in satisfaction. Its touch was cool and silky, and it gave off a faint pleasant scent.

Fork narrowed its eyes at him and said in a shrill voice, “Your taste in names is awful.”

Myss narrowed his eyes right back. “If you want to live, keep quiet.”

Salaar chuckled and coughed twice, then waved his own serpent staff. “Then I will call this one ‘Knife’. It’s basically a knife transformed.”

Knife: “That’s truly a… unique name, beyond my comprehension.”

Salaar: “Really? Thank you for the compliment.”

Clap, clap, clap.

Kalen applauded from a few steps away, wearing the same astonished look as Myss.

“This is the first time I have seen such wondrous alchemical magic,” the priest exclaimed. “Congratulations on successfully, uh, giving birth to new life…?”

Myss and Salaar both fell silent.

After a few seconds, Salaar gave a dry laugh, thanked him, and used magic to erase the traces of the array on the floor.

“But the anomaly here hasn’t disappeared,” Kalen said, glancing toward the door. “Sir, did you overlook something?”

“No. There’s indeed a tiny remaining portion of the Abnormal Fruit. Only a very, very small bit,” Salaar said, then produced a candy ball as if by sleight of hand.

Myss couldn’t fathom it. This man’s clothes had nearly fallen apart earlier. The ritual dagger was one thing, but this was somehow still around.

He was in no mood for such details now. From that candy he smelled an extremely alluring fragrance.

It was the scent of the Abnormal Fruit. It wasn’t as intense as the fruit itself, but exactly the same in flavor, most likely the residual crumbs of the contract magic.

“Eat it,” Salaar said, tossing it to him. “In such a tiny amount, even if it is poisonous, it won’t matter.”

Myss popped the candy into his mouth without hesitation.

Curiously, his sense of taste didn’t react. The fragrance felt more like a guide, as if his instincts had borrowed human senses on purpose just to secure his attention.

As the fruit’s magic seeped into him, Myss felt vividly and unmistakably alive. It was an incomparable comfort, like a newborn taking a first breath.

In truth, Myss could more or less guess Salaar’s motive.

If he kept brooding over this, it wouldn’t benefit anyone. The great hero was cooling a powder keg. Myss couldn’t resist such bribery though. The contract first and the candy after; Myss’s dissatisfaction vanished to the sweetness.

“I’ve decided not to resent you for now.”

Myss devoted himself to savoring the magic. His whole body tensed, and the corners of his eyes grew faintly moist.

“That’s truly my honor, My~ss~,” Salaar said cheerfully.

……

The candy melted, and the illusion quietly collapsed.

Faint voices drifted from the nearby street. The damp, fishy odor fully dispersed, and the air turned dry and clear.

The church was still the same church, but the sky outside the door had brightened at once. Myss looked up and saw the spire intact, all the damage from the battle gone without a trace.

The hot, rank air, the membranous sheath covering the city, the windows lit from within—all of it had felt so real. Yet the twisted monster nurtured there had never managed to be born.

Only the contract’s silver snake still lay on the back of Myss’s hand. Its cool, slippery touch told him the past events hadn’t been false.

At last, the Abnormal Fruit’s remnants were completely digested by Myss. Mina’s distorted memories faded, leaving only a light impression that could no longer stir any emotion.

In the very end, Myss seemed to hear a soft sigh.

“Who goes there?!” A roar followed at once, making Myss jump.

—People in disheveled clothing had appeared in the church, creating quite a suspicious scene. The night watchman swung his lantern and shouted them out.

Scintilla, whose appearance had grown abnormal, was wrapped in silk and was being floated by Salaar. Huey was still unconscious and was carried on Kalen’s back.

Hailey ran ahead to lead the way. She moved through the night with practiced ease and guided them straight to the Hammer Tavern.

Since the bird-beaked demon had appeared, the tavern had far fewer guests. Even so, at the sight of this particularly strange group, a wave of whispers and exclamations rose. Hammer silenced the curious patrons with a look and pointed upstairs.

“I’ll get you something to eat in a bit. Tell me what herbs you need,” he whispered.

…And just like that, Scintilla and Huey took the beds that should have belonged to Myss and Salaar.

Myss was in a good mood, savoring the candy, so he decided not to pursue the matter for now. He leaned against the corner and watched the busy humans.

Perhaps because he had newly gained the fruit’s power, Salaar generously cast cleansing spells and removed all the grime from everyone.

Earlier, to attend the exorcism and blessing, Salaar had only worn a loose old outfit. Now he pulled out that dark-blue formal suit again and changed quickly in the corridor. Paired with the newly acquired serpent staff, he looked even more like a proper scholar.

“Mr. Huey has nothing serious. His magic fluctuations are a bit weak. Slow recuperation will suffice.”

After carefully checking Huey’s condition, Kalen looked relieved. A few more crows had gathered outside the window, hopping along the sill and gently tapping the glass with their beaks.

Kalen smiled and waved to them, then went to check Scintilla on the other bed. At the sight of the girl’s terrifying alteration, that trace of relief vanished at once.

Half of Scintilla’s body was gone, leaving only pale red threads tangled into a mass. They drooped dryly like plant roots withered by drought.

Myss narrowed his eyes, trying to observe the Magibase inside Scintilla. He found only a broken, indescribable clump of something. It was less like a living thing and more like scraps of meat on a butcher’s board.

Salaar stood beside him and watched in silence as well.

“Miss Scintilla’s situation isn’t optimistic.” Kalen sighed. “Forget recovery. I have never seen someone altered like this return to human form. Mr. Myss being able to separate her human body at all is already an extraordinary feat.”

Salaar looked at him noncommittally. “So?”

“So I’ll look after her until the very last moment,” Kalen said softly. “How about I take her home, and you two look after Mr. Huey and Miss Hailey. If anything else comes up, find me at Scintilla’s house anytime.”

“The Abnormal Fruit is gone, and the strange sickness won’t recur. Your investigation can be wrapped up.”

“Is that so?” Salaar crossed his arms. Knife flicked its tongue.

“I never said our goal was to investigate the ‘Lower City plague’.”

“As it happens, when I last visited Scintilla’s home, something seemed to be missing from her table… Of course I don’t mean the lantern.”

“Father, what’s that letter in your pocket?”

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The author has something to say:

The pets are here!

Yes, I declare they have two children, blood-related (…)

Two adorable contract snakes to make up for the fact that neither of them has a Magibase, and they even come as a matching couple—

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 24: A Fleeting Glimpse

Through all that long time, Salaar had never seen Myss’s true face.

In boundless darkness he could feel countless lines of sight coming from Myss. In dim light he had seen innumerable tips of tentacles.

He sketched the shape of that vast alien being in his mind bit by bit. Perhaps It was a soft-bodied creature with innumerable tentacles. Or perhaps It hid carapace, scales, and teeth deeper within.

…Would It be like a bird or a fish? Like a snake or a wolf?

…Would It be like a dragon? Or perhaps the giants of human fantasy?

Now, he had part of an answer.

No, Myss was like nothing at all.

No familiar tentacles, no supple flesh. For one second Salaar wasn’t even sure it was a “living thing.”

Myss hung unnaturally in midair with locked joints. The limbs on one side had been corroded away, and the wounds shed dense black mist.

It wasn’t formless dampness, more like some shattered particles. They moved in a terrifying, seductive pattern and spread outward into a broken radial structure.

It was like a beautiful, pitch-black sun.

It was a strange ethereal beauty. Rather than a wonder born of life, it belonged closer to mathematics: simple, cold, absolute.

A strange thought struck Salaar. If the concept of “end” itself could be observed, it would probably look like this.

Unfortunately, it was too young and too incomplete. It didn’t feel like Myss’s true form at all, more like a tiny corner of Myss’s real body.

Yes, that human shell was only a hole. Salaar could only snatch a glance at the “colossus behind the hole”. Yet the moment the darkness bared a hint of its true face, the “human Myss” shell was about to collapse.

It wasn’t only Myss’s flesh that was collapsing.

Where the black “sunlight” fell, the umbilical cord turned into squeaking fragments. Its regeneration was close to zero and they were on the verge of snapping.

At the end of the cord, the infant writhed uneasily. In its amniotic fluid it opened its mouth and cried without sound.

More memory fragments surged in as if to weave layer after layer of swaddling, desperate to heal its wounds faster. Countless pale red filaments drew back from the dark. Some tips still clung to incomplete Magibases. They ground them up at once and fed the body with purified magic.

Hundreds of Minas crawled over the monster’s surface and bent to stitch the ruptures. They no longer insisted on “restoring the original”. They stacked patches in haste. With such slapdash mending, the monster gradually lost its human shape and grew ever more twisted.

The battle shifted from mutual destruction to a race between ruin and regeneration.

Perhaps the human shell limited His power. Myss’s pace of destruction couldn’t keep up with the Minas’ speed of repair.

He struggled toward one particular direction, yet the monster’s flesh blocked Him again and again, slowing Him to a crawl.

His human body necrotized and sloughed under the black radiation, like a snakeskin about to be shed. If this continued, “Myss” would vanish.

No, Salaar thought. Not now. He still wasn’t sure what would happen.

Myss might die, might lose control. In the worst case His will would return to that boundless dark and then descend upon the world.

“Don’t come closer.” Salaar tossed the words to Kalen and dove for that black sun.

Near that uncanny splendor his own flesh hissed as it corroded and split, then regenerated under the nourishment of golden light.

Enduring the pain of being burned alive, Salaar charged straight to Myss’s back and wrapped both arms around what remained of his torso.

He squeezed every drop of power from his body and poured all he had into healing that shell. Myss’s flesh regrew fast and sheathed the black mist, only to be burst apart by it again.

…Myss himself gave no response, intent only on flying in that one direction.

“Myss.” Salaar forced a voice through a mangled throat. “Myss, no.”

Black blood streamed from Salaar’s eyes, his eyeballs shriveled at speed, then regained luster in a flood of golden light. Even so, he never looked away.

He clenched his teeth, and his flesh began to proliferate unnaturally. He bandaged Myss’s wounds with his own skin and rammed the rampaging darkness back into Myss’s body.

It was a horrifying “embrace”. At a glance he looked like a wax statue melting over a branding iron.

Myss finally sensed the obstruction. His human shell convulsed and gave a broken cry.

It irritated Him—He knew exactly where He should strike, yet He couldn’t squeeze out enough magic, and the body wouldn’t obey His commands. This human flesh was truly clumsy and hard to use.

Right then He wanted only to cast it off and be rid of every hateful shackle. Even if His thoughts and feelings slipped away with it, what would be so bad? He had never needed that noise.

But Salaar’s flesh pushed into His wounds and locked Him tight inside the shell.

The man even bared his own heart; the beating organ pressed to Myss’s back. The instant it brushed that heart, His runaway power froze for a moment.

Just like their first grappling match on arrival. By some unknown law, He simply couldn’t kill Salaar.

Salaar didn’t miss the opening. Dazzling golden light burst outward like an explosion.

New-grown flesh wrapped the black mist and Myss’s body knit together at speed. The agony melted away like snow. In a daze, He recovered a sliver of reason.

Salaar’s build was much larger than Myss’s, and the embrace from behind almost embedded Him in that body.

The enemy’s warm flesh pulsed gently inside Him… within his wounds. The sensation defied description and Myss broke out in goosebumps on the spot.

Myss twisted in displeasure. “You—”

The moment he opened his mouth, something round and plump filled it.

It was a raspberry-flavored candy ball, still smeared with a touch of sweet blood—Salaar’s blood.

…The act was baffling. Myss froze where he was, jaw locked around the candy.

“Such a temper. Looks like you are hungry.” Salaar spoke in fits and starts, and he sounded relieved.

The great hero spoke with ease, yet his body was in tatters. His clothes were rags, and his skin was all torn gashes. The abnormal overgrowth of flesh withered and sloughed away. Cold sweat slicked him, his body trembled faintly, but his expression stayed quite calm.

At last his gaze left Myss and turned to the monster.

A moment ago, Salaar had been busy restraining Myss, and no one had time to attack. The two of them ended up crushed tight in the monster’s embrace, and only Salaar’s protective magic kept them alive, yet—

Crack. The tottering barrier split with a fissure. Warm memories from mothers flowed slowly, and countless women’s arms reached out for them from the shards of memory.

Crack. Myss bit down and shattered the candy. The sweet aroma pushed back that trace of blood.

He still didn’t trust Salaar. But he also knew this absolutely wasn’t the time to argue.

Myss tried to recover the feel of his earlier attack. For the moment his power was stable inside him, and his senses weren’t as sharp as when he lost control.

Fortunately, his new ability hadn’t vanished completely. Myss focused, and his pupils blurred and warped like mist. Through a thousand obstacles he could vaguely see the shadow of the “end”.

“We can only attack that infant. The rest of this thing is kneaded from memories and can regenerate without limit,” he said irritably. “I will settle accounts with you later…”

“There’s nothing in this world that is truly limitless, especially not memory,” Salaar said quietly, without loosening his embrace.

Myss shifted uncomfortably. “Thanks to you, now, even I can’t make these memories disappear. Unless you have Mina’s skill and can twist them all.”

“Twist?”

“Twist, pollute, understand it however you want,” Myss snorted. “Either way, the infant is the true body. It’s constantly drawing on ‘motherly’ memories. As long as the people of Rosha aren’t all dead, it has an endless supply.”

Salaar suddenly smiled.

They were so close that Myss could feel the vibration in Salaar’s chest.

“That is convenient,” he said weakly. “You know I am very good at mental magic.”

“Since it needs happy memories, we only have to pollute them all with painful ones.” Salaar’s tone grew indistinct. “Very good. If the need were reversed, it would be troublesome…”

Myss nearly laughed from anger. “That’s the memory of an entire city!”

“But I’m truly very good at mental magic,” Salaar said in an elusive way. He tightened his hold as if a drowning man clutching driftwood, squeezing Myss enough to make him struggle.

Then he shoved Myss away.

“Go finish what you started,” Salaar whispered. “This time I’ll give you the best footholds.”

Only then did Myss notice the dense sheath of golden protection covering him. Salaar pushed with great force and flung him directly toward the infant.

At the same time, the shield around Salaar shattered on cue. He became the perfect decoy and was swallowed entirely by the monster’s embrace.

In the last instant before the hero disappeared, amid the kaleidoscope of memory shards and the gaps between countless arms, Myss saw that familiar blue eye.

It curved slightly, and that trace of a smile felt like a blessing.

Before Myss could recover, an anomaly burst forth.

It was as if the monster had been splashed with invisible strong acid. The warm memory fragments dimmed rapidly and turned a murky gray-black. The pale red threads withered and curled. Despair spread like a plague… Just as Mina once overlaid their memories, now a tidal wave of pain overlaid them in return and devoured all that was good.

The memory fragments peeled away in layers like dead skin, and the pale red threads snapped to the last. The monster couldn’t keep its footing and toppled toward Myss.

At that moment the shield burst into countless lingering golden shards. Myss stepped lightly on them and shot like an arrow toward the struggling infant.

The monster tried to swing its limbs to block, but with its memories wholly polluted, it couldn’t retrieve a single shred of “happiness”.

Rip!

Hot fresh blood splashed out, staining the spire and speckling the tips of Kalen’s shoes.

Myss pierced the infant’s heart. Pitch-black magic spread without the slightest drag. It split on the spot into several chunks and collapsed into the air.

And the sweetest thing, Myss’s first spoils, was clutched tight in his hand.

It was a thin little girl, curled like a fetus. Shimmering scraps of memory still clung to her skin, and most of her body had already turned to red threads. The girl was probably still alive. Myss could hear her heartbeat.

The distortion and madness ebbed away. The smiling Minas vanished one by one… until only she remained.

Unfortunately, Myss had no time to savor his feast. With the infant gone, the vast body made of memories also turned to ash, and Salaar was about to fall.

As much as he hated him, the guy couldn’t die now.

