How to Train a Hound (Continued)

—Ludmila, justice and righteousness are never the same thing; you must carefully grasp the balance between them.

A familiar phrase echoed in the young girl Lupo's mind—she didn't remember her father having taught her anything like that. But a deep, middle-aged male voice kept reverberating in her head.

She was confused. Confusion made her sluggish.

She felt flames flowing through her body, but what resided in her blood vessels was not magma.

Just as she was feeling confused and hesitant because of this, she found herself with her companions on the marching route of the Ursus army.

That was the mistake she made.

That mistake brought about a one-sided annihilation for her and her followers—even though she did her best to escape with her men at the first moment, this wild hound could not escape the hunt of the orthodox military dogs—the black-clad hunters easily dispelled her Originium Arts and cut off the escape route she had found. Then, suffering befell her and her companions.

Forty-one people escaped Chernobog with her, but only sixteen survived as prisoners. After the Ursus interrogated them about Chernobog's current situation and obtained what satisfied them, only five remained alive.

There were only five, including herself.

The Ursus torturers dislocated her limbs, bound her, and threw her into a caravan under strict guard. Based on snippets of conversation she overheard during the march, the Ursus commander seemed to intend to use her as a bargaining chip in Chernobog, hoping she would be useful in some event.

She wasn't afraid of becoming a bargaining chip; becoming a bargaining chip meant she still had time to live.

What she feared was only the Dusk Flame that suddenly rose outside Chernobog.

Because she felt the flames moving through her body.

Ludmila's eyes snapped open. In the last few seconds of her memory before her vision went black and she lost consciousness, she heard a sudden commotion and explosions coming from the front of the marching column, and the earth-shaking tremor that overturned the entire caravan.

—The Ursus people have been attacked!

—There's a chance!

We must escape this place as soon as possible!

A brief three-part thought process suddenly formed in the mind of the girl Lupo. Her senses were heightened by the pain, and the instant she confirmed that no one else was breathing in the overturned carriage, her dislocated limbs suddenly emitted a series of soft but coherent cracking sounds—the dislocated joints successfully snapped back together, and her gaze cautiously scanned her surroundings.

The carriage tilted over, and outside, all was silent—the Integration members who had been locked in the caravan with her were nowhere to be found. The air was filled with a scent she knew all too well.

The scent of blood.

—This Ursus army should have a total strength of around 1,200...

Without the slightest hesitation, accompanied by a few peculiar breaths, her flat abdomen suddenly spasmed—a lightweight metallic egg, which she had previously attached to her stomach wall with a secret medicine, traveled up her esophagus to her mouth. Her tongue twitched slightly, and a sharp blade, activated from the metallic egg, tore open the shackles sealing her mouth.

Fragments of metal and composite materials fell from her mouth, and she twisted her body to catch them, preventing them from making a sound as they fell into the carriage. Then, a thin blade that she spat out of her mouth deftly sliced the shackles binding her hands and feet into unequal pieces.

This is not an easy task.

These shackles were originally imbued with Originium Arts from the Ursus people to increase their strength. Now that they have been so easily broken, the only proof is the undeniable fact that the caster is dead.

She tried her best to move her hands and feet, attempting to regain her dexterity.

—The Ursus army must have encountered a terrible problem...not Catastrophe, but a battle...is it some special force with extraordinary power, or some kind of newly produced secret weapon?

She surveyed the carriage; chaos reigned as far as the eye could see. Then, she took a deep breath and, as silently as possible, darted out of the cramped and difficult-to-maneuver space.

She originally planned to use the train carriage as cover to move quickly and find an opportunity to escape the predicament.

She failed.

Because she was outside the carriage, she neither saw nor heard anything.

--fog.

What came into view was a thick fog.

A crimson mist, as sticky as glue but without any moisture.

In this thick fog, even with her keen senses, she could only observe a visible distance of three meters. Beyond those three meters of fog, everything was utterly silent.

There were footprints on the ground, many and messy, but even more numerous were the marks of something heavy being dragged—her fingertips touched the soil, and the instant they touched the crimson earth, they were stained red—it was blood, fresh blood. The blood that flowed from a corpse lying on the ground, dragged away by something terrible!

She was drenched in cold sweat and trembling all over. She forced her brain to work at full speed.

—An unknown monster, no, perhaps a human. Because this crimson fog is Originium Arts ... of the same kind as me, but far, far stronger.

She crouched down, pressing herself as close to the ground as possible. Thick, sticky blood splattered everywhere, yet no earth-shaking vibrations reached her ears—she used her clothes to cover her face as a makeshift mask. Feeling the smoke-generating organ in her mouth, rendered unusable by the injected suppressant, she felt a mixture of exhilaration and fear.

She was thrilled because the Ursus people could probably no longer stop her from pursuing freedom.

The panic stemmed from the caster's bizarre nature and unimaginable power—she herself could create a dense fog that concealed her movements and blocked sound. But that kind of relatively simple Originium Arts was useless against the Ursus army. Yet this attacker had silenced the entire army using the same methods she had employed. That meant she wasn't even worthy of comparison with that caster.

—If it wants to kill me, I am doomed.

—You absolutely must not confront it head-on, or even clash with it.

Breathe, try, and breathe lightly.

The fire within his body grew stronger, spreading outward from his lower abdomen, gradually extending to his entire lower limbs, and eventually his whole body.

It felt like... an itch being tickled. A shiver ran through her body, and her heart and will became strange. She subconsciously pressed her lower abdomen, but the movement froze halfway through.

—What am I doing? I...I have to leave right away.

—I can't die here!

Get out!

It crawls on the mud without making a sound or a noise, just like a snake.

She could see the wheel tracks and knew which direction led to the outside of the canyon. So she silently and diligently moved closer to that direction. Whatever she saw or felt, she kept moving in that direction.

She moved forward five meters and touched a piece of cold flesh. Carefully crawling away from the side, only half of the body remained, the smooth, mirror-like cut of the corpse brushing against her face—her heart suddenly pounded violently, then she controlled her blood flow with a secret breathing technique.

Keep climbing, don't stop, the further you go, the more corpses you'll find.

She was covered in even more blood as she crawled across the half-arm-long swamp of blood and mud like a toad in a swamp. She pretended that the severed limbs, broken remains, detached organs, and shattered skeletons were merely ornaments. She tried her best to keep her heart from pounding too hard.

She suddenly froze.

Hands stopped, feet remained still, blood seemed to freeze.

The next moment, accompanied by a dull dragging sound, a huge shadow several meters high in the fog dragged a heavy object past her—no, it wasn't a 'heavy object'. It was a person, flesh and blood of dozens of Ursus soldiers, forcibly kneaded together! She even saw half of the torturer's body, whose limbs had been dislocated, embedded in this mass of flesh and blood, with what appeared to be foreign objects wriggling in the gaping holes of his face!

—This, this is!

Breathing was forgotten out of fear. She remained motionless, lying there for several minutes. Even as the crimson mud obstructed her breathing, she dared not move.