The Blood Festival Begins
Zeroonia had been right.
From the desolate plain that had seemed to hold nothing at all, monsters and demonic beasts were pouring in without end.
When Yoon Sang-hyuk woke, he could immediately feel that the air around them had changed. It was a strange sensation, impossible to put into words. If he had to describe it, it was like gravity had increased just enough to make his body feel heavier.
That must have been the signal that the Blood Festival had begun.
From early morning, Zephyr and his brothers had been busy. They hurried through their meal, then checked each piece of their gear. Before long, the monsters and demonic beasts began to run wild.
Kyaaaak-
Kyaooo-
After successfully fending off the attack of the giant worms that burst up through the ground, they were met by a swarm of winged beasts. Creatures with grotesquely twisted faces and batlike wings were swooping in.
They were not especially formidable, which was probably why they could not use magic at all and attacked only with brute force. They dove from above, slashing with sharp beaks and claws. Some came at them with their mouths stretched wide, trying to tear flesh with their teeth.
Yoon Sang-hyuk sat on the roof of a container box, lazily drinking a canned beer as he watched Zephyr and his brothers fight.
It was probably obvious, but the strongest of the brothers was Zeronia. Because the brothers gathered dark energy and fed it to her, her strength existed on an entirely different level from the rest.
Whenever the twin whips in her hands carved the air in a brilliant blur, the winged beasts inevitably turned to blood and soaked the barren ground of the Demon Realm.
The whips lashed through the air without pause, yet never tangled with one another. Like living things, they turned the space around Zeronia into her perfect domain.
On closer inspection, the length of the whips kept changing, stretching and shrinking in constant motion. They seemed to be whips with special options attached.
They had placed two carriages side by side with the horses between them. Zeronia stood atop one carriage to deal with the beasts, while the brothers who were left below fought beneath it. At a glance, it was clear they were protecting the horses while fighting. In some ways, the horses might have been the most important thing in the expedition. All their supplies were stored in Yoon Sang-hyuk’s subspace, and the carriages were made from the Demon Realm’s notoriously durable metal.
Zephyr’s fighting was impressive too.
He held a long sword in his right hand and a short dagger in his left, slicing through the beasts. After killing one, he would vanish for a moment, then reappear in a completely unexpected place and wipe out another. Whenever the three younger brothers were in danger, he always appeared to extend a hand of salvation.
It was the textbook fighting style of an assassin.
By contrast, the three younger brothers fought in an extremely ordinary manner. Each wielded a single longsword and used traditional swordsmanship. Whether because they had trained for a long time or not, the three of them moved as though they were one body, covering one another in a surprisingly seamless rhythm.
Kyaaaaak-
A piercing scream stabbed at his ears. As a shadow suddenly spread overhead, Yoon Sang-hyuk lifted his head and looked up at the sky.
"Oh? A boss monster, huh?"
Similar in appearance to the winged beasts attacking Zephyr and his brothers, but dozens of times larger, an enormous monster was flapping its wings as it approached.
"Brother."
"I know. Gather up!"
At Zephyr’s shout, the three brothers moved in close around him.
Zeronia whipped the monsters around her into shredded ruin.
Shrrk-
In an instant, the whip wrapped around her wrist and transformed into something like a vambrace. Then, from nowhere, a sword with a red blade appeared in her hand.
Zeronia ran toward the brothers. With their hands joined and raised, they braced themselves. As Zeronia stepped on the brothers’ hands, they hurled her body into the sky with all their strength. Like a launched shell, she cut through the air at terrifying speed.
Her target was, as expected, the king of the winged beasts closing in at high speed.
Kririririk-
The space around Zeronia rippled. For a split second, so much power gathered at once that the surrounding air itself distorted. The only regret was that, although she possessed more than enough dark energy, she had not formally been granted the authority of a demon lord, so she could not use a true power.
If Zeronia had possessed even a trivial power, creatures like this would not have been able to come near her in the first place.
Shrrk-
The king of the winged beasts never even reached Zeronia. Before it could close the distance, the sword wave she unleashed shredded its entire body into torn slabs of meat that fell to the ground.
The surviving winged beasts saw their king die and let out shrieks of terror as they fled. The madness brought on by the Blood Festival was swallowed up by fear.
"Huu-."
Zeronia stood on the ground, catching her breath.
Perhaps because she had used too much power at once, even her shoulders were rising and falling hard.
"Not bad."
Yoon Sang-hyuk pulled a canned honey drink out of his subspace and tossed it to her. Zeronia caught it, opened the can with practiced ease, and drank. The sweetness seemed to erase her fatigue, and a small smile touched her lips.
"Lord Sang-hyuk. We should move at once. The area is extremely chaotic."
Just as Zephyr said, the ground around them was covered with the traces left by dying winged beasts. The stench of blood was nauseating as well.
The group moved out immediately. But after only a short distance, they stopped and rested with the carriages. During the Blood Festival, monsters and beasts could burst out at any moment. They had to rest whenever they could.
