Chapter 42
Chapter 42
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: Scent Tracking
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(42) Scent Tracking
"We lost the scent."
Ruby said.
It wasn't the tone of admitting fault, but rather one of bewilderment, as if wondering, 'How could a great being like me make such a mistake?'
Jade asked worriedly.
"Does that mean we lost him?"
"It's just that the air has stagnated. The scent is still there, but it's lost its direction. If he suddenly veered off in another direction from here, we might really lose him. But if he's kept going the same way, we can still catch up."
Ruby glanced back the way they'd come and continued.
"A sandstorm's coming soon. At this time of year, it'll be a big one."
Sure enough, the southwestern sky was darker than the rest.
"This time of year?"
"The moment spring begins."
"How would you know that, when you've only been underground?"
"You can feel the ground shaking even underground. Storms hit every year at a certain time, and this is it. Let's hurry."
Ruby grabbed the reins and quickened his pace.
Ruby wasn't riding the horse, but his steps didn't slow him down. If anything, Jade riding the horse was holding them back. Earlier, he'd even fallen off once. Now, every time the horse moved roughly, the cuts from the temple stones yesterday or the bites from the demons ached.
As Ruby had said, the wind picked up, and the surroundings darkened rapidly.
"The chances of losing him are getting higher. The more he moves, the fainter his scent gets, making it harder to distinguish. If he enters a village with people, even my nose won't be able to pick him out."
Ruby pointed toward the distance while trotting along.
"Ah, there's a village. Looks like he went there."
Without Ruby, Jade might have ridden right past it without noticing. The village blended perfectly into the desert. Whether by original color or sand-stained, the walls, floors, and roofs were all uniformly red.
A few people wandered around the village. Spotting them, Ruby stopped.
"Why?"
Jade asked.
"Strange. This is supposed to be an abandoned village. But there are people living here?"
"It's rundown, but..."
Jade couldn't make out faces from this distance yet.
"...if people are living there, it's not abandoned. What about his scent?"
"It's fainter. But now there are other people's scents mixed in."
Ruby pointed at the village.
"He's probably already in there somewhere, having taken over another human body."
"We have to catch him before more victims appear."
Jade recalled the moment he hadn't realized Autis was a demon.
"Even if he switches bodies, can you still identify him?"
"Probably."
Ruby answered curtly and entered the village.
The villagers stared at Ruby and Jade with blank faces. Some stopped in their tracks to gawk, others walked on indifferently. Some peered through windows.
Jade chalked it up to the typical stoicism of desert folk.
"Jade, stay put on the horse."
Ruby said, then swung the chain in his hand. The chain shot out like a blade, slicing a woman carrying flowers clean in two. She screamed, and the others screamed too as they fled.
Ruby hurled the chain at the fleeing people. It stretched long, piercing their chests and stringing them together in a line.
"Stop! Ruby! Stop it!"
Jade shouted in shock.
"Quiet!"
Ruby yelled, yanking the chain back. Blood sprayed from it, splattering Jade's face.
"My God, what are you doing? I said stop!"
Jade kept yelling, but Ruby threw the chain at someone inside a house, decapitating them. An old man smoking a pipe rolled under Jade's horse, pipe still in his mouth, head gone.
Jade opened the book. He chanted the verse that tightened the shackle around Ruby's neck.
"You right now..."
Ruby noticed immediately and turned his head, but Jade's outstretched hand was faster. Reacting to the light from his hand, the wrist and ankle shackles glowed brightly and fell off. The neck shackle blackened and tightened.
Ruby clutched it with both hands and dropped to his knees.
"Don't... it hurts! This... hurts!"
Ruby gasped and choked.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Jade shouted.
"They're... demons..."
Jade looked at the corpses. Black smoke rose from them like steam, and in their places were small monsters—the same ones from the cave that had cackled about being Baifel's minions.
Jade quickly withdrew the light and chanted the counter-verse. The neck shackle returned to normal, and the wrist and ankle ones reattached.
Ruby exhaled heavily, hands on the ground.
"Sorry. I thought you'd gone mad and were killing people..."