Kicking off the remaining golden glimmers, Myss streaked straight for Salaar. When he landed again, he had a human in each hand, and luckily neither had shattered.

Myss tossed the half-unconscious Salaar aside, rolled up his sleeves, and rushed the girl. He was just about to deliver the killing blow—

“My God, you’re a remarkable hero.”

Kalen had somehow followed. His face was full of sincere awe, and the black blood beneath his eyes hadn’t yet been wiped clean. “Sorry, sorry. Seeing the way you looked earlier, I misunderstood again…”

“You want to save her first, right? Please, let me!”

Myss: “?”

No, you really misunderstood. I was about to kill her.

He was dumbfounded for only a few seconds before Kalen darted in and pulled something from the girl’s arms—

Myss: “…!!!”

That was it. That was exactly what he wanted!

The thing sent the Demon Lord reeling so hard he nearly lost his balance.

It was a lump of soft black flesh about the size of a round bun. It swayed gently in Kalen’s palm, its surface pulsing slightly, like a heart made of pudding.

Myss wrung out every drop of self-control in his life and swallowed back the saliva threatening to spill out. “You know what this is? …What is it?”

---

The author has something to say:

Myss: I’ll deal with Salaar later, for now just let me eat.jpg

Myss: ? Don’t take my food.

Salaar: (secretly observing)

This definitely isn’t Myss’s full form, no way everything gets revealed in Volume 1.

Next chapter reveals the source of the plague, story finale——!

Will the Demon Lord actually get to eat this meal? Food food!

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

---

Chapter 23: The Predator

When she saw the unconscious Huey, Hailey neither cried nor made a fuss.

She simply walked quickly over and sat down beside him. Instinctively she tilted her body and leaned lightly against her family, like a bird returning to its nest.

The monster scrabbled restlessly along the outer wall, the rustling friction echoing inside the church.

Myss rubbed his empty stomach, his gaze tracking the source of the sound. That fragrance still clung to the tip of his nose and teased his appetite.

Just as the priest had said, the thing could only move outside the church. It was as if there were an invisible door at the entrance that kept it firmly out.

A perfect stronghold, very suitable for a brief rest. That priest did pick the place well… Myss couldn’t help wondering how long it would hold.

On the other side, Salaar studied the summoning array for a while, then looked up at the priest.

The priest wasn’t wearing the bird-beak demon outfit. Perhaps because his face was so friendly, he still looked tall, yet the sense of pressure he gave off had dropped by a large margin.

“We know who you are, so let us skip the pleasantries,” Salaar said. “This is already the fourth time we have met, ‘Mr. Demon’.”

“Thank you for saving me.”

The priest brushed the dust from his black clothes and offered a proper bow. “I’m sorry. Earlier I mistook you for the ones spreading the sickness and caused you trouble.”

“Yeah, you are a huge pain.” Myss turned his head. “Openly running around scaring people, secretly trying to prevent and treat the plague all by yourself. One moment the city lord’s soldiers are chasing you, the next you’re being informants to them… It makes no sense at all.”

Salaar: “…”

Salaar rubbed his temples. “Although this guy is very rude, I was going to ask you much the same thing. Father, why did you not cooperate with the people of Rosha?”

The priest let out a long sigh, as if he had been waiting for this question.

“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kalen, a priest of the Order of Shadows.”

His voice was clear and paired with that gentle face he seemed like a harmless herbivore.

He took off his blood-stained black gloves, revealing two healthy-looking hands. On the middle finger of each hand, he wore a bone ring.

“The situation is urgent, so I’ll not hide it from you. This pair of rings is a holy relic of the Order of Shadows. The ‘left hand’ foresees ill omens, the ‘right hand’ slips into shadow.”

“When I first arrived in Rosha, I considered requesting an audience with the city lord. But my ‘left hand’ sounded the alarm like mad that doing so would cost me my life,” Kalen continued with complete candor. “As you have seen, that city lord isn’t exactly wise.”

So it was a prophecy ability. Salaar focused on the rings.

No wonder the bird-beak demon could appear at the right time every time. Apparently, this man was using the foreboding as a compass.

However you looked at it, the proper way to use the thing should be to stay as far from misfortune as possible. Kalen insisted on squeezing his way toward danger. One had to wonder what the God of Shadows thought of that.

By the same logic, the reason he could escape right under the noses of Myss and Salaar must have been the rings’ power to hide.

…“Divine power”?

If “divine power” was this special, were Myss and Salaar summoned into the human world by the will of some “god” as well?

“Since you can only foresee ill omens, how did you know there was a problem with the food and water?”

With an enemy outside, Salaar quickly reined in his thoughts.

“Ah, only the food and water?”

Kalen was genuinely taken aback. He scratched the back of his head. “I dealt with the common routes of infection, the food, the drinking water, and the patients themselves. The crows were in charge of handling the food and water. I was responsible for scaring away the people around the sick.”

“But sporadic cases kept appearing, so I thought I must have missed something.”

“Oh, that was Mina deliberately infecting people. You cut off transmission among ordinary folk. Otherwise Rosha would have been finished already,” Myss put in matter-of-factly.

He had thought Kalen could see the pale red magic too. It turned out it was a false alarm.

“That’s very good to hear. Thank you for telling me,” Father Kalen said to Myss with heartfelt sincerity.

“I’m only telling the truth.”

Kalen looked even more embarrassed. “Haha, honesty is a fine virtue, and yet I reported you to the authorities—”

No wonder the bird-beak demon never spoke. This man’s voice was too soft, and his plain, earnest manner was almost irritating. It didn’t match that grim image at all.

Seeing the conversation threaten to drag on, Myss turned away in annoyance and hid behind Salaar. He shoved at Salaar’s back, signaling the big hero to deal with this nuisance.

Salaar cleared his throat at the right time. “Father Kalen, so two months ago you foresaw misfortune coming to Rosha and came specifically to solve it? …Two full months of persistence. Your character is admirable.”

Kalen gave a shy smile. “You’re exaggerating. I have my own motives too.”

As he spoke, something seemed to occur to him, and his expression turned serious. “Now that the misunderstanding is resolved, we need to deal with that thing outside at once.”

As if to answer him, the church trembled again. A trickle of grit fell from the dome. The pale red threads on the floor slowly writhed and slid past their feet.

That aroma grew stronger, and Myss could not help licking his lips. He had no objections at all. Who could refuse a fragrant midnight snack?

Salaar didn’t reply at once.

He walked to the unconscious Huey. “Myss, check on Huey first.”

“Almost dead.”

Myss only glanced once and rendered a verdict on the spot—Huey’s Magibase was a fairly large, red-bellied tit. At the moment it was wrapped tightly in the red threads, with only the tip of its beak showing.

In fact, the real miracle was that Huey was still alive at all.

At the word “dead”, the emotionless Hailey lowered her head and slowly cradled the unconscious Huey. Her face was still expressionless, and a faint, almost indiscernible confusion flickered in her eyes.

Huey’s chest heaved violently twice, and he forced his eyes open with difficulty. “Hailey…?”

“I’m here, Uncle Huey,” Hailey said.

Huey trembled, setting the pale red threads all over the floor quivering. His lips parted, and he managed to squeeze out a muffled “sorry.”

“No, it’s all my fault.”

Hailey answered at once. Her tone was very calm, so calm it hurt to hear. “If I had not recommended you to Father Kalen, you wouldn’t have been trapped here.”

“If I hadn’t barged into Scintilla’s room, I wouldn’t be here either.”

Huey straightened his back weakly, clearly sensing that something was off about Hailey. He didn’t press the point, only lowered his eyes.

“Helping others isn’t wrong…” He spoke with all his strength, enunciating each word. “I also… chose to walk into Scintilla’s room of my own accord…”

“If you are still bothered… about her…”

“I have already grown up,” Hailey interrupted in a soft voice, as if reciting words from a diary. “Back then I didn’t know any better. I stopped minding long ago.”

“I have always been very grateful to you, Uncle.”

Huey’s lips curled. He let out a long breath, and his shoulders drooped a little.

In the bright candlelight of the church, he gazed at Hailey’s face with reluctance to part, and his eyelids sank bit by bit.

Just as those eyes were about to close, a hand pressed down on the crown of his head.

“It seems your reason is still intact, so I’ll be brief.”

Salaar spoke clearly. “Do you want to die now as a normal man, or gamble on a chance to live, even if failure would turn you into a monster without blood or tears?”

Huey’s lips moved, as if he were about to call for his mother, then he forced it back. His gaze swept over Hailey again. This time, it was as if he were searching for someone’s shadow on her face.

“How can I die, Sister?” he murmured dreamily. “The Summoning Ritual is about to begin… Hailey likes to watch…”

“I’ll take that as permission.”

Salaar’s left hand moved lightly atop Huey’s head, then withdrew quickly.

Huey fell asleep at once, and all the pale red threads around him wilted. In Myss’s sight, the threads slowly slid away and released the battered Magibase.

Kalen raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, but he kept silent, neither asking questions nor urging them along.

“Thank you.” Hailey bowed her head to Salaar.

“Don’t thank me too soon,” Salaar said. “I was already finding it strange. You two have been paying too much attention to Scintilla. How much do you actually know about her?”

Hailey lowered her head and took a moment to organize her words.

“My mother died in childbirth when I was born. At the time Uncle Huey was only sixteen. Madam Philomina taught him many things and helped him take care of me for a while.”

How to wrap a diaper, what temperature goat’s milk should be, how to handle a crying infant. Knowledge like that wouldn’t just spring up from a sixteen-year-old boy’s head.

After that came the story they all knew.

Philomina died before the Summoning Ritual. Scintilla summoned a caterpillar at the ritual. From then on, the Scintilla household went from bustling with visitors to nearly deserted.

Seeing Scintilla’s situation grow worse and worse, Huey asked young Hailey a question.

“Shall we bring Scintilla to live with us?” Huey asked. “Just think of it as gaining an older sister.”

Hailey burst into tears on the spot and refused, nearly rolling on the floor. Scintilla had lived ten thousand times better than they did before and had barely had anything to do with them. Why should she come take her uncle now that she had fallen on hard times?

Seeing little Hailey making such a fuss, Huey didn’t bring it up again. He only went to look in on Scintilla from time to time and brought the child food and drink. Every time Hailey found out, she would sulk for a while. She always felt like someone had stolen a small piece of her uncle.

“…Uncle Huey did nothing wrong. I was too willful back then,” Hailey said indifferently. “If not for Madam Philomina, I might not have survived in the first place.”

“After Scintilla started appearing less often, my uncle would occasionally write to her, but she never replied. He would visit in person, but she wouldn’t open the door, yet she still accepted the food.”

“Every so often I would go and check on her situation. We only met eyes a few times through the window, and I couldn’t understand what she was thinking at all.”

“Hey, why are you getting hung up on this?”

Myss had been about to charge outside in one go, but all these family matters tripped him up. He grabbed Salaar’s collar in annoyance and tugged him toward the doors.

“Every spell has a solution, and every monster has a weak point,” Salaar whispered. “That monster is clearly connected to Scintilla. Understanding Scintilla’s experiences will help us grasp the situation.”

Wait, was this kid’s occupational illness acting up? Was he going to stay here for hundreds of years to research this monster?

Seeing Salaar wholly focused on analyzing the monster, Myss felt unaccountably peeved and yanked the collar harder. “You studied me for so long and still learned nothing. Listen, what we need right now is action.”

As for weak points, hit something head to toe and you’ll find them. He needed to divert Salaar’s attention fast.

Myss closed his eyes, held his breath, and immersed himself in the slow flow of magic around them.

The monster’s sweetness, Salaar’s fresh scent, and beneath it all a summoning circle for Magibases that hadn’t yet been activated…

This time he couldn’t stop at a sniff. He had to think it through. Every spell has a solution…

…Got it!

He caught onto something. The hazy scent became much clearer.

“That summoning array.” Myss’s mind was spinning, but he finally managed to grasp the magic’s essence. “There’s a leak here.”

Salaar and Kalen: “…?”

Myss forced himself to be patient and gestured. “The entire ritual site is like a door into the human world.”

“Right now it’s only open a crack, so it can still keep the monster outside. Once it starts running for real, that monster will charge into reality at once.”

Salaar started, hesitated for less than half a second, then said, “I understand. We must handle it before the summoning begins. Otherwise, it will crash straight down on everyone present.”

He turned to Kalen at once. “We have a little under twenty-four hours left. Tell me everything you can do. We need to work together.”

Kalen showed the rings on his hands. “I can hide myself at any time. But foreseeing ill omens requires preparation and cannot be used for immediate combat.”

“My regeneration is strong. As long as the wound isn’t instantly fatal, I can recover. Incidentally, I can communicate emotionally with animals, although there don’t seem to be any living creatures nearby.”

Salaar: “Your specialty in magic?”

“I don’t know any magic,” Kalen said frankly.

Salaar and Myss: “……”

To Lord Karns in hell, there are actually two people with this outrageous handicap.

“In other words, you are a pure hand-to-hand fighter.” Salaar pressed a hand hard to his temples. “A hand-to-hand… priest.”

“Exactly. Feel free to let me lead the charge,” Kalen said with a broad grin.

Boom!

The church trembled again and swayed dangerously. At the doors, a patchwork hand scratched back and forth. Not long ago, Myss had sliced it clean off. Now it had fully restored itself.

Salaar tightened his grip on his dagger. “It seems our lady monster can’t wait to be born. Hailey, take care of your uncle.”

“Yes, sir.”

……

The three of them climbed over the protruding reliefs, leapt through the skylight, and returned to the church spire.

Outside was still pitch dark, and the hot, humid air pressed down at once. Myss looked down at the monster jammed at the doorway—its magical fluctuations were growing more intense, and its movements were highly frantic.

“When that thing’s stuffing shows, pull out as much as you can. I’ll burn it,” Salaar said to Kalen. “In short, limit its ability to move first.”

Kalen hesitated. “What about Miss Scintilla?”

“She’s already dead. She’s either inside the monster, or she is the monster. Both are possible.”

Salaar’s expression hardly changed. “But we can’t afford to hold back. Rosha’s safety matters more.”

Kalen’s brow twitched. He changed the question. “How do we make the monster’s stuffing come out—”

Halfway through, he abruptly closed his mouth.

Myss was cavorting all over the monster’s surface.

He was brandishing a deformed silver dinner fork, the tines leaving black trails as they swept. Large swaths of patches on the monster were pried up, and the brown-yellow “hair clumps” stuffed inside bulged out in heaving waves.

Pale red threads and memory fragments flew together. The split gaps healed rapidly but Myss didn’t care. Relying on his terrifying speed, he bounded all over the monster, scratching open one fresh wound after another.

Kalen pushed off hard from the ground. With the crack of breaking tiles, he shot out like a cannonball.

Mid-flight his figure melted into the dark, and one nearby wound was abruptly yanked wide, spilling out a mass of hair clumps that left the monster’s body visibly deflated.

Salaar stood on the highest point of the spire, raised the ritual dagger like a wand, and aimed at the single eye on the monster—

The next instant, countless bullet-like lances of fire poured onto those hair clumps. Dazzling gold flames turned them to drifting ash in a heartbeat, and the monster let out a scream fierce enough to rupture eardrums.

Perfect teamwork. He felt pretty good. Myss drew back his gaze and stretched in midair.

He looked down at the brightly lit church and thought of his petal-scattering practice—countless black fragments rode the wind, blossoming into numerous holes across the monster’s body in an instant.

The Minas emerged from the holes, faces twisted as they reached toward him. Countless pale red threads shot for Myss. Before they could reach his toes, they slammed into Salaar’s protective magic.

Salaar’s golden magic bloomed around him from time to time. The lights were sometimes flames, sometimes shields, sometimes little platforms of light for him to step on.

They always appeared at the perfect spot beside him, as if they were Salaar’s own line of sight.

