Puppy Princess
While I was dealing with the human users one by one, a sudden scent of familiar blood washed over me.
It was Aurell’s scent, the one that always seemed to come with a bright smile at my side.
But there wasn’t any time to get distracted.
Whoosh!
The black, shadow-wreathed slash cut clean through the side of a building, carving away a huge section of wall. Behind the collapsing concrete was the human-user sniper who had shot at me.
"What the hell!"
Maybe he’d been startled by my sudden appearance?
The human user, [SlayerChunSam], turned and bolted at once.
Watching him, I wondered what on earth had possessed them to attack us in the first place.
If they’d just stayed quiet, none of this would have happened.
Had they not even tried to gauge our strength?
Back when the world was still normal, even in Blood Carnival, people picked their fights carefully. It was common to keep your head down and your mouth shut if someone stronger than you walked past.
Just as I could use my Demon Eye to read the users’ information, the human users must have had some way to measure a target’s strength too.
Tap.
The moment my foot kicked lightly off the ground, the wings on my back spread wide.
Like a great bird riding the wind, I flew straight toward him.
"Aaaah!"
SlayerChunSam, who had been fleeing in panic, looked back over his shoulder.
His face twisted immediately in terror.
Fear had frozen his movements stiff.
Then, riding on the wind, another scent of blood reached me.
Human blood. Aurell and Hwanggu must have joined forces and taken out another user.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Bang!
At that moment, a gunshot cracked through the air.
My burning Demon Eye revealed the bullet’s trajectory.
The wings moved the instant the shot rang out.
As the great feathers wrapped around my body, a white flash struck them hard.
Thud!
The impact was heavy, reverberating through me with considerable force.
Still, his attack couldn’t pierce the wings.
It seemed he’d run out of silver bullets.
I folded my wings and dropped lower.
Even then, his resistance didn’t stop.
His face, twisted nearly beyond recognition, was filled with a fierce will to live.
He was even crying now as he rained attack after attack down on me, and for a moment he looked almost pitiful.
But I didn’t stop walking.
Bang!
Swish!
Reading the path of the bullets as they came, I swung the katana in my hand.
Every time I sliced through that pure white flash, the katana’s durability dropped fast.
It was fine. There were other weapons hidden in the shadows.
Bang!
Slash!
Bang!
Swish!
I repeated the same exchange several times.
And then, at the exact moment the katana that had kept batting away the bullets began to crack, I noticed something: SlayerChunSam was smiling, just slightly.
Ah.
So that was his plan.
Bang!
Another shot rang out.
I could already sense the katana’s end.
Slash!
Crash!
The blade split cleanly along the cracked line.
I looked down at the katana, reduced to a short, broken remnant.
The item description had changed.
The moment I confirmed that, SlayerChunSam fired again.
Bang!
A pure white flash rushed toward me.
But I’d already seen this attack coming too.
Without a trace of panic, I moved.
One long stride forward.
My outstretched leg struck the ground hard.
Thud!
Then I reached into the shadows.
My small hand slipped into that space where nothing should have been visible, and a clear sensation hooked itself around my fingertips.
It was definitely the other katana I’d shoved into the shadows earlier.
Without hesitation, I whipped my arm out.
Swishhh—!
A waterfall of black shadow poured along the katana’s edge.
The speeding white flash was swallowed whole by the black torrent the blade had created.
Bombs and gunfire.
SlayerChunSam had poured out everything he had, and when I drew a new sword, he let out a deep, exhausted sigh.
The stench of gunpowder hung thick in the air. And then, just as I thought that, the muzzle of his gun turned toward his own head.
"Planning to kill yourself?"
SlayerChunSam didn’t even answer me.
He only looked at me with a gaze twisted up with disgust and rage.
Bang.
"Ah..."
A single gunshot echoed out suddenly.
The instant I thought red blood would spray high into the air, SlayerChunSam’s body crumpled to the ground.
I’d meant to keep him alive, because I had a lot I wanted to ask him, but he’d killed himself without any hesitation.
An incomprehensible choice.
Why had he done it?
I exhaled and headed toward the place where Aurell and Hwanggu were.
Finding them wasn’t difficult.
I only had to follow Aurell’s blood scent.
The trail led into the depths of a ruined building.
I stepped inside carefully.
Then I heard it.
The eerie, grating sounds of flesh and bone being crushed.
Crunch, grind, crack.
Once, I’d seen a huge dog chewing on a raw chicken.
The sound I was hearing now felt strangely similar.
"Aurell. Hwanggu."
Just in case, I called the children’s names.
