Under the thunderous strike of Orum's flame-steel halberd, the forest monitor lizard's massive body began to convulse violently.
The halberd descended like a black meteorite, crashing into the lizard's skull. The terrifying impact traveled instantly to the depths of its cerebellum, shaking it like an earthquake.
The lizard's eyes spun out of control, pupils dilating wildly, its entire body losing all sense of balance.
"ROOAAR!"
The forest monitor let out a howl of unbearable agony as its enormous body began thrashing madly across the ground. Its limbs, thick as tree trunks, kicked and spasmed in frantic convulsions, spraying dirt and gravel in all directions. Each roll was accompanied by the dull, heavy thud of bones slamming against the earth.
Then, without warning, the lizard threw open its gaping maw and began to retch violently.
A torrent of fresh blood gushed from its throat like a breached dam. The dark crimson fluid was laced with yellow-green stomach acid, releasing a suffocating stench of rot and bile.
Standing by the carriage, Melina watched the scene and felt a wave of intense nausea crash over her. She pressed a hand to her mouth, fighting desperately to keep herself from vomiting.
But when she saw what the lizard had disgorged, she froze completely.
Scattered among the pooling gore were human remains, crimson-stained and only partially digested.
"These... these are..." Melina's voice trembled, her eyes wide with horror.
She forced herself to look more closely. The blood-soaked bones were a deep scarlet throughout, their surfaces marked by the corrosive burns of the lizard's stomach acid. She counted carefully.
Five human skulls.
Some were grotesquely deformed. Others still retained enough shape to hint at the faces they had once been. They lay tangled in the stomach acid and filth, the smell rising in nauseating waves.
"Ugh..." Melina finally lost the battle with her stomach and doubled over beside the tree line, retching. Her body heaved, though thankfully nothing came up.
These were the remains of the missing merchants and adventurers. There was no other explanation.
---
A deep rumble shook the earth as the forest monitor lizard wrenched its head upright, its eyes blazing with savage fury.
It had finally realized who had dealt it such a devastating blow.
The lizard fixed its burning gaze on Orum and unleashed a deafening roar, its jaws spread wide.
"ROOAAR!" The sound rolled back and forth between the mountains. The lizard stared at Orum with murderous intensity, every fiber of its body radiating the desire to tear him apart.
Orum gripped his halberd, watching the lizard's movements with calm, steady eyes.
He noticed it immediately: deep within that gaping throat, a specialized gland was beginning to writhe and pulse. The gland was pale yellow, its surface riddled with dozens of tiny pores, all secreting a thick, viscous fluid at a rapid pace.
This was the forest monitor's most lethal hunting mechanism. It could spray adhesive fluid comparable to industrial-strength glue. Once ensnared, prey would be pinned in place and devoured alive.
"Hssssss..." The lizard's throat began to contract rhythmically, the gland's contents building pressure. In the next instant, it would unleash that deadly spray.
The moment hung on a razor's edge.
Orum's eyes sharpened to a point, and without a moment's hesitation, he raised the flame-steel halberd.
Deep within his chest, two hearts pounded in unison, surging like floodwaters broken free, flooding his limbs with raw power. His muscles snapped taut, pushed to their absolute limit.
The world around Orum slowed to a crawl.
The roaring lizard, the swirling dust, the gland glistening wet inside that cavernous mouth. All of it seemed to freeze in place.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Orum's silhouette blurred into motion.
"Battle Skill: Thrust!"
Time itself seemed to stop.
The flame-steel halberd became a bolt of black lightning, driving forward at a speed that seemed to tear through the very air, plunging straight into the lizard's open maw.
The tip found the upper palate with perfect precision and punched through like paper.
A sharp, wet tearing sound rang out. Flesh split. Bone exploded.
The halberd drove all the way through the lizard's skull and burst out through the back of its head.
"BOOM!"
A vast crimson mist erupted outward. Pale brain matter and blood sprayed in every direction, staining the entire area in the colors of a slaughterhouse.
The forest monitor lizard stood rigid for one suspended moment, then collapsed with a thunderous crash.
