"Isn't it just Kazdel? What's there to be afraid of!"
Flandre pointed a small finger at herself, then gestured toward Remilia, and finally waved her hand toward Clever.
"With three vampires walking together, everyone else should be the ones shaking in their boots!"
Hearing Flandre's cheerful reasoning, Clever blinked, suddenly realizing a fundamental truth: aside from herself, there wasn't a single normal living soul present in this entire group.
With two high-tier vampires and one low-tier standing in a row, even the most battle-hardened, ruthless Sarkaz mercenary company would tremble at the mere sight of such a lineup. Consequently, the desolate badlands of Kazdel, which seemed like an absolute death trap to ordinary travelers, presented zero actual danger to this particular carriage.
"Are we truly not going to Siracusa? Perhaps it won't rain there for the next few days!"
Clever had never anticipated that a single, passing remark of hers regarding the damp southern climate would prompt Flandre to decisively rewrite their entire travel itinerary.
Moreover, looking at Remilia's expression, the elder sister seemed remarkably tempted by the sudden shift in course.
While heavy rain would obviously restrict Flandre from playing outside, Clever found herself slightly puzzled by Remilia's reaction. After all, the Crimson Devil favored staying indoors to read her novels anyway, so why did she also harbor such a profound, unmistakable look of disgust toward the concept of a rainy season?
"Then let's adjust our course to Kazdel!" After briefly weighing the options, Remilia turned her eyes toward Patchouli.
The purple-haired magician merely waved her hand to signal her complete agreement. After all, the sovereign of the Liches had granted her unrestricted, direct spatial access to their boundless hall of knowledge; as for the conventional public libraries scattered across the southern cities, she no longer harbored any significant interest in their mundane collections.
With Remilia's final command delivered, Hong Meiling, who was actively guiding the carriage from the driver's bench, pulled the reins to turn the horses around, heading directly toward the southwest.
As the carriage rolled steadily across the changing landscape, the lush, orderly forests of the empire gradually gave way to a quiet, abandoned settlement.
The little town was completely overgrown with wild, untamed greenery. Plants and thick vines crawled up the stone facades of the vacant buildings, wrapping tightly around the foundations; it was glaringly obvious that human life had departed from this place a very long time ago.
"The local Originium concentration here isn't elevated at all, and the settlement is positioned right alongside the primary trade route. Why on earth would a town like this be left entirely abandoned?"
Standing at the threshold of the overgrown square, Flandre peered into the quiet streets, her curiosity piqued by the desolate scene. Judging by the sheer scale of the central plaza, it was easy to see how vibrant and bustling this community must have been in its prime. Furthermore, the surrounding residential structures still appeared remarkably sturdy, having survived the elements without collapsing.
"Actually, such occurrences are quite common in these borderlands," Clever explained, stepping out of the cabin to join her. Although she didn't recognize this specific settlement by name, a single, trained sweep of her eyes was more than enough to identify several highly suspicious indicators. "While there are no signs of a natural Catastrophe having struck this zone, that doesn't mean the population was spared from man-made disasters."
She pointed toward a distant, shadowed corner where the bleached fragments of old bones lay scattered among the weeds, then toward the splintered, heavily damaged doorframes of the nearby shops.
Considering that the sun was rapidly dipping below the horizon, the group prepared to make camp and rest within the perimeter of the town. After all, even if a violent massacre had indeed occurred here years ago, the living members of this party harbored absolutely zero fear of physical threats, let alone the lingering spirits of the long-deceased.
Furthermore, the physical geography of the location was excellent; it remained close to the main road, and a clean, winding river flowed just a short distance from the edge of the square.
By the time their tents were fully pitched, the sky had transitioned into a deep, velvety darkness.
As the companions sat together around the campfire, the surrounding abandoned houses loomed like pitch-black monoliths against the night. From time to time, small nocturnal birds and wild forest creatures would crawl through the empty windows or rustle past the rotting doorways, sending quiet, scraping echoes through the silence.
Clever looked around the darkened square, pulling her cloak a bit tighter around her shoulders as she grumbled under her breath. During the bright hours of the afternoon, these vacant stone structures hadn't felt particularly intimidating, but with the fall of night, she couldn't help but feel a distinct, icy chill traveling down her spine.
"Can you truly not see it?" Flandre suddenly whispered, her voice dropping into an eerie, solemn tone.
"See... see what?!" Clever replied subconsciously, her body tensing up.
"There is someone standing inside that house over there, waving their hand directly at you."
Flandre pointed a small finger toward a decaying residential structure across the square. Clever looked over, her heart hammering against her ribs; yet apart from the empty, gaping frames of the doors and windows, there was absolutely nothing there.
Furthermore, because the front entrance and the rear windows were perfectly aligned in a straight line, the structural silhouette in the dim starlight looked exactly like a hollow, human skull with its jaw thrown wide open. That pitch-black, yawning maw seemed as if it were actively waiting to swallow any unsuspecting traveler whole.