The attacks kept coming. The monster’s body gradually shriveled, and its movements slowed further and further. Looks like we don’t need to worry about finding a weak point, Myss thought. They were about to win… huh?

The monster’s “head”—the infant—suddenly stirred.

In an instant the sound of flesh squeezing rose on all sides, and memory fragments surged in from every direction of the city. They frantically covered the monster’s damaged parts, and its insides swelled fast, a full size larger than before.

It lunged toward Myss, and the wet umbilical cords curled for him. Myss sprang back with the motion. The tip of his foot habitually tapped the air, reaching for one of Salaar’s light platforms.

He stepped into nothing.

In that weightless moment, Myss’s heart skipped along with it, and a storm of unruly thoughts exploded in his head.

…No, had he gone mad, believing Salaar like that?

…Had that guy connected the clues on his own and already discovered the truth of the body-swapping ritual?

…Were those perfect assists only to make him drop his guard, so he could be eliminated by the monster?

His thoughts were cut short by the excruciating pain.

The deadly cords pressed in from all sides, and a searing heat ran through Myss’s limbs. The mucus on the cords melted his skin. His flesh felt as if it had been splashed with strong acid. Pain pierced him from every direction.

It hurt. This human body seeped cold sweat and tears at the same time.

The human body was too fragile and too sensitive. Myss had never felt such pain. The survival instinct, coupled with fury, swept through his mind in a flash and tore at his nerves along with the agony.

He would eat it.

Myss almost lost consciousness. Only this thought echoed in his mind. In the corner of his eye something he saw bursts of golden light, but none of that mattered.

He would eat it. He would eat it.

Myss heard a hair-raising shriek, and then realized the cry came from his own throat. His vocal cords were vibrating, his skull was trembling, and all things in the world reeked of blood.

He would eat it, he would eat it, he would eat it.

Myss’s pupils were no longer the perfect circles of a human. They eroded outward into his irises, turning into an irregular, terrifying black mist. Myss sniffed madly at the monster before him, tracking those hazy, tangled traces of magic.

Right. He had just practiced this… all to shove that damned Salaar out the door. Every spell has a solution…

The instant he fully grasped that, his instincts almost immediately understood what to do.

Every spell has a solution.

Like a carnivore tasting hot, fresh blood after giving up milk for the first time. Like a cub popping out its claws and discovering how easily they slice through flesh.

All things in the world come to an end.

Soft flesh burst beside him in blooming fireworks. The scattered, complex magic before his eyes kept simplifying. The dizzying magical circuits collapsed into a single point. The monster’s flavor turned clean and sharp. Right there… Right there.

…The end was right there.

Yes, this was His power, His instinct. He could destroy everything and plunder everything to His heart’s content. Why had He only noticed now?

He seemed to be laughing, yet He wasn’t quite sure. He couldn’t remember where His mouth was, or even whether He had something like a “mouth” at all.

He only knew that He would be able to eat it very soon.

Not far away, on the church spire.

Moments earlier, the tip of the tower had been assaulted by a swarm of Minas, and Salaar’s vision was briefly blocked. He couldn’t assist Myss in time.

For some reason, Myss’s reactions were clearly half a beat slower. The monster grabbed him in a sudden embrace, and his body vanished into the wet umbilical cord.

—Damn it!

Salaar tried to snipe with flame, but his magic didn’t leave a single mark on the umbilical cord.

In his urgency he shouted for Kalen and prepared to rush in himself. Then he saw it… that foreign thing, that being more like a monster than the monster itself.

“Forgive me, may I ask a question?” Kalen hopped back onto the spire and wiped the black blood from his eyes.

“What exactly is your ‘companion’?”

“I would like to know as well, Father,”

Salaar stared intently at “that thing”, unwilling to look away for even a second, though black blood was seeping from his seven orifices and a keen, freezing ache gripped his brain.

“…I would like to know as well,” the hero muttered.

---

The author has something to say:

The Demon Lord is slowly developing his own instincts.

Happy researcher Mr. Salaar:

Very soon it will be your turn for a little exposure, Mr. Salaar.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

---

Chapter 22: Divine Kingdom

Of course, Salaar wasn’t about to let him go so easily.

The golden shield forced open a slit, and the great hero yanked Myss out by sheer force. Salaar pulled too hard; Myss crashed straight into him, and the two of them toppled together toward the base of the city wall.

Salaar twisted in midair so that his back faced downward. The instant they hit the ground, he wrapped Myss up and rolled across the mud, stemming off most of the impact.

The price was that both of them were caked in mud. With Myss’s long hair, he suffered the most.

Salaar: “Mom, are you okay?”

Myss shuddered, a chill running down his spine. “You wacko, shut up!”

“Oh, that’s what you are hung up on,” Salaar said breezily. “Relax, my three hundred years of memory are fine. But Mina’s emotional attack was too strong, so I need a living anchor. With a real ‘mother’ within arm’s reach, it’s much easier to steady my mind.”

“So I planted a bit of suggestion in myself. You know I’m very good at that sort of magic.”

He was, in fact. Myss subconsciously looked at Hailey.

Hailey was staring at them with hollow eyes, devoid of any emotion.

“Can’t you choose Hailey?”

Myss was truly baffled. Species issues aside, at least her gender matched.

Salaar stared at him in astonishment. “What nonsense are you talking about? Hailey is still a child.”

“What nonsense are you talking about? I’m your enemy!”

Salaar: “Exactly, which is why I picked you—if I chose Hailey as the ‘mother’ anchor, I would feel completely sick. Picking you also feels awful, but at least you would have to be disgusted along with me. That is a win, right?”

A breath caught in Myss’s chest. He wanted nothing more than to bite off this man’s nose.

For a second, he even felt a twinge of nostalgia for his time inside the seal. At least back then Salaar never pulled such ridiculous mind games. Would this guy really defile the memories of his own mother just to make Myss sick?

Myss glared at Salaar with venom, hoping to find guilt, resistance, or turmoil on his face. All he found was calmness, like a pool of stagnant water.

… Forget it. Salaar had gone toe to toe with him alone for more than three hundred years. The man wasn’t normal. What else could he expect?

“Don’t call me ‘Mom’. I have a name. And absolutely don’t act like a spoiled child towards me.”

Finally, the Demon Lord rasped a warning. “…Otherwise, I’ll show you the cruelest mother–son breakup in human history.”

Salaar snorted a laugh. “Got it, My~ss~”

Myss flicked his mud-smeared braid back, blew out a hard breath, and shot everyone a look of deep dissatisfaction.

His gaze quickly locked onto Hailey. “If we all got hit, why’s she perfectly fine?”

“I saw Mina’s figure as my mother, but that means nothing. My mother has been gone a long time,” Hailey replied coolly, as if the topic had nothing to do with her.

Her Magibase tit didn’t move. A few pale red strands of magic wriggled near it, trying to wrap around it, but it was like climbing a porcelain statue greased with oil; they could only slide back down in vain—the strange disease’s infection had suddenly failed.

Huh?

Myss couldn’t help taking a longer look. He hadn’t been mistaken. The pale red threads had no effect on the tit.

“Are you sure you only took her emotions and did nothing else?” he asked, suspecting Salaar had meddled.

Salaar tilted his head in confusion.

Myss had no choice. He wasted a few more words and roughly explained Hailey’s situation.

“Her infection stopped? …That figures. The sickness is closer to a spiritual plague.”

Salaar didn’t look very surprised, as if he had already guessed.

“‘Mina’ went to great lengths to become the perfect mother because her infection depends on emotion.”

“Covington and Barlow both cried for ‘Mom’ as they were dying. I think in that moment they subconsciously accepted Mina, and their Magibases dropped all defenses.”

… And then Mina sliced off their Magibases and ate them, Myss thought.

By now, the mechanism of the mysterious plague was crystal clear.

Mina’s magic distorts memories and stokes dependence. The instant the infected open their hearts, Mina would devour their Magibases.

Great. It looked like Mina couldn’t do anything to the three of them for the time being.

Hailey had lost the emotions that could be shaken, so her condition could no longer worsen.

Myss had no concept of family to begin with; zero multiplied by ten thousand was still zero.

Salaar was even more ruthless. He pre-twisted his own subconscious and forcibly designated his mortal enemy as “mother”, ensuring he wouldn’t feel any soft spot when facing Mina.

Thinking of what Salaar had done gave Myss goosebumps. He shook his head hard and decided to change the subject. “Knowing the infection mechanism doesn’t help. We’re trapped here.”

Salaar: “Wow, that really is breaking news.”

Myss grounded his molars. Had Salaar really anchored him as “Mom”? The brat’s attitude hadn’t changed at all. He was still as nasty as if he had been chewed up by a dog.

While Demon Lord was griping internally, Salaar had already turned to Hailey. “Based on what you know, where might Huey have gone?”

“If that priest doesn’t interfere, Uncle Huey would go to the Hammer Tavern. Even if the interior has completely changed, he would go there first to look for me.”

Hailey’s tone was calm and unruffled, nothing like a child.

“If he can’t find me, he’ll do everything he can to escape. Uncle Huey said he must see me grow up safe and sound.”

“All right, we will check the Hammer Tavern first,” Salaar said.

Myss thought for a few seconds and couldn’t come up with a better plan. Besides, the darkness around them was so thick he couldn’t see his hand. He didn’t remember the roads at all, so he could only keep following Salaar.

In the thick darkness, the three of them moved forward slowly.

They drew farther from the city wall covered in flesh-membranes, yet that strange sickly-sweet smell grew stronger.

Myss sniffed. After a while his nose went numb. The scent had a half-raw, half-cooked quality. He wasn’t sure it even counted as a pleasant food smell.

Beyond the scent, the buildings around them looked more and more out of place.

They had started in the slums, where the houses were a mess to begin with, so nothing seemed wrong. But as the buildings became more orderly, the oddities stood out.

In those unremarkable corners of walls and gaps beneath the eaves, layers of foreign matter had grown. Their texture was like cobwebs caked with dust, or like the skin that forms on spoiled meat broth. Their colors were vivid, and the “patterns” on their surfaces flowed slowly.

No, those weren’t patterns.

Myss narrowed his eyes. It seemed to be countless fragments of images stitched together.

Women’s smiling faces stuck to sunlight, fresh milk and bread steamed with heat. Hundreds of mothers hummed as they held their children, each lullaby different…

Strangely, simply looking at them wrapped him in soothing smiles and sweet aromas. He felt as if he sank into warm embraces one after another. Gentle humming echoed softly in his ears.

Myss recognized the sensation. When he was first stuffed into this human body, he had experienced similar sensory shocks. There was no doubt these were memories—memories that belonged to different humans.

They curled up in the corners of this bizarre space, lit by windowlight, everything like a fantastical dream.

Salaar clearly recognized them too.

“All right. Now we know where Mina’s concept of ‘mother’ came from. She just fused the populace’s memories of their mothers. She doesn’t have much creative ability herself,” he said briskly.

“So what?”

Myss poked those memories. They felt soft and springy, very strange.

Salaar: “So she may not be very intelligent, like Fabian’s exorcism-and-consecration array—she’s simply mechanically repeating the same routine.”

Fine, Mina wasn’t bright. That still didn’t explain what was going on with this strange world.

Myss wordlessly withdrew his hand and stopped prodding the memories.

The weird phenomena in the dark didn’t leave them alone.

Doors and windows they passed would occasionally act up, screeching with ear-splitting creaks or being gently tapped by unseen hands.

Sometimes they would just round a corner, and when they looked back the sign on the corner had turned, pointing toward some alley. A few seconds earlier, that alley didn’t exist at all.

Occasionally, at the edge of the light, Myss saw Mina’s feet. He recognized that burlap skirt and those dust-stained shoes.

“Mina” would stand ahead of him, not far yet not near, her upper body swallowed by darkness. When Myss stared straight at her, she vanished again.

If Hailey’s emotions were normal, who knew how badly she would be frightened. Just thinking about it sounded like a headache. Myss glanced at the quiet, well-behaved girl and, for once, agreed with Salaar’s decision.

Salaar himself was on high alert. Even if the noises couldn’t hurt them, he still moved with patience, stopping to investigate from time to time.

“They’re just memory scraps. No danger for now,” the great hero reported.

During the dull march, Myss gradually grew sleepy.

The roads in the Lower City were hard to walk. Wet mud caked his shoes, cold and heavy. He hadn’t eaten dinner, and his stomach was rumbling. He didn’t even have a warm cup of mead to sip.

Amidst his drowsiness, Myss found the ghostly noises more and more unbearable.

When he passed a wooden door, it let out an especially loud creak. Salaar was just about to stop when a streak of black light sliced past the tip of his nose.

The door disintegrated on the spot, as if it had never existed.

No door meant no door noise. Perfect. Myss grunted, convinced he was a genius.

Salaar shot him a helpless look. “Someone’s cranky. Hungry?”

“Grrr-rrr.” Myss’s stomach answered for him.

“No,” Myss himself firmly denied. “You’re not hungry, so how could I be?”

Salaar raised an eyebrow. “But there was a very, very big growl just now.”

“They’re just memory fragments. No danger for now,” Myss said with a straight face, imitating his tone.

Salaar only smiled. He dug in his little travel pouch and fished out two candies. He tossed one to Myss. Myss sniffed it and caught the raspberry scent he liked.

Salaar pushed the other piece into Hailey’s hand, and she obediently took it and ate it.

“I have salted butter and jerky too, but we need to ration them. Let us use this to tide us over,” Salaar said.

Myss looked at the candy, then at Salaar. Fine, this didn’t count as conceding. This was him claiming spoils from his mortal enemy.

He popped the candy into his mouth and crunched it with his teeth.

The human body really was a marvel. As the sweetness spread across his tongue, the edgy restlessness in him eased a lot.

He stopped wrecking those poor doors, focused all his attention on the candy, and even forgot the sleepiness fogging his head.

Its taste was even better than Myss had imagined, and he had no idea where Salaar had gotten it. Myss eased up with his teeth, and his tongue cautiously licked at it, eating especially slowly.

Just as the candy sphere was almost gone, they finally found the Hammer Tavern.

The tavern was still crooked as ever. The once enormous windows had all turned into the tiny panes they saw in SScintilla’s house. Behind the conspicuous tavern entrance was still that shabby little room, and the size contrast was quite comical. They couldn’t even find the way up to the second floor.

All around was silence. The priest and Huey weren’t there.

Hailey stood without a word. Who knew what she was thinking, or perhaps she was thinking nothing at all.

“You’ve failed. Next, it’s my turn to choose the route… route?”

Myss was halfway through declaring this to Salaar when the ambient noise suddenly changed pitch.

He saw a gutter rat totter past the tavern, a few pale red threads coiled around it. The rat was half transparent overall, its outline drifting in and out of focus, as if it walked along the edge of a dream.

… No, how had a Magibase left its person?

Myss abandoned Salaar on the spot and ran toward that Magibase rat, only to discover with some displeasure that the Magibase was still connected to a human. At the very least he could feel the fluctuations of human magic.

Too bad this wasn’t a wild Magibase delivered to his doorstep. He simply couldn’t see the Magibase’s owner.

“Hey, can you hear me?” Myss stepped on the rat’s tail.

The rat bounced under his foot and turned its head in a daze. “Mm, mm? Mom?”

“Shut up, I’m not your mother.” Myss felt his mood dip the moment he heard that word. “What exactly is your situation?”

“I, hiccup, I just finished drinking. I might have mistaken you,” the rat said drunkenly. “Sorry, I had too much, had too much… I had a dream about my mom…”

“Making a living hasn’t been easy lately. I miss her so much… Mom…”

The rat squeaked its sentiments. The pale red threads on it wrapped tighter and tighter, and its form grew more and more solid, as if someone had bitten it straight off from the ‘real world’ and swallowed it into ‘this side’.

The red threads squirmed without pause. The rat’s tail tip and toes had already been consumed by the pale red magic, yet it felt nothing.

