Chapter 4: The Corpse-eating Beetles

The torch in the monster's right hand—or whatever served as a torch, illuminated the entire hall. 

Although referred to as a hall, it wasn't particularly spacious, with a low, arched ceiling and ancient stone walls adorned with rugged reliefs shined by flickering firelights. The reliefs depicted an ancient, forgotten race that didn't resemble any humanoid creatures but rather dragons without horns. Underneath their rudimentary, blade-like forelimbs, undulating lines of granite formed the corpses of their slaves at their feet. Beside the granite, some skulls with undecayed skin were burning on the lids of several coffins, with the bodies of butcher and outsiders piled nearby.

The creature stood there with its back to them. It was humanoid, but its hip were as tall as a regular human's height, its gray-black body gaunt and withered, with long gray-white bristles as long as human arms growing from its hunched back. In addition to its repulsive, emaciated yet muscular deformed body, its head was embedded in its chest like a screw, obstructed by its back, making it impossible to see more details.

Salser heard the shrill sound of saw teeth grinding, guessing that the creature's teeth must be very sharp.

The torch light was blood red, with ribbon-like black objects floating in it—held high above its head, emitting a ghostly red glow.

At that moment, the monster and the ghostly torch moved as if it had smelled something. It turned its head, revealing a mouth that split from the top of the head to the chin, like a crocodile's, with three or four rows of deformed sharp teeth messily embedded inside. Two pea-sized pure gray eyeballs covered by bristles were embedded on either side of the mouth, making the creature look like a megalodon shark with its head turned ninety degrees.

It breathed heavily, its voice was like an old shabby bellows, its sharp ribs protruded from below its chest and fully opened, like an invitation to embrace a lover. It began to walk back in the direction it came from. From its dark gray mouth, unchewed intestines dripped down while it stared into the darkness where they were.

"Are you sure the sword you gave me isn't some cheap junk worth only two or three coppers?" Jeanne whispered beside him, her voice devoid of any fear.

"This sword is more valuable than your head," Salser said, meeting her calm light golden eyes with a non-sarcastic tone of mockery.

"Good."

The light moved forward inch by inch, like a blind man groping along the wall at the edge of a cliff, gradually covering the darkness where they were. The gray, dull eyes of the creature examined the people in the shadows, showing interest when seeing food.

Salser saw the translucent eyelid flicker, and then the creature uttered a low, seemingly meaningless beastly growl. Under his indifferent gaze, its gray pupils suddenly turned into two burning piece of coals.

An instant later—

A hot wave filled with the stench of burning engulfed the entrance of the hall. Then, he heard a miserable shriek—

The monster's shriek.

A pitch-black long sword flew over a dozen meters and pierced through the high-temperature flames, firmly nailing itself into the center of the creature's bloody mouth, wide opened like a sacrificial bowl, causing it to swallow its foul, hot breath and roar, turning it into a painful howl.

In the blink of an eye, Jeanne had also casually taken away the black-red sword from his hand.

In an instant, she crossed the short distance of over ten meters—right after she threw the sword, like a hawk.

The creature glared at the approaching woman with a furious gaze, continuing to roar in pain and anger. Its bloody claws, as long as a human thigh, drew a dark arc flash, sweeping towards the short figure in front of it, under the torchlight, like the spokes of a war chariot rolling over countless corpses.

Jeanne expressionlessly ducked under the monster's claws, thrusting the sword deep into its armpit. Then, she twisted her right wrist, slashing and pulling, severing the arm that was waving the claws. Black blood splattered onto the ground and walls. The monster howled and waved the torch, its dozens of sharp ribs in front like saw teeth opening and rapidly extending, trying to crush the small human. Looking from afar, it was like a crocodile leaping out of the water to hunt a zebra.

She ignored the monster's attack and jumped high, grabbing the black sword that had pierced its mouth; the other sword was pressed against the saw teeth of the monster's chest. The Inquisitor used a strange posture to gain momentum and thrust hard, the sword piercing through the monster's entire head. In the next instant, she pulled the blade down hard from inside the monster's mouth, and blood gushed out like a burst wine bag.

The sound of fabric tearing.

Starting from the monster's mouth to its crotch, its entire body was cut open.

The almost-split-in-two monster fell to the ground—with a blank expression, she stepped on its head and cut off the head embedded in its chest.

“Indeed, quite impressive," Salser strolled over leisurely and clapped for Miss Jeanne, “It was my initial assumption that assistance would be requisite; however, it appears you are quite adept at managing independently.”

“I seized the moment because it was ripe for action—another reason is that your sword is sturdy enough," she said without expression, kicking the severed head of the creature away, “You don’t get a shot like this every day, or else my squad wouldn’t have ended up dead, leaving me the sole survivor.”

"Besides—"

Jeanne turned her face towards him, extending her forearm—it had several clean cuts. The already damaged armguard shattered like paper, and purple-red blood gushed from the Inquisitor's arm. Through those wounds, he could even see white bones—the wounds must have been left by the sharp ribs on the monster's chest.

"—Patch me up," she said.

The sword hadn't completely blocked the attack.

Salser noticed her eyebrows knitted together, but she didn't show any signs of pain.

“It appears you have a penchant for dichotomy in speech and action, and furthermore… but let that pass,” he said, a faint light glowing in his hand, covering the Inquisitor's forearm,  “To mend injuries of this nature demands an extensive amount of life force—naturally, not of your own. I am obliged to purify the taint to avert the disintegration of your soul. The expenditure is considerable, and my reserves of mana are finite. Hence, would you be so kind as to alert me prior to your impetuous sallies, akin to a feral swine?”

"I'll try," she said without lifting her eyelids.

The tone of this sentence is so perfunctory; it seemed she is also the kind to do as she pleased, Salser thought without much hope.

After completing the treatment, he began to absorb the life force of the guards and the monster, observing the hounds that had died here.

In the blackened bloodstains were haphazard corpses: a young woman with her skull split open, naked, hanging from a stone pillar; a man with his belly completely opened, his intestines dragging on the ground, curling up in a corner; a middle-aged man with his fingers dug into his throat, while his face frozen in unbearable agony, died on top of a coffin; among the piles of dead, strange black beetles were wriggling, squeezing in and out of the mutilated bodies, as if gnawing on the corpses, licking the sticky, foul-smelling blood.

Salser squatted down, extending his hand as he touched one of the corpses, and a dozen beetles quickly burrowed into his skin like shadows—

"Interesting—"

He shook his head, snapped his fingers, and a fluctuating wave of dark gray energy spread throughout his body. In an instant, those beetles began to wriggle frantically as if sensing something extremely terrifying, like a black tide—those that had burrowed into his skin quickly crawled out and scurried away, while those that hadn't rushed out of the pile of corpses, away from the source of the disturbance, with some beetles even colliding with each other in their panic.

Soon, they scattered completely, fleeing rapidly from this not-so-spacious hall.

"Those are the beetles of the Death God Hood...," Jeanne's brows knitted together, "Why are these disgusting things muddled with the hounds? Dark wizard—what exactly has your Empress conspired with?"

Salser glanced at her expressionlessly.

"If I had foreknowledge of Nero’s schemes, I wouldn't have been reincarnated into this wretched place."

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