"You look pretty pleased."
Watching Zephyr and his brothers prepare the meal, Yoon Sang-hyuk spoke up.
"It is the Blood Festival, after all."
He really could not understand it. Could the endless flood of maddened monsters and beasts really be called a festival?
As if sensing his expression, Zeronia brought him tea and explained.
"What does any being in the Demon Realm need in order to rise higher?"
"Dark energy."
"Exactly. The period of the Blood Festival is when dark energy is at its richest. For those who cannot withstand it, it is hell. But for the rest of us..."
"Then it really is a festival."
Yoon Sang-hyuk nodded as if he understood.
"And that is not all. In the Demon Realm, when you eliminate an opponent, you can steal some of the dark energy they possessed. That is why conflict never stops. Zephyr and the others have gained quite a lot of dark energy through battle so far. If we had not left the city with you, Lord Sang-hyuk, it would have been impossible."
"Inside the city, the competition to hunt down maddened monsters and beasts must be fierce too."
"If one is unlucky, there are times when one cannot kill even a single creature. This time, we have been very fortunate indeed."
"At this rate, can't you become a high-level demon and a demon lord in no time?"
"When I said I was fortunate, I meant that no truly worthy opponents have appeared yet."
"Hmm?"
Zeronia looked off into the distance.
"The sweet madness of the Blood Festival grants beings under its influence more than twice their usual strength. Monsters and beasts at the very bottom, no, even middling beasts, we brothers can still handle somehow. But the creatures that stand above them are beyond us. Especially if an astral monster appears, something that is our brothers’ natural enemy, the situation would become quite dangerous."
* * *
After two more battles, evening finally came.
After spending all day breathing in blood and decay, Yoon Sang-hyuk wanted something spicy, so he boiled ramen. Zephyr and his brothers liked ramen as well, so he made ten packs at once.
Unlike Yoon Sang-hyuk, who finished after fishing out the noodles twice, Zephyr and the others were drinking the broth as if even the last drop mattered, licking it clean. Zeronia did not join them, as though she were trying to maintain her dignity, but every now and then she would steal a glance at her brothers.
"You worked hard today."
Yoon Sang-hyuk took out the container box.
"We are honored to serve you."
"I didn't exactly do much..."
It was Zephyr and the others who had worked hard. Just as Yoon Sang-hyuk was about to step into the container box, he turned back.
"Share it among yourselves."
He pulled a box from his subspace and tossed it over. Catching it, Zeronia silently asked with her eyes, What is this?
"Something tasty. It’ll help you forget how tired you are."
It was chocolate snacks, the kind that any South Korean man who had served in the military would love. Chocolate snacks were for sharing warmth.
"If you open the box, you'll find something inside wrapped in plastic, just like ramen. Peel off the wrapper and eat it."
With that, Yoon Sang-hyuk went into the container box. After changing into different accessories and cleaning himself with cleansing magic, he lay down on the bed.
Outside, cries of "Oh!" and "Ooh!" kept breaking out one after another. Just as Yoon Sang-hyuk was about to smile faintly and go to sleep, he sat up again.
"There's never a moment to rest."
When he stepped back outside the container, he saw Zephyr and his brothers standing frozen, chocolate snacks still in their mouths.
Zeronia’s concern from earlier in the day had become reality.
The air around them turned cold in an instant. Along with it, the expressions on Zephyr and his brothers’ faces began to harden.
Finding it interesting, Yoon Sang-hyuk watched them. When the temperature dropped like this, it meant an astral-type monster had appeared.
"Spirits, huh."
Ghosts in ragged long robes surged up from the ground. There were well over a few hundred of them. The chill they exhaled blanketed the land in white frost in an instant.
He was curious to see how Zephyr and his brothers would react, but then Zeronia rose to her feet.
"The black blood that flows through our bodies."
"The blood of life that proves who I am."
At Zeronia’s lead, the brothers muttered the lines in low voices.
"The dark skin that resembles the night."
"Is the color of the homeland to which I must return."
Zeronia and her brothers spoke in unison.
"Those who hide themselves in fear shall not enter the glorious land of our ancestors."
Their voices carried a solemn resolve.
Watching them, Yoon Sang-hyuk burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha."
The Zephyr brothers, who had been sharpening their fighting spirit, looked over at Yoon Sang-hyuk. Their expressions were no longer the respectful ones they wore when dealing with their lord. They were looking at him with twisted faces.
"What, are you charging into a battlefield with your life on the line right now? You seem to be misunderstanding something big. You guys are guides. I'm sure you know what that means, don't you? Your only job right now is to get me safely to the Gray Wasteland. Understand? Just do your work properly, and if there's anything you can grab along the way, take it for yourselves. As for anything beyond that which you can't handle..."
Yoon Sang-hyuk stood up, brushing off his backside.
"I'll handle it."