Kornil Ashuld
Kornil Ashuld
Aslan followed the trail of splattered blue blood deeper into the forest.
No hesitation in his stride. His eyes locked onto each mark the instant it appeared.
The blue stains led inward in scattered clusters before gathering in a single heavy pool.
He dropped to one knee beside it.
Harod watched him kneel to examine the sign, then spoke.
"Just one question, my lord."
"Ask."
Aslan kept the executioner's sword resting on his shoulder and ran a hand over the stain. A faint prickle of mana.
"What exactly are we dealing with? And how did you know all of it before it happened?"
"...I've been wondering that myself."
Angie echoed Harod's question. Aslan answered neither of them. He rubbed the blood between his fingers in silence.
"Because it was obvious. The thing we're chasing—a hag—is a monster that carries mana. A creature that used to be a mage. They lace the wind with hypnosis magic to drug their prey before feeding."
That meant whenever a hag began to hunt, the wind carried a distinct scent and a thread of mana came with it.
For Aslan, whose raised Luck and Magic Power now let him perceive a wider sensory field, picking that out was no challenge.
"And?"
But "I sensed it" wasn't a sufficient explanation. He answered her as he straightened.
"The sea breeze had shifted and was settling over the camp. The bugs went quiet. At least one should have been crying, but it was strangely still. And there was a smell in the air that didn't belong."
The explanation was laced with partial truths. Angie tilted her head and made a soft "Hmm," but Aslan offered nothing further—mostly because he had no knack for spinning anything better.
So he let the silence stand and pressed the pursuit. Angie closed her mouth and followed.
As they pushed deeper, the forest turned strange: tropical humidity mingled with the salt of the sea, and through the gaps between trees, mana seeped like something breathing.
Aslan moved through it all, eyes darting from sign to sign, and took the executioner's sword in both hands.
"Like right now."
At those words, Harod yanked his weapon and shield free. Angie caught on a beat later and pulled out her spear.
Kiiii-eeek
A cry came, faintly, from what felt like every direction at once. Aslan let out a slow breath, flicked the sword with a twist of his wrist, and settled his grip.
"We've already spotted you, and I already know exactly what you're going to try. Stop skulking around and come out."
He lowered his stance as he spoke. From the deep shadows of the tropical scrub, shapes slunk into view.
They were deformities. Nothing else quite described them.
Blue skin, tentacles extending straight from the mouth, gill-like slits carved from cheek to neckline, and mana seeping from those slits in visible wisps.
The malformed creatures still carried traces of the humans they had once been—jabbing fingers at Aslan, flicking their tongues.
That tracked. Hags were mages who had once been human.
More precisely, they were people who had willingly discarded their humanity.
Mages who hungered for power, who pursued the War God's methods to the bitter end, and found this end.
Aslan had no tears for those who chose to stop being human.
Just cold killing intent as he adjusted his grip and expelled one long, drawn-out breath.
Just counting the number of things he would have to put down.
"They use magic. Don't stand in a straight line from their extended hands. Move using the trees for cover. Ten of them total."
"What?"
He finished the rushed explanation and launched himself forward.
Kiiii-eeee-eeek!
The nearest hag thrust a hand toward him.
At the tips of its blade-like nails, something coalesced. The instant it did, Aslan tilted his head and dropped his stance low.
Bang!
A spike of ice skimmed past the nape of his neck and buried itself in the earth. From that near-prone crouch, Aslan swung upward.
Crunch!
The hag's thick neck split as if struck by an axe and rose into the air. Before the severed head could fall, Aslan pulled the blade back and rotated his whole body.
Craaack!
Momentum drove the executioner's sword through the temple of a second hag still frozen in shock, splitting its skull apart.
The hags shrieked and threw themselves at him.
Aslan held his ground. He moved only when a creature stepped into reach.
Four died in a handful of seconds.
The closest hag stretched out a hand—and Aslan thrust the heavy tip of the executioner's sword into its cervical spine.
The next lunged with its claws. He caught them on the flat of the blade, flipped it to knock the arm aside, and swung long to cleave its skull.
As brain matter scattered, another hag was already gathering flame in its palm through the gap.
Aslan met its eyes and moved.
The fire shot forth as he dropped to his knees and swept the blade. The edge caught the hag's hand and split it in two. It screamed. He split the screaming creature's shin.
Its leg buckled, and he stomped its neck as it fell, then brought the sword down on the skull of the one turning to flee.
The bisected head collapsed with a wet slap, and the remaining creatures scrambled to react.
Kiii-iiii-eeee-eeek!
Two bolted at once, fleeing somewhere deeper into the trees. The rest veered around Aslan and hurled themselves at Angie and Harod.
A hag came straight at her, and Angie thrust her spear without thinking.
There was no technique behind it—just a raw, forceful lunge. It punched through the hag, and the creature shrieked and thrashed its limbs.
Harod Claw was on the flailing hag before it could recover.
"Raaaah!"
His iron rod came down with a savage cry and a boom that caved the ground. The hag's head shattered into fragments.
Angie was still pulling her spear free from the corpse when Harod stepped in front of her and raised his shield.
Boom!