The ground shook. Dust billowed skyward.
You have slain 1 Forest Monitor Lizard!
Stage reward available: Monster Organ, Forest Monitor Lung!
Next stage reward: Slay 10 Forest Monitor Lizards to claim an advanced reward!
Orum read the notification, and a look of quiet satisfaction crossed his face.
Another rare monster organ secured. The forest monitor's lung, judging by its name alone, would dramatically enhance lung capacity and endurance.
---
"That was..." Melina approached slowly, staring at the lizard's carcass sprawled across the ground. She stood there, utterly speechless.
One hit. Instant kill.
Just moments ago, she had been quietly telling herself that she, a Wanderer with a full class, would be the one protecting Orum, a pre-class initiate.
Yet the terrifying display of combat she had just witnessed, watching him drop a forest monitor lizard in a single strike, had shattered every assumption she held.
Melina's mind drifted back to Felix's introduction. Orum was a Hexcaster, a Pact-Binder, someone who had entered into a contract with a powerful Archfey sovereign and received her blessing.
But even divine blessings weren't supposed to make someone this strong. This wasn't a blessing. This was a god walking among mortals.
The power Orum had displayed was nothing short of what you would expect from someone under a permanent Strength plus ten enhancement.
Staring at the straight-backed silhouette in front of her, Melina felt her heart give a sudden, startled leap.
"Could Orum actually be the Forest Fairy Goddess's own son?! This is absolutely ridiculous!"
"Pfft."
Orum pulled his halberd free with a sharp tug. Blood and gore ran in rivulets down the dark blade. His gaze immediately snapped toward the direction of Kadia Village, brows drawing together.
"Something's wrong."
Kadia Village was too quiet.
---
At that same moment, in the central square of Kadia Village.
Theodore's sudden disappearance had put Muller and the armed retainers on instant alert.
"Where is Theodore?! Tell him to get out here!" one of the retainers barked, sword drawn, shouting at the trembling villagers before him.
Astride his black warhorse, Muller sat like a silent statue, looking down at the gathering crowd with a gaze that grew colder by the second. The very air around him seemed to drop in temperature.
A seasoned veteran of countless battles, Muller felt the wrongness immediately. The atmosphere had shifted into something unsettling.
The faces of the villagers crowding in around them showed fear, yes. But beneath that fear lay something far more dangerous.
Rage. Hatred.
And the barely restrained edge of killing intent.
Muller drew his longsword slowly from his hip, the polished blade leveling outward at the encroaching villagers. His expression was as cold and unyielding as frost, the weathered lines of his face utterly still.
"Bring out Theodore." His voice cut like ice. "Or face death."
It was his final warning. All the armed retainers raised their blades in unison, ten longswords catching the sunlight and scattering it in a cold, lethal gleam.
Yet rather than retreat, the villagers responded to Muller's hard stance with a surge of even fiercer defiance. Murmurs rippled through the crowd, then swelled into open agitation.
Someone in the crowd picked up a sharpened wooden spear. Then another, and another. Within moments, the assembled villagers were gripping crude spears slathered in green poison, their shaking hands pointing those tips directly at Muller.
Terror was written plainly across every face. They looked like a herd of cornered animals. From their lips came a rapid torrent of dialect, words that neither Felix's group nor Muller's could begin to understand, though the tone made the meaning unmistakable: furious and unhinged.
The central square had become a powder keg. The air hung heavy with dread.
Felix, Ronald, and Raygore shifted into ready stances as well. The ceremonial longsword hissed from its scabbard, the war hammer rose, and the great dark blade swung up to guard, each of them braced for the brawl that now felt inevitable.
Then it happened.
One villager, his clothing in tatters, broke entirely. He let out a howl that didn't sound human and lunged forward with his spear, driving it at the nearest armed retainer.
The retainer reacted like lightning, sword slashing down.
A flash of cold steel. The front half of the spear spun away in pieces. The retainer followed through without hesitation, reversing the stroke and driving the blade home.
