The campfire burned slowly.
Countless stars glittered in the night sky above the small campsite, looking down upon the land below. They watched the slowly burning campfire and the man disposing of corpses.
He Shenyan was skinning and dismembering an ugly monster. His hands were covered in blood, yet he seemed utterly unconcerned, even humming a song.
He had been in this world for nearly a month, wandering through this frigid forest. He Shenyan could sense the human villages not far away, but he had no intention of disturbing them.
He was quite comfortable living alone in the forest. Aside from finding monsters to study each day, he did little else. The ugly, diminutive monster in his hands was trembling. Its brain was exposed, quivering slightly in the cold air.
Its wrinkled skin had been peeled away, damp and steaming, then casually tossed onto a table nearby. Though it was in agonizing pain, it could neither move, scream, nor call for its kin.
"Good, good. Don't be afraid, you ugly little thing. It'll be over soon."
He Shenyan lightly patted its crimson brain, earning a violent shudder. If he had not found dozens of human skeletons beneath the bridge where these creatures lived, he might not have been so cruel.
His attitude toward nonhuman races had always been flexible—put another way, if you did not kill people, he would not kill you.
He Shenyan knew he was a human supremacist. He did not care.
These things had ugly, vicious faces and were mostly quite short. Their teeth were extraordinarily sharp, as were their claws.
He Shenyan had no doubt that their filthy, stinking claws could rip open a farmer's belly in a single strike. One of these creatures alone might not have been frightening. The problem was that they lived in groups.
So he had lent the local residents a hand. In any case, he had studied enough of those Griffin-like Monsters over the past few days.
Humming, He Shenyan condensed a small, glowing knife of Magic Power in his hand and neatly, precisely sliced open the monster's brain.
It began to convulse violently, its entire brain seeming ready to burst from its half-open skull. Its eyes bulged, and its long, narrow tongue hung from its gaping mouth as it died in extreme agony.
He Shenyan remained unmoved and continued dissecting the monster's freshly dead corpse.
About half an hour later, he snapped his fingers. A curtain of water appeared out of thin air, allowing him to wash the blood from his hands and restore the messy workbench to pristine condition.
With a casual point, he used telekinesis to hurl the corpse several hundred meters away. He had no interest in considering the monster's fate. The animals in this forest were not particularly friendly.
Or rather, anything capable of surviving in such a Land of Bitter Cold, whether human or beast, was unlikely to be friendly.
He strolled slowly around the campsite, wondering whether he should torment those four stone-like Monsters again tomorrow.
They possessed only rudimentary intelligence and had become paranoid from He Shenyan's occasional surprise attacks. Though he had not killed them, he was deeply enthusiastic about teaching them simple arithmetic.
Those simple-minded creatures could not even speak in complete sentences, yet he had forced them to learn arithmetic. They could not beat him in a fight either, so they had simply abandoned their cave and fled.
He Shenyan laughed aloud at the thought. His peculiar sense of humor reminded him of a classic joke, but he did not intend to say it aloud. After all, telling himself jokes would be far too pathetic.
Even if he was currently trying to escape Eternal Heaven's pursuit.
The Angels' memories were a treasure trove to him. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would sift through them, like skipping through a long, terrible television series with thousands of episodes. There was always some new plot to find.
Three weeks ago, he had discovered in those memories that anyone who killed an Angel would be branded—but he had not been.
Perhaps that was because he had not killed them. He had eaten them.
Back to the point: just because he had not found anything did not mean there truly was nothing there.
He did not believe he could slaughter twenty-five Angels with impunity and continue running wild among the stars. Eternal Heaven would find him sooner or later—well, probably in another few tens of thousands of years.
It was rather funny. Those twenty-five Angels had thought they had discovered an ownerless world and eagerly come here together. It had not even been an official mission.
Moreover, because the distance they had crossed was so vast, by the time news of their deaths reached Eternal Heaven, at the speed described in their memories, a turtle might naturally evolve into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
For now, he treated this as a vacation, a chance to relax and study the Monsters unique to this region. One could never have too much knowledge.
He Shenyan returned to the campfire, beside which stood a reclining chair. It was made of wood, with soft cushions for both the back and feet. He did not even need to sit in it; merely looking at it made it seem undoubtedly comfortable.
He lay down and gazed at the stars filling the sky. The campfire beside him burned slowly, crackling and popping.
It truly was an exceptionally peaceful night. It would have been even better without the noisy commotion coming from nearby.
Displeased by the interruption, he opened his eyes irritably. A flash of blue light passed through them. A basic Eagle Eye Spell showed him a group of people in the forest holding torches as they pursued an old man.
The old man's hair and beard were white, and he held a small girl in his arms. She was asleep; even being chased as though for her life could not wake her from her dreams. The old man was panting heavily, his lungs protesting.
A burning sensation spread through his body. His old fellow, the old fellow that had followed him for who knew how long, was protesting in this manner: Old fellow! This isn't your youth anymore!
The old man ignored it and kept running. For an elderly man, his speed was practically miraculous. Even the sturdy young men behind him could not catch up. They could only watch as he darted through the forest, gradually disappearing from sight.
Soaked from head to toe, the old man sat down against an enormous tree.
He closed his eyes, his chest heaving violently, and fumbled as he laid the girl in his arms onto the grass beside him. Kaedwen's weather had always been renowned for its coldness, not to mention running into the forest late at night in soaked, thin clothing.
But compared to his own condition, the slaughtered village, and the people who had been pursuing him for some unknown reason, he was more worried about the girl.
He had always worried about her, from his youth to his old age.
"Oh, merciful Melitele. I pray that if you are watching me, if you can see this useless old man begging you, then shed your merciful tears and let this innocent child leave safely."
He prayed to Goddess Melitele, a loving goddess who protected the poor, the homeless, children, and pregnant women. He had no other choice but to pray to her.
As though the gods had answered, a miracle truly happened.
A man in black robes slowly emerged from the dark forest ahead of him. His black hair fell behind his back, and an indescribable aura of mystery radiated from him along with the pure white orb of light floating beside him.
Not to mention that face. The old man would swear upon his name that even during his younger days loafing around the city, he had never seen a man so handsome.
Compared with him, those bards fought over by noblewomen were like stinking bugs in a sewer.
But—compared to those eyes, which seemed to radiate starlight, all of that...
Gods. Had you answered his prayer?
He stared blankly at the man, forgetting even how to speak.
First update. Sorry for being late. Updates will proceed normally today. Five updates tomorrow.
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