Survivor's "Gift"

[Dim Filthy Blood 4ml]

[Moderately Corrupted Flesh*1]

[Corrupted Bones*1]

The battle ended within a minute.

Colin suddenly felt that these Aberrations—small, not even five feet tall, with barely any flesh on them and nothing but exposed white bones densely veined with blood—were the normal kind.

Because aside from "Aberration," it did not even have a follow-up name.

The "Confessor Priest" he had encountered before should have counted as a green-name monster—an Elite Monster—and a special one at that.

Still, while ordinary monsters were easy to deal with, their returns were low.

They looked visibly poor.

"Now this feels a little like a game," Colin muttered.

His pace quickened once more.

Those ordinary Aberrations were very slow. Unless an encounter was unavoidable, Colin had no intention of fighting them.

Unless one had Thorns of Suffering growing from its body, Colin would never stop and waste time.

However, after walking for only a few minutes, Colin's brow gradually furrowed.

Because he saw blood.

Human blood.

"As expected, other Survivors besides me have also found a way to light the lamp."

Colin began to slow down.

He discovered traces in another direction that should have been left behind by another Survivor.

The footprints were chaotic and hurried. He did not know what the person had encountered, but blood had dripped with every step.

The blood was dark red and had not even visibly coagulated yet. When he touched it with a finger, it was still sticky.

Although Colin could not distinguish human blood from animal blood with the naked eye.

The prompt could.

So he could confirm that this was human blood.

However, this also meant that it had not been long since that Survivor passed through here.

The key was that Colin realized they seemed to be heading in the same direction.

Less than ten minutes ahead lay Father Kadish's Church, the location of the mission.

If

that person got there first, ahead of him, and brought peace to the children... physically.

"That's not good news."

Colin quickened his pace.

The blood trail stretched a long way, soaking into the soil. It was visible all along the path, and the amount of blood lost was obviously substantial.

"With so much blood, if it all came from one person, they're probably dead, right?"

Just as Colin was beginning to wonder whether that person was dead or alive.

He suddenly got his answer.

Less than ten meters ahead, a figure lay quietly against a withered tree, utterly motionless.

A Female Corpse.

Her expression—

She had no expression.

Because her head was gone.

Blood flowed from the bowl-sized wound in her neck, down her skin and onto the ground, soaking into the surrounding earth and forming a bloody patch.

Her dingy gray dress had been dyed red. It was covered in many scraped tears, and it was impossible to tell whether they had been caused by monsters or by branches and stones while she fled in panic.

"She gave up resisting and lay here waiting to die. Time of death was within the last twenty minutes..."

After his initial shock, Colin quickly calmed down. Although the stench of blood in the air made him uncomfortable, his mind had already begun working.

He bent down, pulled up his sleeve to cover his mouth and nose, and crouched beside the corpse, carefully examining every detail.

Despite his intense discomfort.

This concerned what Colin would encounter next, so he had to be thorough.

First, the woman's blood was bright red, with no signs of poisoning. That meant she had not died from poison.

Second, her current state did not look like she had struggled. It was more like she had given up running and chosen to wait for death.

Because if she had fought against the monster that killed her, it would never have given her the chance to lie down in such a neat position, much less the time to straighten her clothes.

Combined with the wound on her leg and the obvious swollen sprain around her ankle.

It was clear that she could no longer run.

So Colin boldly guessed that her final choice had been to sit beneath this tree, put her tattered dress back in order, and then—

have her head yanked off in a single motion.

Judging from the torn flesh around her neck, her head had been pulled off like a mushroom.

Because of the severe blood loss, her blood had not even managed to spray very high.

Colin shifted his gaze toward a footprint about two meters away from the corpse.

The footprint was a full meter long and half a meter wide, resembling a human footprint.

But no human footprint could possibly be that large.

There was one such footprint every few meters. Fortunately, after killing the woman, it had left in the opposite direction with her head.

[The owner of the footprints is absolutely no less than five meters tall. You cannot comprehend what kind of creature this is, but you know that provoking it is basically equivalent to death.]

That was obvious. Colin dismissed the prompt he had received from examining the footprints.

There was no sign of her Servant near the corpse, but it was easy to imagine that she had likely used him to block the rear, and his chances of survival were slim.

"Lord, what do we do next?"

Servant No. 1 could not help asking softly. They had also seen the scene before them, but compared to a corpse, what terrified them more were those Giant-like footprints.

Those footprints made them tremble as though the fear came from the depths of their souls.

Colin did not immediately answer his Servant.

Before his eyes was an option: [Choose to Pick Up].

Within that option, Colin saw 43ml of Dim Filthy Blood. That was enough to show that she had not died because of the Gray Fog. Before dying, she had even stored most of her blood in her Inventory.

That already explained her choice.

"If I get the chance, I'll help you kill it!"

After saying that softly, Colin chose to accept her "Gift."

No matter what, the dead were already dead, while the living still had to go on.

It was only when a blood-soaked Survivor's corpse lay before him that Colin truly realized once again that this was a game of life and death.

Those who could not keep up would be ruthlessly discarded by the "game," becoming nameless corpses in the wilderness, ignored by all, without even an inscription.

Colin's feelings were somewhat complicated.

After all her supplies had been put into his Inventory, Colin handed the woman's Hurricane Lamp and axe to Number Two.

The Hurricane Lamp could not be stored in the Inventory, and although the axe would not improve his physical stats, it was still better than a broken wooden stick.

Then Colin stood up. After paying his respects to the woman, he said, "Keep moving.

"The monster that killed her should have left, and the Church is nearby.

"Since we've already come this far, it would be hard to justify not trying."

The Church of Suffering was already very close. He did not want to give up.

Before long, Colin could vaguely see the Church built within the forest through the fog.