"Hsss... gurgle..."
The Crawler hanging upside down on the brick wall didn't blindly pounce and bite like a mindless beast.
That deathly pale face, torn all the way to the ears, slowly tilted its head at a grotesque angle that utterly defied human cervical structure. The pupil-less whites of its eyes stared dead at Erika, nostrils flaring, as if meticulously deciphering just how much living breath was still concealed beneath this intensely rotting "dead flesh."
And behind it, dozens of murky eyes crouched in the darkness, completely motionless.
As if waiting for the signal to begin the feast.
The disguise had lost all meaning.
The instant this thought flashed through his mind, Erika felt no fear. Only an extreme, icy clarity.
The very moment that foul, coppery saliva slid into the corner of his mouth—
ROAR!
The hanging Crawler violently attacked!
No wind-up. No warning. Its grotesquely reversed limbs viciously pushed off the mossy wall. Its massive body launched like a meat cannonball shot from a barrel, its blood-red maw gaping with a nauseating stench, lunging straight for Erika's throat!
It was so fast that all that registered was a rapidly expanding black void of rotting, blackened teeth.
"Die!"
Erika's muscles, wound to their absolute limit, explosively unleashed!
There was nowhere to hide in the sewage ditch's blind spot. He had no retreat, and absolutely no intention of retreating. His remaining left hand locked in a death grip around the Night Patrol's dagger. Meeting that tearing maw rushing toward his face, he viciously stabbed upward!
CLANG! SHLICK!
The dagger flawlessly pierced the gap of the Crawler's torn lower jaw!
The blade scraped against broken teeth, emitting a teeth-grinding metallic screech, before sinking deep into the soft tissue of its upper palate. The sensation was like stabbing into a piece of rotting meat that had soaked too long, yet possessed a grotesque, rubbery toughness.
But the monster's inhuman strength was terrifying.
The massive impact force slammed down the dagger's hilt and straight into Erika's left arm. Crushing downward from wrist to elbow, he heard his own wrist bones emit a sickening crack, followed by his spine slamming heavily against the sewage ditch's stone wall.
BAM!
The impact blacked out his vision, a wave of sweet copper welling up in his throat.
"SCREEE—!"
The Crawler let out an ear-piercing shriek at point-blank range. Its torn, gaping maw was dead-locked by the dagger, foul black blood dripping down the blade to splatter across Erika's face and neck.
Just as Erika used his shattered, agonizing left hand to rigidly hold the dagger, barely holding back the jaws trying to consume his head—
One of the monster's spider-like, backward-bending, grotesquely thick right hind limbs suddenly lashed out like a fleshy whip!
Aimed directly at Erika's completely defenseless right flank!
There was no arm there to block—only the torn white robe and a thin layer of skin stretched over his ribs.
SHLICK!
Five long, black, razor-sharp nails met zero resistance. They pierced the fabric, viciously burying themselves into his right intercostal muscles!
"Ugh!"
A suppressed, choked groan squeezed from the depths of Erika's throat. The blinding agony washed his vision out in white; he nearly lost his grip on the dagger.
But immediately after, the source of his ultimate terror wasn't the tearing pain of shredded muscle.
It was a kind of... grotesque coldness.
The black nails impaling his ribs felt weirdly pliant, acting less like bone and more like hollow syringes.
The instant they punctured his skin, a stream of frigid, slippery, and disturbingly lifelike liquid injected directly into his bloodstream from the nail tips!
The sensation was absolute horror.
Not pain, but a bone-deep, absolute zero cold. The moment that liquid breached his body, it felt like countless icy black threadworms frantically burrowing through his veins, crawling straight toward his heart!
In a mere second, his entire right side utterly lost all sensation. Not numb, but as if that half of his body had been simply erased from existence. He tried to move, but couldn't.
"Gurgle… hisss..."
Scenting the sweetness of living human blood, the dozen Crawlers waiting in the alley went completely feral. Hair-raising, wet scraping sounds surged from all directions as those deathly pale, hollow eyes rapidly closed in.
Death had arrived.
That icy foreign venom had already spread into his chest cavity, closing in on his still-beating heart. His consciousness was being forcibly peeled away.
At this razor's edge, just as that lethal cold was about to brush against his heart—
HUMMMM—!!!
A deep, overwhelmingly domineering resonance suddenly detonated from deep within Erika's left arm!
BOOM!
Blinding, searing-hot platinum light erupted without warning from Erika's left arm!
The light was too pure, too absolute—as if it had violently smashed a fragment of the sun straight into this pitch-black alleyway of stench and mud!
"SCREEEE AAAHHHH—!!!"
The alpha Crawler, still straddling Erika with its nails embedded in his ribs, let out a despairing shriek ten times more agonizing than before under the point-blank platinum glare!
Wherever its pale skin was touched by the light, it instantly billowed volumes of stinking black smoke, as if splashed with boiling acid! Flesh began to blister, ulcerate, and dissolve at a visible rate!
It frantically withdrew its black nails from Erika's ribs. Its massive body, like an ignited moth caught in the glare, tumbled backward, crashing heavily into the muddy water to convulse in agony.