Ruby stood as if to get up, then leaped in one bound, grabbed Jade's throat from the horse, and slammed him to the ground.
Jade hit back-first, letting out a choked yelp from the impact.
"I told you not to use it!"
Ruby warned, eyes glowing red.
"I said don't use it!"
Jade, throat gripped by Ruby, said.
"Got it. But next time something like this happens, warn me first. What just happened was plenty understandable as a misunderstanding..."
Ruby squeezed harder, forcing Jade to stop.
His vision went white. Just as he thought he'd die from asphyxiation, Ruby released him.
Jade rolled aside, gasping. Dry-heaving brought up saliva instead of vomit.
"Doesn't that hurt, flower boy? But I hurt a hundred times worse. That was me going easy! Got it?"
Ruby panted, rubbing his neck.
Jade coughed as he stood.
"Yeah. Seemed plenty lenient. If you'd dropped me headfirst, you wouldn't have had to bother choking me."
"I changed my mind 0.1 seconds before your head hit the ground. Don't use that thing again!"
"Who knows. If you really tried to kill people, I might."
"Hmph. If so, I'd cut out your tongue and..."
"...shove it up your nose. I've got your curse patterns all figured out."
"...No, I was gonna say ear."
"Don't make me laugh. I saw your lips shape for 'nose'."
"I always purse my lips like this for 'ear'."
Ruby walked past the little demon corpses. Moments later, they all turned to ash and vanished.
Jade took the reins and followed, asking.
"But how'd you know they were demons, not people?"
"Their pupils."
"Their eyes?"
"Living people's pupils move very quickly."
Ruby continued in a still-angry tone.
"You think you're focusing on one spot, but unconsciously, you're checking everywhere. That's the subconscious. Like how, when you talk to me, you always glance at my hair and shackles."
"You can see that?"
"I can."
"These people didn't have that pupil movement?"
"They were fixed. Just pretending to look. If one was like that, maybe bad eyes, but all of them? Plus, this village is obviously abandoned. Even you noticed! But people living here? No way."
"How do you spot it at a glance?"
"At my level, that kind of deception is child's play. To fool someone, you need at least this much."
Ruby suddenly did a backflip mid-stride. He turned to face Jade. Jade thought for a second he'd fainted.
There stood Jade instead of Ruby. Same clothes, face, hair color, height—exact.
"Wh-what's that?"
"Transformation spell! Gotta be at least this good to fool the target."
"The voice is different."
"No, it's the same."
"What? It's not!"
"Your own voice always sounds different to you."
"What does that mean?"
"There's a thing. You wouldn't get it even if I explained."
"Feels creepy anyway."
"Yeah? Thought you'd find it fun."
Ruby-in-Jade's-form shrugged indifferently, then backflipped again, reverting to himself.
"Pretty useful against angels. Heh heh heh."
Ruby chuckled slyly and kept walking.
Jade reasoned it out and said.
"Deploying transformed minions as humans—must be his doing? Set a trap and fled himself..."
"He didn't flee. From experience, that magic needs to be close-range. Distract with fake humans, then ambush. Daring to target me!"
Ruby chuckled again.
"You sound like the villain."
"I was originally the villain?"
"Not anymore."
"Why not?"
"Just not."
"Your feelings."
Ruby snorted ambiguously and pointed to a half-ruined church at the village's end.
"Scent's coming from there. But weird. This is blood."
Ruby pushed open the half-broken church door and entered. Sand and dust billowed up as the door swung inside.
The chapel windows were all cracked, walls webbed white with cracks. Musty smell hung heavy; chairs thick with dust like snow stood untouched for years, filling the hall. Red sand piled like graves where the ceiling had collapsed.
"Ugh."
Jade groaned, covering his mouth as he led the horse inside.
Chopped and shattered corpses littered the chapel.
"Interesting."
Ruby muttered.
"You call this interesting, seeing human corpses?"
Jade said, a bit angrily.
"I know these guys. The ones robbing that merchant earlier."
"The Kaf thieves?"
"Yeah. Boss isn't here."
Ruby kicked severed arms and heads as he walked to the chapel center.
Jade pressed his mouth harder to fight nausea.
