The beasts hanging from the ceiling fell with a thud.
Their skeletons were a mix of human and beast remains, and their flesh was a black sludge formed from melting humans. A golem made of a material only Gletus the Betrayer could handle.
Thump, boom!
As they landed, black sludge splattered everywhere with a splash. Even though they had enough legs to stand on solid ground, the beasts were using their forearms to press against the ground.
Though they resembled the King of Beasts, they were still beasts.
Creatures devoid of pride, dignity, and reason. Seeing the golems made to mimic the calamity from centuries ago, Rania clicked her tongue.
“Tsk.”
She lightly flicked her wrist.
Amidst the grotesque howling, Rania raised her arm against the beasts charging from all directions. Her extended arm aligned with the jaws of an approaching beast.
“——————!”
Compared to the hulking beast charging with a howl, Rania’s pose of merely extending her arm looked pathetic…
Crack.
The beast, charging with all its might to smash everything, was easily caught by Rania’s hand. A beast that was less than half of her size couldn’t move forward even a step.
Crack, crack.
The jaws of the beast caught by Rania began to twist. Black sludge sprayed out like a fountain between Rania’s fingers gripping its mouth.
“Hey, Kalt.”
Rania turned her head back while forcing the beast to kneel with strength. Behind her, Kalt, who had already made one beast kneel with his sword, lightly dusted off his blade.
“Yes, Senpai.”
“Don’t kill it. We need to check something.”
“I’ll try my best.”
With a twirl, Kalt spun his sword and charged at the beasts. Rania stomped down on the jaws of the kneeling beast with her boot. She slapped her palms together, pinning its head to the ground.
Slurp.
A vast amount of mana stretched like a spider web between her palms. From the center of the growing mana, tick, tick—platinum light burst forth.
Smite.
Reversal.
Spell-Bunch.
With the spells inscribed, she clapped her palms together once more. The sticky mana converged into a single point and flashed furiously. A phenomenon that mages call the pinnacle.
Boom!
In an instant, dozens of beams of light shot up from the ground to the sky with a sound like thunder.
2.
There exists a gentleman called the Guardian of the North, and his appearance is quite notable. They say he possesses a beastly quality one cannot see in the Royal Capital…
Lac von Grace.
Natida had heard plenty of rumors about this young man known as the Prince of the North. It also helped that she had Tephran, a knight whose job was to gather such rumors, by her side… but she was also personally intrigued.
‘Isn’t he the one taught by the Hero…?’
The person taught by her benefactor and superior.
Natida leaned forward, holding Lac’s hand. She narrowed her eyes as she held onto Lac’s hand, preventing him from pulling away. The moment her emerald eyes met his crimson ones, they sparkled.
Lac flinched, pulling his head back.
With her brows furrowed, Natida leaned in a bit more. After a brief squabble, surrounded by the watching warriors, she let out a short sigh.
“Oh, my apologies.”
With an awkward smile, she let go of Lac’s hand. She touched her eyes lightly while smiling.
“My eyesight isn’t great. I need to be closer to see your face properly.”
He was just as handsome as the rumors suggested.
Muttering that, Natida took a step back.
“I’ve come with orders from Hero Rania. Here’s the letter she sent…”
As she handed him the letter, Natida added,
“I’d appreciate your cooperation during my stay in the North.”
Saying that, she grinned, but Lac felt an unsettling chill from her smile, one that felt oddly familiar. It was a chill he remembered feeling quite often in the past.
‘Where have I seen that smile before…?’
Lac rifled through his memories.
Not long after, he recalled the identity of that unsettling familiarity.
“Hey there, it’s nothing serious.”
“Is there a problem? Don’t you trust me?”
The great Professor Rania.
That’s how she used to smile. And after seeing that smile, Lac would always face some ‘rather dangerous’ predicament. Trembling from learned fear, Lac shivered.
“…?”
Natida tilted her head at Lac’s reaction.
Having grown up in the Church, she lacked social skills, and it was Rania who taught her the ‘art of dealing with people.’
“When asking for something, smile like this.”
“It means I’m counting on you.”
Rania advised Natida to never lose her smile in any situation and demonstrated what she meant, which Natida successfully learned. However, every time she wore that smile, it only made others shudder instead of feeling welcomed.
‘Why is that?’
This was something she couldn’t understand.
*
A day had passed since Saint Natida arrived in the North. She chased away the priests who followed her and wandered alone around various places, while Lac spent yet another ordinary day.
“Whew…”
Having finished his training at the Holy Site, Lac let out a deep breath as he stepped outside.
Cooling his body in the chilly winds of the snowy plains, he turned at the sound of someone approaching, almost as if someone had been waiting for him. In a corner of the snowy expanse, someone was crouched, smoking a cigarette.
“Oh.”
Saint Natida.
She waved her hand towards Lac.
