Mud Duke's voice was low and hoarse, yet his words exploded like a bomb.
"The smell of blood?" Wine Cup instinctively took a deep sniff of the air, but sensed nothing unusual. The air was hardly fresh, yet it was nowhere near bloody.
Mud Duke glanced at Wine Cup and nodded lightly. "Yes. A stench everywhere. But it isn't floating in the air. It has sunk into the walls, beneath the floorboards..."
As he spoke, Mud Duke closed his eyes and inhaled the air around him.
The way he sniffed looked much the same as Wine Cup's. Yet with every breath, no air passed through Mud Duke's nostrils. Instead, certain restless particles within the earth seeped into the depths of his mind through the damp air and his exposed skin.
In other words, Mud Duke spoke of "sensing a scent," but it was actually a resonance with the power of the earth.
The blood-soaked earth bore wails and terror. As an earth-element lifeform, Mud Duke happened to pass by—and happened to hear its lament.
That was the reason.
It was also the truth behind why no one but him had smelled blood.
No, it was not that no one else could smell it. Na... had smelled it too.
But Na had not smelled it with her own nose. After hearing Mud Duke's observation, she inserted her sensory organ beneath his skin.
Her senses entered a synchronized state with Mud Duke's. Through that, she too sensed the bloody smell he spoke of.
"There really is a smell of blood."
Na described that scent in her own words.
"In Mud Duke's perception, every system connected to the earth around us—the floor beneath our feet, the walls around us—is covered in a deep, bloody aura."
"It is as though this entire building has