The Monster in the Deep Forest (7)
"Aaaah!"
"Oh, they’re coming up!!"
The entire village fell into a panic.
The minions that had been shot with arrows and kept charging anyway suddenly spewed tentacles from their bodies, using them to attack and to haul themselves over the palisade.
The villagers had prepared in their own way, but faced with a scene beyond anything they had ever imagined, there was no one capable of responding properly. They could only scream, or tremble in fear until they were slaughtered.
"Get out of here, you monsters!"
"Father!"
Of course, there were brave souls among them. One middle-aged man with a hay fork in hand sprinted forward, slammed the wolf that had climbed the palisade with the tentacle sprouting from its back, and smashed its head in.
The wolf’s head, covered in bulging black veins, burst apart on the spot, spilling a dark, almost black blood.
"Khh..."
Even then, the wolf’s tentacles writhed violently, lashing out in every direction. That he narrowly avoided them was pure luck.
When even the thrashing tentacles finally went still, he grit his teeth and ripped the hay fork free.
"Father..."
"Go help your mother, Zack. And run. Now."
He grabbed the son who had run up to him, a boy still in his teens, and shouted in a trembling voice. After fighting it like this, he had already realized that they could never win.
"Gaaah!"
"N-no!"
But at that moment, a tentacle shot in from behind and pierced through his body, spraying blood as it writhed. The boy’s face, already pale from seeing his father grimace in agony, went white as paper.
The owner of that tentacle was a grotesque monster staggering over the palisade. With its twisted body and black veins like the others, it used a tentacle formed from its hand to lift the already lifeless body into the air.
Why?
For an instant, time seemed to stop.
The boy, who did not even know what a hobgoblin was, only that it was a goblin-like creature with a build similar to a human’s, found himself reaching for the hay fork his father had dropped.
His heart was a storm of confusion—resentment and rage at not knowing why this had happened to them, tangled up with terror. But in that moment, the rage that surged up at the sight of his father’s corpse was stronger than fear.
"Aaaaah!"
So he charged.
All around him, blood was already being spilled in the ongoing slaughter, and the sound of people’s screams kept echoing through the village.
The hobgoblin minion seemed to sense that feeling too, and tossed the corpse aside before lunging at the boy.
"Who are you? Why are you attacking us, you damn monster!"
The village chief, utterly beside himself, cried out in a hollow voice. What he could see before his eyes—the destruction of his village—was no dream.
The instant he caught sight of the boy’s body pierced through by the tentacle, he could no longer hold back. There was no mercy, no recognition, left for these hideous hell-born monsters.
"Hunting."
"W-what?"
"This is just hunting."
But the chief, who had shouted at the top of his lungs, was left slack-jawed and dazed when Lena answered with complete honesty.
"To eat or be eaten is only natural. We have to grow strong to survive, and to grow strong, we only needed prey."
"We did nothing wrong. So why..."
"I know that very well. But in the end, whether you were right or wrong never mattered. And above all..."
Lena smiled faintly. In a way, these villagers were no different from her former self—wronged victims, sacrifices. But she knew that well, and that was precisely why she was all the more merciless.
"That one desires your deaths. To devour you and make you nourishment for us."
"Th-that one?"
The chief flinched, unable to make sense of her words. The way she spoke made it sound as if someone stood behind her. But among the monsters that had stormed in with her, she was the only one capable of speech.
"Just who..."
"Don’t be fooled by the monster bitch’s nonsense! At most, it’s just some grotesque monster leader!"
The mercenary leader cut off the chief’s flustered words. But the mercenaries who had been dragged into this by chance were just as crushed by Ascalas’s terrifying presence as everyone else.
It’s already too late to escape easily.
The mercenary captain turned the gears in his head and decided that they would fight for now. In particular, he aimed his spear at Lena, thinking that if he could subdue her, the one who seemed to be leading them, there might still be a way out.
"Bao, take the flank. Dave, guard the rear."
He ordered his men into battle formation.
What he did not see was the way Lena’s face crumpled as she glared at him.
I’ll never forgive you.
Lena let the fury blazing in her chest burst right out.
As time passed—more precisely, with every dose of Ascalas’s essence she consumed—her personality grew more extreme, more feverish, until she could no longer tolerate some fool daring to profane her god.
