A bright, perfect silver moon hung quietly in the night sky, and a cold evening wind howled across the open ground.
In the air was the faint, decaying smell unique to the slums, a rotten, bloody stench carried up from the sewer.
And the heavy, dangerous growl of a wild beast.
Barker stood still where he was, his body wrapped in moonlight swelling larger at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Around his body, the blood-colored airflow drawn from his own blood circled him like a vortex, using the curse of Beastification Syndrome as a threat to drive off any enemy who dared approach and intended to interrupt the process.
Xia Nan gripped the Beheading Longsword in both hands, the iron-gray sharp gleam along the edge of the blade looking even colder under the moonlight.
Xia Nan watched the burly middle-aged man not far ahead, whose body was rapidly beastifying.
This was not like all kinds of works from his previous life, where the villain would just watch the protagonist break through in battle without stopping him.
Of course he would not stand there motionless and wait for the other party to finish strengthening himself before starting the fight.
It was just that the air currently filling the space around Barker's body, the airflow carrying his blood, was like a mop that had just been used to clean a bathroom. It had an extremely powerful deterrent effect.
Although Xia Nan did not have any obvious wounds on his body, who knew whether this blood aura, after close contact, would seep into his body through the pores of his skin?
If he was infected with Beastification Syndrome because of that, it would be troublesome.
And his own close-combat style emphasized flexibility and mobility, lacking long-range attack methods.
As he thought,