The Corrupted Monster occupying the center of the town ruins had startled Hao Ren, but even Veronica, a local who ought to have been quite familiar with the Chaos lands, had shown tremendous surprise. This caught Hao Ren completely off guard.
"Is it not usually like this?" Hao Ren looked at the Knight Princess beside him. "Didn't the old knight just say that after lighting some kind of hearth in the town, the Corrupted Monsters wandering the wilderness would be drawn here?"
"But we also said that Corrupted Monsters are far fewer in number than Chaos Minions." Veronica lowered her voice, unable to hide the tension on her face. She turned her head, and Hao Ren saw her pale violet eyes glimmering faintly in the darkness. "Corrupted Monsters are what living beings from the Order World become after being contaminated by Chaos, but not every orderly creature can become a Corrupted Monster—in most cases, those who are contaminated are directly devoured and assimilated by Chaos power. Only one in ten thousand can complete the transformation. In the realm of Chaos, only the Chaos Minions are truly the main characters here."
At this point, Her Highness the Princess cautiously poked her head out to glance toward the center of the town, then withdrew it and explained, "Besides, this is the hinterland of the Chaos realm. There couldn't possibly be this many Corrupted Monsters here."
Veronica had not explained the latter half in much detail, but Hao Ren already understood what she meant.
Judging from their nature, Corrupted Monsters should have appeared in large numbers only at the boundary between the Order World and the Chaos World, because only there would there be enough "material" to be contaminated and transformed. The deeper one went into Chaos, the rarer the Corruptors should have