Through the open crack of the door, the villagers slowly revealed themselves.
Men and women, young and old—their faces were all different, but they had one thing in common: they were smiling happily.
As if they were truly welcoming new villagers.
But the only things wearing those joyful expressions were their faces.
Their bodies, everything below the head, seemed to embody hell itself upon this world.
There was a woman crawling across the floor on a long, stretched spine, without limbs.
A boy held his severed head with his feet, supporting himself on the ground with his hands.
An old man, whose exposed ribs moved like a jaw in place of a mouth seared away by fire, also walked toward us.
Even a baby who could not have been born long ago no longer possessed the form of a human.
“Uuugh!”
Cecilia retched at the sight of their grotesque forms.
As someone from a renowned magical family, she had often seen undead made from human corpses.
But precisely because she was like that, there were things she could understand.
These were neither undead nor chimeras.
They were humans, still alive, still conscious, and moving.
Theodora and Brandon, realizing it belatedly, also went deathly pale.
“I had heard about cultists, but it was this bad?”
“No way…”
Their hands were trembling faintly from the instinctive fear they felt from those things.
“Everyone, get a hold of yourselves!”
After shouting at them, I looked at Senior Rena.
Unlike the others, at least she had only furrowed her brow slightly and was maintaining herself much as usual.
I pointed with my finger at the so-called “village chief,” the first one to appear, and asked Senior Rena.
“Senior Rena. Can you snipe that one in the back?”
“Sorry, impossible. If I were on higher ground, maybe, but as things are now, there are too many obstacles.”
So that was how it was.
It seemed there was no way to settle the situation by eliminating the leader.
In that case, what we had to do was clean up those villagers as efficiently as possible.
“Cecilia! Stop them from approaching with an ice wall!”
“Uuugh, a-all right.”
When I shouted as loudly as I could, Cecilia cast a spell even as she retched.
Along with it, a fortress of icicles grew up, surrounding us.
The monsters stopped moving for a moment before the sharp wall facing them, but only for a moment.
Crack.
Even as its body was pierced by the icicles, a monster slowly advanced toward us.
Its body was already no better than a rag, but when its entire body was eventually torn apart by the icicles, it had no choice but to die.
Even after seeing that, the monsters continued to advance.
As if they meant to break the wall of icicles with their own torsos.
“Ugh!”
Cecilia poured in more mana and made the icicle wall sharper, but in this state, it was obvious it would not be long before it fell.
“Senior Rena, Brandon. Can you buy me a little time?”
“Of course.”
“Got it, Ashen.”
At the same time I spoke, Senior Rena’s arrows and Brandon’s mana arrows rained down on the monsters.
Thud!
Every time Senior Rena’s arrow was loosed, it pierced through a monster’s head or neck.
No matter how grotesque they were, if they had been made from humans, those organs could only be vital points.
On top of that, Senior Rena’s arrows were imbued with mana, so the monsters whose spines and brains were torn apart had no choice but to stop moving and collapse to the ground.
Brandon’s mana arrows were different from hers.
His mana arrows were neither as powerful nor as accurate as Senior Rena’s.
Even if fired at an ordinary person, they would only be strong enough to subdue them.
However, Brandon solved that with overwhelming numbers.
Dudududuk!
Arrows of mana fell from the air like a shower, piercing the monsters’ arms and legs.
None of them proved fatal, but most pierced an arm or a leg.
It was enough to slow the monsters down.
With this, we should be able to prevent ourselves from being attacked by the monsters for as long as possible.
But even that was only a matter of time.
Bang.
The doors opened once more, and even more monsters poured out of the houses.
With numbers like that, no matter how much mana Senior Rena, Brandon, and Cecilia had, their limits would soon arrive.
‘As expected, simply defending isn’t enough.’
I looked at Cecilia, who was breaking out in a cold sweat, and kept thinking.
What was the best tactic in this situation?
After a brief moment of thought, the answer came to me.
