Drifting Death
He had asked his master once.
Why did that creature look up at the sky every time it rained, and make such a mournful sound?
"I don't really know, either. Maybe because it lost something precious? A home, for instance... It wanders the Forest of Resentment with nowhere to lay its own body. That's why it's sad."
"And if the entire Forest of Resentment is that thing's home?"
"That doesn't quite fit, does it? It's different from the others. It doesn't even react to the scent of blood. It just walks slowly, as if bewitched — like a doll whose soul has been pulled out. And yet... paradoxically, the gods put far too much care into forging that doll's flesh."
His master's last words still lingered, even now.
"Perhaps the gods exhausted themselves shaping its body, and had nothing left."
Messi pulled free of that brief, aching recollection and faced the cold reality once more.
At the center of the vast hall, it stood.
Over three meters of towering height. A massive frame packed densely, meticulously, with muscle. Even the slightest shift sent those fine muscles rippling, each performing its own function — assembled with the precision of a machine, not a hair out of place.
The violet skin, as if the entire body were one vast bruise, was savage to behold. The greatsword clenched in those thick, enormous hands — metal scraps jammed and forced together into a single slab — looked ready to split three men in a single stroke.
Huff. Huff.
It had its back turned. The ragged breath it was pouring out in front was visible even from behind. For all those long years, it had simply existed there.
Your instinct is probably right. So this place was that thing's home...
He had never once imagined something so terrible. Now that it was happening, he even found himself wondering why he had never connected the ruins and Enzo Muerte at all.
Perhaps because of something Messi had said before, the knights did not dare show any fighting spirit.
"S-slowly... we fall back. We... close the door again..."
Sir Ramang, the first to recover his wits, gestured for them to retreat. The knights, bodies still locked stiff, began to ease the door shut with desperate care.
Greeeek...
The wide-open door inched closed. And just as a sliver of gap remained—
Ssslick.
"...!"
Enzo Muerte turned its head, and at that exact instant — thud! — the door slammed shut. A razor-thin moment. In that fleeting glimpse, Messi saw Enzo Muerte's face.
"Hah... haah..."
Once the door was closed, Ramang was panting hard, cold sweat pouring off him in a way Messi had never seen before.
"Sir Ramang, are you all right?"
"Did I... did I actually call a thing like that 'just one'?"
He was muttering to himself, still in shock. Not a good sign.
He was probably replaying the time they had encountered it on the way to the Forest of Resentment. Back then Ramang had said, It's only one. Aren't you overreacting?
So the gap he couldn't perceive then, he can perceive now?
That meant his eye had improved... and there was only one way that happened.
A rise in realm.
Ramang, who had been at the very edge of Sword User, was finally setting foot into Brillant — the threshold of the Expert domain. He had spent so long accumulating knowledge at the peak of Lavish that real combat had become the springboard for his leap.
The life-or-death fight with Laud — Brillant, even if the realm was fake — must have helped. And he probably learned a thing or two from Janggun-i as well.
Whether this was something to congratulate him for or not... Ramang himself seemed too stunned by the encounter with Enzo Muerte to even notice.
Ereb approached, his face grave.
"Messi, I don't see another path. Looks like we'll have to go through there."
"Yes, Young Master. We have to break through."
"Can you do it? Last time you described that thing as..."
He swallowed the rest: as something that had crawled up out of hell itself.
Messi conceded the point.
"That's true. But I don't think we're completely without a chance."
"...How?"
"Did anyone get a look at Enzo Muerte's face before the door closed?"
Instead of answering, he turned the question on the knights.
A few responded. Among them was Hulan, who had discovered the Great Magic Barrier.
"The face was wrong. If I didn't see it wrong, both eye sockets were completely caved in."
"That's not all. Both ears were crushed too. That huge head with nothing but a nose and a mouth... it gave me chills."
"You couldn't tell from behind, but a lot of the front of it was missing. Strange. Didn't they say it was troll-type? Regeneration should be extraordinary."
The testimonies poured in, and Messi agreed. What he had glimpsed through the closing gap was a horrific sight — flesh filled in where organs had been lost.
"Which means...?"
"Yes. Clearly the aftermath of combat. The opponents would have been the Woodcutters."
"Right. There were corpses everywhere."
"And there must have been several Enzo Muertes. I saw about four bodies that looked like theirs. Was I the only one?"
"No, I saw them too."
