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:
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————
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.
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