“From now on, I’m going outside to fight them.”
“What do you mean, Ashen?”
Senior Rena asked me in a slightly lowered voice.
Seeing her eyebrows rise slightly, she must have been worried that I was pushing myself for the sake of the group.
I gestured to reassure her and continued explaining to Senior Rena.
“While I rampage outside, Senior Rena, if there’s an enemy aiming for my back, shoot it with an arrow. The ice wall will be in the way, but you can do it with an arcing shot.”
“Of course. Who do you think I am?”
At her confident tone, I gave a brief laugh and turned my gaze to Brandon.
“Brandon. Use your magic arrows to take care of any enemies that look like they’re about to break the ice wall. That alone will be a big help to Cecilia.”
“Got it. I’ll do my best.”
Brandon gripped his staff tightly with a determined expression.
Reassured by his firm resolve, I turned my gaze to Theodora last.
“Theodora. Do you remember the attack you used on me in the maze before?”
“You mean the Wave of Sacred Flame?”
“I know it’s a difficult technique, but can you use it again here?”
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to wipe them out in a single blow? But if you do that, you’ll…”
“I’m confident I can avoid getting caught in it somehow. So answer me. Can you do it?”
“…If you give me time, I can do it. I can even sweep all these things away.”
“Then I’m counting on you, Theodora.”
“Be careful, Ashen.”
I smiled at Theodora as she looked at me with a worried expression, then immediately wrapped my entire body in Crimson Blood.
The blood-colored liquid pierced through my veins and covered my whole body, and the knight who had once been human soon gained a body no different from that of a monster.
With the body of a monster, I leaped over the ice wall.
The villagers’ gazes fixed on me as I shot into the sky in an instant.
The monsters gathered as if trying to seize me in midair.
I dropped straight down on top of them.
Crunch.
The sound of bone and flesh being crushed dug into my ears.
The things that had once been human were flattened beneath my feet, crushed like minced meat.
The sensation was utterly unpleasant, but I did not stop and swung my spear horizontally.
Blood-colored tentacles extended from the spear, dragging the enemies toward the spearhead.
The monsters did not resist at all. Rather, they were pulled in as if lunging toward me.
And soon, the spearhead pierced through them.
Puk.
One by one, the villagers were skewered on the stake-like spear.
Each time they were impaled, Crimson Blood greedily devoured the monsters’ life force as if delighted.
‘The absorption rate is strangely good.’
I frowned and examined the energy flowing into my body.
The amount of life force Crimson Blood could absorb was small.
Unless I absorbed a massive creature like a troll, absorbing this much life force should have been impossible.
And yet now, even against monsters barely a little better than a single human…
The energy within me was swelling far too abundantly.
At this rate, it was almost as if—
‘They were born to be eaten by Crimson Blood.’
I lifted my gaze and looked at the monsters.
The monsters with happy faces slowly approached me.
If I tried to absorb them, I could probably do so without difficulty.
But if I absorbed them like that…
‘What would that make me?’
In the brief moment my hand stopped, one of Senior Rena’s sunset-colored arrows lodged itself into a monster behind my back.
“Focus, Ashen!”
At her shout, I came to my senses, raised my spear again, and charged at the monsters.
As I swung my spear and glanced to the side, I saw the monsters whose heads had been blown off by Senior Rena’s arrows.
She must have cleaned up the area around me while I had been lost in thought.
‘What about Cecilia’s side?’
With Crimson Blood’s tentacles covering the surroundings, I turned my head toward where Cecilia was.
Perhaps Cecilia’s mana had already reached its limit to some degree, because I could see the icicle wall gradually thinning.
At that moment, Cecilia’s shout rang out.
“Do you think I’ll kneel from just this much?”
Along with that, the icicle wall thickened once more.
Seeing blood flowing from Cecilia’s nose, it was clear she was pushing herself considerably.
“Don’t overdo it, Cecilia.”
Brandon glanced at Cecilia, then once more poured mana bullets into the monsters.
