Chapter 51

A massive hand rose. Erabelle shut her eyes tight, bracing her teeth together.

Here it comes.

She tensed her muscles, conditioned by years of instinct to absorb the impact, but... nothing happened.

Cautiously, she opened one eye. Virgo Hag was gone.

Or rather, his head was.

Only his head had vanished. The rest of his corpse twitched in place, shuddering like a fresh kill in the throes of a seizure, the severed neck gaping open in a grotesque, ragged ring.

Is he dead? Really...? Just like that?

Thud. Thump. Thump.

Erabelle turned her gaze toward the dull, wet impacts.

Through the heavy plume of black smog, a dark silhouette emerged, clutching the severed head by its hair. He slammed it against a crumbling concrete barrier—once, twice, again—with a sickening, rhythmic crunch.

Her body froze solid.

Commander Dezeb Avganis strolled out from the haze, casually running a hand through his hair to shake off the spray of blood.

His fingers dripped crimson. Flecks of spatter painted his uniform, his neck, and his pale face, though the serene composure of his expression made the violence infinitely more terrifying. He had not emerged unscathed: a palm-sized flap of torn skin hung loose from his cheek, swinging slightly as if he were indulging in some horrific, bodily performance.

Still paralyzed, Erabelle locked eyes with him.

They burned a vivid, unnatural red—reflective and sharp, like light catching the eyes of a nocturnal predator in the dark.

Beneath the dangling skin on his cheek, something writhed within the exposed crimson muscle. A chaotic, squirming mass—resembling maggots, drowning rats, rotting tissue, or a nest of tangled vipers...

Wait. I’ve seen this before. Countless times.

"Erabelle."

Dezeb closed the distance between them, calling her name in his usual, level tone.

It was repulsive. That exquisite synthesis of flawless beauty and abject horror made him appear all the more monstrous. As if reading her thoughts, his mouth curved into a faint smile, and an impossibly long tongue snaked out to lick the raw, exposed flesh of his cheek.

"How do I look to you right now?"

"Well..."

"Disgusting?"

"...Yes, sir. I’m sorry."

To deny it would have been a useless, transparent lie. Erabelle watched his face intently.

Right. It’s not as if you ever possessed a conscience to begin with.

He smirked at her honesty, his gaze holding hers without blinking. Relentless. Unyielding. The atmospheric pressure around him grew suffocating.

"The rest of you remains quite beautiful."

"I am aware."

Ah. He knows. His stare seemed to grow a fraction colder. She tried to convince herself it was merely her imagination. Hope was a fragile, necessary delusion out here.

"......"

"......"

Why is he still staring? What does he want from me?

He used his tongue from the inside to push against the torn crater in his cheek. A hard bulge rose against the skin like a piece of candy, until the loose flap finally detached and fell away completely. He tilted his head, smiling as if waiting for her to offer a proper response.

Under the mounting terror, Erabelle forced her throat to work.

"I have a cell-regeneration kit in my pack."

His eyes darkened further. Wrong answer.

"I have high-grade analgesics as well."

"...Unnecessary."

Wrong again. Just tell me what you want so I can give it to you— Erabelle screamed in the silence of her own mind, trapped beneath his freezing gaze.

"C-Coffee, perhaps?"

"I am injured, Lieutenant."

"I carry a fast-acting tissue sealant."

"How fortunate for you."

"Would you like me to apply it?"

"No."

"......"

A change of clothes, then? She glanced at his ruined, blood-soaked tunic. She had an emergency men's standard-issue tunic packed away. But before she could speak the offer aloud, Dezeb cut her off.

"I don't need it."

He planted both arms against the shattered concrete wall behind her, trapping her within his frame, and leaned down.

"Then... if there is nothing else you require, sir, I’ll return to my detail—"

"You won't."

"Understood, sir."

The instant the words left her mouth, his lips were on hers.

The damp, suffocating malice of a monster forced its way past her lips, tracing the line of her teeth. Yet Erabelle, conditioned by nearly two years of brutal survival, obediently yielded.

His grotesquely long tongue scraped against the roof of her mouth, slick with saliva. In that suffocating embrace, she felt the subtle shift of his cheeks—he was smiling against her mouth.

"You certainly have a resilient stomach, don't you?"

Dezeb pressed his mouth deeper against hers, drinking her breath as he spoke.

"What will you do if I decide to take this all the way right here?"

Flushed and lightheaded, Erabelle acted on pure reflex, reaching up to catch the loose piece of torn skin hanging from his cheek and gently pressing it back into place over the wound.