"Tch..."
"That one is magnificent. Far beyond what trash like you could ever imagine!"
The mercenary captain barely managed to block Lena’s attack after reclaiming the spear he had been stepping on.
He was also a warrior who had trained a measure of mana.
But Lena was no longer the same as she had been during the battle with Zack. After that fight, she had devoured Zack’s corpse as experience and nourishment, and grown stronger.
"C-capta—"
"This crazy—!"
Lena slipped inside the mercenaries’ guard, and the spear in her hand—far longer than her own body—moved with horrifying freedom.
Even with three of them attacking her at once, including the captain, she parried every blow and struck back.
The mercenary captain dodged the monster’s foot as it came for his face, only to stare in horror when Lena’s snake-like spear pierced straight through one of his men’s throats.
"R-run!"
In the end, the mercenary captain turned and fled.
The chief, left behind as the captain spun on his heel and sprinted to the opposite side in an instant, could only stare blankly after the backs of the fleeing mercenaries.
The hand gripping his axe trembled uncontrollably.
Pulling the spear from the body of the mercenary she had just killed, Lena turned those eyes—devoid of all laughter—toward the chief. In the darkness of her eyes, red pupils flickered with murderous intent.
"The weak get eaten. Just like you are now. I hated that."
"So... you allied yourself with an evil god for that reason."
"And you? Could you refuse? They’re offering you a new miracle, a new chance."
Lena sneered at the chief’s words. She had read the fear in his eyes.
In the end, he was no different from her.
A weakling cursing weakness, fearing it, and yearning for salvation and miracles.
"Who knows. Maybe you’ll receive a miracle from that one’s hand, just like I did."
That was why she saw the chief as someone still hoping for a chance—someone who would cling to the Great Lord and hunger for Ascalas’s essence just as she had.
"...Stop spouting nonsense, monster."
But the chief’s response was not what she expected.
"Weakness is certainly a curse. It’s maddening that we should be trampled and devoured by the likes of you—nothing but worms from hell. But just because I hate that doesn’t mean I’ll sell my soul to some evil god who toys with monsters."
"H-how dare you say something like that..."
Shocked by values and a choice so utterly unlike her own, Lena froze in place.
The chief had merely chosen differently, guided by a different conviction, but the still-immature Lena could not understand that.
"I’ll die as a human. Die, monster!"
The chief raised the axe in his hand and charged. While the stunned Lena failed to react, the axe blade swept down to split her head open.
"Kkha..."
Just then, a giant spider crashed through the palisade in front of them and blocked the blow with its body.
The chief, pierced through by the Great Lord’s tentacle, dropped his axe and thrashed helplessly as he was dragged toward the Great Lord’s jaws, where venomous fangs gleamed.
"Die as a human?"
And Lena, seeing that, let out a small laugh.
Essence Infusion
"Aaaah... AAAAAH!"
Following the command, the venomous fangs that had sunk into the chief’s body began forcibly infusing him with Ascalas’s essence.
He would not have been able to preserve his self in the first place, since his own will had already collapsed. And because his compatibility had never been very high to begin with, his body mutated in an instant, black veins rising as it twisted violently.
Who said you could?
Forced to receive essence that way, the chief was reborn as one of Ascalas’s minions—a monster with a warped body, running wild as it attacked the villagers.
1. Pursue the mercenaries who escaped by using Lena.
"I will."
Lena, who had been looking with satisfaction at the village already beginning to be reduced to scorched ruin, understood the command given to her and bowed her head toward the Great Lord.
Then she exploded into motion, sprinting off with a burst of leg strength. Her targets were the mercenaries who, in the middle of the battle, had realized they could not win and fled.
"That way?"
The pursuit was easy. A wolf minion with an excellent sense of smell ran alongside her, tracking the enemies’ position.
Stupid human. You were wrong!
Grinding her teeth, Lena moved faster still. Even now, she could not accept the chief’s conviction.
For living things, surviving is the only answer. There is no right or wrong in that. To survive in this world by any means necessary—that, to her, was truth. That was the answer.
Whether she died as a human or as one of Ascalas’s minions, death itself was defeat. She believed that without a doubt.