The gnawing sound of bones breaking stopped at once, followed by a flurry of hurried footsteps.
"Charlotte-nim!"
"Charlotte-nim!"
Out from deeper inside came two blood-soaked girls.
The first thing I checked was Aurell’s condition.
Her arm had a bandage wrapped around it, but otherwise she looked fine.
There was plenty of blood around her mouth, so it looked like she’d been drinking from the human user Hwanggu had helped kill.
According to the information I’d pulled up with my Demon Eye, there wasn’t anything unusual beyond her health being slightly reduced.
In that case, she’d be fine soon enough if I let natural recovery do its work or gave her a potion.
Next, I checked Hwanggu.
Her hair was longer, her ears bigger, and even the fluffy tail jutting out below her waist had grown more pronounced.
She looked even more wolf-like than when we first met.
That was Hwanggu’s information as seen through the Demon Eye.
I nodded. I’d had some idea already, but it seemed Hwanggu was level 20.
And considering she’d used mana too, she was probably the one who had taken down the human user.
Puppy Princess...
Looking at Hwanggu’s original nickname, I fell silent.
She’d used a name like that for herself, and yet she’d complained that the cool names I gave her were bad?
I found myself curious what Hwanggu would do if she ever learned her own original nickname.
Without saying a word, I watched her.
Hwanggu was busy working her tiny mouth, chewing away.
Something was definitely in there.
I didn’t need to ask to know.
Every time that little mouth worked, a thick, rotten smell of blood drifted out.
"Are either of you hurt?"
"Aurell got hurt!"
Hwanggu was the one who answered me.
Her ears perked up and her tail swayed as she pointed brightly at Aurell’s arm.
"Mm..."
Aurell glanced at me nervously and touched her own arm.
Did she think I was going to scold her?
I sighed and pulled a red potion out of the shadows, handing it over.
Now that I was closer, I could tell something else: mixed faintly into Aurell’s blood scent was the smell of silver.
She’d been hit by a silver bullet, then.
It wouldn’t heal easily.
"Drink this."
"Huh... are you sure I can have this?"
I nodded silently.
I didn’t have many potions left, but if I stripped the bodies of the human users I’d just killed, I could probably make up the difference.
Aurell started gulping down the potion I handed her.
Eyes squeezed shut, rising onto her tiptoes as she drank greedily, she looked like a child being forced to swallow a glass of white milk she didn’t want.
"Hwanggu. Aurell."
"Yes?"
"Are you two busy?"
Just to be safe, I asked them.
Since blood still seemed to be drifting out from the inside of the building, they’d apparently been in the middle of a meal.
But Aurell and Hwanggu both shook their heads quickly.
I left the building with the two of them.
Now that the fight was over, it was time to collect the spoils.
Maybe because all the danger had vanished, Hwanggu looked pleased and kept wagging her tail happily.
"Hwanggu."
"Yes?"
"Aren’t you curious what your original name was?"
"My original name?"
I rubbed at my left eye and nodded.
At that, Hwanggu folded her arms and began thinking seriously.
Watching her, I tilted my head.
Was she not curious what her own original name had been?
Did this really require that much thought?
"Charlotte-nim."
"Yeah?"
"I like things the way they are now."
"You like them the way they are now?"
"Yes!"
After saying that much, Hwanggu gave her tail a playful swish and bounded forward.
Watching her, I tilted my head again.
She didn’t know who she was, or even what she’d been doing herself...
Still, she didn’t seem frustrated by the fact that she’d lost her memories.
Hwanggu sniffed the air and busily gathered up the human-user corpses I’d dealt with.
There were three bodies in all.
One with its head blown apart, one crushed from above, and one cut clean in two. None of them were in good shape.
Hwanggu stood before the three corpses, tail whipping back and forth.
It was an impressive sight, that tail spinning like a propeller.
Of course, Aurell was drooling too as she stared at the human corpses.
"You really want them that badly?"
"H-huh...!"
"Y-yes...!"
Aurell jumped at my question and wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth, while Hwanggu shot her hand into the air and nodded at once.
If I gave the word, she looked ready to start devouring the corpses right now.
"Hold on a second."
Saying that, I rummaged through the bodies’ pockets.
What I managed to take was two close-combat weapons, the kind you’d see in the military, as well as a bandage and five potions—healing items.
And a large Korean map stained with blood.
"This is...!"
When I unfolded the soaked map, I found a large dog drawing marked on specific sections.
It seemed to be some kind of code only they could understand.
I tried using my Demon Eye just in case, but there was nothing to be learned.
Map
It is a map.
It is stained with blood.