The edge sank deep into the villager's chest. A short, strangled grunt, and the man crashed to the ground. Blood spread instantly, soaking into the dirt beneath him.
The sight of that crimson pool spreading outward acted like a spark thrown into dry tinder.
"They killed him!"
"The knights are massacring the village!"
Screams of horror and fury tore through the square.
The blood ignited something feral in the crowd. Fear burned away and in its place rose a savage, consuming rage. Every face twisted. Every pair of eyes lit with the fire of vengeance.
Muller gripped his sword, surveying the villagers with cold composure, knowing a bloodbath was now unavoidable.
Then, at the very peak of the tension, the noise stopped.
All at once, the village fell silent.
The crowd parted like a tide pulling back, opening a straight path through the middle of the square.
The soft, steady rhythm of footsteps approached.
Theodore emerged from the back of the crowd, three-cornered hat on his head, walking forward at an unhurried pace.
He was a different man from the one they had seen before. The craven servility was gone entirely, replaced by an expression of solemn, almost fervent reverence. The deep-lined face radiated not even a trace of the groveling deference from earlier. In its place burned a fanatical and unshakable piety.
He held aloft a small, roughly carved wooden shrine and carried it forward into the square.
"Is that... a divine effigy?"
Felix looked up, his pupils snapping tight.
On the shrine stood a statue whose features were too blurred to make out clearly. The figure's graceful silhouette was enough to identify it as female. A goddess.
Atop his black warhorse, Muller raised his longsword hilt-high before his chest, blade pointed toward the sky in the solemn posture of the Blade Oath. Along the sword's length, a brilliant white light surged and crackled with sharp, splitting sounds, a devastating battle skill coiling and building on the edge of release.
"Theodore!"
The old knight's presence swelled around him, hair and beard stirring as his voice rang out like a struck bell.
"You worship a wicked god and have turned this village into a den of outlaws! There is no punishment but death!"
In the face of Muller's raised sword blazing with the force to split stone and shatter hills, Theodore showed no alarm whatsoever. He didn't even appear to notice. His eyes were fixed on the shrine he cradled in his hands, and with immense care he bent down and placed the goddess figurine at the center of the square.
Then Theodore lowered himself to the ground in a full prostration.
His whole body pressed against the dirt, his lips trembling as he recited words he had spoken thousands upon thousands of times before.
"Praise be to the great Goddess! We give thanks for her grace! We offer everything we are to the Goddess!"
The last word of the prayer had barely left his lips when Theodore drew a sharp stone blade and, without hesitation, sliced open his own arm.
Blood welled up and spilled freely, dripping into the earth before the idol.
"We offer everything we are to the Goddess!"
It was a signal. Every villager around him raised a stone blade in unison and opened their own veins.
Countless rivulets of blood converged across the ground. The air filled instantly with the thick, iron-heavy scent of it.
In a single moment, the square had been transformed into a bloody, profane altar of sacrifice.
"This blade is my oath, this heart is my witness. Where my loyalty points, all evil shall be struck down!"
Muller roared the words and unleashed the sword energy from his blade. The blazing white arc of force tore through the air, aimed directly at the wooden goddess figure.
But the instant it made contact, an invisible shimmer of light rippled outward from the idol, subtle and almost gentle, yet utterly unyielding. Muller's devastating sword energy dissolved against it without a trace.
Then, with a sharp crack, the wooden head of the goddess figurine began to fracture. The fissures spread rapidly, and from within, a dazzling cascade of prismatic light bloomed outward in every color.
The light swept across Kadia Village like a rising tide, swallowing the entire settlement in an instant.
Muller felt an irresistible force press down on his mind, his consciousness unraveling at speed. The world around him bent and blurred.
A heartbeat later, he toppled from the saddle against his will.
He hit the ground with a heavy thud.
His armed retainers fared no better. Each of them let out a brief, cut-off grunt before crumpling where they stood, like marionettes with their strings slashed.
Felix, Ronald, and Raygore lost consciousness at the very same instant, their bodies going rigid and falling limp.