Could this world be Mina’s stomach? Myss studied those brazen pale red threads. He suddenly realized that the magic threads which were extremely hard to distinguish in the real world were much clearer here, not just the ones packed inside the city wall, but also the ones that ate people’s Magibases.

Myss’s gaze immediately swung to Hailey. Sure enough, even without looking too hard, the red threads twined around the tit were still clearly visible. Their shapes were unusually stable, and their tips trailed faintly into the depths of the darkness.

“What? You’re seeing Magibases again?” Salaar asked, sweeping his eyes toward the rat.

“I’m seeing something even more impressive than a Magibase.”

Myss announced triumphantly, “What did I just say? You failed. Now it is my turn to choose the route.”

He puffed out his chest, ready to engage Salaar in a grand debate. Salaar only gave him a long look. “All right, you lead.”

“?”

“I have to be filial once in a while too, My~ss~.”

The great hero deliberately called his name with sincerity and warmth, and it made Myss’s whole body itch. Yet Salaar had agreed to his plan, so he had nowhere to vent his anger.

Fine, for the sake of that candy sphere.

Myss drew a deep breath and focused on Hailey. Under his full concentration, those pale red threads grew even clearer. Myss cautiously reached out and grabbed one of them.

This bizarre space was closely tied to Mina, and the pale red threads were Mina’s means of siphoning magic. The end of a thread must connect to something important —perhaps Mina’s true body, or the core of the space, something like that.

In short, as long as they took care of that thing, they would definitely find a way out.

Myss gripped the slippery strand of magic and led the other two into the darkness.

……

Pale red threads coiled all over the floor. Huey leaned weakly against a bench, already unconscious. If Myss had been on the scene, he would have seen it at a glance. Huey’s Magibase had almost been devoured by the red threads. Only the final absorption step was left.

If Huey woke up one more time and wavered one more time, he would immediately fall ill and die.

Father Kalen sat at the other end of the bench, head tilted up toward the skylight. Night had grown deep, and the sky were dotted with stars.

“Sleep. Don’t worry.”

Kalen lowered his gaze and spoke to the unconscious Huey as if the man could still hear him. “This is the place where it’s least ‘ominous’. Everything will be fine.”

After saying this, he touched his chest lightly with one hand, bowed his head, and prayed a few silent lines.

When Kalen lowered his head, the gap between his collar and the back of his neck widened a little, revealing an ugly old scar. It was rough and hideous, as if someone had cut a full circle around his neck.

Opposite the bench was the site of the Magibase summoning ritual.

Yes, the two of them were sitting in the Lower City’s church.

The time was past midnight. Strictly speaking, the Summoning Ritual would begin tomorrow. The site was already fully prepared. The broken steps were carpeted in red, and torn statues were draped with satin. A massive magic array was drawn in the center of the hall, a structure a hundred times more complex than the most ornate jewelry.

Warm candlelight flickered without cease, lighting the entire hall as bright as day. The nave was empty…was it truly empty?

At the edge of his vision, there was always a figure that seemed there yet not. When Kalen turned his head, the shadow had vanished. From time to time a swath of skirt flashed in the corner shadows, and a seat retained a faint hint of warmth, as if someone had just risen from it.

Now and then a whisper came from near a statue, and in the quiet he would catch a breath. The church was clearly empty, yet Kalen kept having the illusion of companionship. The hair on the back of his neck stood slightly as someone’s gaze was stealthily scanning his surroundings.

In the growing sickly sweetness, he tightened his grip on the lantern and took a long, deep breath.

By the God of Shadows, he had been too rash after all. When did things start to go wrong?

Not long ago, he had the crows tail those two suspicious people. They obviously intended to interfere with the Summoning Ritual and had deliberately asked about Scintilla. So Kalen rushed to Scintilla’s place first to clear away potential dangers, just as he always did.

Finding that the house had been abandoned for a long time and nothing was amiss, Kalen relaxed. So when Huey entered the room under the pretext of concern, he didn’t stop him in time.

…Then they were trapped here, in this bizarre world without light.

After a brief panic, Huey insisted on checking the Hammer Tavern. Naturally Kalen went with him, but they found nothing. The strange thing was that Huey became less tense instead.

“Father, I have no other requests. From here on I will fully cooperate with you. We will definitely get out of here, right?”

He forced down the fear in his voice and mustered a smile. “The Summoning Ritual is about to begin. I have to take the child to see it…” 

“I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here,” Kalen said firmly.

Before long, guided by the God of Shadows, he succeeded in finding the place closest to the outside world—this church where the summoning ritual was to be held.

When he stood at the church door, Kalen almost thought they had found the exit. The place hadn’t been swallowed by “Scintilla’s home”. Inside the church the lights were bright and the candles flickered, indistinguishable from the real world.

Through the little skylight beside the spire, he could even see a sky full of stars and the bright moon.

The night was dark like murky water. Facing the open church doors, he unconsciously let out another sigh of relief. That was the second time he lowered his guard.

In that instant, Huey suddenly slammed into his back. Kalen stumbled a half step forward and quickly regained his balance. He hadn’t even shifted his gaze yet when he saw Huey fall at his feet.

A deep wound had opened on Huey’s shoulder. The flesh was rolled back and bleeding nonstop. Countless strange red threads bored into the wound and seeped into his body.

It was the first time Kalen noticed these pale red threads, and he followed them outward with his eyes. Then he saw… that thing.

The moment he saw it, Kalen immediately understood what had happened.

To protect Huey, Kalen had been walking in front. The thing had patiently waited for them to draw near the church and for their attention to be caught by the scene before them. Then it launched a stealthy attack from behind.

When the strike came, Huey had shoved him aside with all his strength and hadn’t managed to dodge in time himself.

Kalen clenched his jaw, hefted Huey onto his shoulders, and ran toward the radiance inside the church. As expected, the thing didn’t follow them in. It seemed unable to enter the church interior.

Kalen set Huey down on a bench and bandaged him with practiced hands. The bleeding stopped quickly, yet Huey remained dazed. The red threads seemed to have blended into his flesh, and Kalen couldn’t get them out no matter what he did.

Huey let out a muddled groan that sounded like “Mom.”

His eyelids drooped as his unfocused gaze drifted into empty air, and he smiled. The next moment Huey frowned and muttered “Sister.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. I’m the one who dragged you into this. I ought to protect you.” Kalen wiped the cold sweat from Huey’s forehead.

“No, no, Father,” Huey mumbled. “I’m not that noble. I don’t understand those things. If I lose you, I definitely can’t get out…”

Suddenly his voice rose, his emotions surging with a strange manic edge. “I must get out of here. Someone is waiting for me… Mom…”

Kalen unhooked the water bag at his waist and gave Huey a little herb-soaked water.

“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “Don’t talk anymore, Mr. Huey.”

Huey was clearly not right.

He was young and strong. A shoulder wound like that, with bleeding that wasn’t severe, shouldn’t have left him so quickly delirious. His current state looked more like a sudden flare of the strange illness.

Kalen chopped the side of his hand down and knocked Huey out cleanly. In his experience, all patients fell ill while awake. Sleep helped slow the progress.

Sure enough, once Huey slipped into unconsciousness, the red threads in his wound quieted somewhat.

But the source of those pale red threads, that terrible giant thing, was still guarding the door, a constant reminder.

What a pity, Kalen. This place felt like reality, yet it wasn’t true reality. Outside the door was still that pitch-black, warped world.

Watching the thing crawling at the threshold, Kalen wiped the blood from his hands and pressed his lips together.

The longer he stared at it, the more a fine ringing built in his ears. In under two minutes, a warm trickle ran beneath his nose. Kalen swiped it away without thinking. It was blood.

Kalen considered himself well-seasoned in strange affairs, but he had never seen a creature or a space so abominable. As the ringing sharpened, a long-buried word surfaced in his mind.

“Divine Kingdom…”

His older brother had once whispered it to him as a bedtime story.

“A God can construct a special space and use it as a nesting place. Inside a Divine Kingdom there will be many things that defy common sense. It’s more like a dream than a dream.”

“But I have never heard of a ‘Divine Kingdom’,” young Kalen had said. “Everyone says there are many gods in the city, but no one has ever mentioned that term, and it’s not in the books.”

His brother tucked the covers around him and smiled. “Not every god needs a Divine Kingdom.”

“Some gods are lies made up by people, so naturally there is no such thing as a Divine Kingdom. And some…”

“And some of them?”

“And some gods are so powerful that the entire world is their playground,” his brother whispered. “Only ‘juveniles’ and ‘the weak’ need a Divine Kingdom.”

“I see.” Young Kalen worked hard to remember it all. “Brother, how do you know everything? Have you seen a god?”

Kalen couldn’t remember how his brother answered back then.

He remembered only his brother’s smile, and the two terrifying scars on his brother’s face.

If this bizarre space really was the “Divine Kingdom” his brother spoke of, he feared he wouldn’t be able to leave easily.

Boom.

The whole church shuddered. Something blocked the sealed skylight. The red threads on the floor writhed like mad, and the sleeping Huey let out two groans of pain.

Kalen raised his eyes. The giant thing at the door had vanished. At some point it had climbed to the top of the church and was peering in through that tiny skylight.

The front doors stood empty, like an invitation, or like a provocation.

If they kept waiting like this, Huey would only be dragged to death here. Since the suspected culprit was right before his eyes—

Kalen stood up, took off his coat, and laid it over Huey, who was drenched in cold sweat. Then he slowly put on his gloves, the bone-white pair of rings completely hidden beneath the black fabric.

“We’ll meet again shortly.” Kalen bowed his head to Huey. “May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”

Before he moved, he had carefully confirmed that the “ominous” for this action wouldn’t be fatal. Since that thing had offered a sincere invitation, he would give it a proper response.

…After all, the God of Shadows had never deceived him.

……

Outside the church, not far away.

Myss stared in shock at the church that looked both familiar and strange.

From the outside it was the same as ever: a damaged spire reinforced, outer walls decorated with laurel branches and little silver bells. Even the red carpet on the stone steps was there, shining the color of dead meat in the night.

The good news: Myss had found the end of the pale red threads, the source of Mina’s magic, the place where the disappearing Magibases went. He was staring straight at it.

The bad news: It was staring straight at him too.

The thing was enormous, clinging to the church like a dragon wrapped around a tower from a fairy tale. Yet it looked nothing like a dragon.

At first glance, it resembled a lanky rag doll covered in patches.

It had a vaguely womanly shape, but the proportions were utterly wrong, with limbs long and thin like some kind of insect.

Its surface was stitched with a riot of overlapping patches. On closer look, the patches were fragments of memories, and the “red stitching” along their edges was made of the pale red threads Myss knew all too well.

Thousands of threads poked out their ends and extended everywhere, wriggling like living things. At that very moment, Myss was holding one of them between his fingers.

By now, what Myss cared about wasn’t the threads, but the thing’s head… if that could be called a “head”.

The deformed monster had no neck. Where the neck should have been, a meat-red umbilical cord jutted out. The cord connected to a fetus wrapped in fetal membrane. Curled up and plump, it floated above the rag doll’s shoulder, just about the size of a human head.

The cord looped into a perfect circle above the fetus, like some kind of halo.

In that second, it stretched out its neck—no, that umbilical cord—tilting its body toward Myss. Even without showing so much as half an eye, it still made Myss feel a fierce stare.

What are you looking at? Myss shot back with a hard glare.

The sickly sweetness made his head swim. The thing was clearly the source of the smell. Up close, the blood-reek grew faint, while the sweetness became overpowering.

—Myss was hungry, hungrier than he had ever been.

The monster’s scent wasn’t like the fragrance of a Magibase, and Myss couldn’t find any food to compare it to.

It wasn’t the scent of flowers or fruit or anything that actually existed. It was more beautiful, more enticing, more dreamlike… Even that annoying metallic tang became harmless. Of course, without it would be even better…

If he took a bite of this thing, Salaar probably wouldn’t give him trouble for it. No, why should he care what Salaar thought? He had to find the source of that smell and eat it, every last bit.

“…s.” Someone was calling him.

“…Myss…” The voice drew closer, breath brushing his ear. “My~ss~”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Myss snapped back to himself. Then he noticed his voice was a bit thick, as if his mouth were full of saliva.

Wait, not as if. It really was. A little drool had even leaked from the corner of his mouth.

“Right back at you,” Salaar said. “Normal people don’t drool at that thing.”

Myss scrubbed the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not normal.”

Salaar: “… Fair point.”

He gazed at the monster on the church, the smile in his voice thinned. “So then, Lord Myss, who’s not an ordinary person. Do you recognize that thing?”

The ritual dagger was already gripped in his right hand, dazzling golden light dancing along the blade.

Myss thought it over seriously. “It seems like it would taste very good.”

Salaar: “I am only a human without pica. Please describe it another way.”

“Ordinary humans are like chicory. They have a very bland smell. I have no desire to eat them.”

“Segmented Magibases are like fresh pastries, very fragrant. I want a taste—not from hunger, just a nibble for the craving.”

At that, Myss gazed at the monster with longing. It didn’t look so strange to him now. Crabs looked very strange too, and humans still ate them with delight.

“This thing… I can’t describe its smell. If I have to, it’s something like the aroma of a feast when you are on the verge of starving to death.”

“…” Salaar said.

He let out a short laugh. “It seems the purer the magic, the greater the temptation for you.”

Is that not normal? Myss sneered. Humans also like energy-rich sweets, or meat that sizzles with fat. No one likes unsalted bitter soup.

“In other words, this thing is even more dangerous than I thought.”

Unaware of Myss’s thoughts, Salaar stared at the gigantic monster. Most of its body was sunk in darkness, and the church lights only traced a blurry outline, which made it look even more terrifying.

What a thrill. Salaar could swear that more than three hundred years ago there was absolutely nothing like this in the world.

He wasn’t sure why, but the longer he looked, the itchier his eyeballs felt. He took a deep breath and blinked hard. In his double-imaged vision, he suddenly realized the thing seemed… not in great shape.

It was too thin, its movements unsteady. The red stitching on its body hung loose, split open in many places, and the stuffing bulged out. From the texture alone, it looked exactly like clumps of brown-yellow hair.

Atop the church spire, a small human silhouette was faintly standing.

That silhouette—dressed as a curate—leapt high and charged the monster with bare hands.

The monster raised a limp arm to block. The figure vanished in place, then reappeared in front of the monster’s “head” the next second.

His fist was half a step from the fetus when countless pale red threads sprayed out like blood, fusing into countless “Minas” before him. They hovered in midair and rushed at the figure like ghosts.

Yet the instant they touched him, the Minas recoiled as if shocked, jerking back their clawed hands. Even the pale red threads that had lunged forward snapped back and drifted hesitantly.

Even so, the figure still took a solid physical hit and was knocked flying. He tucked his body and slammed into the church spire with a thump, kicking up clouds of dust.

“It’s the priest,” Salaar said.

“That is the bird-beak demon,” Myss said. “He has a very distinctive scent.”

“Which means Uncle Huey is nearby.” In a rare instance, Hailey spoke up. She had no interest in the twisted monster, only a searching gaze for the church. The stained glass was still normal. It hadn’t turned into Scintilla’s windows.

Salaar: “We need to help that priest.”

Myss: “We need to help the bird-beak demon.”

They both couldn’t help looking at each other, and in each other’s eyes they both saw shock.

“…He might know something,” Salaar stressed.

“That monster would taste better,” Myss said with perfect fairness.

Hailey: “……”

Hailey: “Do not talk at the same time. I can’t make out what you’re saying.”

Salaar let out a chuckle and tossed Myss a look that said “stay here for a second,”. Then he bolted first.

He didn’t attack the monster directly but rushed to the priest who had crashed into the spire. A golden shield flared up right on time and perfectly blocked the monster’s follow-up strike.