"Ah, look at this. Dried up like a salted herring."
Ruby pointed at a corpse hardened like it'd been left in the desert for a century.
"You know this one too?"
Jade asked.
"Can't tell? It's Pendail."
"Gasp!"
Jade inhaled sharply, sucking in sand dust.
As he coughed it out, Ruby wandered the chapel searching.
Jade tracked him with his eyes and asked.
"Only Pendail's body left, no Kaf boss—means he body-swapped into him?"
"That's part of it. But he went out of his way to erase his scent. That's the interesting part."
"Not sure I get what's so interesting."
"I was tracking Pendail's scent too, but also the evil spirit's own. He tried to cover it. With his power, no need to smash bodies like this."
"Deliberately filling the church with blood scent?"
"And deployed his demon minions transformed as humans at the village entrance."
Jade recalled the evil spirit trying to possess him.
"So he was stalling for time here! Why? He should've barely had time to flee—why linger?"
Ruby sniffed torn clothes from the floor.
"One survived. Took her along."
"How do you know?"
"This clothing smell isn't from someone long in the desert. Woman's too. But no female corpses here."
"Woman?"
"Yeah. Probably young."
"You can tell age too?"
"My standards. Not a grandma."
Ruby sniffed the rags more, then scanned around.
"After taking Kaf's body, dragging a young girl, stalling in the church? Doesn't add up."
"Needed a spare body. Can't stay long in one."
Ruby nodded in agreement.
"Nice theory. But where'd he flee? No sign he exited the church..."
Ruby suddenly pointed at a star cross on the chapel wall.
"What's that? You wear one too."
"Symbol of God. Never seen one five hundred years ago? Must've been around."
"Think I have... So what?"
Ruby strode across the chapel, past the door to the back yard.
"Found it. He went this way."
"Kaf's footprints?"
"No. Girl being dragged. Irregular steps—forced to walk. She's alive, as expected."
The back yard had a small priest's quarters, a shed, and beyond, a communal graveyard for villagers.
Jade touched his stinging neck—sticky fluid.
"Your wound's festering?"
"Yeah?"
"Demon bites are dangerous. Seen humans die from scratches alone."
"Later. No medicine now anyway."
Ruby opened the priest's quarters door. Empty inside, he tilted his head.
"Hm? Nothing? Trail leads here though."
"If he was hiding, shouldn't you open carefully? Or slam it for a surprise attack."
"Why? I can catch him without ambush, block any he tries... Ah, this?"
Ruby pulled a rope on the floor. A heavy wooden plank, needing two men to lift, rose like a tray.
A ladder led down a dim hole.
"Heard desert homes have underground shelters for sandstorms."
"Not a cellar—tunnel. He fled this way."
"Both? Kaf and the girl?"
"Yeah. I'll handle it—you wait here?"
"Why?"
"No big threats left in the village, faster without you... Plus, you're hurt. Demon wounds like snake venom. Better not move."
"You can't kill the evil spirit! Need my light magic."
"I'll catch Kaf and bring him to you."
"What if he jumps to the girl?"
"Then Kaf dies, girl becomes the spirit... I'll catch her too."
"No! Can't let more victims before we nab him."
"I'm doing this so you don't die and we never unlock these shackles."
"Then find that Umparuton dwarf smith!"
"Thanks for the idea..."
Ruby jumped down without the ladder.
Jade untied the horse's reins, dropped the saddle. Not much baggage.
"Too harsh to leave you alone here, but no choice now."
Jade dropped the bags to Ruby below, then descended the ladder. His neck now ached to numb his shoulders.
'Hope I hold out till we catch him.'
Jade walked the pitch-black tunnel.
Ruby was way ahead.
"Just follow straight. No branches—don't bump into walls."
Only Ruby's voice echoed in the dark.
"Don't worry about me—go block him."
"Can't help worrying about a weakling like you?"
Ruby grumbled, then asked.
"Want me to go ahead and nab him?"
"Yeah. Sounds good."
Ruby's running footsteps faded into the dark.
'With Ruby's skill, he can catch him. But I don't know the spirit's name. Can't kill him with my verse then...'
Jade worried, but no ideas came now.