Even in that brief window, these were men who remembered the vast hall like a photograph. Messi decided to use that.
"All right, listen up. Tell me only what you remember with certainty. Let's complete a map of the interior first."
Messi drew his sword and began sketching rapidly on the floor — starting with what he himself remembered.
Identical iron doors hung on all four sides of the great hall, one to each point of the compass. If they treated the door they had entered as the south gate, they would have to choose one of the remaining three as an escape route.
In the center of the hall, one Enzo Muerte. Around it he sketched in the positions of the corpses he remembered, and the background.
"Looked like a mage's laboratory. Size of a grand hall, though. Three shattered giant crystal tubes in the back. Papers and materials scattered everywhere... looked like someone had rummaged through them. The Woodcutters, probably."
"The north gate was unusually large. Could we even open it if all of us pushed together? I wouldn't bet on it."
"You said the corpse with the axe was there? No — it was over there."
One by one they added what they remembered. The map gradually took shape. Then a remark came that Messi could not ignore.
"Come to think of it... wasn't there a woman's corpse?"
"Yeah. Long hair, and the back was definitely a woman's."
Messi's hand paused, then marked it on the map. Eleven o'clock in the hall. A woman's corpse...
Madri?
The younger sister whose death had driven his master into despair. Her body was here?
How had she died? If he could see the corpse, he might learn a great deal. And later, at his master's grave, he might have something to say. The line from the diary kept returning to him: If I die, I want to die at Madri's side.
Could I... recover the body?
The thought swelled. Messi shook his head.
His master would not want him putting himself in danger for that.
It's greed. Wanting that on top of everything else, in this situation, is as good as asking to die.
"Messi. You all right? Even you, scared of running into that thing? Heh."
Ereb's words snapped him back. Messi focused on the completed map.
"I'm fine. But Young Master, I don't think we can break through the north gate. It's about three times the size of this door — questionable whether we could even open it — and it doesn't match the direction we need to move quickly."
"The decorations on that door were different too. Didn't look like a door for ordinary use."
Kkyu picked up on that at once.
Divinity...?
Wait... then when they said I was born with divinity, that means I was born with the power of a god?
I'm a proxy of a god...? Since when?
Even Kkyu had no answer for that. All she knew was that she could feel divine power from Messi.
At her words, Messi scraped the north gate off the floor-map with his sword.
"We abandon the north gate... that leaves east and west. In my judgment, we should take the west gate."
"The west? Why give up the east?"
"Because the Woodcutters who fled would have used the west gate."
"...?"
Ereb studied the map, trying to follow the reasoning, then understood.
"I see... most of the Woodcutters' corpses are concentrated near the east gate."
"The seven who survived were men who gave up the fight and ran. Doing that through the east gate, so close to their comrades, wouldn't have been easy. And people usually pull their bodies in the direction farthest from danger."
"But if that's the case... they'd have had to run at the start of the battle, wouldn't they? It doesn't make sense that seven Woodcutters fled while leaving behind a single Enzo Muerte in that condition..."
Messi had thought the same.
The Woodcutters had faced five Enzo Muertes, killed four, and left the last with severe aftereffects — but they hadn't had enough left in them.
There was no way seven Woodcutters, unable to finish off one wounded creature, would have chosen to flee at the end.
They ran in the middle?
That didn't sit right either. They were masters of combat. By mid-fight they would have calculated whether they had a chance or not. They wouldn't have abandoned a winnable battle to run.
Those bastards. From the very start they shoved forty-five men into the fight and slipped away...
"Those seven were the problem. If they'd joined in and fought properly, the outcome might have been different."
There would have been casualties, but more Woodcutters would have survived. Then Madri might not have died, and his master might not have had to grieve.
Anger surged — but all seven of those men had already met mysterious deaths long ago.
"Anyway, we open the door and slip out through the west gate as quietly as we can, before it notices."
"There'll be other passages beyond. We'll have to search as thoroughly as we can."
The direction was set. The knights took their places at the door again. They would enter as carefully as possible, suppressing every trace of presence.
Huff. Huff.
The knights were shaking too. Before they went in they rolled their necks, breathed fast — doing everything they could to loosen bodies clenched tight with tension.
"If you're ready, open it."
At last Ramang gave the signal, and the seven knights with their hands on the door began to pour mana into their strength.
Greeeek...
"Huh?"
One of the knights opening the door let out a questioning grunt.