Compared to arrows, their destructive power was somewhat lacking, but the monsters were slowly being driven back by the mana bullets’ high stopping power.
“Even if the wall thins, I’ll defend it.”
“Ha, don’t worry. Do you think I’d give up before Miss Rena does?”
“Why am I being brought into this?”
Even as she said that, Senior Rena drew her bowstring again.
‘Looks like they’ll be safe for a while.’
I withdrew my gaze from them and this time looked toward the village chief at the center of the village.
Even as he watched the monsters being slaughtered by us, he still did not hide his smile, as if he found it enjoyable.
“What lively guests you are. You would make fine villagers.”
“Shut up!”
I shouted loudly at the village chief as I pierced through the heart of an old-man monster.
Gurgle.
The moment its heart was pierced, red blood poured from the old-man monster’s mouth.
If it had been a normal human, it would have been unable to move properly from the pain.
But the old man instead smiled as if delighted by that pain, then slowly withered away and met his end.
‘Damn it.’
Every time those monsters were eaten one by one by Crimson Blood, an unpleasant energy flowed along my spine.
Each time, it felt as though Crimson Blood were whispering to me.
‘Yes, this is your instinct.’
‘Damn it.’
This could not go on.
Listening to the whispers gradually growing louder, I gritted my teeth.
Even if I tried not to absorb them, the moment I touched them, Crimson Blood excitedly devoured the monsters.
At this rate, there was a real chance that Crimson Blood would seize control from me.
‘Cecilia’s icicle barrier is starting to come undone too.’
Theodora, how much longer are you going to take?
Fortunately, after only a few minutes, Theodora shouted loudly.
“Ashen, dodge! Here it comes!”
The moment I heard her voice, I shot straight into the air, and at the same time, a wave covered the ground.
Whoosh.
Pure white flames engulfed everything on the ground.
Like divine punishment sent down by a god.
Or like the sun rising from within the darkness.
The sacred flame, carrying blue lightning, covered the entire village and burned away the blasphemous monsters one by one.
The monsters swept up in the flames were still relatively better off.
The monsters near the icicles were pierced by Brandon’s mana arrows, pinned to the ground, and forced to endure the force of the explosion.
Fragments of violet sword aura scattered like snowflakes, tearing through blood and flesh.
And for those who, by some one-in-a-million chance, survived even that, sunset-colored arrows and blue mana bullets flew in.
In the end, in a mere twenty minutes, the countless horde of monsters vanished without leaving even a trace.
Thud.
After the flames died down, I landed right beside the village chief.
Perhaps because he had been fairly far away, his legs had melted from being caught in the flames, but he was comparatively intact.
“You truly are wonderful people.”
The village chief still smiled as he looked at us.
“It is only a shame that I could not make you into villagers.”
The monster, who had quietly murmured that, soon looked at me with a smile, as if reassured.
“But how fortunate. Because you are here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Opening his mouth wide, split all the way to his ears, the village chief burst into loud laughter toward me.
“You are our brother as well.”
The moment he said that, Crimson Blood throbbed as if answering him.
A pulse that seemed to say the village chief’s words were right.
As if denying that feeling with all my might, I shouted at the village chief in a growling voice.
“You’re saying I’m your brother?”
“Could it be that you have not noticed? You are a brother closer to us than anyone.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
I aimed my spear at his head and looked straight into the village chief’s eyes.
He had no eyeballs, but I could instinctively tell.
That he was not lying.
“Explain.”
Why am I your brother?
The rest of my words never followed.
Because the village chief grabbed his own head and abruptly tore out his neck.
As he pulled out his neck, he spoke in a calm voice.
“You will know soon. Now that He has opened His eyes.”
Leaving those words as his last, the village chief collapsed limply on the spot.
‘Who the hell opened their eyes?’
Just as I examined the village chief’s corpse with a grim expression—
Rumble.
The snowy field supporting the entire village began to move.
As if some colossal life form were awakening.