"Focus, Angela Tail!"
Magic hammered the shield with hollow, ringing impacts. Harod planted his stance and weathered the barrage, then barreled forward and rammed the hag shield-first.
Kiiii-eeek!
He drove the screaming creature back, and Angie seized the gap, thrusting on instinct to finish it.
As the impaled monster shrieked, Harod delivered the end—a sideways swing of the iron rod that scattered its brain across the undergrowth.
Watching the creature die, Angie realized that even if she couldn't fight the way Aslan did, she and Harod together could handle monsters in their own way.
She felt she could keep fighting. She wanted to keep fighting. A raw, juvenile fighting spirit began to bloom—and just as she fixed her gaze on the next hag—
Crack!
Aslan materialized beside that hag and brought the executioner's sword down. The fight was over.
The creature split front to back and hit the ground with the sound of a soaked rag being hurled down.
Angie felt a pang of regret—her last kill stolen—and then Aslan walked up to her.
"Good work. Hags aren't easy prey. You handled yourselves well."
What little resentment she'd held evaporated in the praise. She pressed her lips together to hide the smirk and tried to sound casual.
"Yeah, well. You were pretty incredible yourself."
"I'm the Master of Combat. I'd better be."
He answered while shaking out the blade. Clumps of gore slid off in thick, wet chunks.
Those chunks dotted the ground and led still deeper into the trees.
"We have to chase down the ones that ran. Quick prep, then follow. Harod."
"...Mm. Ah. What is it?"
"Well done."
At the recognition, Harod glanced around awkwardly. Aslan had killed most of the hags himself—praising him for taking down a few felt misplaced.
But he also felt, in those words, the weight of something he couldn't refuse.
"Thank you."
After that, the party walked in silence. The deeper they went, the more chaotic the trail became, tangling often with the tracks of other beasts.
Even Harod, a seasoned warrior by any measure, would have found the tracking grueling. But not Aslan.
Aslan saw footprints and claw marks burned vividly into the earth.
He moved without hesitation, and before long they came upon a cabin and a cave tucked into the forest—a place where someone had once lived.
"...This is..."
What they found inside went beyond imagining. Aslan himself lost his words for a moment.
At the mouth of the cave, a hag cowered and trembled, begging for mercy. Aslan brought the executioner's sword down without a word.
The cave was full of corpses.
Dozens of them. Twenty at the very least, likely more.
Every single one had a hole bored into the skull, the brain eaten clean.
And their bodies hadn't been left whole, either.
They'd been dismantled for magical use—clearly butchered like livestock. Organs, hides, and meat were strewn around the cave as if hung to dry.
Aslan squeezed his eyes shut and let out a breath through his nose, his face set with disgust.
Geladrion had always been this kind of place. The quiet recognition scraped at him.
He was still standing before that hideous cave, his expression twisted—
"Ah, here you are. I've been looking for you."
Kornil Ashuld and his soldiers had arrived. He'd brought several mages with him, among them the soldier Aslan had personally treated and shared medicine with.
Aslan glanced at the group. Kornil met his eyes.
"This must be their nest. Well, now... everyone knows Baron Kandlibur lacks competence, but I wouldn't have guessed he'd let a monster nest fester like this... At any rate, is the situation concluded?"
"It is."
Aslan answered flatly. Kornil Ashuld forced a smile.
"That's fortunate. In that case, shall we be on our way? The hour is already..."
"These bodies."
Aslan cut him off mid-stammer. He turned only his head to look at the man.
"I'm going to bury them before I leave. Wait. Your soldiers were attacked while they were resting—they can't have recovered properly."
Kornil's face registered discomfort, but Aslan's expression didn't shift.
"My lord, these are unclaimed dead. Surely we can leave them. Some of these corpses are well into decay."
He wasn't wrong. Some were already rotting. Aslan let his gaze rest on one for a moment.
"If I were one of those unclaimed corpses, I'd want someone—anyone—to bury me."
He picked up a shovel leaning against the cabin.
"If you're not going to help, then make camp. Let your soldiers rest, Imperial Investigator. The investigation isn't over, and burning through soldiers won't serve your purposes."
While Kornil Ashuld stood there looking put-upon, Aslan was already digging.
His shovel-work was so practiced it was hard to believe he was the Master of Combat. The earth opened quickly—a grave deep enough for a man—and Aslan dragged a body into it with his own hands and covered it with soil.
"...Lord Master, I'll help."
One of the soldiers who'd been watching the burial—the one Aslan had given medicine to—stepped forward.
Seeing him, a few other soldiers followed, wearing awkward smiles or odd expressions.
Their words varied, but the message was the same: they wanted to help. Aslan didn't turn them away.
Only Kornil Ashuld stood apart, face sour, ordering the remaining soldiers to make camp.
Angie took in the sight: Kornil Ashuld, Aslan, Harod helping the soldiers move bodies.
She stood there watching, hesitated for a moment, then walked up to Aslan.
"Why go this far?"
He stopped, shovel driven into the dirt.
Leaning on the handle like a staff, he looked down at the turned earth and answered.
"Because I thought it was right."
The girl couldn't fully understand the words, but soon she was helping him anyway.