The screams stopped. The monster no longer moved, and silence settled over his blood-soaked shoulders.
Ludville took a light breath.
He remembered entering Grauter’s habitat.
He also remembered charging straight toward the first monster that attacked him without slowing down even a little.
The monster’s fierce claws tore through his armor, sending a sharp pain through him, but Ludville didn’t dodge.
Without pulling the claws out of his muscle, he instead locked the arm in place like an anchor and swiftly cut through the monster’s neck.
Then, when another monster opened its mouth to tear him apart, he thrust his sword straight into it.
All the way through the base of its tongue and into its skull.
He pierced it in a single strike.
Black blood sprayed into the air.
A brief moment of exhilaration, followed by emptiness.
Without feeling the joy of victory or fear of death, he was instantly covered in monster blood from head to toe.
The only thing left was an unconscious awareness that he had to keep swinging his sword as long as he was still breathing.
He cut because something was in front of him, cut because something moved, and even when blood splattered everywhere, he didn’t care.
He had no desire to survive, nor any desperate wish to die.
How much time had passed like that?
At some point, he came to his senses.
A drop of blood slowly fell from the tip of his sword to the ground.
Only after blinking once or twice did he realize that he had slaughtered every Grauter.
His face, hands, and even the inside of his armor were soaked with monster blood and its remains.
‘My memory cut out again.’
It had been happening for some time.
Whenever he fought monsters, whenever the evil energy seeped deep into his body, the sensation in his fingertips gradually became hazy, as though each one were shutting down, even while his mind remained clear.
He liked that feeling.
A sensation close to death.
As if eternal rest were finally coming…….
Because, at least in those moments, he could stop thinking about anything at all.
That was also why he rolled the herbs known to have severe side effects into cigarettes and smoked them.
To feel that sensation.
But this time, even the familiar numbness he had always felt seemed strangely unfamiliar.
His heart suddenly gave a heavy beat, then its rhythm began to slow.
The blood that should have been surging violently seemed to slow down, as though something were blocking its flow.
His mind gradually felt heavier, as if it were sinking deep beneath the water.
‘Something is going wrong.’
He was certain of it.
It seemed that the body that had somehow managed to endure until now had finally reached its limit and was beginning to fail.
‘Is this as far as I go?’
He had always known that he would have to pay a heavy price someday.
But so what?
He had done it because he wanted to at that moment.
He hadn’t thought deeply about it. Even if he did, wouldn’t everything eventually return to the same terrible headaches?
‘Ah, now that I think about it…….’
……The Grand Duchess could get rid of his headaches now.
The thought suddenly crossed his mind.
With his hand slick with monster blood, he touched the forehead where her hand had once rested.
He thought, perhaps, that he wanted to feel that low, gentle warmth one last time.
And then, as though the god who had never once answered his prayers throughout his entire life had finally granted one for the first time—
“You said you would need me.”
A voice came from behind him.
The voice he had been waiting for—
Even though he hadn’t known he was waiting for it.
*****
The forest was already a battlefield after the war had ended.
Trees had been ripped out by their roots.
Mounds of earth had been crushed apart.
The corpses of monsters had been brutally torn to pieces as though swept away by a violent storm.
It was a hellscape created by a single person.
And Ludville stood at its center.
The hem of his cloak was already torn and soaked in blood.
His sword hung loosely from his hand, half-drawn, while blood dripped down his fingers through the cracks in his torn gloves.
Ludville wasn’t moving.
He stood there like a statue rooted to the ground.
‘Could the monster transformation have already begun?’
Monsters were supernatural beings born from condensed human ‘despair.’
Pure monsters were born by feeding on human despair, but there were also rare cases where humans who had been exposed to monster evil energy for an extremely long time transformed into monsters themselves.
People called this ‘monster transformation.’
It was rare.
It required several specific conditions to come together.
Most people exposed to evil energy simply suffered blackened necrosis throughout their bodies, rotted from within, and died.
That was why no one had known.
There had been no signs of necrosis anywhere on Ludville’s body.
But what if the reason he had appeared perfectly fine on the outside was because the monster transformation had already begun?
What if Ludville had fulfilled all the conditions during this battle today?
One terrible possibility after another raced through Odely’s mind.
She felt as though she couldn’t breathe.
Odely pulled on the reins and jumped down, nearly tumbling to the ground, then hurried toward him.
Without hesitation, she placed her hand on his back.
Through his shredded armor, she could feel a thick, sticky, scorching energy.
‘This is…….’
She flinched.
Then she held her breath and focused on the sensation.
What she felt through her fingertips was far beyond simple exposure to evil energy.
It was as though he himself had become the ‘source’ of the evil energy.
‘This much…….’
It felt as though his body were filled with a concentrated liquid of evil energy.
It was practically the ‘essence’ of evil energy itself.
‘How could I not have known?’
No, how could he possibly have endured this pain?
He hadn’t shown even the slightest sign of it.
At this level, it was almost unbelievable that he had been able to maintain his sanity and live normally all this time.
How had he walked, talked, worked, and……?
Perhaps even the impulsive changes in his behavior, as though he had become a completely different person, had been caused by the influence of the evil energy.
But…….
“……Haa.”
Odely let out a relieved sigh.
‘Fortunately, the monster transformation hasn’t begun yet.’
That was right.
Ludville’s body was saturated with evil energy, but he had not turned into a monster.
There was only one reason.
He had no despair.
More precisely, all his emotions had been completely dried up to the point where he couldn’t even feel despair.
‘Because there was no nourishment called despair.’
The same was true of both monsters and monster transformation.
A certain amount of emotion was necessary for them to take root and make the flower of evil bloom.
Ironically, because his emotions had been completely depleted, the monster transformation had not begun even after his body had become saturated with this much evil energy.
Because he had continued living without feeling anything……
‘He survived because he had no emotions.’
Odely raised her hand and placed it over his heart.
Then, the power of purification began to gather.
Golden purifying energy slowly seeped into the crimson currents that had gathered like blood.
Comments (0)