In a fraction of a second, every single hair on Clever's arms stood straight up in pure terror. She tremblingly grabbed hold of Flandre's hand, her wide eyes locked onto the dark doorway, frantically straining to see if some monstrous entity was truly lurking within the deep shadows.
"Y-y-you... don't go trying to scare me! I'm... I'm not afraid at all!"
"Can you really not perceive it? I can see it perfectly!" At that exact moment, Hong Meiling suddenly adopted an expression of profound, theatrical surprise, chiming in to support the prank.
"Eek...!"
Clever's eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed flat onto the grass, completely fainted from sheer fright.
Clack! Clack!
A split second later, both Flandre and Hong Meiling let out soft squeaks as a sharp, well-deserved flick descended directly onto their foreheads.
"Do not go around terrifying her for no reason. Her mental state isn't particularly robust to begin with," Remilia chided, her fingers still raised as she looked down at the two pranksters currently crouching together on the grass, rubbing their bruised heads. She glanced over at the fainted librarian and let out a soft, exasperated sigh.
A few minutes later, Clever slowly blinked her eyes open. Upon seeing Flandre and Meiling standing in a corner as punishment, she instantly understood that she had been completely played by the duo.
Her face turned a brilliant, burning shade of red in an instant. After all, she had let herself get so thoroughly worked up over a few teased words that she had literally scared herself into a dead faint. If the older sisters back in her home valley ever caught wind of this embarrassing display, they would likely tease her about it for the rest of her life.
"Apologize to Clever," Remilia commanded, leveling a stern look at her younger sister.
"Oh... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have played such an mean joke on you!" Flandre shuffled over to Clever's side with slow, dragging steps, pouting slightly as she delivered her apology.
"I'm sorry, Clever...It was extremely mean of me to do so..." Meiling also bowed her head.
"It's... it's fine..." Clever mumbled, her face still warm.
Her unique Originium Arts originally possessed an incredibly powerful, precise sensory reconnaissance capability, meaning she could have easily scanned the empty house to verify whether the duo was lying to her. But in that sudden moment of panic, she had been so thoroughly startled that her brain had completely locked up, forgetting to activate her arts entirely. Thinking about it now, she felt incredibly foolish.
Just as she was wallowing in her embarrassment, her focus suddenly snapped toward a stone house positioned not far from their campsite.
Within the scope of her passive awareness, over a dozen distinct, feral life signatures were rapidly approaching from the outer wilderness. They slithered into the vacant residential structure, using the shadowed corridors to quietly surround their camp from that direction.
Sakuya Izayoi stood up from her seat, her hand sliding toward the pocket of her apron as she prepared to systematically eliminate the incoming threat, but Flandre quickly reached out to stop her.
"Let me handle this! There aren't very many of them anyway!"
Without waiting for a response, Flandre turned her gaze directly toward the targeted house.
Before long, the predatory beasts that had snuck through the ruins to launch a coordinated ambush finally emerged into the dim firelight of the camp.
It was a pack of wild, mutated Fanged Beasts.
Roughly a dozen of them slithered out from the stone doorways, thick saliva dripping from their jaws as they bared rows of razor-sharp fangs, their yellow eyes locked fixedly onto the travelers.
Flandre's face lit up with absolute joy. "None of you are allowed to interfere! These ones belong entirely to me!"
With a bright cheer, she charged straight toward the pack, baring her own small fangs and clawed fingers.
The sudden, loud commotion instantly drew the focus of the predators. The pack immediately adapted to her movement, with three of the largest beasts splitting off to lunge toward the incoming child—the heaviest male leading the charge directly down the center, while the remaining two flanked her from the left and right.
"Hmph. These wild beasts actually understand the basic concept of tactical encirclement," Remilia sneered casually from her seat, watching her sister run straight into the center of the trap.
Clever, standing to the side, felt her heart leap straight into her throat at the sight of the lunging predators.
But in the next microsecond, Flandre suddenly reached her small hand out, her fingers curling as she violently squeezed the empty air in front of her.
BOOM!
The massive, heavily muscled Fanged Beast charging down the center instantly exploded in mid-air. Its body tissue and blood splattered violently across the grass in every direction, looking exactly as if a high-yield explosive charge had suddenly detonated within its chest cavity.
Before the remaining two flanking predators could even register the sudden death of their leader, their momentum carried them within Flandre's reach.
She spun her small frame on a dime, her hand shooting out like lightning to grip the skull of the beast on her left, before effortlessly hurling its massive, heavy body directly toward the predator on her right.
The thrown Fanged Beast had absolutely zero time to comprehend how a tiny, delicate girl possessed such blinding reflexes and such utterly unreasonable, monstrous physical strength.
The two heavy predators collided in mid-air with a sickening, metallic crunch. The sheer, kinetic force of the impact was so devastating that their spines were bent into two distinct, unnatural V-shapes.
Upon tumbling to the dirt, the two broken beasts struggled weakly for a brief moment before their limbs went entirely limp, their breathing ceasing forever.