The stench of rotting corpses gradually drifted over.
Ash, who had been drawn to the lightning and thunder in the sky and the immense oppressive presence of the surrounding forest, suddenly turned around and saw a female walking corpse limping toward him.
The body had completely decayed. Its taut skin and flesh, clinging tightly to the bones, looked like wind-dried cured meat.
As a result, every step it took produced a teeth-grating sound like muscle fibers snapping.
"Ash!"
It laboriously shuffled in front of Ash and called out to him.
The voice was hoarse and exceedingly weak, yet it was a man's voice.
This walking corpse was in a vastly different state from the one Ash had seen in the cabin before his last trip through history.
That thing had been incomparably vicious back then.
It had been almost impossible for ordinary people to defeat.
But this walking corpse looked as though any old man could raise his cane and smash it to the ground with one blow, like a fragile puppet.
Especially since its voice had changed.
Before he traveled through history, it had possessed the voice of a crazed, taunting female beast. Now, it was a man's voice—a man's voice barely clinging to life.
"Ash, don't you recognize my voice?"
"You should know me."
"We... huff... we're old friends!" The walking corpse merely stood quietly before Ash, showing no intention of attacking him.
"Voice... old friend... You are..." Hearing that hoarse, feeble voice and feeling the cold chill of the nail in his hand, Ash's heart jolted. "You're Baal?"
Ash felt like his brain could no longer keep up.
Before coming here, Baal had clearly been at the birthplace of the evil spirits—the forest where that cabin stood—guarding the Flesh-Weaving Machine alongside several other great evil spirits and