The moment the priest recognized who it was, his eyes opened a touch wider, but he wasn’t foolish enough to pause mid-battle to question him. He grabbed Salaar’s outstretched hand without hesitation and forced himself to his feet.

As soon as he had pulled the man up, Salaar pivoted.

Golden light surged along the ritual dagger’s blade and condensed into a brilliant golden longsword. The edge sank into the monster’s patch-covered skin, and Salaar sprinted up along its arm.

From its wrist to its shoulder, Salaar carved a long gash. Before he could pull the sword free, the monster’s wrist had already begun to heal.

The patchwork memory fragments writhed and fitted back into place, a new layer sealing tight. Pale red stitches sewed themselves, and the wound vanished almost instantly.

A muffled shriek rang from inside the monster. Salaar stumbled in place and nearly lost his balance. Right then a dozen Minas floated up around him and lunged in a frenzy.

Salaar raised the golden shield at the perfect time, but perhaps because he wasn’t at full strength, the barrier was as thin as a cicada’s wing and shattered in an instant under the Minas’ blows.

While the Minas swarmed him there, the monster lifted its huge palm and slapped down hard like swatting a mosquito.

—Swoosh!

A streak of black light cleaved across the gold and lopped off that twisted palm.

The monster’s shriek multiplied severalfold. Its severed hand wasn’t corroded by Myss’s magic. The memory patches and pale red threads began repairing themselves again, only much more slowly than before.

Seizing the moment, Myss hoisted Salaar onto his shoulders and nimbly wove past the Minas one by one. His movements were as light as the wind, like a beast slipping through deep forest.

In only a few heartbeats, Myss had carried Salaar up to the top of the church.

“It’s my prey.” Myss bared his teeth at the monster.

In answer, clusters upon clusters of Minas sprouted across its skin. Wearing gentle smiles, they opened their arms and ran toward the group.

Salaar slid off Myss’s shoulder. “Something’s off. Pull back for now.”

Their attacks were doing nothing to the monster. The enemy’s condition was unknown, and their supplies were limited. Forcing the fight would only waste their strength.

At the very least, they needed to exchange information with this enigmatic priest.

Seeing the priest still standing where he was, Salaar added in a rapid rush, “I know you came with Huey. Huey’s niece is down below. She needs a safe place.”

Only then did the priest tear his gaze from the monster. He coughed twice, his voice a little hoarse. “Get inside the church.”

“Huey is there.”

---

The author has something to say:

Subscribers before the 25th can join a lottery. One hundred people will split 10,000 JJ coins.

These days every subscription matters a lot to me. Those of you planning to stockpile chapters, could you wait a few days before you keep stockpiling?

————

The first supporting character has finally joined the party.

This time it truly is a formidable foe (for the current two). Time to reveal a few little secrets about the two of them.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

---

Chapter 21: Nurturing Love

Huh? What did you say?

Myss perked up at once.

Hailey was stunned by Salaar’s question. She parted her lips slightly, as if she had forgotten how to speak.

“The anomaly here is very likely connected to the strange illness. We need to go out and investigate.”

“But your mental state is very poor and not suited to action. I have to take that into account. Can you understand?”

Hailey nodded blankly.

“I know a spell that can erase your personality and emotions.”

Salaar’s voice started trailing off. “If you agree to receive it, you’ll no longer feel panic, wavering, or fear. You’ll become a, hmm, purely rational machine of flesh.”

“Listen carefully. Undoing this spell is very troublesome. If we can’t leave this place within forty-eight hours, you’ll never be able to recover.”

For a living person of flesh and blood, this would be tantamount to death.

“That counts as black magic, doesn’t it?” Myss said with keen interest. “I didn’t expect you could do this.”

Salaar didn’t answer directly. “I can’t split my attention at all times to look after her. That would slow the entire investigation.”

“Yet if we leave her here alone, she won’t be able to hold out. Even so, I’ll respect her choice.”

“…Uncle.”

Hailey moved her lips and only on the second try managed to make a sound. “Uncle Huey may be in danger, right?”

“If I go with you, can we find him faster?”

“Yes. You know Huey better than anyone and you are clearer on how he would act,” Salaar said honestly.

Hailey pressed her lips together and gradually stopped crying.

“All right,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I accept your spell.”

Salaar said nothing. He simply stretched out his left hand and gently patted Hailey’s head.

When his palm moved away, Hailey’s body jerked violently, like a small animal pierced through the skull by an arrow. She widened her eyes a little, as if she wanted to ask something, but she could no longer ask anything.

Myss blinked. Her Magibase tit had gone rigid on her head. The little bird no longer hopped or sang. It was as quiet as a specimen.

Hailey was still breathing, but she was only breathing. Other than that, she was no different from that bottle of dried ink.

“I remember now. You used this trick when I was still sealed,” Myss said.

“There are times when ‘having emotions’ is itself a curse.” Salaar didn’t deny. “Even my companions couldn’t withstand darkness that was too long.”

Myss didn’t hide the mockery in his tone. “Ah yes, companions. You turned some ‘companions’ into walking corpses and personally killed quite a few—”

Salaar glanced at him, his eyes without the slightest ripple. “I already said I would respect their choices.”

“…All for the sake of ending the Night Scourge,” he added with a smile.

Myss suddenly felt bored. Sprinkling salt on Salaar’s wounds was fun, but if you sprinkle hard when there is no wound, people usually call that a “salt-bath massage”.

Did Salaar truly have no mental weak points? Myss sympathized with Mina for once.

When they left the room again, Salaar stood at the front.

Hailey followed quietly at his right. Her steps were steady and her face expressionless. It took her a long time to blink once. The tear tracks on her cheeks hadn’t yet dried.

Mr. Hero held a cluster of golden light in his left hand, like holding a tiny sun. Myss used Salaar as a meat shield and looked around curiously.

The darkness felt solid and pressed down low over their heads. The air was stifling and damp. Within a few steps of leaving the room, Myss’s clothes were almost entirely stuck to his skin, and even breathing became labored.

That sweet bloody smell grew more obvious, so thick that Myss’s throat itched. It was less like they had left the room and more like they had entered something, even though the outside seemed far more spacious than that room.

From the depths of the darkness came sticky rubbing sounds from time to time, along with indistinct dripping.

Whenever they slowed their pace, there would be footsteps nearby that hovered near and far. Yet when Salaar shone the golden light, there was always nothing at the source.

The only good news was that the city’s layout hadn’t changed much.

The houses they passed were still there and all were lit, although their appearance was a little off. They all had the same gray little windows, with cracks in the glass that were exactly identical.

Myss walked up to the nearest house to him, opened the window without ceremony, and peered inside.

He wasn’t very surprised to find that the furnishings inside were exactly the same as in Scintilla’s home. It had been kept just as they had left it. Brilliant golden flames from Salaar still danced in the hearth.

The debt receipt was set squarely on the table, and line after line of “Mother sends you her regards” was unusually clear.

With Salaar’s silent cooperation, Myss opened several more windows. The scenes inside were exactly the same… Perhaps all the thousands of lights they could see at the moment were all “Scintilla’s home”.

“If I walk inside now, will there be many of me at the same time?” Myss mused.

Salaar’s expression was solemn. “I doubt it. This is more like a simple environmental replay… Something like ‘you can go home anytime and anywhere’.”

Myss actually thought that was quite convenient. They could return to the room to investigate at any time and wouldn’t have to sleep on soggy mud at night.

“I see. Scintilla is ‘Patience’ and Mina is her mother.”

Myss felt this trip had yielded a great deal. He cheerfully stepped on the muck and listened to it gurgle.

“Ten years ago Scintilla used the Magibase Summoning Ritual to resurrect her dead mother. It has to be that.”

Philomina’s signature and the handwriting of “Mother sends you her regards” in Patience’s letters were exactly the same. Myss could tell. As for what came after, he didn’t know yet. For the moment that was the only physical evidence.

Salaar didn’t reply. Holding the radiant ball of light, he headed for the city wall not far away.

Rosha’s wall was still very high. The weeds in the gaps were nowhere to be seen. In the glow of the golden light, lumps of shadow writhed in the cracks between bricks. Pale pink magic twisted slowly, winding through like veins.

They disliked the light and were struggling to burrow deeper into the wall.

Myss grabbed one and yanked hard.

The thing was slippery and really did feel like a blood vessel. Looking closely, it was clearly one of the threads of magic that tainted food, only far more solid than it had been outside.

Myss had already pulled out two or three meters of it, yet the pale pink filament still didn’t end.

Salaar: “Stop playing around. Keep an eye on Hailey. I’ll go up the wall and take a look.”

“Mina’s range of influence must be limited. We need to confirm the boundary of the abnormal area first.” He added this in case Myss didn’t follow.

Myss said, “If I’m not by your side and you die, what then?”

“Over this distance, there’s no problem.” The corner of Salaar’s mouth gave a twitch.

A sudden idea struck Myss. He rushed forward dragging the pale pink filament, tied it around Salaar’s waist, and even thoughtfully finished it with a tight knot.

Both the filament and Salaar gave a simultaneous struggle, and neither seemed very pleased.

“Now it’s fine.” Myss swung the pale pink filament. “Hey, off you go—”

Before Salaar could speak, Myss whirled him up like a flail and slung him onto the city wall. Fortunately, Mr. Hero had ample combat experience. He adjusted his posture beautifully and landed steady upon the parapet.

Golden light illuminated the top of the wall, and both Myss and Salaar fell silent.

—The outer side of the wall was completely sealed.

The barrier was a deep red. Its surface gleamed wetly, and the veins beneath were visible in every detail. From time to time it twitched, giving off the warm, gamey reek found only in entrails.

The wall of flesh fit snugly over the city wall, like a half-round cloche on a dinner plate. Myss couldn’t see its edges at a glance. It might well have covered the entire city of Rosha.

Salaar lifted his eyes. He raised his hand and slashed with his ritual dagger, slicing through the wet fleshy membrane.

With a stomach-turning stench, pale pink slime erupted. It congealed rapidly in midair and turned into countless pale pink threads that shot down into the ground.

Seeing the slime about to splash Salaar, Myss gave the filament a fierce yank. Salaar was pulled down from the wall first, and not a drop of slime touched him.

The instant Salaar landed, Myss sprang lightly onto the wall. He swung his fork and drove it deep into the wound Salaar had made. His magic poured into the membrane at once, and an ominous black spread outward.

“Mom,” Hailey suddenly said, stretching out a hand and pointing at the massive wound.

Almost at the same time, the hair on Myss’s body stood on end. For the first time in his life, he tasted a living creature’s crisis instinct—

The membrane convulsed violently. The gash blew open and spewed countless black and red arms.

The tainted portion turned entirely into graceful arms. As if they had been struck by something tremendous, they reached toward him like anemone tentacles, seeking to give him a fervent embrace.

Bad. Myss’s pupils trembled.

The membrane’s strength was completely off. It easily expelled his black magic and returned it to him doubled—in an instant those deformed arms wrapped around Myss. Hot, sticky emotion surged and was forced into his skull.

… You and I are the closest people in the world. You and I are the closest people in the world. You and I are the closest people in the world.

The pale pink magic enveloped Myss. He felt himself sink into a sweet, scalding swamp.

…Rely on the one who bore you. Rely on the one who bore you. Rely on the one who bore you.

That damned swamp boiled his brain and tried to brand the “nurturing love” into his consciousness by brute force.

The emotional interference Mina had warped earlier had been like a fingertip that touched and withdrew. Now it was more like a blade thrust into his chest, stirring his heart without mercy.

…I love you. I love you. I love you.

The “nurturing love” was right ahead. It was flawless, beautiful, and safe, waiting for him with open arms. Myss knew that if he threw himself into its embrace, all pain would cease to exist.

How perfect, except it had chosen the wrong target.

The Archdemon regarded that love with something close to contempt, as one might watch crows peck a corpse. No matter how thick the stench of decay, no matter how blissfully the crows ate, it didn’t stir any desire in Him.

Myss gathered his black magic at his fingertips and tore at the pale pink power engulfing him with all his strength. Yet the unlucky stuff only grew more numerous, wound tighter and tighter, and swiftly wrapped him into a cocoon.

When Salaar had attacked the membrane a moment ago, the reaction hadn’t been this intense. What did that mean? It meant that in Mina’s eyes he was more dangerous than Salaar!

Myss flailed and found grim amusement in the thought. He knew it, that dachshund-fragile guy Salaar was only long in the body, not in the nerve*.

*Clarity: He’s basically saying Salaar outwardly looks big/tall (long), but it doesn’t necessarily make him tough, using a dachshund as an example (it’s has a long body but is quite small and not all that threatening).

Rip.

A seam opened in the magical cocoon. A hand gleaming with golden light reached in and clamped down hard on Myss’s shoulder.

Myss: “?”

No, how could Salaar be completely unaffected? That guy still had a little humanity left… right?

Had Mina’s magic targeted only him? Or—

“Mom,” Salaar whispered to him.

Myss: “……”

Myss immediately drew back into the cocoon, forced the slit shut, and wished he could stitch it up twice for good measure.

Things outside were too insane. Perhaps he should simply die in here.

---

The author has something to say:

Next chapter updates at 00:10. The next one is a big ten-thousand-word chapter for the VIP start, and there will be a raffle.

Subscriptions over the next few days are extremely important to me, so please support if you can. Try not to stockpile for now.

Also asking for some favorites on my author page.

————————————

Since I want to hit the earnings chart, the schedule is adjusted to the following.

From the 21st to the 23rd, Sunday through Tuesday, updates at 00:10. On the 24th, Wednesday, update at 23:10. After that, back to daily updates at 20:00.

After VIP begins, I will try to post more content each chapter.

————————————

Here is a bit of promo for my upcoming novel. See my author page for details or click through from the latest chapter note.

“A Crime Unworthy of Death”

On the night of their decisive victory, General Luo Xia was mysteriously attacked and his consciousness slipped into a parallel world.

In this unlucky timeline, they failed to stop the apocalypse, the base was destroyed by enemy espers, his special-ops unit never even existed, and he lost contact with all his subordinates. His childhood best friend and brother-in-arms, General Yi Beiwang, had no memory of him at all.

Then Luo Xia discovered that in this worldline the enemy organization’s world-ending boss—whose identity was shrouded in mystery and “deserves a thousand deaths”… seemed to be himself.

Grim, justice-obsessed gong × adaptable, sly shou

Post-apocalyptic espers. A story where he tragically becomes the enemy boss and, while being hunted by his comrade (?).

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Kinky Thoughts:

This is the last of the free chapters on jjwxc. If you’ve been enjoying the novel so far and are able to, please consider supporting the author by buying the raws. You can use google chrome with their auto translate and this guide on how to buy novels on jjwxc. Remember, only with your (financial) support can artists continue to produce more great works.

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 20: Outside the Door

Hailey still insisted on leading the way.

“That place is especially hard to find. A map wouldn’t make it clear at all,” she said loudly. “You said it is only to confirm a document and there’s no danger. I might even run into my uncle on the way.”

Salaar thought for a few seconds. “All right, but you must promise to follow orders.”

This time they went somewhere even more out of the way than Barlow’s place. Hailey led them through a broken bridge tunnel and along a reeking sewage canal, then stopped beneath Rosha’s outer wall.

There was no cobbled road here, only mud that seemed like it would never dry.

Huddled against the wall stood a jumble of houses. They were dull in color and ugly in shape, like the product of some kind of skin disease when seen from afar.

The large buildings were longhouses packed with the poor. Livestock were kept inside, and the stench of manure was unbearable. The smaller ones were a little better. They had crude chimneys and didn’t smell as strong.

Scintilla’s place was in the most remote corner.

The little house had a tightly closed door and a single extremely narrow window in the wall. The window glass had cracked long ago and was coated in dust. The sun hadn’t set yet, but the inside was pitch black and nothing could be seen.

A small bark cylinder hung on the door, with a withered sunflower stuck inside. A few crows perched on the eaves, hopping about restlessly.

