The ghoul wandered aimlessly through the mountain range.
Even as it did, it swallowed brightly colored venomous snakes, small animals, and insect-type monsters.
If it was small enough to swallow, it put it in its mouth first and thought later.
“Guuuh….”
After repeating such actions several times as it pressed onward, it arrived at the dungeon before it knew it.
In front of it, the vampire Baalcherit was diligently planting seeds.
“Guh?”
“Hm? Is that not the ghoul? What brings you here?”
Baalcherit noticed the ghoul as well and waved.
“Guh, guuuh.”
(I got lost. I’m looking for Lord Death Knight.)
The ghoul was a being born from the Death Knight.
It could faintly sense the Death Knight’s aura, but it was too faint to tell exactly where he was.
But perhaps she might know where the Death Knight had gone.
“Hmm… If it is the Death Knight, he certainly went that way.”
“Guh, guh.”
(Thanks, thanks.)
The ghoul lowered its head and offered its thanks.
“Why make such a fuss over this? Is it not only natural that we help one another?”
Baalcherit waved her hand.
Over the past few days, while planting seeds here, she had learned many things.
The firm friendship between Necros and the Death Knight.
The goblins, who did not shy away from dirty work and remained faithful to their duties.
And even the Dullahan Verter, who strove to give his loyalty to the dungeon.
Watching them, Baalcherit had come to see the collective called a dungeon in a new light.
And she felt proud that she had been of help to the ghoul.
“Ah, yes. Take some of these with you as well.”
Baalcherit handed the ghoul a portion of the seeds.
“It would be quite good if you scattered them little by little on your way.”
In truth, she had been scattering seeds around the dungeon under Celia’s orders.
She had planted them diligently, but the man-eating carnivorous plants grew so slowly that there had yet to be any proper results.
So she had thought of one clever measure.
If they were scattered not only around the dungeon but all throughout the forest, would that not yield better results?
Baalcherit wanted the ghoul to scatter the seeds as it went to the Death Knight.
“Guuuh….”
Fortunately, the ghoul readily accepted.
Taking the seeds Baalcherit had given it, the ghoul set off once more.
‘As expected, everyone is faithful to their duties.’
Watching the ghoul’s departing back, Baalcherit was moved all over again.
Of course, as the ghoul walked, it swallowed every last seed Baalcherit had given it.
“Guuuh.”
Thanks to that, an endless war broke out inside the ghoul’s body.
No, it was nothing less than a miniature of a horrific ecosystem.
“Kyaaak!”
“Hissss!”
All sorts of life-forms devoured and fused with one another, constantly changing.
The green monster resembling a squirrel that the ghoul had swallowed early on, the Venom Squirrel.
The Venom Squirrel tore through a venomous snake’s scales with its sharp claws.
Struck by the powerful blow, the highly venomous snake died while spewing a viscous liquid. The liquid soon filled the ghoul’s entrails, and within it, the deadly poison grew even stronger.
Perhaps due to the influence of the poison, the ghoul’s skin, which had originally been ashen gray, began to take on a slightly deep purple hue.
“Guuuh.”
Of course, the ghoul wandered peacefully through the forest without even realizing it was changing.
Even in that moment, battle continued to rage within its body.
The Venom Squirrel’s mutant DNA rapidly replicated, infecting the ghoul’s organ tissues.
The infected tissues caused a bizarre phenomenon, growing and mutating at an uncanny speed.
The insect-type monsters that touched the deadly poison melted immediately, but their exoskeletal shells were so tough that only those parts resisted melting.
Instead, they began to combine with the ghoul’s internal tissues, and thanks to that, the ghoul’s skin became harder and sharper.
With its insides filled with deadly poison and blood, there were those who reacted.
The seeds of the man-eating tentacle plant that Baalcherit had given it began to resonate.
They had clearly been said to grow slowly, yet not long after entering the ghoul’s body, they sprouted.
The sprouts soon extended their stems and began taking root in every corner of the ghoul’s body.
The body that had once been like a tattered rag, its skin rotting and dangling, was perfectly held together by the stems the plants extended.
All of these processes repeated endlessly and evolved.
Those that survived grew stronger and left the DNA of the strong within the ghoul’s body.
