The torch in the monster's right hand—or rather, the thing that served the function of a torch—illuminated the entire hall.
It wasn't a particularly spacious hall. The arched ceiling was quite low, and the coarse reliefs on the old stone walls flickered in the firelight. The carvings depicted a forgotten ancient race, not quite humanoid, more like draconic beings stripped of their horns. Beneath their blade-like forelimbs, undulating lines of granite formed the corpses of slaves at their feet. Beside the granite, skulls with their skin not yet fully rotted away burned atop the lids of several coffins, where the bodies of the butcher and some outsiders were piled.
The thing stood there with its back to them. It was humanoid, but its hips alone were at the height of a normal man. Its grayish-black body was gaunt and withered, yet from its hunched back downwards, it was covered in grayish-white bristles as long as a human arm. Besides its nauseatingly malformed body—somehow both emaciated and packed with muscle—its head was embedded in its chest cavity like a screw. Its back blocked the view, making it impossible to see in greater detail.
Sassel heard a sharp, grating sound, like a saw. He guessed the thing's teeth must be incredibly sharp.
The torch's light was blood-red and swirled with ribbon-like black objects. Held high above its head, the sanguine glow was almost ghostly.
Just then, the monster and its spectral torch twitched, as if it had smelled something. It turned its head, revealing a mouth that split its head in a straight line from crown to chin, like a crocodile's. Inside, three or four rows of misshapen, sharp teeth were clearly visible, embedded chaotically. Two pea-sized, pure gray eyes were set beneath the bristles on either side of its mouth, making the thing look like a sawfish with its head turned ninety degrees.
It breathed in a low rumble, the sound of a worn-out bellows. Below its chest, sharp ribs splayed outwards from its body, a grotesque invitation for a lover's embrace. It began to walk back the way it came. Unchewed intestines dribbled from its grayish-black maw as its gaze fixed on the darkness where they were hiding.
"This sword you gave me—are you sure it's not some piece of shit you can buy for two or three coppers?" Jeanne whispered beside him, her tone devoid of any fear.
"This sword is more valuable than your head," Sassel met her calm, pale-golden eyes, delivering a taunt that wasn't meant to be a taunt.
"Good."
The firelight crept forward inch by inch, like a blind man feeling his way along a cliff's edge, gradually consuming the darkness that concealed them. The creature's dull, gray eyes studied the people in the shadows, showing the interest of a predator that had spotted food.
Sassel saw its translucent eyelid flicker once. Then, the thing uttered a low, guttural murmur that sounded like a meaningless beastly howl. As he watched, unfazed, its gray pupils suddenly became two burning coals.
An instant later—
A wave of heat, thick with the stench of scorched flesh, swept toward them like a hurricane, filling the entrance to the hall. Then, he heard a scream—
The monster's scream.
A jet-black longsword flew across the ten-meter gap, pierced through the intense flames, and buried itself dead center in the creature's gaping maw. It made the thing swallow its foul, hot breath and its roar at the same time, turning them into a pained, agonized shriek.
In the blink of an eye, Jeanne had snatched the black-and-red longsword from Sassel's hand.
She crossed the ten-meter gap in an instant—hot on the heels of her thrown sword, like a peregrine falcon.
The thing fixed its furious eyes on the approaching woman and continued to roar, a mix of pain and rage. Its blood-soaked claws, as long as a human thigh, carved a dark arc through the air, swiping at the shorter figure before it. In the firelight, it looked like the wheel of a war chariot that had crushed countless corpses.
Jeanne, expressionless, ducked under the monster's claws and plunged her sword deep into its armpit. Then, with a twist and flick of her right wrist, she severed the attacking arm completely. Black, foul blood splattered across the floor and walls. The monster howled and swung its torch wildly. The dozens of sharp ribs on its chest opened like saw-teeth and shot out, trying to bite the small human in half. From a distance, it looked like a crocodile leaping from a river to snatch a zebra.
Ignoring the attack, she leaped high into the air and grabbed the black longsword embedded in its mouth. Her other sword, she braced against the saw-like ribs on the monster's chest. With a bizarre exertion of force, the Inquisitor rammed the sword through the monster's entire head. In the next moment, she yanked the blade stuck in the creature's mouth downwards. Blood gushed out as if from a slashed wineskin.
The sound of tearing cloth.
From its mouth all the way down to its groin, the monster's entire body—was split open.
The monster, nearly torn in two, collapsed to the ground. She expressionlessly stomped on its head and, with a single swing, lopped the head off from where it was embedded in its chest.
"Oh, how remarkable," Sassel sauntered over, applauding Miss Jeanne. "I thought you might need some help, but it seems you can handle everything on your own."
"The timing was good, so I struck early. The other reason is that your sword is sturdy enough," she said, her face a blank mask as she kicked the severed head away. "You don't get an opportunity like this every time. Otherwise, my team wouldn't have been sent here, and they wouldn't have died until only I was left."
"Also—"
Jeanne turned her face to him and held out her forearm. It was laced with several clean cuts. Her already damaged bracer had shattered like paper, and purplish-red blood was gushing from her arm. Through the wounds, he could even see the white of bone—the cuts had clearly been made by the monster's sharp ribs.
"—Heal me," she said.
The sword hadn't blocked the attack completely.
Sassel noticed her brow was furrowed, but she showed no sign of pain.
"It seems you're quite used to saying one thing and doing another. And you're quite used to... never mind," he said, a faint light glowing in his hand as he placed it over the inquisitor's forearm. "Fixing a wound like this consumes a lot of life force—not yours, of course. Plus, I have to filter out the contamination to prevent your soul from collapsing. The drain during this process is significant, and my energy reserves are limited. So, before you charge out like a fucking wild boar next time, could you give me a heads-up?"
"I'll try," she said without even raising her eyes.
What a half-assed tone. Looks like she's the type to just do whatever she wants, Sassel thought, not holding out much hope.
After finishing the healing, he began to absorb the life force from the guard and the monster and turned his attention to the dead Hounds.
Amidst the already blackened bloodstains lay bodies strewn everywhere: a naked young woman with her skull split open was hung from a stone pillar; a man with his belly sliced open, his intestines trailing on the floor, was curled up in a corner; a middle-aged man who had died clawing his own throat out, his face frozen in an expression of unbearable agony, lay atop a coffin. Strange black beetles were squirming in the pile of dead, wriggling through the mangled bodies, as if gnawing on the corpses and licking the sticky, foul blood.
Sassel crouched down. He reached out a hand. The moment he touched one of the bodies, a dozen or so beetles burrowed into his skin as fast as shadows—
"How interesting—"
He shook his head and casually snapped his fingers. A grayish-black ripple spread through his body. In an instant, the beetles swarmed frantically, as if sensing something utterly terrifying. Like a black tide, the ones that had burrowed into his skin quickly scurried out and crawled away. The ones that hadn't yet entered scrambled out of the corpse pile in a panic, fleeing the source of the ripple. Some beetles even crashed into each other in their haste.
Soon, they had scattered completely, rapidly fleeing the small hall.
"Those are the beetles of Hod, the God of Death..." Jeanne's brow furrowed. "Why the hell are these disgusting things mixed in with the Hounds? Black sorcerer—what the hell has your Empress gotten into bed with?"
Sassel shot her a look, his face impassive.
"If I knew what Nero was planning, I wouldn't have reincarnated into this shithole."