Other than that, the house had no special features.

Hailey looked around hopefully for a while but saw neither the priest nor her uncle.

“Thank you for your help, Miss Hailey,” Salaar said. “It’s getting dark. You had better head home early.”

Nearby houses were beginning to light their lamps, which made his words all the more persuasive.

Hailey grumbled and shifted her heels awkwardly. “Is my uncle not inside?”

Yes, he’s not, Myss thought. There was no sign of life in that house. It was like a corpse with a stopped heart. He took two steps forward and pulled the wooden door open.

The door wasn’t locked. Myss yanked it so sharply that the dried sunflower fell to the ground. Since the sun was still up, the light from it fully revealed the scene inside.

Scintilla’s dwelling was pitifully small. There was only one room, and you could see everything at a glance.

The room was fairly clean. A crude fireplace was piled in the corner. A small cooking pot hung inside the hearth, and bundles of dried herbs hung above it, releasing a faint fresh scent.

A quarter of the room was taken up by a bed. Even so, the bed only had room for two people to sleep tightly pressed together. A thin layer of dust lay on the sheets.

A little wooden table was wedged in the gap between the bed and the wall. It was piled with old books and parchment. A feather quill sat in the ink bottle, and the ink inside had long since dried up.

By any look of it, the room had been vacant for some time.

Even so, Myss felt that something was off. He stepped inside and began leafing through the books on the table as if no one else were there. Salaar followed close behind and checked the small pot in the hearth.

Perhaps from worry, perhaps from curiosity, Hailey stepped over the threshold and set foot on the room’s floor.

“See? It’s very likely Huey and the others already left. Go home now,” Salaar told her.

There was nothing particularly strange around them, but it wasn’t a good place to linger.

Hailey answered obediently and headed for the door. Salaar nodded with approval and picked up a stack of parchment from the table—

Bang!

Hailey stumbled back into the room and slammed the door with all her strength. She was shaking badly, and her face was whiter than lime.

Once the door was shut, the room dimmed at once. Myss turned his head with displeasure and frowned at Hailey.

“Ou… outside,” Hailey said, bracing the door with her back, her lips trembling. “Outside is really scary…”

By her side the blood-red afterglow seeped in through the window, just as before.

Salaar turned his wrist, and the ritual dagger was suddenly in his hand. He approached the wooden door in silence. Hailey fled gratefully, running to Myss’s side.

Salaar tugged the door slightly and opened a narrow crack.

Myss looked toward the crack on reflex. He knew that the light of the setting sun should stab in at once, stretch across the dim floor, and lie there like a neat incision.

…But it didn’t

No light shone in at all. It was pitch black outside and frighteningly still. Instead, a trace of the room’s faint light leaked out and stained a small patch of the darkness red.

The ground at the threshold was still wet muddy earth, no different from when they had come.

Myss looked at the pitch-black door crack, then at the small window where the afterglow entered. He walked to the window, pulled the latch, and opened it with a brisk motion.

The instant the window opened, the afterglow vanished.

In a heartbeat the three of them were drowned in a darkness thick as syrup. A strange sweet-and-bloody smell filled the room, like rain-damp bread and also like fresh pus.

Myss reflexively shut the window. The lingering glow lit the room again and slid lightly along the cracks in the glass.

The room was the same as before. Yet when they tried to leave, the outside seemed connected to the wrong world.

Myss: “Wow.”

“Uncle…” Hailey squeezed out a dry whisper. “My uncle hasn’t been here yet, has he?”

“I think someone has already come. Looking on the bright side, Mr. Huey may not have entered.”

Salaar glanced at the desk. There was no oil lamp on it, but there was a ring where a lamp had stood. Judging from the dust, it had been taken away not long ago.

Hailey’s breathing quickened. “My uncle would care about Scintilla’s condition. He would come in to look.”

Salaar snapped his fingers and brilliant golden flames rose in the hearth. Myss looked a moment longer and noticed the flames were only floating there and hadn’t set the firewood alight.

With a steady light source, Hailey looked a little calmer.

Salaar turned around, the gold fire lighting his face. “Do you remember? We’re secret investigators. Trust me. We’ll find Mr. Huey.”

He spoke gently, but his arm shot out and grabbed Myss, who was heading straight for the door. To the Demon Lord, darkness was like going home. He had no instinctive fear of it at all, and he was just about to slip through the crack.

Yanked back, Myss was annoyed. “What are you doing?”

Before Salaar could open his mouth, another sound answered first—

Tap. Tap. A soft knocking came from the doorway.

“Hailey?” Huey’s voice sounded from outside the door. “Hailey, is that you? I heard your voice.”

Hailey clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at the wooden door in terror.

The instant the knocking began, Salaar had slammed the door shut. Even so, the voice drew closer and closer. It was as if it walked right up to her out of thin air, and only she could hear it.

“Hailey.” The voice called right by her ear, yet Hailey felt no human breath.

“Mom is here… Mom is here,” it said.

But it was still Huey’s voice. Goosebumps broke out all over Hailey. She clamped her hands over her ears and crouched before the flickering hearth.

“Miss Hailey, wake up. Look at me.” Another voice sounded at her ear, distant and blurry, as if through a layer of water.

Right, that was Mr. Salaar’s voice.

Hailey raised her unfocused eyes to those lapis-lazuli irises.

“It’s my uncle,” she struggled to convey. “My uncle is calling me from outside the door. His voice is getting closer and closer, and he is calling himself ‘Mom’…”

“Yes, Mom,” came Huey’s voice again, this time from deep within her mind.

Hailey couldn’t bear it any longer and began to sob. “He’s in my head… She’s in my head.”

“Oh?” Myss crouched, nose angling toward Hailey, only for Salaar to press him back in place.

“Human etiquette,” Salaar reminded emphatically, hauling him back to a standing position.

Fine. Myss drew his nose back, interest fading.

“She smells like baked wheat cakes… Barlow’s smell,” he said. “She had it before we came here, very faint. I thought it was just the street. Now it is getting stronger.”

“You mean she may have encountered Mina,” Salaar said, his tone darkening.

“Might even be my infection. I gave her curds and berries, and Mina was right in front of me then.” Myss lazily stretched.

“You didn’t notice magic in the food?” Salaar asked.

Myss rolled his eyes and tossed the question back. “What about you? You grabbed a bowl yourself.”

Back then he had only noticed the faint pink magic after Barlow swallowed the croutons. That stuff was extremely hard to observe. He had stared until his eyes ached.

Salaar fell silent. He lowered his gaze and looked at Hailey, who was sobbing under her breath.

Myss grew impatient. Because of this little girl they had already been delayed for quite a while, and it felt completely pointless. Myss certainly knew there was danger outside. The problem was that they couldn’t hide here forever.

“Child, do not cry.”

At last the Great Hero finally spoke. Salaar went down on one knee and looked at Hailey with gentle eyes.

Hailey returned the look on instinct.

Salaar was gripping the parchments he had just gathered from the table. The top sheet lay exposed, and the words right at hand leapt into her sight.

It was a shabby debt receipt, covered edge to edge with the words “Mother sends you her regards.”

The frenzied writing obscured the contents and scarred the parchment all over. Between the strokes only a few pitiful remnants showed through.

[…Scintilla, daughter of Mina, borrowed a copy from my shop…]

[…The title page is stained, compensation required…]

A large name was written at the signature line. The signer wasn’t good at writing, as the letters looked clumsy and tender.

[Philomina]

At the moment the signature was wrapped in line after line of “Mother sends you her regards,” like a coffin buried in earth.

Hailey remembered this name. Her uncle had mentioned it a few times. Philomina seemed to have visited when she was little, but she had long forgotten the woman’s face.

Wait, had she really forgotten?

She distinctly remembered… Mina, her dearest mother Mina.

“I am sorry, Miss Hailey. I am afraid our situation isn’t very hopeful.”

Seeing she didn’t’ respond for a long time, Salaar continued, “Next I have a question that is discourteous—”

“May I ‘kill’ you?”

---

The author has something to say:

The same darkness.

For humans: danger, the unknown, instinctive wariness.

For Myss: ah, the smell of home, how familiar—

For Salaar: here we go again.jpg

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 19: Chanter of Flesh

“I’ll go in first.”

When Myss’s name was called, Salaar passionately cut in line.

The mustached man keeping order at the door: “Huh?”

Salaar: “I’m in a hurry to use the restroom. If I miss my time slot, Lord Fabian would have to wait for me.”

The mustachioed man flipped through the list and saw that Salaar was last. They certainly couldn’t keep Lord Fabian waiting, so he readily agreed.

Salaar straightened his collar. As he walked past Myss, he tilted his head with meaningful intent.

While Myss lacked common sense, he wasn’t stupid. When it came to serious matters, the Demon Lord knew how to show restraint. For example, at this moment Myss quietly met his gaze and said nothing more.

Salaar stepped into the room and gently closed the heavy wooden door.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Salaar. May the cycle remain unbroken.”

Hearing that name made Fabian smile slightly. Then he gazed into Salaar’s blue eyes for a while.

“Please stand at the center of the circle and don’t move. The duration of the exorcism depends on your constitution. It won’t exceed five minutes at most.”

“By the God of Cadence above, may the cycle remain unbroken.”

Salaar swiftly sorted through his recollections and responded naturally. “Thank you for the explanation. During the ritual, do I need to remain silent?”

“No need. You can think of it as a physical checkup,” Fabian said with a calm tone. “As long as you don’t leave the center of the circle, even singing is fine.”

Salaar obediently went to the center of the circle.

The center was pleasantly warm. It felt as if he were stepping into a hot spring and every pore loosened.

Those fine threads of magic bored into his body, and Salaar took a moment to savor the sensation. The blessing spell was trying to merge into his magic in order to enter his magic circuits and filter out impurities.

However, that power and Salaar’s power were like oil and water and couldn’t merge at all. From Fabian’s perspective, Salaar’s magic itself was an oversized impurity.

Without changing his expression, Salaar dispersed the foreign magic and resolved the blessing spell. The whole process flowed smoothly, like wiping dust from a window lattice.

From what he observed, once the circle began operating, Fabian had nothing more to do. The old man only needed to replenish the circle’s power at intervals. He didn’t need to chant the entire time and wouldn’t notice this small anomaly.

By his count, he still had about five minutes. That was… more than enough.

As he had told Myss, this was a rare chance. He could make full use of the Demon Lord’s new discovery.

Recalling the look of satisfaction when Myss had shared that discovery, Salaar let one corner of his mouth lift. Then he briskly rolled up his left sleeve.

For this moment he had worn a loose linen shirt on purpose. He pushed the sleeve to the shoulder, baring the elegant length of his left arm.

Under Fabian’s puzzled gaze, Salaar’s right hand slowly brushed across the skin of his left arm.

With the sound of flesh turning, six milky-white tendons rapidly grew. Like sprouting plants they pierced through the skin, stretching from Salaar’s left shoulder to his left palm, their bases anchored in faintly quivering flesh.

Salaar extended his left arm slightly, and those strange tendons went taut, forming a shape somewhat like… six strings of a lute.

Salaar lowered his eyes and tilted his head slightly to the left. His posture was exceedingly gentle, as if cuddling an invisible lover or cradling a child who didn’t exist.

Framed by that black hair and the dark blue cast of his eyes, he looked like a wraith half hidden in a chilly sea mist. Strikingly handsome and equally dangerous.

Fabian was about to speak in shocked inquiry when Salaar laid his right hand on the strings.

“Come, Mina. Calibration is complete,” he said with a smile. “This time let me assist you.”

Before his words finished, the strings took on a faint wash of pink.

Salaar’s fingertips glided, and soft notes rose and fell lightly through the room. Mina’s magical fluctuations were caught and magnified by the melody and flowed around Fabian like the wind.

After a heartbeat of confusion, tears rolled down Fabian’s cheeks in large drops and soaked into his white beard.

“Ah, Mother…” He stood up unsteadily and stretched out both hands, his clouded eyes fixed on Salaar.

“Look at me. Look at what I have achieved now… I know you will be proud of me.”

Salaar plucked the warm strings of flesh and blood. The tone was winding and gentle, like murmured whispers. Fabian wept like a child and confided in a mother seen only in his mind.

“Yes, I have always overseen Rosha’s Magibase Summoning Ritual and never had an accident… I still remember the day you took me to attend a ritual…”

“Something memorable at the ritual? Not recently… Ten years ago? Ha, there was something odd ten years ago…”

Fabian kept sniffling and his words tumbled about. Even so, Salaar quickly put the story in order.

In this world there are a very few so-called “Chosen Ones” who can use magic before receiving a Magibase.

People generally believe that such children have extraordinary magical talent and can summon exceptionally powerful Magibase.

Ten years ago in Rosha’s Lower City, there was one such child.

Her name was Scintilla. Back then many big names in the Upper City took notice of her and she received considerable support. Unfortunately, her performance at the Magibase Summoning Ritual fell short. She summoned only a caterpillar.

After that the important people withdrew their kindness. Rumor had it that Scintilla couldn’t accept the sudden change in her prospects. She fell seriously ill, grew quiet and withdrawn, and gradually vanished from public view.

…Aside from this small episode, the records of Rosha’s rituals are plain and unremarkable and not worth mentioning.

The music cut off. Mina’s magical resonance dispersed at once and failed to touch Fabian in the slightest.

The wound on Salaar’s left arm healed rapidly. The overgrown tendons and flesh lost their anchor, sloughed away like scabs, and were then cleared completely by magic.

At the same time, a warm wind of brilliant gold brushed away the old man’s memories and tears, like a mother’s hand saying farewell.

Fabian’s eyes became vacant again, as if startled awake from a dream, and exactly five minutes had passed.

“Ah… forgive me, child. I think I nodded off for a moment.”

The old man tightened his throat and wore the look of someone who had woken from a beautiful dream, both nostalgic and relieved.

“May you find a brief moment of peace,” Salaar said softly. “There’s no need to dwell on it. Being able to receive your exorcism and consecration was already my honor.”

Fabian nodded and smiled again. For some reason, his smile was much more relaxed this time.

“Don’t worry. Just quietly erase Fabian’s magic and then come find me,” he whispered to Myss after leaving the room.

……

“By ‘excellent opportunity’ you meant asking Fabian directly?”

Myss had passed the exorcism and consecration with ease, and he was heading to the Hammer Tavern with Salaar.

Salaar: “Yes. I made a small use of Mina’s aura so Fabian would trust me completely. If you hadn’t identified Mina’s magical traits, it wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.”

That was right. Thanks to himself. Salaar did have some discernment.

Myss hummed. “So what did you learn?”

“A child named Scintilla.”

Salaar rubbed his chin. “Scintilla had astonishing talent. She could use magic before summoning a Magibase, so she received quite a lot of support from the Upper City. I would guess she also had decent educational backing.”

“Yet ten years ago she failed at the Magibase Summoning Ritual and then disappeared from view.”

“A magical prodigy, a decent educational background, a ritual ten years ago. Does that sound familiar?”

It did sound a bit like “Patience”. Myss said, “What about her mother?”

“Not sure. That is exactly what we need to confirm,” Salaar said. “Luckily we happen to have a good connection.”

After a moment’s thought, Myss realized he meant Hailey and Huey.

Scintilla had once been a Lower City celebrity and had attended the Summoning Ritual with Hailey. Those two were certain to know something.

At this hour Hailey would be at the Hammer Tavern. On her days off she had been working there part time as a waitress, so they could see her shortly.

Excellent, Myss thought. If Scintilla was Patience, they could investigate Scintilla directly and give up participating in the Magibase Summoning Ritual. That way the bird-beaked demon wouldn’t immediately trouble them.

But would things really go that smoothly?

After all the highs and lows before his unsealing, Myss had a bit of trauma when it came to the word “smooth”.