"......"

"......"

Without warning, Dezeb dropped his head onto her shoulder, his body curling slightly as he began to tremble.

Is the pain really that severe?

He stayed like that, shaking quietly with suppressed laughter—until the mirth vanished and his weight went completely limp against her.

"...Ha."

A sharp curse slipped from his lips.

"...Why are you like this?"

The voice rasped directly against her ear, bone-chilling and raw. His fingers dug into her upper arms, his nails lengthening into sharp, elongated claws that pierced her uniform. Erabelle shifted her eyes slightly to confirm the mutation.

Yet in the very next breath, the pressure vanished. He drew back and straightened up as if nothing had occurred.

He was, once again, impeccably, flawlessly human.

Every trace of the grotesque entity had evaporated. His dark hair ruffled softly in the ash-laden breeze, his pale skin smooth and pristine, like polished porcelain. A breath-takingly handsome man stared down at her.

Though his eyes remained dead cold.

Right... I really don't have much time left, Erabelle thought, meeting his gaze.

"I must take my leave," Dezeb said softly, his tone dripping with gentle courtesy. "Watch your step on the way back, Lieutenant."

The sudden kindness felt far more eerie than his violence. As he turned on his heel, the Dogs materialized from the smog and fell into step behind him.

Erabelle stood alone, staring at his retreating back until his silhouette dissolved into the gray haze.

...So that’s how it is.

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them slowly.

I’ve been marked.

The back of her neck had been prickling for minutes. Fortunately, she still had one objective left to clear if she wanted to score points on her assessment.

Huddling against the chill, she let out a long, shuddering breath.

Still... where in the world am I?

Judging by the composition of the smog, it was an active conflict zone. It was a good thing she had said her farewells to Count Valba Aracan earlier; the odds of her returning from this deployment alive were rapidly dropping to zero.

She pulled out her tactical pad and brought up the field coordinates: Grid 34-4.

Maybe it’s time to stop fighting it and just give up.

"Why the hell am I on a different continent?"

She had no confidence in her ability to navigate back to her unit alone. She couldn't even open a directional maze—the local signum was likely jammed by whatever massive entity had shed its skin here.

Before long, the ambient atmospheric interference would render her completely immobile. Without a Shield Disk, she was nothing more than high-grade bait.

"......"

As she stood frozen in thought, a sudden movement made her flinch and step back.

Virgo Hag’s headless corpse was dragging itself toward her across the rubble.

"Uh..."

From the ragged opening of his severed neck, dozens of thick, dark-red tentacles squirmed out, digging into the cracked earth to pull the torso forward. The rest of the hollowed-out body slouched limply behind them, dragged along like an empty suit of clothes. The mass of tendrils was clearly the actual host.

Erabelle took a measured step sideways, trying to calculate its path.

Yep... it’s definitely tracking me.

She turned on her heel and broke into a sprint.

Naturally, she didn't get far.

Ugh.

Erabelle squatted beside a small, crackling fire, having gathered scattered pieces of shellwood to burn.

There was nowhere left to run. Stepping just a few meters outside the perimeter of the ruins revealed a terrain crawling with high-class threats. Familiar horrors were vastly preferable to unfamiliar ones.

Fifteen minutes after fleeing, she had simply circled back to her starting point and built a camp. Virgo Hag—or rather, the tentacle cluster animating his corpse—sat quietly beside her near the embers. Apparently, the creature was cold too.

Which made sense. Unless it had boots for every individual tendril, it was essentially naked in the sub-zero air.

"......"

"......"

Clutching its own crushed, mangled head against its chest with its tendrils drooping in the dirt, the creature looked oddly miserable. Likely a side effect of having its skull smashed repeatedly by Dezeb.

Then again, surviving a direct encounter with Dezeb Avganis was a miracle in itself. The Commander possessed no sense of restraint whatsoever.

Erabelle poked at the embers with a charred stick, shivering as the wind whipped through the broken concrete.

I’m going to freeze to death out here.

What now...?

The surrounding ruins appeared to be the remains of an ancient research facility. The smog made it impossible to map the full layout, but the footprint was colossal—mangled and crushed beneath the shed carapace of an even larger leviathan.

Whatever monster had left that skin behind, its lingering aura seemed to be keeping the other wasteland beasts at bay. Except, of course, for the pathetic creature sitting beside her.

Still, the apocalyptic reality of this foreign world wasn't her burden to solve. Not when her own countdown was already ticking down to zero.