"Tap." "Tap."
Brando advanced through a thin layer of viscous blood, frowning. Every time he lifted a foot, his boots drew out long strands of blood, making him sick to his stomach.
Even worse, there was almost nowhere to step. Corpses covered the entire floor. At the earlier ritual sites, they had still managed to rescue quite a few citizens, but here, all that remained were lifeless bodies.
"Urgh—"
The young man called Alka leaned against the altar and retched dryly. But he really had nothing left to vomit; he had already emptied his stomach earlier.
Charles floated back from the distance. He hovered more than a foot above the ground. Wasting magic in a place like this was truly unavoidable. Otherwise, he would be unable to move quickly, just like Brando.
"Not a single one of them is still breathing. These people are practically professional killers. Good grief, even a butcher knows to pray to Lady Martha before bringing down the knife." As he spoke, he shook his head, gaining an entirely new understanding of these Cultists.
"...Actually, most of them died from excessive blood loss." Medisa added from the side, "I examined their wounds. Many of them didn't die immediately after being stabbed. This ritual must have drained their blood."
Brando stopped and looked at the blood pool before him. Its surface was as calm as a mirror. It was not really a pool; it was more like a single drop of blood ten meters in diameter, held at a height of thirty or forty centimeters by its surface tension.
Blood itself could not possess such tension. As soon as he approached, the currents of magic surging in his eyes suddenly gathered, and the calm blood pool erupted without warning. A twisted monster leaped out of it, shrieking