Ringwraiths Arrive! A Thrilling Chase Is About to Begin

The innkeeper and the waiter were crouching pale-faced in the hidden cellar beneath the bar counter, barely daring to breathe. Though there was no surveillance equipment in the cellar to show them what was happening outside, they could smell the thick stench of blood and the foul reek of organs and other filthy innards. Neither of them was the sort of kindhearted soul who would spare even an ant while sweeping the floor or shield a moth from a lamp, so they could naturally guess what the tavern looked like at that moment.

If the two of them had not been so timid and afraid of trouble, they would have simply counted the intelligence fee they received for selling out the lodging information of Frodo, the four Hobbits, Aragorn, Wang Zhen, and the others before immediately slipping into this hidden cellar to save their own skins. At the time, they had feared that, after killing Frodo and the others, those adventurers—drunk on cheap ale and not quite right in the head—might kill them as well.

It sounded absurd, but these adventurers had done such things before, so the innkeeper and waiter had very sensibly hidden away to preserve their lives.

Yet neither of them had imagined just how wise that decision had been!

Had they not hidden quickly enough, they would most likely have ended up like those sprawled amid the blood-red radiance, rolling and writhing while screaming in agony. Their entire bodies looked as though they had suffered the torture of a thousand cuts, covered from head to toe, inside and out, in crisscrossing shallow wounds as dense as spiderwebs. Those wounds were rapidly breaking down at a visible rate and dissolving into the blood-red radiance that engulfed them!

However, those two frauds who knew nothing of honor or