The intense light illuminated the entire dead-end alley through the sewage ditch.
The dozen Crawlers that had just surged down like a tide hit the platinum halo as if slamming into a solid wall of fire. They hissed in terror, clutching their scorched, ulcerated eyes. The once-inescapable encirclement instantly collapsed, the monsters fleeing madly like cockroaches scattering from the light into the deepest, darkest crevices!
Erika half-knelt in the bloody water of the sewage ditch, gasping heavily.
The left sleeve of his robe had been instantly evaporated by the platinum flare, leaving only bare skin and that complex Mark. Now, the Mark flowed like molten lava, radiating a blinding light.
The searing energy surged in reverse up his left arm, flooding his chest like a purifying wildfire, instantly incinerating the invading icy venom! The burning sensation from within his own blood vessels was agonizing, yet it forcefully dragged him back from the brink of death.
He stayed kneeling there, cold sweat mixing with muddy blood, dripping from his chin.
The alley was empty. The Crawlers had fled. Only the alpha monster's ruined carcass remained, still billowing black smoke and twitching in the muddy water.
But there was not a single trace of joy at surviving in his eyes.
The light of the Mark was dimming at a visible rate.
His already scarce life-saving energy, spent on this forced, reactive eruption, had been completely drained. The surging, burning sensation in his left arm was rapidly fading, replaced by a bottomless, blackout-inducing weakness.
Trembling, Erika looked down.
He ignored the agony of his fractured wrist, staring dead at his right ribs.
Five bloody holes.
The flesh was curled outward, dark red blood steadily seeping out. Even though the venom had been burned away by the Mark, the penetrating muscle tears were very real. Every ragged, rapid breath pulled at the damaged intercostal muscles, bringing piercing, drilling agony.
With his broken left hand, moving with excruciating difficulty, he covered the bloody holes in his ribs, trying to stem the bleeding.
It's over.
Energy depleted. Wrist fractured. Right ribs severely wounded. Heavy blood loss.
And in this wasteland, that platinum flare that had just pierced the night was like lighting a beacon. It was an outrageously arrogant declaration of his exact location to every predator in Darenz—especially to that madman named Cole.
He half-knelt in the bloody water, waiting in the dead silence of the dark for the impending slaughter.
One second. Ten seconds. Half a minute.
Only the wind, moaning through the gaps in the slums, filled the alleyway.
No one came. The iron boots of the Night Patrol didn't march. That twisted figure in the filthy white robe didn't descend from the sky.
Only the bone-piercing coldness, along with the blood continuously welling from his ribs, slowly drained the last remaining warmth from his body.
Can't stay here.
I'll die. Even if I'm not hunted down, I'll bleed out and freeze to death in this ditch.
Erika clamped his jaw shut, using his remaining right arm to grip the rough stone wall of the sewage ditch. Like a corpse forcibly defying the laws of death, inch by agonizing inch, he dragged himself out of that pool of muddy water mixed with blood and entrails.
"Huff… hah..."
With every breath, the five bloody holes in his ribs wheezed and leaked air, feeling like countless dull knives scraping against his lungs. His left wrist hung limply at his side; with every halting step, the broken bones grated sickeningly against flesh.
Where to?
The edges of his vision began to irreversibly blacken. The mud, moss, and monster carcasses before him twisted and dissolved in a violent wave of vertigo.
So cold.
Darenz's chill, like countless icy steel needles, was slowly driving upward from the marrow of his feet straight into his heart.
But in his delirious daze, the freezing, nauseating sewage beneath his feet seemed to simply disappear.
Replaced by an extremely soft, plush sensation. Like stepping barefoot onto a vast, expensive, perfectly dry wool carpet.
The lingering smell of blood and corpse-rot in his nostrils also faded. A thread of extremely familiar, cloying, aristocratic incense, carrying a faint trace of warmth, quietly rose in the air.
A patch of orange-red light appeared in his fading vision.
A fireplace.
Dry wood crackling softly within. The leaping flames drove away all the darkness, casting a warm glow onto the high ceiling, illuminating the silent mural of the six figures on the wall.
So warm.
In this wasteland where every breath carried ice crystals and man-eating monsters lurked everywhere, it was the only place left with any warmth.
Erika's cracked lips parted slightly. His unfocused, dilating pupils stared dead at that "firelight" in the void.
He forgot that the one who once stood on that carpet was Cole.
A dying stray dog has no dignity. It only wants to get close to the fire.
He even unconsciously raised his left arm, fractured wrist dangling, fingers slightly curled, desperately wanting to touch those dancing sparks, so close.
The firelight was right ahead.
Driven by the most primal, deepest biological craving for warmth, Erika dragged his right leg, long since numb, and took the first step toward that phantom firelight.
Squelch.
His heavy boot stepped into the very real mud.
Pulling it out made a desperate, sickeningly sticky sound.
That warm firelight, like a match extinguished by a sudden downpour, shattered on his retinas into a patch of absolute, icy blackness.
Thud.
No warning. No struggle.
The frozen stray dog collapsed heavily into the stinking black mud.