Those that were weak were culled, but by leaving behind their DNA just before death, they ensured their traces would not be forgotten.
And at last, at the end of all this chaos and destruction, a new order began to take shape.
“Guuuh….”
“Kyaaak!!”
Even now, the ghoul was shoving a new monster into its mouth.
It seemed there was still a long way to go before the new order would be perfectly established.
* * *
Eclipse, an organization of black mages who dreamed of the evil god’s resurrection.
Sharia, the young leader who headed Eclipse, and Lucas, the vice leader, were climbing a rugged mountain range.
“Huff, huff… Lucas, are you sure this is the right way?”
Sharia, who was not used to mountain climbing, asked as she breathed heavily.
Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead.
At Sharia’s question, Lucas stopped for a moment and carefully examined the old map in his hand.
“Yes, Leader. This is definitely the direction we should be going.”
Lucas answered with confidence.
In truth, it would have been far easier to climb the mountain range through the Sail Kingdom.
But Sharia and Lucas were black mages.
With the White Order currently keeping watch over the Sail Kingdom, there was a high risk that their identities might be exposed if they made one wrong move.
So instead of entering the mountain range through the Sail Kingdom, they were traveling through the mountains wedged between the Free City Alliance and the Kaln Empire.
The terrain was that much more treacherous, but the rumored treasure and the hope of the evil god’s resurrection filled the two of them with tireless strength.
“Ugh!”
As Sharia was pulling herself up by gripping a rock, strength suddenly left her hand.
Just as she lost her balance and was about to fall backward, Lucas fortunately grabbed her hand.
“Leader! Are you all right?”
“I-I’m fine… I just got a little dizzy….”
A weak smile hung at Sharia’s lips as she answered between ragged breaths.
In truth, Lucas was no different.
Neither of them looked particularly well.
That was right.
They were currently suffering from dizziness brought on by hunger and exhaustion.
Before climbing the mountain range, all they had eaten was a piece of moldy bread.
And even that, they had shared with all the members of Eclipse.
With Eclipse’s impoverished circumstances, even buying a dried-out loaf of bread was a struggle, let alone dried jerky.
The members had begged diligently and obtained something like swill, but as leader and vice leader, it would not look good to steal food from their own members.
In the end, Sharia and Lucas had eaten nothing since entering the mountain range.
Of course, the mountains had all sorts of fruits, plants, and animals, but they had avoided them as much as possible in case they were poisonous.
“Lu-Lucas… I’m hungry….”
But now, they were reaching their physical limits.
She wanted to just close her eyes and eat even the unidentified mushrooms growing between the rocks.
When Sharia unconsciously reached her hand toward the mushrooms, Lucas stopped her.
“Hold on. If we go just a little farther, there should be something we can eat.”
Lucas was hungry and exhausted as well, but he supported Sharia and encouraged her.
Knowing better than anyone why they had to endure this harsh road, he resolved to overcome this hardship for the sake of their goal: the resurrection of the evil god.
It was then.
“Guuuuuh!”
At the strange roar that came slicing through the wind, the two of them flinched and raised their heads.
From the sound echoing beyond the jagged rocks, they could feel an aura akin to death.
“What was that sound…?”
Sharia’s eyes trembled with fear.
“It certainly seems to be the cry of a monster, but….”
Lucas, too, could only trail off as he answered.
It was definitely a monster’s cry.
But judging from the aura emanating from that cry, it was no ordinary monster.
“Guuuuuh.”
The cry drew closer.
To think this would happen now, of all times, when they had exhausted all their strength.
The two looked at each other and nodded.
Sensing danger, Lucas scanned their surroundings and took up a guarded stance.
Sharia also struggled to suppress her fear and prepared to chant a spell.
“…….”
The creature’s sound continued to grow closer.
Only then could they clearly sense its aura.
“Lucas, this aura is….”
Sharia swallowed and wore a serious expression.
It was a familiar aura.
“Yes, I can feel it. It is faint, but it is unmistakably the power of death.”
It was not merely the power of death.
It was an aura of death like the bottom of hell, where souls fought and devoured one another.
They could feel the aura of a dark abyss that seemed as though it would erode even the souls of the living.
A power of death that made even death itself tremble.
