Leave Him to Me... Just Me Alone (Part 1)

"Old antique, stay close to me. What kind of... hellhole is this!" Irin whispered to the young man beside her, her voice low.

They were currently walking through a dark, damp, and abandoned sewer.

Beneath their feet, aside from filthy puddles, there were "indescribable" moss-like plants that Irin had never seen before, accompanied by a low, rumbling growl echoing in her ears—a sound that seemed to come from everywhere in the sewer at once.

That was definitely not a sound made by humans or animals. Irin had heard it twice before, but both times remained vivid in her memory, because that was...

The sound only a Corrupted Corpse could make.

Irin kept her nerves taut, shielding the young man behind her. She had not forgotten her duty, and the object of the girl's vigilance was far more than just the perilous, abandoned sewer; it also subtly included the nun leading the way ahead.

Maria suddenly stopped and gestured to the two people behind her. Irin looked over and discovered that at a fork in the pipes, two Corrupted Corpses were wandering about. Their bodies were covered in rot, their arms bulging with thick, twisted muscles that had mutated into fleshy pincers.

This was their only path forward; clearly, a battle was unavoidable if they wanted to pass.

"Don't worry about me," Liao Ji spoke up in advance to put Irin at ease.

After all, it appeared that among their trio, only Irin was a melee fighter, and once the girl charged forward, only the nun would be left by his side.

Irin chose not to use her gun. In a place like a sewer, even the slightest noise would be amplified several times over by the echoes. Corrupt Calamity began to spread from the girl's body, eventually forming a blood sword that Irin gripped in her hand.

This was not the massive blood-red greatsword from the Kalleva factory; both its width and length had shrunk significantly. Clearly, in Irin's eyes, two Corrupted Corpses were not enough to warrant the use of her full ability.

With a flash of her figure, Irin had already quietly slipped over. When she closed to within about ten meters, the two wandering Corrupted Corpses seemed to smell something and turned their heads in unison, aiming toward the patch of shadow where the girl stood.

Seeing that she had been exposed, Irin did not hesitate. Ten meters was enough for her. She stopped creeping and burst forth. In less than half a breath, she had reached the front of the first giant-pincer Corrupted Corpse, using her momentum to drive the blood sword directly into its neck.

Squelch!

Having ascended to "Danger Rank," the girl's strength had indeed improved significantly. The force of this strike actually sheared the Corrupted Corpse's head clean off. Immediately following, as the other one lunged from behind, the girl ducked to dodge the fleshy pincer swinging at her, kicked it to the ground, and followed up with another strike, plunging it straight into its forehead. Squelch!

A clean and efficient battle; one could say it was a double-kill in seconds.

"Miss Irin, you're so strong!" As the three of them continued deeper, Maria, who had been watching the girl's fight, couldn't help but voice her admiration.

"It's alright."

"I don't know if... if I may ask, what did Miss Irin do before becoming a Corrupted?"

Perhaps because the crushing victory had eased the sense of crisis, Maria seemed to have her chatterbox opened in this environment and began to chat with the girl.

Irin originally hadn't intended to answer, but seeing that Liao Ji beside her didn't seem to mind at all—and even seemed to be encouraging them to communicate more—she paused and replied:

"Scavenger."

"Eh? Then how did Miss Irin become a Corrupted? And how did you meet Mr. Liao Ji?"

Faced with the nun's curious questioning, Irin didn't know how to answer. She stammered a bit, but fortunately, Liao Ji spoke up from the side.

"Irin was the best scavenger in the Black Cave, so I hired her to explore ruins in the Underground Cave with me. We were lucky enough to find some treasures, but we were spotted by Kobolds while retreating. At the critical moment, I don't know if it was the power of the treasure, but Irin awakened her ability and became a Corrupted, which allowed us to survive and get out."

As Liao Ji spoke, the nun clenched her small hands, looking nervous, and only let out a long sigh of relief after hearing the story end with a safe conclusion.

However, Maria didn't continue the conversation afterward, and the topic went cold. Soon, as they ventured deeper and saw more and more Corrupted Corpses wandering the sewers, the three stopped chatting entirely and focused on the exploration.

Although there were many Corrupted Corpses, thanks to Irin's combat prowess, the three were not delayed much along the way.

When they reached the next corner of the passage, Maria told them that Irin's mother was nearby.

This immediately stimulated the girl. Seeing a group of Corrupted Corpses blocking the path again, she couldn't wait to rush up and sweep them away, even though there were more of them than ever before—a full seven or eight.

The first one or two were fine, just like the many battles before—instant kills. However, what happened next within the group of Corrupted Corpses was completely beyond Irin's expectations.

I saw that before the girl could even rush over, the Corrupted Corpse at the very back, which was clearly a head taller than the others, took the initiative. It used its mutated heavy-fist arm to smash into its own kind nearby.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

As it killed each fellow Corrupted Corpse, the red mist of Corrupt Calamity swirling around it grew more intense. The muscles beneath its rotting skin bulged suddenly, and many sharp spikes erupted outward. In the blink of an eye, its aura had increased by more than one level.

It roared and charged toward the girl. Because of the angle, Liao Ji, who happened to be standing behind this mutated Corrupted Corpse, could see two crest marks on its exposed back.

Those were not true crests; they looked like marks left behind after being used once.

But even as mere traces of a crest, they were flickering with an eerie light at this moment, seemingly the source of this Corrupted Corpse's sudden mutation.

Irin was still trying to conserve her strength and had not released her ability, continuing to meet it with her blood sword in its normal state. But when the mutated Corrupted Corpse actually slammed into her, it erupted with a force several times greater than the ordinary ones. This completely caught Irin off guard, nearly causing her to lose her grip on her sword and be sent flying by the impact.

Fortunately, the girl lost control of her body for a split second.

The sword that wanted to clash head-on with the Corrupted Corpse was forced to change its trajectory, twisting into a defensive stance to block the Corrupted Corpse's follow-up punch.

Even so, the girl still spun through the air before landing awkwardly and rolling away, dodging the Corrupted Corpse's subsequent pursuit.

BOOM!

The sewer wall where Irin had just been standing cracked like a spiderweb under the Corrupted Corpse's second punch, and the ground felt as if it had trembled.

Seeing this, a lingering fear washed over Irin. It was hard to imagine that if Liao Ji behind her hadn't forcibly intervened in the battle, forcing her to switch from offense to defense, even if her sword had struck the Corrupted Corpse, it would have been a case of "inflicting eight hundred damage while suffering a thousand."

What is going on!

What exactly is this Corrupted Corpse...

Only then did Irin finally notice the two flickering, blood-red crest marks on the back of the Corrupted Corpse. Could those be...

There was no other way; it seemed she had no choice.

Just as Irin was about to mobilize her ability to re-summon her true crimson greatsword, a brief chant echoed, followed by a burst of holy light that completely engulfed the mutated Corrupted Corpse.

"Arghhhhhhh!"

The Corrupted Corpse instantly let out a pained roar, and immediately after, its massive body began to shrink, its bulging muscles withering away as if drained. In less than the blink of an eye, it had reverted to the appearance of an ordinary Corrupted Corpse, and the two remnants of the glowing blood-red crests on its back vanished entirely.

"This..."

Before Irin could even react, a beam of light shot out like a sharp arrow in the next second, piercing directly through the head of the Corrupted Corpse. This mutated Corrupted Corpse, which had been troublesome enough to make even Irin—who had reached Danger Rank—feel uneasy, had actually... died just like that?