Chapter 82: Chaos

Elizabeth clenched her teeth tightly and screamed in pure frustration.

“Damn it! Come out, Paragon!”

Unable to keep her secrets any longer, she finally summoned her Incarnation, revealing herself as a Spiralwalker in front of everyone present.

Paragon manifested in a brilliant burst of bright silver light. The dazzling knight immediately dove toward the monstrous Nightmare Beast Spirit Chimera before the creature could devour everyone else in the hall.

At the same time, Elizabeth leaped toward Alfrion, who continued laughing with vicious delight.

“Hahaha! It’s too bad, truly! I am simply better as a guild master than you!”

“W-What sort of power is this?! You’re much weaker than I am and yet…! I can’t find the strength in my knees to move… cough…! W-What is this black blood? You’re infecting my soul?! A curse? No, I am a Half-Blood Dragon. This shouldn’t affect me…!”

Camilla watched in growing horror as Alfrion began to change in a deeply unnatural way. His left arm swelled with dense muscles and twisted black flesh. Multiple red eyes snapped open across the surface of the limb, while a massive claw made of jagged ice surged outward from his hand.

“I’ll just have to remove you from this guild so I can take over it and protect it! The Adventurer Guild will once more have its dignity!”

“STOP FIGHTING!!!”

Before Alfrion could take another step, a small girl leaped out of nowhere. She drove her shoes straight into his face with surprising force and sent him crashing through dozens of chairs.

“Kuuaaaaggghh?!”

CRAAASH!

Alfrion screamed in agony as his body rolled across the floor, smashing several more seats before finally slamming hard into the far wall. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his eyes distorted with pain. His monstrous arm was now covered in dozens of knives made of pure flame that burned the black flesh into cinders.

“W-What the…?!” he coughed again, voice filled with disbelief. “T-That damn brat… is no human!!!”

As Alfrion continued coughing in anger and pain, Camilla looked up toward Elizabeth. Her eyes glowed faintly as she sensed something familiar deep within the girl.

Kindred.

“Wait, you’re…?”

“Guild Master!” Elizabeth ran toward her without hesitation. “Are you okay?! Oh no, you’ve been infected with Nightmare Essence. Wait there! This will hurt a little!”

“What do you mean with— Ugh?!”

FLASH!

Elizabeth had no time to waste. She immediately used Harmonious Restoration to suppress the Nightmare Curse before it could fully settle inside Camilla’s body and cause the same terrible fate that had once befallen her aunt.

At the same time, she called upon the help of Mongrel and Dryad to siphon away all the surrounding Nightmare Essence. Together they cleaned both the area and the guild master just in time.

“Ugh?! Nngghhh…! It fucking burns!” Camilla growled angrily as black scales began spreading across her body. “You brat…! You’re one… one of us, huh?”

“Eh?” Elizabeth’s eyes widened when she noticed that Camilla now had visible horns and scales along her skin.

It was not hard to put the pieces together.

“Heh, I’ll keep your secret,” Camilla said with a rough smile, gently patting the girl’s head before standing up once more. “What do you know about what’s going on, though? That bastard… is he using some kind of new drug or something? What the hell has gotten into him?!”

“It’s hard to explain,” Elizabeth replied carefully. “But Alfrion is suffering from some kind of Living Curse from another Dimension. Does that suffice as an explanation?”

“W-What?!” Camilla looked completely shocked. “A Living Curse from Another Dimension…? Huh, okay then… sure, I believe that after what just happened. He used to be way weaker than me, though! He was able to suppress me so easily… it’s unbelievable.”

Elizabeth stared at Camilla more closely, taking in her emerging features. “Lady Camilla, are you…?”

“I have an aunt who is a half Blood Dragon,” Camilla explained. “My grandmother moved from Yggdrasil long ago and settled down here. The bloodline has been pretty diluted over the generations. My mom had a few scales and one horn. My dad was just a normal human.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said with clear fascination in her voice.

It seemed that dragon bloodlines existed in many places, even among ordinary humans. Sometimes only a faint trace remained. Dragons had likely produced many children across thousands of years, allowing their bloodline to spread rapidly across different species and large families. Even if a person had never met a true dragon in their lifetime, they might still carry a small portion of that power if an ancient ancestor had shared it with their bloodline long ago.

“And Blood Dragons, huh?” Elizabeth continued with growing curiosity. “C-Can you turn into a big dragon? Wait, are you related to the royal family?!”

“You ask way too many questions for being a little shrimp!” Camilla said with a sneer, lightly nudging the girl’s head with her knuckles. “We can talk about that later. Wait, what’s that over there?!”

“ROOOAAAARRRRR!”

In the Arena, a giant creature began causing absolute chaos. It was a monstrous, mutated chimera that had fully transformed into a Feral Nightmare Beast.

“That’s Alfrion’s pet!” Camilla shouted. “What the hell has gotten into it?!”

The Chimera had mutated into a strange and deeply bizarre form. Its multiple heads constantly coughed up thick black blood. Its body had been forced back together with writhing black tentacles, while countless red eyes covered nearly every surface. Aside from its already aberrant appearance, the Chimera continued growing larger and uglier by the second. New arms tipped with sharp black claws sprouted from its sides. Thick scales and a hard exoskeleton rapidly formed over its flesh as it began crawling, slowly but with clear intent, toward the surviving candidates.

However, someone was already fighting the creature and protecting the others. A knight clad in shining silver armor swung a gleaming sword, unleashing powerful vertical and horizontal slashes one after another.

The knight floated easily in midair and avoided the monster’s claws with graceful precision. Every swing cleaved large chunks of flesh from the Chimera’s body and rapidly tore through its bulk. Golden and white flames burned across the creature wherever the blade struck. Yet the chunks of flesh that survived the attacks quickly mutated further, growing new heads, legs, and eyes before beginning to scramble toward the frightened candidates.

“What is that thing?!” Camilla demanded. “It’s doing everything wrong!”

“Hahah, it’s my… uh, Familiar,” Elizabeth admitted. “His name is Paragon, and yeah, he’s not doing a perfect job right now… Dryad, go help him!”

“Why me?!” Dryad asked angrily from her smaller form.

“You can eat it!” Elizabeth insisted without hesitation.

Dryad’s expression suddenly shifted into a vicious smile. Her tiny body rapidly expanded in size, transforming into a gigantic black tree that surged upward from beneath the ground. Thick roots and branches of black wood pierced the Chimera’s body like a massive spear.

CRAAASH!

“Gyaaaaarrggghhh!”

The Nightmare Chimera Beast screamed in pure agony. It quickly tore itself free from the wooden spear and began slashing at Dryad’s trunk with its sharp claws while firing beams of corrupted black flame.

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Character Illustration Time:

Dryad (baby form)

Archivald

Reinhardt

Mysterious Ghost Ghoul Girl (Her name is Yurei)

Hikari

Borfus

Camilla