Chapter 24 – Night of the Bloodghouls

Ninety gold coins.

That was what Dylan had earned by selling every Parasitic Tree seed he had brought out. Even then, he had bundled them together at a steep discount because he needed the money at once.

He could still remember the furtive gleam in the goateed merchant’s eyes as the man deliberately drove down the price.

Given more time, Dylan could easily have made twice as much.

Time, however, was the one thing he did not have.

It was the largest sum of money he had ever held, and he spent it without the slightest hesitation.

After paying the inflated price of fifty-five gold coins for a Reversion Elixir, Dylan rode without rest toward Fenrad, a border village whose residents had all been relocated so it could serve as a treatment station for the wounded.

After Bella contracted Bloodblight, she had been sent to Fenrad Church along with the other victims. A priest used Holy Light each day to suppress their transformation.

Even with that treatment, they could last no more than three months. By the time the news reached Dylan, an entire month had already passed.

Now the deadline was close, and Dylan did not dare waste a moment.

Perhaps it was because of the parasite, but lately he needed less and less sleep.

That was probably a good thing. It gave him more time to travel.

The extra gold also let him exchange horses along the way and ride through the night.

He had encountered a few dangers, but he still reached the border earlier than expected.

Dylan dismounted on a narrow trail some distance from the village. He had no intention of riding openly through the gate.

One look at the half of his face covered in hyphae would invite questions he could never answer. If he wanted to see his daughter, he would have to slip inside unnoticed.

He untied the reins and slapped the horse on the rump. As he watched it disappear down the road, Dylan marveled that he had ever lived extravagantly enough to abandon a perfectly good mount.

The sun had already set. Darkness would cover his approach.

He clutched the parcel containing the elixir close to his chest. The nearer he drew to the village, the tighter the knot in his stomach became.

They were almost at the three-month limit. Had Bella truly held on this long?

What if the Reversion Elixir did not work?

What if something else had already...

“Bella, please be all right...”

Dylan suddenly frowned and sniffed hard.

At some point, the smell of charred wood and blood had begun drifting through the air.

He froze for an instant, then sprinted to the crest of the hill. The whole of Fenrad was burning.

Figures flickered among the flames. From the village came faint screams and battle cries beneath the clash of metal.

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What was happening? Had the Vampires attacked?

No. This had to be a raid. A small outpost like this could never withstand an entire army.

What about Bella?

Dylan spotted the church at once. Thank the gods, it was not burning, though danger could reach it at any moment.

He had to get to Bella, now!

The moment Dylan entered the village, it felt as though he had stepped into hell.

Smoke and sparks churned through the night sky. Sticky blood clung to the soles of his boots, and the thatched roofs on either side of him burned and collapsed.

Three routed soldiers suddenly burst from a house. Terror filled their soot-blackened faces as they raced past Dylan and fled toward the edge of the village.

Moments later, a horrified scream rang out behind him.

Dylan looked back. One of the men lay on the ground with his chest torn open, twitching through his final moments. The other two soldiers had vanished.

Beside the fallen man crouched a vaguely human shape, devouring still-living flesh like a wild beast.

“A Bloodghoul...”

For the moment, the Bloodghoul seemed absorbed in its meal and paid Dylan no attention.

Dylan had no wish to tangle with it. He turned to leave, only to find another one standing in his path.

This Bloodghoul looked like a young woman. She stared straight at Dylan with crimson eyes full of ravenous hunger.

On closer inspection, protruding growths of hornlike tissue covered her skin, making her look even less human than Dylan did.

She clearly had no intention of letting him pass. Dylan drew the longsword at his waist.

The weapon was forged from tempered steel and was considerably better than the blade he had lost in the dungeon. Whether it could deal with the Bloodghoul before him was another matter.

The Bloodghoul bent her knees and shot toward him.

So fast!

[Parry LV4]

Dylan barely raised his sword across his chest in time. Sparks flew as claws struck steel, and the tremendous force hurled both him and his weapon several yards backward.

He slammed into a wall. His organs seemed to turn over as he coughed up a mouthful of blood threaded with hyphae.

Strong. That one strike told him everything he needed to know. Her Stats far exceeded his own, even at his peak.

A Bloodghoul’s strength depended directly on the strength of the person who had been transformed.

Dylan cursed the border guards in his heart. How had they allowed so many powerful fighters to contract Bloodblight?

The Bloodghoul gave him no chance to recover. Her second thrust drove straight for his throat.

In that desperate instant, Dylan tore a scroll from his clothes and activated it at her.

[Blindness]

“Graaaaaah!”

Dylan had known he was traveling into danger. Of course he had come prepared.

The scroll had cost five gold coins, and for a short time it robbed her of sight.

What he had not expected was for the Bloodghoul to become even more violent. Instead of stopping, she lunged at him by instinct alone.

“Ah!”

The claws meant for Dylan’s neck pierced his left arm. Their tremendous force pinned him to the wall behind him.

A bloodthirsty smile spread across the Bloodghoul’s face.

Her other claw swept blindly toward the place where Dylan’s body should have been.

The talons gouged furrows through the wall, but found no prey.

“Die!”

Dylan’s roar came from behind her. He struck with all the strength he possessed.

[Berserk LV3]

[Spinning Slash LV5]

The tempered-steel longsword bit into the Bloodghoul’s hardened neck. It cut two-thirds of the way through before she managed to catch the blade with her claws.

The Bloodghoul could not understand how the man had appeared behind her. She had clearly pinned him to the wall only a moment ago.

She tried to force the sword away, but blood gushed from the terrible wound in her neck, and the strength steadily drained from her body.

“I said die!”

After a brief struggle, Dylan’s furious bellow filled the street. The Bloodghoul’s head and one of her hands fell to the ground together.

“Hah... hah...”

Covered in blood and gasping for breath, Dylan kicked the headless corpse aside with savage satisfaction.

Then he went to retrieve the arm he had deliberately torn off.

He bound the severed limb back in place with a strip of bandage and felt the hyphae writhing slowly as they repaired the break.

Dylan was growing disturbingly accustomed to this altered body.

He only wondered how much more flesh would fuse with the hyphae this time. There was not much of him left that was entirely human.

Behind him, the other Bloodghoul showed no concern for its companion’s death. It continued feasting on what remained of the soldier.

Dylan offered the dead man his heartfelt gratitude. He could not survive a fight with another Bloodghoul in his present state.

He drained an entire Mana Potion. It would help the hyphae within him mend his internal injuries.

Dragging his heavy body, Dylan continued toward the church.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but the uproar around him seemed to be fading.

Was the battle nearing its end?

He prayed that the Bloodghouls had not won. He also prayed that he would not find his daughter already transformed into one of them.

If Bella truly had turned...

Dylan tightened his grip on his longsword.

Then he would free his daughter from her suffering himself.