Facts proved the Demon Lord’s jitters weren’t without cause—

“Scintilla? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

Hailey hesitated, her expression somewhat complicated. “Her health isn’t good. She’s always in a daze and rarely goes out. We’re the same age, but we’re not really close. She hardly speaks to anyone.”

“In earlier years she would sometimes edit letters for people or go to the Upper City to buy and sell used books. Later she stopped going out altogether. No one knows how she gets by.”

She pursed her lips and added quietly, “But there are lights on at her place every night, so she should be all right.”

Salaar: “I heard she took part in the summoning ritual ten years ago, the same year as you.”

Hailey nodded. “I remember that. But we were too young then. I only remember she summoned a caterpillar. For the details you would have to ask my uncle.”

“When would Mr. Huey be free?”

Hailey hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know, but he shouldn’t be here right now.”

“A priest just came by to ask about Scintilla. Mr. Hammer didn’t know her address. I wanted to lead the way, but he turned me down. The priest said that was work for adults.”

“So I recommended my uncle and said he could help… The priest was carrying a Kingdom Religious Certificate. If something happened to him in the Lower City, it would be trouble for everyone.”

Salaar’s eyebrow twitched. “A priest?”

“Yes. Very tall and very polite. Why are you all looking for Scintilla? Did something happen to her?”

“Nothing, there’s just a document that needs her confirmation,” Salaar said with a soothing smile. “Please tell me her address. A simple sketch map will do.”

Outside the window, a crow perched quietly on the eaves, its pupils reflecting the blood-red sunset.

---

The author has something to say:

Saint Salaar’s skill set isn’t all that holy.

He’s somewhat of an unorthodox bard.

Myss: Got it. No wonder you told me not to trust bards. Turns out it was professional rivalry. (x

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 18: Kalen

“Order of Shadows? Is there such a sect?” the night watchman asked back.

In this world there are only three religions that truly count: the Church of Cadence, the Secret Garden, and the Night Listeners. The rest are all small fries. Even so, the watchman had at least heard of those small fries. 

As for this so-called Order of Shadows, he had never once heard the name.

“He has a Kingdom Religious Certificate in his hand. I checked it. It’s real,” reported the guard.

The fact he had a Kingdom Religious Certificate gave the office executor a headache.

In their country, the Kingdom of Aufon, the Church of Cadence holds absolute dominance.

The royal family granted the Church of Cadence the authority to oversee religion. Other faiths must receive its recognition before they can obtain the Kingdom Religious Certificate. In other words, anyone who holds such a certificate is a legitimate cleric endorsed by the Church of Cadence.

“Let him in,” the executor said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

After he saw the visitor’s face, the executor’s mood improved a little.

The priest was very young, about twenty-five. His looks were above average, and his bearing put people at ease.

His flax-colored short hair was slightly wavy, neat and clean, and his eyes were a very pale aquamarine. A gentle smile graced his features, and his gaze was warm, like a soft woolen blanket by the hearth in winter.

The executor’s expression eased.

His eyes skimmed over the man’s tidy black clothes and the bone-white matched rings on both middle fingers. Good. Young, yet plainly dressed. Not one of those showy charlatans at a glance.

“What’s your name?” he asked with a measure of friendliness.

“Kalen. No family name. From Atra.”

Priest Kalen placed one hand lightly to his chest. “May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”

So that was it, a commoner cleric from a neighboring country.

“Unseen and unharmed,” the executor replied with practiced ease. “Father Kalen, you said you have leads on the ‘Lower City plague’?”

“Yes.” Kalen sighed softly. “I saw it with my own eyes in the Lower City…”

…Father Kalen gave a precise description of two men. One with striking gray-white long hair, the other with black hair and blue eyes, adept at spellcasting. The gray-haired man spread the plague with his own hands and hastened its infection.

However, according to Kalen, no remains were left. Everyone else present had been struck by memory magic and remembered nothing at all. The whole matter was as unreal as a nightmare.

After hearing Kalen’s account, the executor frowned.

“Father, even if you are a legitimate cleric, if there is no physical evidence and only your testimony, we cannot open an investigation. Are there any other witnesses? Even one would do.”

Kalen paused for an instant, then shook his head in the end.

“My lord, I fully understand your difficulty. I didn’t come to ask you to arrest anyone,” he said in a warm voice.

“Oh?” The executor raised an eyebrow.

“I heard the court mage in charge of the ritual is named Fabian. He is also a high priest of the Church of Cadence and very skilled in sacred matters. Before the ceremony begins, could you ask him to perform an individual exorcism for every staff member?”

Kalen spoke slowly, as if he wasn’t very used to this mannered way of speaking.

“…That way the filth in the shadows can be cleansed, and the children will be kept from the plague’s taint.”

The ritual’s staff? The executor thought for a moment.

Not counting the guards, there were sixteen staff members in all inside the venue.

Fabian himself, who would preside over the ritual; one “Pure Soul”; six “Holy Guards”… and eight “Disciples of Mercy”, elders of high standing who were responsible for watching over the children.

The “Disciples of Mercy” were all prominent figures in Rosha. They had long wished to befriend a high priest. Yet the Church of Cadence advocates restraint. Believers may accept banquets or gifts only under specific circumstances, so it was difficult for the two sides to interact in a proper, aboveboard way.

Father Kalen’s idea was quite good. With the right handling, this could be a win-win arrangement.

“I will report to His Lordship and discuss the matter with Lord Fabian,”

The executor cleared his throat. “Thank you for your lead, Father. On behalf of Rosha, I grant you one gold ring as a reward.”

Kalen bowed and didn’t take the gold ring on the table.

“May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed,” he repeated the blessing with solemn sincerity, then he turned and walked into the night, his figure gradually swallowed by the shadows.

……

Noon the next day, at the inn where preparations for the ritual were underway.

“Exorcism and consecration?” Salaar repeated.

“Yes, yes. The notice came this morning. Lucky you,” said the mustachioed manager. “That’s a blessing from a high priest, and it will be one on one. They say it’s to ward off the plague. If I weren’t too old, I would want to find a role to play myself.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Salaar glanced at Myss. “If I remember right, exorcism and consecration include a purification phase…”

“That one is especially good for your health,” the mustachioed man said with longing.

Salaar offered a polite smile and ended the topic.

The ritual would begin the day after tomorrow. This arrangement was a little abrupt.

If his guess was right, this was very likely the work of the bird-beaked demon. For the past few days, they had gone to the inn that was preparing for the ritual, right on schedule, with their intentions as plain as day.

The “demon” was forcing them to withdraw from the Magibase summoning ritual. From the bird-beaked demon’s point of view, he and Myss were nothing but suspicious sources of contagion.

The good news: the bird-beaked demon truly had no malicious intent. He only wanted the two of them to stay away from the children, and he didn’t even wish to involve Hailey, the young eyewitness.

The bad news: between the two of them, there really might be someone who’s allergic to purification…

“I handled Barlow so cleanly. He clearly has no evidence. Humans are really unreasonable,” Myss said with displeasure after hearing Salaar’s inference.

Salaar rubbed his temples. “That’s not the point. Forget it. Do you have anything else to say?”

“Oh, I still have to kill someone,” Myss said. “Last time I only ‘assisted’ Mina’s magic. This time I want to separate the Magibase in my own way and see what happens.”

“Since the mage is coming to purify anyway, one more time won’t make a difference.”

Salaar’s look grew a touch complicated. Myss could faintly read big words on his face: “You’re hopeless.” Myss turned his head away and pretended not to notice.

“No.” Salaar stepped in front of him. “Don’t think I don’t know. You just want to get a taste of the Magibase.”

“Tsk.”

“The urgent matter is to solve the problem of the blessing.”

Salaar pondered. “Let me think. For more than twenty years, that same mage has been in charge of Rosha’s rituals. Hm. This might be an excellent opportunity.”

Myss: “An excellent opportunity to purify me?’

Salaar: “Fair point. It might actually be two excellent opportunities.”

Myss pulled out that deadly dinner fork in a threatening way.

Salaar looked at him with amusement. “The other great opportunity, you will know it when the time comes.”

The court mage Fabian worked with remarkable efficiency and arrived at the inn that very afternoon.

Fabian fit people’s image of a “mage” perfectly. He wore a crisp, elegant, religious white robe, and his long white beard was groomed with meticulous care.

Beside him Myss saw a Magibase stag. Its antlers branched in luxuriant tines, and it strolled at the old man’s side at an easy pace. Thanks to that creature, even the sunlight spilling into the room seemed a little more sacred.

“Let’s finish things here quickly and take a nap,” the stag muttered lazily to itself. “The exorcism for the Disciples of Mercy is set for after the banquet. I hope the banquet has Mamzi sweet wine. Hm…”

What a big deer. Myss stared at the stag’s plump body and suddenly remembered the rosemary venison steaks you could only get in the Upper City.

The stag shivered under his gaze, looked over in alarm and doubt, and happened to lock eyes with Myss.

“You… You rude brat,” it cried. “Lower your head.”

The reaction was too strong, and Myss couldn’t help glancing at Fabian. He found that the court mage showed no response at all and was completely unaware of his own Magibase’s unease.

How curious. These Magibase were just like their masters’ subconscious. They faithfully reflected the owner’s inner state, yet the owner knew nothing about their behavior.

“Pleased to meet you, Roasted Venison,” Myss mouthed silently at the stag.

The stag stamped hard, snorting thick and loud. “As expected, a ranger from a backwater. Low birth and lower morals.”

Myss: “Low morals? You’re mistaken.”

“Where is the mistake?” The stag lifted its head high.

Myss bared his sharp teeth. “I have no morals.”

At his side, Salaar let out an earthshaking cough.

The stag was scared out of its wits. It clip-clopped around to Fabian’s other side and tried to use the old man’s withered body as a shield. Fabian was speaking with the mustachioed manager when he suddenly broke off, his brows drawing together.

“My goodness, my lord, what’s wrong?” The mustachioed man’s voice turned syrupy, his tone obsequious to the point of absurdity.

“Nothing,” Fabian said mildly. “My magic fluctuated for an instant. This place is indeed unsanitary… Let us begin at once.”

The moment his words fell, his Magibase stag bolted in impatient flight.

The mustachioed manager cleared out the inn’s largest room to serve as a temporary exorcism chamber. The materials table was piled with salt, all kinds of herbs and essential oils, and even fresh lamb’s blood.

Fabian picked up a crystal flask and added herbs, then oils, then blood in that order. After that he took out a small vial from his pocket and dripped in a few drops of golden liquid.

Heated by flame, the murky mixture gradually turned a clear violet. A faint note of frankincense drifted through the air.

When preparations were complete, he drew a finely worked silver staff and began to chant quickly.

The Magibase stag bounded lightly about the room. The liquid in the flask flew out as if it were alive and traced a complex and beautiful giant magic circle on the floor.

All the curtains had been drawn. In the dim space, the circle shimmered with a warm white glow.

“All right.” Fabian smoothed his beard and turned to the seven staff members waiting at the door.

“Anyone not involved is to step out. When I call your name, you will come in one at a time.”

“We’ll now begin the exorcism.”

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The author has something to say:

The first support cast member has appeared!

Kalen is actually twenty-six years old. (This shouldn’t count as a spoiler, I hope.) Salaar’s physical body is twenty, Myss’s physical body is nineteen. Looks like Mr. Kalen will be chaperoning two kids (?)…

This chapter is from Salaar’s point of view: observing the Demon Lord mouthing his lips while he argues with air.

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 17: The Informant

Myss was in an excellent mood.

He could now be sure the strange plague in Rosha was Mina’s doing. Mina—whatever her true form was—had mixed crimson magic into certain foods.

Once people ate the tainted food, that wisp of magic began corroding the victim’s mind. In other words, it slowly stripped out the person’s Magibase and devoured it.

In the end, the so-called “meat-cocoon corpse” was nothing more than a candy wrapper after the bonbon was gone, a shell with the kernel missing.

And after the patient died, part of the proliferated magic would contaminate nearby food and repeat the cycle of infection.

Looks like I don’t need to worry about “Mina’s” long-term effects, Myss thought cheerfully.

He had no Magibase, so no matter how much contaminated food he ate, the crimson magic wouldn’t be able to harm him. He only needed to wait for it to dissipate on its own.

As for what Mina actually was, how the memory distortions worked, and how to clean up the mess in front of him… all those fussy little headaches could be left to the great hero.

Right this moment, Salaar was looking down at him from the rooftop.

“You’ve made trouble again,” Salaar sighed.

“And you enabled me,” Myss said.

Salaar smiled, his gaze still locked on Myss. The next second, ignoring the bird-beaked demon just a few paces away, he sprang straight toward Myss.

Salaar’s leap seemed to punch through the sunlight, scattering ten thousand glittering shards of gold.

Those flecks of magic became a rain of gold; wherever the light motes fell, people bowed their heads and sank into sleep.

Except for two—

The bird-beaked demon snapped his cloak, and a dozen crows beat their wings to shield him from the flying motes. Hailey was spared by Salaar; she sat there dumbfounded, watching Salaar lightly land on the ground.

Myss caught a speck of gold on his fingertip and touched it to his tongue.

“Tastes like illusion magic,” he smacked his lips.

“I scrambled their memories. When they wake, they won’t remember you. They’ll just think Barlow disappeared,” Salaar said. “Good thing there weren’t many witnesses.”

“What about the little girl here?” Myss pointed at Hailey.

Salaar shrugged. “Miss Hailey knew you were coming and personally led you here. To make her forget you entirely would take stronger magic… which would damage her mind.”

He explained while keeping a keen eye on the bird-beaked demon.

The bird-beaked demon didn’t attack them; he simply stood there. A huge crow perched on his shoulder, its gray-white nictitating membrane kept blinking repeatedly.

After a brief stillness, the flock of crows plunged to the ground.

Half-full casks were knocked over with a crash, wine gushed across the floor and seeped into the cracks between stones. Cups and plates clattered down, and the food upon them was snatched away by the crows, leaving only filthy scraps.

Myss narrowed his eyes at that pitch-black silhouette.

With that ruckus, the Mina-tainted wine was all spilled. Then the crows spiraled upward, casting a dozen drifting shadows.

As the shadows swept by, the bird-beaked demon vanished into thin air once more.

Hamer had said the rumor claimed the bird-beaked demon appeared twice before a patient.

The first appearance meant the person had fallen ill. The second meant they would sicken and die.

Was it Barlow’s death that summoned him here?

But from Myss’s spur-of-the-moment infection of Barlow to Barlow’s attack and death, the entire process had taken only a few minutes. Salaar had tailed him the whole way, so being on the scene wasn’t strange… the question was how the bird-beaked demon managed to show up in sync.

Myss was still thinking when his view suddenly jolted; someone had grabbed him around the waist.

Salaar tucked him tight under one arm as if the Archdemon was a sack of potatoes. With his left hand he kept casting, gracefully suspending Hailey in midair—the girl was utterly stunned, staring blankly at the two of them.

“Let’s leave here first,” Salaar said flatly.

A dozen minutes later.

Instead of returning to the Hammer Tavern, the three of them found a little restaurant with hardly any patrons—a place so tiny it was almost cramped, bare-bones in its decor, with a faint smell of cow dung in the air.

The menu offered only boiled turnips, baked potatoes, and cornbread with crumbled bacon.

Salaar ordered three steaming baked potatoes, scored crosses in them with a dinner knife, then, as if by magic, produced three pats of butter and tucked them into the potatoes.

“Eat.” He slid one serving to Hailey. “Something hot will help settle you.”

Hailey gripped her fork mechanically and jabbed at the potato, nearly sending it flying.

“Barlow is dead.” After a long while, she managed to stammer out the words.

Myss forked a potato cheerfully. “You said you wished he were dead.”

“I, I…” Hailey looked both confused and heartsick. “He deserved it, but…”

“You told Myss about Barlow, and then he killed Barlow. You feel like you have blood on your hands, don’t you?”

