Brando also saw the door. Holding the Blade of Flames, he cautiously approached it and pushed it open. At a glance, he found Mayad in the wrecked office.
More precisely, this being, ranked seventh among the twelve Shepherd Patriarchs of the Tree Shepherds, had been cleaved in two and now lay in the very center of the room.
The wound stretched from his left shoulder near the neck all the way to his right waist. It had sliced through his ribs and lungs, completely severed his spine, and sent dark-red blood and chunks of black organs spraying across the floor. Unidentifiable insects crawled in and out of the corpse, as though they had taken the empty chest cavity for a new nest.
Brando had seen plenty of corpses, but he still could not stop himself from feeling sick. He raised a hand to block Medisa behind him and said with some effort, "You'd better not come over."
In theory, Medisa's mental fortitude was far greater than his. A thousand years ago, the scale and brutality of the battlefields had surpassed the present by a hundredfold. As the commander of an army, the Little Princess of the Silver Elves had long since grown accustomed to all kinds of scenes unsuitable for children.
Even so, Brando would rather treat her as a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl who still needed protection.
Medisa pressed her lips together and stopped of her own accord. She did not seem to mind Lord Brando's concern for her. "Mayad is dead?" she asked softly.
Brando nodded. Like Medisa, he had more or less guessed it. The strange behavior of the swarm revealed the news plainly enough; it was simply too unbelievable to accept.
Historically, Mayad had died around the Year of Astrology. As a world boss who fell