At first, they thought they had simply mistaken it.
But as the aura drew closer, they could tell for certain.
Was it not a deep power of death they felt from the howling monster?
And as black mages who used the power of death as their source, there was no way they could fail to recognize it.
“This power is….”
Moreover, Sharia’s talent as a black mage was truly overwhelming, so she could feel it with certainty.
And in her mind, she reached a single conclusion.
“…It is His power.”
Such profound power of death was not something just anyone could wield.
An aura like this belonged only to the evil god, to Him alone.
A smile blossomed on Sharia’s face, which had been exhausted just moments before.
At Sharia’s words, Lucas gave a slight nod as well.
“That is correct. The only being who possesses such power is Him.”
The only existence who governed death was the evil god.
However, the aura they felt now was extremely faint.
It was likely a fragment that had broken away from His vast power of death.
That meant the owner of the cry was surely a being that followed the evil god.
Once their thoughts reached that point, Sharia and Lucas immediately moved.
They were black mages of Eclipse who wished for the evil god’s resurrection.
To remain still when an opportunity had come would be disloyalty.
“Guuuuuh.”
Sharia and Lucas ran with complicated feelings in which hope and fear were mixed together.
Toward the source of the roar.
They had long since forgotten the story about the rumored treasure.
When an opportunity to behold the traces of the evil god had come right before them, treasure did not matter.
“Guh….”
At last, they could see the howling being.
“Th-That is…!”
After confirming its identity, Lucas could not help but be shocked.
“…A ghoul!”
But the ghoul did not look ordinary.
Its rotting skin was a dark purple.
And a hard carapace had grown over the surface of its skin.
That was not all.
“Are those… plants?”
Things that looked like plant stems had grown all over the ghoul’s body.
It was truly a being with an appearance entirely different from an ordinary ghoul.
Above all, there was the deathly aura it exuded, on a completely different level.
‘Just watching it is this overwhelming….’
As a black mage, Sharia had encountered countless deaths, but this was the first time she had felt such abyssal terror.
That was why Sharia could be certain.
“So it truly is the evil god’s apostle.”
At some point, the ghoul’s position had been elevated all the way to the evil god’s apostle.
Otherwise, there was no way such a ghoul could exist in this world.
As Sharia and Lucas stared at the ghoul, the ghoul also noticed their presence.
“Guuuuuh.”
(Living humans.)
Since the ghoul only searched the belongings of unconscious or dead humans, living humans were not of interest to it.
“Guuuh.”
The ghoul lost interest and turned its back.
Time was short if it wanted to find the Death Knight.
It had to move even more diligently.
But Sharia interpreted the ghoul’s actions differently.
“Lucas, it seems that apostle is telling us to follow it.”
No matter how much of a black mage she was, she could not interpret a ghoul’s words.
The ghoul had merely said something toward her and started moving, but Sharia interpreted it however she liked.
“It seems so. Let us follow as well.”
Lucas, too, distorted the ghoul’s words and understood them wrongly.
An odd scene unfolded, with the ghoul taking the lead and Sharia and Lucas following behind.
The ghoul, walking ahead, turned around when the humans kept following and spoke.
“Guuuuuh?”
(Why are you following me?)
Of course, Sharia could not understand a monster’s words.
She merely interpreted them as she pleased.
“Yes, Apostle! We will follow you to the end!”
“Guuuh, guh.”
(Strange humans.)
The ghoul soon gave up and went about its business.
As it walked, it found an adventurer collapsed beneath a tree.
It approached and naturally searched through the adventurer’s clothes.
“A-As expected! The evil god’s apostle is merciless!”
“Guh?”
At Sharia’s praise, the ghoul shook its head.
It did not feel bad.
“Guh….”
The ghoul handed Sharia the gold coin it had found in the adventurer’s clothes.
“Th-This is a gold coin bestowed by the apostle…!”
Deeply moved, Sharia bowed her head to the ghoul.
Lucas beside her did the same, bending at the waist and offering his thanks.
“Guh, guh.”
A small smile carved itself onto the ghoul’s face.
It was the first time it had learned that the act of giving something to another could feel so good.
“Guuuh….”
The ghoul raised its head and looked up at the blue sky.
For some reason, the world looked beautiful today.