Beleria's Past

"Hehehe, yummy food, Beleria's here~"

As if it understood Beleria's words, the chunk of flesh roared and attacked her, the vicious bone spikes on its fleshy arm shooting straight at her face.

But Beleria was in no hurry at all. With a slight turn of her body, she dodged the attack.

"Hehe, yummy food, you've been naughty~ You're bullying my friend. Beleria only has this one friend."

With that, Beleria suddenly strained her hands, which had been shackled together. A crisp crack rang out, and the shackles split into three pieces. One remained locked around Beleria's neck, while the other two hung from her fair wrists.

Her slender wrists stood in stark contrast to the heavy shackles.

With her hands freed, Beleria became even more nimble. She rolled her wrists, excitement written all over her face.

"Yummy food, you're done for~"

Power continuously surged from Beleria's body. Gradually, a pale red aura formed around her, carrying a powerful surge of Path Energy.

[Path of the Hunt]!

Bai Sheng had not been mistaken. That aura from before belonged to the [Path of the Hunt]. He had never expected Beleria to be a Pathwalker. He had thought she was merely a young girl with a tragic past who had been captured for human experimentation.

________________________________________(Title Girl: Don't just put divider lines everywhere, little sister.

Divider: No, no! It's fun this way! And Title Sister, you even took away my yummy food. I'm not talking to you anymore (｀へ′)

Title Girl: Fine, fine. Then none of the author's pickled cabbage fish tonight will be saved for you either ╮(￣⊿￣)╭

Divider: My dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest Title Sister~ You know, little sister actually likes you the most (?????)

Title Girl: Hmph~ So I've got you figured out after all ┐(′-｀)┌)

As Bai Sheng recovered from his injuries nearby, he unknowingly recalled what Beleria had told him about her past in the prison cell:

Beleria had come from a small village near Kasantiya. Unable to afford Kasantiya's taxes, its people had built a tiny settlement on the outskirts of the city.

Bai Sheng knew that place. Back then, people in the city called it the slums. Some called it the dead man's pit.

After all, nearly all the death-row prisoners executed in the city had been dumped there. The villagers' job was to haul them away for burial or cremation, and that was almost their only source of income.

There was nothing Bai Sheng could do about some of Kasantiya's problems on his own. The emperor would not grant him any authority, so all he could do was secretly provide aid to that village whenever he returned from the battlefield.

And Beleria had been born there. But people were inevitably different from one another. Her mother had given birth to her after being violated by a scumbag from the city, so Beleria had not had an easy life in the village either.

She herself could not remember exactly when it happened, but she was certain that she had been very young when a group of armored soldiers took her away. Along with her, they took dozens of children and quite a few adults from the village.

After that, Beleria only remembered a flame suddenly rising behind her before she abruptly lost consciousness.

That village...

If Bai Sheng remembered correctly, it had seemed to have been burned to the ground. There had even been quite a few charred bodies inside. When he asked the emperor, the emperor merely said that those people had willingly died because they could no longer survive, in exchange for some of the village's children being allowed to live in the city.

But that explanation clearly could not hold up. At the time, however, Bai Sheng did not have the energy to dwell on it. The front lines were under pressure, the commander from that year had been killed, and nearly all military affairs had fallen onto Bai Sheng's shoulders.

Before he could get an answer, Bai Sheng was sent back to the front lines. That deployment lasted three years, and by the time he returned, there was nothing left to investigate.

Bai Sheng had also learned the fate of those children and adults who had been taken away from Beleria.

Human experimentation. Genetic modification technology. The mastermind was the Prince. He and his researchers had attempted to analyze Glamoth's biotechnology in order to create batch after batch of modified humans.

To achieve that goal, they had even used living people as test subjects. Beleria had been injected with countless drugs. She did not know what they were, but from then on, her craving for blood and flesh had greatly increased.

After being thrown into a glass enclosure for observation for a long time, she had been tossed onto a large platform and forced to fight villagers whose minds had already been shattered by the experiments. Only one of them was allowed to survive.

Beleria had been the most special among them. She was the only subject who had been injected with large quantities of drugs without losing her sanity.

At the time, those people believed Beleria was a successful example. But they were wrong.

During battle, the stimulation of blood and flesh would gradually turn Beleria into a mindless beast. She would frantically kill every living thing she could see, but as long as she left combat, she would be fine. She would revert to that harmless-looking young girl again.

In an accident, Beleria had wiped out at least half the researchers. But from then on, a heavy shackle had appeared around her neck, and her hands had been shackled as well.

She had been thrown into a prison cell. The researchers at the time still refused to give up on Beleria, a subject who retained her sanity, and continued experimenting on her with a try-it-and-see attitude.

As for their outcome... it went without saying.

For Beleria... hiss... all that could be said was that it was tasty, she loved it, and she wanted more.

So Beleria once again received the prison package: lodging included, meals not included.

That lasted until the Prince once again recklessly released Beleria and deployed her onto the battlefield.

And the result... was complicated. If you asked whether the war had been resolved, then yes, it had. But the price was that the Prince lost an army of fifty thousand men.

As for where that army went, well, perhaps they should ask Beleria's flat little belly, which showed not the slightest bulge.

Then Beleria was locked back in a prison cell.

No one ever dared to use Beleria, that walking nuclear bomb, again. This was real killing.

They had also tried sending Beleria onto the battlefield alone, but since her opponents were all Stingbugs and there was no blood or flesh to replenish her energy, Beleria simply gave up.

The bugs could not kill her anyway, and she did not stop the insect army from passing through. In the end, the Prince had to personally join the battle before the situation was resolved.

From then on, Beleria had been kept in a prison cell. Although she had nothing to eat, Beleria could survive with very little consumption.

When she had nothing to do, she would catch a couple of cockroaches in the cell as pets and see which one could run faster. If she got lucky, she could even catch a rat. That was Beleria's "big toy."

That life had continued until Bai Sheng arrived, finally bringing it to an end.