The central square, smothered in that prismatic glow, sank into perfect silence. The only sound remaining was the steady rhythm of Theodore's forehead meeting the earth, again and again.
---
When Muller's awareness began to reassemble itself, a crushing wave of vertigo hit him first, as though the entire world had been set spinning. But beneath that nausea, something strange registered. His body felt impossibly light. A vitality he hadn't known for years was surging through him, filling every muscle and bone.
Muller forced his eyes open, and his pupils contracted sharply.
The sight before him was not Kadia Village.
He was standing inside a grand, majestic cathedral.
The structure soared upward, its enormous vaulted dome covered in richly colored murals of saints, so vivid they seemed on the verge of drawing breath. Along the immaculate marble walls stretched hundreds of exquisitely carved reliefs, each depicting a sacred story drawn from the old mythologies, the craftsmanship almost impossibly refined.
Sunlight poured in through towering stained glass windows and fractured into red, blue, yellow, and green, the mingling patterns of light weaving across every surface and filling the cathedral with a sacred, dreamlike radiance.
The air inside carried a faint, pure fragrance, solemn and reverent. Just breathing it seemed to settle something deep within the chest.
Muller looked down at his hands.
They were smooth. Young.
Not a single wrinkle. Every knuckle defined, every muscle firm, the skin taut and full of a vitality that belonged to youth.
He could feel it coursing through him: an energy he hadn't touched in decades, as though every year had been stripped away and he stood at the peak of his prime once more.
A hollow laugh rose in his chest. His grey eyes reflected the light in cold, razor-edged points.
A low-level illusion. Nothing more. Just another petty trick from some backwater godling.
He had encountered this sort before, far too many times. Wicked powers thrived on weaving false dreams from the hidden longings of their targets.
There was the adventurer said to have been bewitched by an evil witch into believing he was dining at a splendid feast, only to discover he had been swallowing toads one by one. And the tale of the noble prince who thought he had spent the night with a beautiful princess, only to find a hideous crone asleep beside him when dawn came.
These illusions always wore the face of desire. Underneath, they were invariably lethal.
As a Knight by profession, Muller was certain that no low-level temptation of this kind could move him even slightly. He would not be taken in by a false dream.
He rose carefully, his movements sharp and controlled despite the dizziness, his eyes sweeping the cathedral for cracks in the illusion. Find the flaw, and the whole false world would shatter.
Then he turned around.
And stopped.
Every muscle in his body locked at once. His pupils went wide. The breath caught in his throat. His heart seized in his chest as though it had forgotten how to beat.
Time stopped. The world went silent. All that remained was the sound of his own pulse.
"Muller."
A gentle voice, soft and achingly familiar, reached him like something surfacing from the deepest part of memory.
Behind him stood a young woman of breathtaking beauty, dressed in a white wedding gown. She held a bouquet of white flowers and stood bathed in sacred light, her whole presence luminous and immaculate, like an angel untouched by the world.
She looked no older than twenty. Her skin was pale as snow, and dark hair fell loose over her shoulders, each strand catching the soft light around her. Her eyes held a warmth Muller recognized at once, clear and guileless, like still water in a holy spring.
"It has been a long time."
She was smiling. The same smile he carried in his memory, sweet and uncomplicated and just slightly shy, as though not a single day of the decades between them had ever passed.
Muller stared at her, unable to move. The sight struck him somewhere beyond thought, somewhere words could not reach. When he finally spoke, his voice came out barely above a whisper, hoarse and raw with grief and longing he had kept buried for years.
"Celia..."
The name left his lips with great difficulty, the word cracked and trembling.
The young woman in the wedding gown walked toward him with quiet, weightless steps, as though she moved just above the ground. She lifted her hand and touched his cheek, her fingertips warm and impossibly soft, the sensation traveling from his skin all the way to the center of his chest.
"Why are you crying, Muller?" Celia asked, her voice gentle with curiosity.
Muller did not answer. He stood completely still and stared at her face, his grey eyes holding her reflection, locked in a silence that stretched on and on.
A single look, and it felt as though ten thousand years had passed.