Salaar’s voice was gentle and even. “Miss Hailey, you aren’t pitying Barlow; you just aren’t used to the weight of a life yet. Believe me, this isn’t your problem at all…”

He glanced at Myss as naturally as breathing. “…It’s entirely Myss’s fault.”

Myss: “?”

“Mr. Myss isn’t a saint. If he makes up his mind to kill, he will act. From what I know of him, even if he hadn’t met you, he would have picked some ‘bad guy’ to kill anyway.”

Salaar’s tone was rock-solid, as if he had eavesdropped on Myss’s very thoughts.

“Child, you actually did a good thing—you picked the one who most deserved to die, didn’t you?”

Myss: “Hello? I’m right here listening.”

Though to be fair, Salaar wasn’t wrong.

Hailey’s confusion turned into bewilderment. She looked from Salaar to Myss. “But Mr. Myss…”

“In fact, we’re secret investigators from the capital, assigned to handle the Lower City plague.”

Salaar lowered his voice and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Four investigators died of the illness in just two months. Clearly something is off, so we’ve kept our identities hidden.”

Then he tapped his own temple, his tone a shade suggestive. “As for Myss, he’s a professional executioner. It’s just that up here… Well… He’s been overly influenced by the bards, so his notion of ‘evil’ is a bit extreme.”

At the words “secret investigators”, color finally returned to Hailey’s face.

So they were experts sent from above; no wonder they had dared to use Barlow to study the illness. She peeked at Myss out of the corner of her eye. “Th-then, if I hadn’t mentioned Barlow…”

“Myss might have randomly killed some unlucky thief.” Salaar gave her a smile.

“May I tell my uncle about you two?” Hailey asked, still a little rattled.

“Of course. As your guardian, Mr. Huey has a right to know.” Salaar’s smile remained unchanged.

At last, Hailey let out a long breath, as if she could breathe again.

……

Night, second floor of the Hammer Tavern.

“What if Huey tries to verify our identities?” Myss challenged.

He normally couldn’t be bothered with this kind of nonsense, but the Magibase Summoning Ritual was about to begin. If anything went wrong at this critical moment, he would have to swallow Salaar alive.

“He won’t.”

Salaar was still fiddling with his charcoal pencil. “From his point of view, we only just arrived. We can’t possibly be the ones spreading the plague.”

“Officially we are secret investigators. If Huey asked the soldiers to confirm it, he would be deliberately exposing us. He’s not that foolish.”

Myss hugged a pillow and leaned against the headboard. “All that trouble spinning a lie just to fool a little girl…”

Salaar smiled. “Who said it was for her?”

“‘Mr. Myss, the righteous executioner,’ from now on you can only kill the wicked. Otherwise, Huey and Hailey will notice something is off, and the city lord’s soldiers will come knocking at once.”

“And by the way, don’t think about killing those two to silence them. Huey has quite a network, which may include some powerful figures.”

Myss: “……”

Damn it! This kid actually plotted against him!

He didn’t care about human life and death, but he truly didn’t want a fuss. His power was far from restored; if he attracted the wrong sort of attention, trouble would snowball.

“You cunning guy.”

Myss buried his face in the pillow. Three centuries away from the world, and the great hero was still infuriatingly capable.

“Live long enough and you pick up some experience,” Salaar crooned like a bard. “Ah, sorry, I forgot you are much older than I am.”

Rip.

Myss shredded the pillowcase, and a few light tufts of feather drifted out.

Salaar’s gaze swept over the feathers, and his smile faded a touch.

“Alright, business. I saw you ‘infect’ that Barlow with my own eyes. What exactly did you do?”

There it was again. This guy always changed the subject right before Myss was about to explode.

Myss scooted over and turned his back to Salaar. “I thought you weren’t interested in the plague. What was it you said? Border towns are easy to seal off, and the sacrifices are still… manageable.”

Salaar’s face remained expressionless. “Fine, I won’t ask.”

He bent his head; the pen tip hissed across the page. Night deepened, and the room slowly filled with shadow.

Ten minutes passed. Myss rolled over. “You really aren’t going to ask?”

The Demon Lord considered his new discovery quite brilliant. But if Salaar wouldn’t ask, he could hardly sidle over and interview himself.

“I’m not the kind of man who pesters others,” Salaar said evenly.

Myss grunted for a while. “What if it has to do with ‘Patience’?”

Salaar’s tone turned theatrical. “Wow, sounds like a big discovery!”

Then he fell silent again.

Feeling aggrieved, Myss climbed off the bed and planted himself in front of Salaar. He cast his not-so-large shadow over the damned guy, every pore of his body broadcasting, “Ask me!”

“Pfft. On second thought, it really might have something to do with ‘Patience.’”

Salaar nearly burst out laughing.

“Those lines in the letters, like ‘Mom sends her regards,’ could be Mina’s doing. Your clues are extremely important, so please share them with me.”

That was more like it. Myss put on a stern face and began explaining the plague’s transmission mechanism.

He even stated with authority that the two of them had been infected on the same day—Salaar by eating tainted croutons, and Myss by eating food at Covington’s death scene.

“In short, Mina cuts the Magibase out of the infected, which causes the magic to mutate. Since we don’t have Magibases, we’re mostly fine,” Myss concluded solemnly.

Salaar lowered his eyes, a faint crease forming between his brows.

“Contaminated food causes infection. When a patient dies, the abnormal magic inside them leaks out and contaminates nearby food. But so far, those around the deceased are unharmed…”

“The bird-beaked demon appears when the patient is infected and when the patient dies, which just happen to be the points where ‘contaminated food’ shows up…”

“When Barlow died, the bird-beaked demon destroyed the food and drink nearby…”

“Interesting. That ‘demon’ seems to be preventing transmission.”

Myss raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look pleased.”

“If that thing is tracking the plague out of goodwill… think about it. First Covington, then Barlow. To him, you’re the most dangerous person in the entire city.”

Salaar gave Myss a long, gloomy look and let out a heavy sigh.

“He doesn’t know our ‘secret investigator’ cover story. He might blow this wide open.”

…

At the same time, in Rosha’s Council Hall.

“My lord, someone outside claims to have information about the plague.”

“Tell him to come back tomorrow. Look at the time. It’s probably some vagrant angling for the bounty…”

“No, my lord. He calls himself a priest of the ‘Order of Shadows’.”

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The author has something to say:

The first named sect has appeared!

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 16: Pathology of the Mutation

The croutons were still in their original paper bag; a small portion had been eaten by Salaar.

Myss suddenly thought of the two bowls of cranberry soup that Salaar had knocked over not long ago. Mina might have used the same trick: the person who gave him the croutons was actually someone else, and she simply replaced that person’s image with “Mina”.

Thinking it over, every time Mina appeared there was food nearby. Even if there wasn’t, she would remind them to eat.

Could it be that “Mina” needed to use food to influence others?

It wouldn’t be hard to test. He still had croutons in hand. He only needed to find a human to try them on.

Hailey… Hmm, not Hailey. The girl is still somewhat useful.

What about the supervisor? No. He had already swallowed his pride to wear this outfit. If it affected the Summoning Ritual, that would be shooting himself in the foot. And Myss was certain Salaar would give him trouble.

Then—

“Is there any scum around here, the kind you would gladly see dead?” Myss asked Hailey.

Hailey froze for a few seconds. “You always like to ask very particular questions.”

“Is there or not?” Myss repeated.

“If I have to name someone, it would be Barlow the Cripple.”

Hailey still answered. She tightened her too-youthful face, her eyes full of contempt. “Barlow is a pervert who likes children. Several of my friends—boys and girls alike—were molested by him when they were little.”

“Two street kids also died at his hands. He said they broke into his house to steal and he accidentally strangled them. My uncle was furious. Those two were always well-behaved, and Barlow’s house had nothing but a pile of rotten straw! Pah, everyone knows what really happened.”

As she spoke, she grew more emotional. The long-tailed chickadee on her head fluffed its feathers and grew even rounder.

As usual, Myss let her words go in one ear and out the other. His mind sifted out only one piece of information: it didn’t matter if Barlow died.

“Where’s Barlow?” Myss asked.

Even Hailey, slow on the uptake, sensed the problem. “Are you planning to…?”

“Where’s Barlow?” Myss ignored her question.

“Sir, Barlow is a big man, and he’s always drunk.” Hailey was a little frightened. “The soldiers don’t really care about disputes in the Lower City. You’d better not provoke him.”

“Mm,” Myss said. “Tell me where Barlow is.”

……

When she realized Myss was set on finding Barlow, Hailey still told him the place. Out of a certain stubbornness, she also insisted on coming along.

“The streets in the Lower City are a mess. You’ll definitely get lost if you go alone. That would be dangerous,” she said with a strained smile. “And there are people there you can’t afford to provoke. You are not yet familiar with Rosha…”

Her fingers twisted the hem of her clothes. She seemed to regret having brought up Barlow at all.

Naturally, Myss couldn’t care less about such details.

While Salaar was away, Myss changed out of the cumbersome costume and back into a practical ranger outfit. Seeing that he carried no weapon, Hailey quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

She still didn’t quite understand why Myss brought along that half bag of croutons.

The Lower City wasn’t very large, yet Myss felt as if they had walked for a long time.

As they went deeper, the buildings on both sides of the road lost their color and turned withered and dilapidated. They looked more like the remains of houses than actual houses.

Many doors and windows had been nailed shut with boards. Hailey told him there were corpses of the victims that died from the “strange disease”. Those eerie bodies hung suspended in midair, and not even mages could remove them, so the soldiers had boarded the places up.

Further in, even the cover of buildings disappeared.

Most of the walls had collapsed, and the roofs were half gone. The living and the dead lay together by the roadside, and those bizarre meat cocoons hung brazenly in the sunlight.

Myss was strikingly handsome, and Hailey was young. The two of them drew every eye in that filthy neighborhood. Many damp, greasy stares clung to their heels, trying to trip them up with sheer attention.

Amid the malicious whispers, Hailey held her breath and walked close to Myss.

Fortunately, their destination wasn’t far ahead. There was a tavern here as well. There was no signboard, no servers, and only grimy casks and swill full of dead flies.

Compared with the Hammer Tavern, this was at best a “watering trough”. The air reeked of sweat and urine. Even so, the men gulped their liquor and laughed hoarsely.

Myss stopped.

The men in the tavern naturally noticed them. Whistles sounded again, interspersed with filthy greetings.

“All right, before it gets dark, let us go back,” Hailey whispered, sneaking a look at Myss’s face. “I-I know you want to punish Barlow. But you see how it is around here…”

“Which one is Barlow?” Myss asked the drunks.

Another shrill whistle, and the drunks roared with laughter.

“Ha ha, Barlow, your little sweetheart is looking for you.”

“Did you change your tastes? These two are too old for you.”

“That pretty boy looks like that, so what if he is older—”

“Who?” Amid the laughter, a hulking man with bloodshot eyes swayed to his feet and squinted at Myss. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

Myss sprang like a leopard. In an instant he landed in front of Barlow and shoved a fistful of croutons into his mouth.

The tavern fell silent. No one moved.

They didn’t know whether to marvel at Myss’s skill or to be baffled by his inexplicable act. Yet when they saw Myss lift Barlow like a chicken, they wisely kept quiet.

Myss was under one meter eighty, while Barlow was close to one meter ninety, yet he was able to grab the front of Barlow’s shirt with ease and hauled him up into the air.

Barlow instinctively swallowed the croutons.

Myss: “How do you feel?”

Barlow: “……” How should he feel? Was the stuff poisoned?

Seeing that Barlow showed no particular reaction, Myss grunted and focused on observing his Magibase.

Barlow’s Magibase was hidden on the right side of his chest, symmetrical to the heart, though the sizes didn’t really match. Judging by the shape, it seemed to be a fly.

Myss was more focused than he had ever been. He felt carefully for the fly buried in flesh and finally sensed a faint wrongness.

Barlow’s Magibase was a little loose.

Myss had noticed that for both him and Salaar, their magic and their flesh were completely integrated, like milk and flour baked into a cake.

Other humans were more like sandwich cookies. The “Magibase filling” and the “body cookie” had fused to a degree yet could still be separated in the end.

A similar situation was appearing on Barlow.

A pale red filament of magic slipped out of the croutons. It bored into Barlow’s flesh, delicately breaking the points of adhesion and trying to slice the Magibase away in one piece.

Unfortunately, it was far too feeble, so the process crawled along. What if he sped it up?

Myss split off a trace of pitch-black magic, turned it into hundreds of fine threads, and sent them into Barlow’s mouth and nose.

At once, patches of pitch-black necrosis bloomed around Barlow’s mouth and nostrils, and a blackened half of his tongue dropped out. Myss’s magic didn’t devour him outright, but the slow corrosion looked even more terrifying, as if an invisible swarm of insects were gnawing him alive.

Barlow let out a scream no living thing should make and thrash frantically. However, Myss’s grip was like an iron clamp. No matter how Barlow jerked and writhed, Myss’s arm didn’t even tremble.

It was his first time controlling his strength like this, and he wasn’t very practiced at suppressing the annihilating power. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Barlow stayed alive.

His pitch-black magic had already reached the Magibase. Myss mimicked that pale red filament and quickly severed the connections between Barlow and the Magibase.

All at once the air filled with the smell of baked flatbread. As the cutting went on, the aroma grew stronger.

“Bastard, stop,” Myss heard the Magibase fly buzz in a wail. “No, no… Mommy, it hurts…”

With the keening, the pale red filament became strangely active.

No sooner had Myss cut the last connection than the pale red thread sprang up, wrapped the Magibase fly completely, and writhed without stopping. In a few seconds the Magibase was gone without a trace.

At the same time the smell of baked flatbread vanished too, leaving only a faint aftertaste.

The pale red filament stretched out again and multiplied into a dozen or so threads. Three or four snaked out of Barlow’s mouth and crawled into a nearby cask, while the rest disappeared into thin air.

The pale red magic was too weak. Myss’s power hadn’t yet recovered. He focused for quite a while and still couldn’t make out where the vanished magic had gone.

Before he knew it, only dead silence remained around him. Myss finally pulled his attention back to the present.

Barlow in his hand had mutated.

He had gone still and was floating in midair, turned into a strange meat cocoon identical to Covington’s. Black traces of Myss’s corrosive magic still marred his skin.

From the moment Myss hauled Barlow up, only two minutes had passed.

Myss shifted his gaze, and the corrosion marks spread with speed. In a single instant the cocoon turned jet black from top to bottom and was annihilated before everyone’s eyes.

There were no screams and no commotion. People were so shocked by this nightmarish development that they hardly dared breathe.

Beside Myss, Hailey had fallen to the floor.

The girl’s lips trembled; her expression caught between terror and daze. Instinct told her to run, yet she tried to convince herself that “Myss is not a bad person,” so she froze in place in miserable awkwardness.

Clatter. The tavern keeper’s ladle hit the floor, like a thunderclap.

Myss blinked and flexed his wrist.

“This is… truly interesting.”

His voice was soft, yet very clear. “Don’t you think so?”

As he spoke, he lifted his head and looked toward the broken roof not far away.

Two figures were standing there.

One of them was Salaar, as expected.

Myss knew this old adversary. Salaar wasn’t someone you could simply shake off. Not long after they left the inn, he had followed in silence.

Before using Barlow as a test case, Myss had specifically checked for Salaar’s presence. Since the great hero didn’t plan to heroically save the wretch, that meant he had tacitly agreed to help clean up afterward.

Salaar looked at Myss in silence, his expression dark and unreadable.

The other figure was the bird-beaked demon. He stood just as quietly, his beak turned toward where Barlow had been.

A crow alighted at his feet and gave a soft caw.

---

The author has something to say:

Don’t expect too much humanity from Myss.

He is, in every sense, a pure nonhuman, not some misunderstood good guy. Salaar’s hostility towards him is justified; the title “archenemies” isn’t a joke…

In short, this is something Mr. Hero will have to resolve personally.

---

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