“I was waiting for you.”
After rubbing out the cigarette on the snow, she got up with a pop. Lac blinked and asked.
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you, I was waiting for you.”
Natida shrugged her shoulders.
“The place where you found strange traces. The path that you chased the Demon Lord’s Army. Could you guide me there?”
There’s something I’m concerned about.
Nodding at her question, Lac led the way. The two walked through the snow without saying a word. The sound of their feet crunching through the snow echoed for a while.
“I tracked them from here.”
Lac stopped.
Where he stood was the snowy field he had been guarding, filled with signs of battle. Natida squinted her eyes and scanned the surroundings.
“And the direction they went?”
“This way.”
Lac pointed in a direction and walked on.
As they followed behind him, they soon arrived at the foothills of the snowy mountains. If they proceeded a little further, it was the place where Lac had found the traces, but… right then, Natida stopped. Not hearing footsteps from behind, Lac blinked and turned around.
“We need to go just a bit further… huh?”
Rustle. Natida was taking off her robe.
Underneath the robe, she wore only a thin shirt, and the cold of the snowy mountain, dropping below zero, was a challenging environment for anyone not from the North.
“Ugh, it’s cold.”
Despite trembling, Natida carelessly threw her robe to the ground.
“What are you doing…?”
“Ah, could you please turn your head for a moment, Prince?”
Natida pulled a dagger from her waist.
“It’s not a pretty sight.”
Lac silently turned his head.
But Lac had already stepped into the realm of the superhumans. His keen ears caught all the small noises behind him.
Crack and then thud.
The sound of something being rummaged through and spilled onto the ground. As the noise subsided, Natida spoke.
“You can look now.”
Lac turned his head.
There stood Natida, stained with red on the snowy ground. Her once-white shirt was now drenched in crimson, and blood trickled from her mouth. Yet, seemingly not caring at all, she picked up the robe she had tossed aside.
Rustle.
Donning the robe and wiping the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, Natida lit a cigarette with the flint she pulled out.
“This is it.”
Pointing in one direction, it was entirely different from where the traces were found. With a long exhale of the smoke she inhaled, Natida spoke with conviction.
“The place where the traces continue.”
3.
“It would have been convenient if you brought Natida along.”
“That saint lady you mentioned as your new assistant?”
“Yeah. She has quite a unique ability.”
Just perfect for moments like this.
Muttering that, Rania looked around with a regretful expression. All around them lay the corpses of beasts. They had succeeded in taking the limbs off the beasts, but they had died before a thorough investigation could be carried out.
‘This was probably the plan from the start.’
They wouldn’t have left these behind for no reason.
“These are all failures.”
Rania poked at a beast’s skeleton with her toes, the gooey mass that constituted its body dripping away.
“Do you see that hose connected to the ceiling? If you take that off, these failures won’t last long before crumbling. That’s why they were left here.”
“Is that so?”
Kalt, wiping the goo off his sword, murmured.
“Definitely not impressive. They may look fierce, but that’s all there is to them.”
They were foes not even worth considering difficult.
In fact, among the beasts Gletus had created, these were on the weaker side. That was the impression Kalt had as he sliced through the beasts.
“If these are failures… does that mean there are successes?”
“That’s the problem. That’s the issue.”
Rania let out a deep sigh.
“Seeing as these failures are carelessly left here for me to see, there’s likely an intention behind it all…”
If the King of Beasts had truly been completed.
If something that could be called a success had been created…
“It would be the worst. The entire situation would turn upside down.”
“…What’s different about a successful one, anyway? These failures don’t seem like much.”
What’s the difference, really?
Rania, constrained from revealing information about the King of Beasts, struggled to articulate her thoughts. Eventually, she opened her mouth.
“It’s like another calamity will emerge.”
“…Excuse me?”
“A damn troublesome calamity, at that.”
The Hero, Ganikalt van Galatrick.
The King of Beasts, who supposedly fought evenly with him. Rania couldn’t dare to guess the strength of that being said to have reached the superhuman realm in the form of a beast.
‘…Even if he is a being that died centuries ago, can he really be brought back?’
Rania rubbed her chin and glanced around.
The bones made from human structure were crude. All the failures left here were nothing but crude specimens.
Only fakes are here.
Just traces of trial and error abound.
Is this merely a mark of failure? Or is it the remains of experiments after completing the product? There was no way to know. Rania bit her lip.
“Damn it.”
Letting out a deep sigh, just as she was about to step deeper into the workshop, Kalt’s steps came to a halt. Rania’s steps also stopped. The two of them froze at the same moment, turning to the exact same spot.
There was no presence.
Not a sound of breath, nor the beat of a heart—nothing that living beings must give off. Yet, the presence itself could not be erased.
Suffocating the breath, a pressure that pressed down on the air.
From within the dense darkness, a pale blue light flickered.
