Chapter 63: The Hunter Reveals His Fangs

"You should feel authorized."

The Cult Leader’s voice contained a peculiar, mocking tone.

"A trash-born commoner like you..."

Then the man raised his cleaver once more.

"...will play the role of a channel by which all the haughtiness of Sterling family will be eradicated."

There was a brief moment of silence that fell upon Black Snake Ravine.

The green mist flowed leisurely past the retainers’ corpses.

A cold wind sang through the narrow fissures of the basalt cliffs.

And behind Lucian, a certain silver-haired youth continued to sob against the rock wall, his whole body shaking in a state of despair.

Lucian stood on his own amidst the glistening red earth and white mist.

For a few seconds, the swordsman stood motionless on the spot.

And so-

With an almost excruciating slowness,

the casual ease with which Lucian had entered the forest began to fade away.

The swordsman did not draw his blade.

Did not take up a battle stance.

Did not release a single ripple of his aura.

Instead, the playful little smile that Lucian had worn since the very beginning faded away from his lips.

The leisured expression that he wore while bantering with Evelyn-

The amused air that Lucian took on when he played along with Eric’s juvenile antics-

They all vanished away in an instant.

Lucian’s face became expressionless and cold.

Even the very atmosphere around the young man seemed to change with the shift in his expression.

For the first time, Lucian saw the Cult Leader’s crimson eyes narrow behind his mask.

Lucian opened his mouth and said-

"You are committing a single, fatal error."

The swordsman’s voice was almost too quiet.

"You continue to assume Evelyn is the one who walks into your snare."

Lucian turned his attention to the three masked cultists.

"But you never paused to consider..."

An invisible pressure started to build up around him.

"...who walked into whose snare?"

Lucian’s face tightened into an expressionless mask.

No emotion whatsoever crossed Lucian’s face.

No trace of anger, surprise, or even excitement.

Only an air of utter and complete composure that belied something far more intimidating than some common student.

It was an expression of a prehistoric beast looking down upon an insect that had dared to trespass.

The ambient temperature of the gorge did not fall any lower.

But then something else happened.

The sickly green mist that surrounded Lucian’s boots ceased flowing forward.

Instead, the mist started to flow backward, being visibly pushed away by some tremendous force emanating from the swordsman’s body.

The air around the young man became visibly warped.

Tiny silver-like cracks formed around Lucian’s shoulder.

It was as if there were shards of broken glass floating in mid-air, making crackling noises as they did so.

Crack.

Crack.

Cracks continued to resonate all around the young man’s body.

Lucian slowly raised his head.

And the brilliant silver glow emanating from his eyes was far from commonplace golden brown ones.

Cold.

Despondent-looking.

Unnatural.

The air of space in this world was pierced by the strange aura that radiated out from Lucian, causing the white mists all around to shine with a strange metallic sheen.

The three cultists became stiff as boards.

Even the Cult Leader’s muscles twitched involuntarily.

Lucian’s gaze swept past the three cultists.

"...You."

His lips curved into a faint smile.

And yet, the tone carried with the young man’s voicing seemed to carry directly into the minds of his prey.

The three cultists all flinched simultaneously.

Lucian’s facial expression was still as devoid of emotion as ever it was.

"You talk too much."

---

The Sector 3-B main plaza was a relatively round space that was dug up from a forest of colossal elder-oak trees.

The giant trees loomed overhead, their petrified trunks coiling up toward the heavens while rivulets of dark amber sap trickled down their bark-covered surface and vanished into the thick moss at their base.

However, something was amiss with the dense mist that floated within the High-Risk Zone.

Instead of gently wafting around the trunks, the fog instead floated in massive clods and patches, as if the thick vapor had no will of its own.

And thus-

A thin streak of crimson light cut through the dense atmosphere.

A distress call.

For barely a second, the High-Frequency Beam of the exclusive Silverwood Military Distress Beacon rang out, signifying an emergency call for backup.

The distress beacon’s ring had only lasted for a fraction of a second before it cut off completely.

A sudden gust of wind billowed the leaves, and several thin white sparks were seen crackling through the gaps in between.

Then a flash of black hair and a blur of violet-black uniform appeared in the glade in the blink of an eye.

Evelyn Sterling.

Her silver ribbon blew wildly behind the young lady as if it were trailing a streamer of red-violet lightsaber.

Instead, a look of suppressed panic, mixed with tension, shone through the otherwise composed eyes of the girl.

Her breath came unsteadily.

The moment that the girl had seen the distress beacon’s frequency pulse through her personal terminal, instinct, training, and experience took over.

Evelyn’s body was already sprinting even as she crossed four miles of monster-infested territory in barely six minutes of running.

First-Order Stage 3 territories were strewn across the entire map like confetti scattered across the ground, and Evelyn had cut past them all with reckless abandon, ignoring the frantic voices yelling through the earpiece in the radio chatter.

Even as she ran past the large and cumbersome stone formations that littered first-sector territory, the girl did not think.

Even as the oppressive weight of the High-Risk Zone was beginning to tell on her legs, the lack beauty did not stop.

When that single pinpoint of a distress beacon signal pulsed across the girl’s vision, the world outside ceased to matter to her in the slightest.

Evelyn skidded to a stop at the middle of Sector 3-B’s main plaza.

Her knee-length boots dug messy trenches into the mossy ground before she finally stopped, one hand wrapped firmly around the hilt of her rapier.

Her knuckles had gone bone-white from the pressure.

A pair of piercing azure eyes scanned the premises.

Every single tree.

Every single flickering shadow.

Every monster lurking behind the fog and thickets.

Then-

"Lucian-!"

Her voice rung through the middle of the glade, only for it to stop as it hit the great oaken trees ringing the main plaza.

Then-

Nothing.

No beast nor creature made a peep.

Evelyn frowned.

There was something wrong...

The ambient temperature was not right.

It was almost...suffocatingly hot and heavy, like standing in a sealed furnace made of copper plates with no means of release for the trapped heat of the metal.

Evelyn’s instincts screamed at her to move.

The young lady quickly dropped her guard, her senses sharpening with every heartbeat.

The grassy terrain beneath her steel-toed boots was not normal pine needle and moss mulch, but rather a series of etched markings carved directly into the ancient stone of the plaza floor.

A strange array.

Even more strange was the fact that dark crimson fluid oozed along the grooves that ran along the etched pattern. What was more amazing was the fact that despite the fluid’s apparent lack of movement, there was in fact a low-frequency pulse emanating from the congealed blood.

Evelyn’s pupils narrowed.

A prepared array.

The young lady’s stomach twisted as she took a step back.

"A trap..."

The word barely escaped Evelyn’s lips before the young lady had already shifted her stance backwards.

Too late.

Along the perimeter of the main plaza, six thick tendrils of dark crimson light shot up from the ground.

THUM!

THUM!

THUM!

THUM!

THUM!

THUM!

They shot up into the dark grey clouds above the plaza in a dazzling display of firepower before six columns of dark energy connected the six tendrils with one another, forming one great inverted dome over the main plaza.

The young lady’s face changed as another blast of corrupted energy blew across the plaza, causing the fog to swirl and twirl wildly in the air.

The very air inside that dome changed almost at once, taking on the appearance of a thick crimson mist that stained the ground, trees, sky, and all surrounding materials, creating the effect of a prison formed from blood.

Evelyn gripped her rapier a little tighter and peered past the wall of blood mist.

Out there, something was waiting. That was what the young lady decided as she sensed it.

And this second time, Evelyn had no doubt whatsoever in her mind.

The distress beacon was not a call for backup.

It was bait.