The landscape visible through the gap was slightly different from before. As it opened a little more, a massive leg came into view nearby. A massive, bruise-violet leg...
"Uh?"
One knight, realizing the truth, yanked his hands off the door and stumbled back. The other six understood immediately.
"Uhh...?"
Enzo Muerte had been standing at the door, waiting.
"R-run...!!"
Whoosh — a gigantic hand flung the door wide and shot out, seizing one of the knights. Without a moment's hesitation, it slammed the thing it had grabbed into the floor.
BANG! Thud-thud-thud-thud...
A human being burst like a balloon. A head rolled. Blood fountained, drenching everyone nearby.
It happened in less than three seconds. Everyone went blank, staring at what had been a comrade moments ago, now reduced to a spray of blood.
It had gone wrong from the start. Messi snapped back to himself, running, and roared.
That shout was the starting gun. Everyone ran. Not a single person even considered colliding with the thing.
If it caught you, you died. Period.
Their comrade's swift death had driven that fact home with hideous clarity.
Messi was no different. Together with General Ant, he was the first to pass Enzo Muerte and get outside its attack range. Barcelo's Fast Walk shone.
But the knights who had started late were the problem.
Blind, Enzo Muerte sniffed endlessly, waving its hands about — groping through them the way you'd scoop at a river so thick with fish it was half water, half meat.
"U-uaaaagh....!!"
Someone else was caught and hurled into the wall. Thud! The upper body crumpled; only the lower half remained, sliding down.
The knights poured on speed to survive. Formation? They didn't give it a thought. Instinct told them the first priority was getting as far from that thing as possible.
But ever since it had been left with only a nose, Enzo Muerte's sense of smell had grown even sharper. Sniff-sniff-sniff-sniff — that searching snort echoed through the hall, raising gooseflesh. The instant it locked onto something, the huge hand swung without hesitation.
SMACK! It swatted a fleeing knight the way you'd swat a mosquito. And like a mosquito swollen with blood, the knight burst.
No one could keep their sanity.
Were these really the proud knights of Ahental, dying so meaninglessly?
The roar of a monster of monstrous strength slammed into their ears. A howling that stripped away the will to fight. It was different from the sound they had heard in the rain. This time it poured nothing but frenzy, thrill, and terror into them.
"It's insane, it's insane!"
Ereb ran at the very front to stay alive, and Ramang did everything he could to protect the Young Master while shoving the other knights forward.
When the waving hands stopped catching knights, Enzo Muerte seemed to catch on. It picked up its greatsword.
And then...
It jumped.
BOOM!
The monster that had leapt into the air brought its blade down on the knights who had reached the west gate.
WHOOMPH!!
They were merely caught in the shockwave of a sword striking the floor — and yet the knights' heads burst, a phenomenon that defied sense.
It didn't stop there. Enzo Muerte spun madly through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, slashing the empty air with its blade.
The problem was how effective it was. Knights nearby, still reeling from the sudden shockwave, were swept up and carved apart in chunks, like slabs of meat.
"U-uaaaaah!!"
"O-open it, hurry!!"
The knights who reached the west gate shoved at it with everything they had. Ereb and Ramang were among them. Greeeek — the door was starting to open when, from behind, a sudden thud-thud-thud-thud-thud of something closing in.
Ramang's skin crawled. Instinctively he grabbed Ereb by the collar and threw them both sideways. In the same instant a colossal shadow flew in and slammed into the door.
KRAAAAAANG!! The knights who had been pushing the door were crushed by that shadow into ground meat.
Red flesh oozing out between crumpled plate armor no longer looked like a scene from the world of men.
Having flung the west gate wide open with its own body, Enzo Muerte tumbled, rolled, then rose in the corridor beyond.
Sniff-sniff-sniff-sniff!!
Another all-around search by scent. Watching it, you couldn't help but feel your skin crawl.
"Th-that's a complete monster..."
It looked like a monster built for the sole purpose of killing people. How were they supposed to shake a thing like that?
Terror was devouring reason. Despair and helplessness were about to swallow them all — when—
RRRIP!
A black point became a line. The line became a plane.
The world began to drain of color, swallowing sound, scent, and presence whole.
A black point becoming a line, becoming a plane, swallowing the background. Ramang knew it well.
Dark Field...!
Everyone's eyes turned toward the origin of that darkness. There stood Messi, clutching a torn Red Scroll, gasping for breath.