The blades dragged along the walls, making a shrill, grating noise. As they struck the walls of the underground passage, the sound quickly turned strange and distorted. In the darkness and stench, it was all the more effective at stirring fear.
Karyl walked slowly, keeping an even pace so he could better control the speed at which the blades scraped along the walls.
He had studied this carefully. He knew what angle and how much force to use on each type of wall to create a sharper, stranger noise.
Of course, he wasn't doing this to make experimental music, or because he was bored and had decided to dismantle the passage with his blades.
In fact, Karyl had only one reason for doing this.
To spread fear.
People were always afraid of the unknown, and that was exactly what he wanted.
Karyl narrowed his eyes and stopped. He could hear the woman ahead struggling to keep her fearful panting quiet, along with the footsteps she thought she had concealed so well. The underground passage amplified every sound.
He could kill her right now.
But not yet.
Or rather, it wasn't enough yet.
After waiting in place for five minutes, a massive shadow leaped down from above him. Wraith bent over and whispered in his ear, "Aren't we going to kill her?"
"Of course we are."
"But she got away."
"She won't get far. This passage ends at Lynch Avenue. She'll find the leader of the Blood Tooth Gang there, and then she'll be under their protection."
"Do the Blood Tooth Gang know her?"
"No, but they recognize the Skolevok Family crest, so they'll protect her, though they'll have their doubts, just like the last gang did. No gang would turn down the chance to get in with the nobility."
"...I still don't understand," Wraith said honestly. "Karyl, you said you gave them twelve hours to run or hide, but that time is almost up."
Karyl slowly grinned.
"That's exactly what I want. The twelve-hour limit is just a bluff, Wraith."
"From the moment I gave them that deadline, they started counting down. They'll grow anxious, tremble, and eventually break as they pray for the twelve hours to pass. Fear makes people forget a lot of things."
"Oh, so you lied to them about the twelve hours?"
"Not exactly."
Karyl chuckled. "They can hide, run, or try to fight back within those twelve hours. But once the twelve hours are up, they'll die no matter what."
Wraith blinked. He still couldn't understand just how terrifying Karyl's words were for their prey. But he had a few more questions.
Karyl had told him he could ask whenever he had questions.
"How do you know where they are?" Wraith asked, puzzled. "We didn't even do any preliminary investigation this time."
"Because I have a few special tricks."
"Oh. You said there were three of them?"
"Yes."
"Then why aren't they staying together?"
"The Skolevok Family needs an heir to inherit the title. Nobles have strange obsessions about strange things. One of them clearly thinks splitting up will improve their odds of survival."
As he spoke, a face flashed through Karyl's mind.
He had decided to leave her for last.
The rain continued to fall. After seven hours of rest, Karyl had recovered his energy. Sleeping in a chair had left his neck a little sore, but all in all, it was nothing.
"Come on, Wraith. She should have made contact with the Blood Tooth Gang by now."
Karyl spoke softly. "Remember, be quiet when the time comes."
"...Oh," Wraith replied, baffled.
How strange. He thought. Didn't Karyl always insist on working quietly? Why had he said it twice?
He didn't know the reason, of course, and he didn't need to.
There were many ways to inspire fear.
Lena Skolevok was nearly out of her mind. Caked in sewage and disheveled, she huddled in the basement of the Blood Tooth Gang's hideout, barely daring to breathe.
She was afraid. She feared that her breathing would draw the monster lurking in the darkness.
The vengeful wraith.
As she panted in terror, someone knocked on the basement door. Lena Skolevok immediately raised the Autogun she had gotten hold of and stared at the door without saying a word.
Her eyes were stretched wide, her mouth hung open, but she didn't dare breathe. The scar running across her entire face had turned faintly red.
A frantic, broken look bloomed across the face that had once been noble, making her seem like an entirely different person from Lena Skolevok.
"Uh, Miss Lena Skolevok?"
A hesitant voice came from beyond the basement door. "I'm Ralph from the Blood Tooth Gang. Would you like a change of clothes? Acid rain is corrosive, miss. Are you still there?"
The Blood Tooth Gang.
Lena breathed a sigh of relief. Her cheek twitched, but she still couldn't fully relax. She stood and slowly approached the corner leading to the basement door, then asked in a low voice, "Is anything happening outside?"
"Uh?"
"Outside. Is anything happening?"
"...Is this your first time in Quintus? It's raining outside, and there are people street racing. There's a great place for it at the end of Lynch Avenue—"
Lena Skolevok took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to scream. Even that short exchange had let the anxiety welling up inside her begin to eat away at what little reason she had left.
Her hand began to tremble again.
"—No, no, listen to me, Ralph of the Blood Tooth Gang."
Clutching her gun, Lena did her best to keep her voice composed.
"All you need to do is keep an eye on what's happening outside. Be especially alert for singing. And, and send someone to contact the Glory Warlords. Tell them Lena Skolevok sent you."
"..."
The man outside the basement door muttered in confusion, then replied, "All right, my lady. We'll do that. If you need anything, just call for me, okay?"
Lena didn't answer. She only trembled.
Something like this had happened once before.
At first, she had been full of hope, believing she could make it out alive.
The gangs' attitude toward her after they saw her clothes and the Skolevok crest she showed them had only strengthened her confidence.
After all, not every gang had a noble backing them. And even nobles who were enemies wouldn't have their gangs murder the other side's heirs in the Underhive outside the Great Purge.
Then the nightmare on the highway had drifted in.
Lena still remembered the first gang that had helped her. It was called the Blood Mist Gang. They had an old building for a hideout and more than two hundred members—not a small number.
Back then, Lena had thought they could keep her safe for those twelve hours. But she had been wrong.
The twelve-hour countdown had ticked away, inching toward its final three hours. And then, at that very moment, when she thought she was finally safe—
The nightmare came.
First came the singing.
Low and drawn-out, with an unmistakable gloom. The tune was soft, yet it sounded like a blade scraping the tender skin of her neck.
Just like on the highway.
It seeped into the Blood Mist Gang's hideout and into everyone's ears. Then the ghostly slaughter began.
Starting on the ground floor of the old building, screams and cries of agony erupted. They mingled with the sound of gunfire and spread all the way to the rooftop of the fourth floor, where Lena was. They never stopped.
Then what? What happened next?
Lena swallowed a mouthful of foul-tasting saliva, trembling. The smell and the strange sensation on her tongue made her realize something with despairing clarity.
She knew that she looked nothing like a Skolevok heir should. She was breathing in filth, her skin was burned by acid rain, and, worst of all—
She was terrified out of her mind.
So terrified she didn't even want to remember how the monster had broken into the top floor and killed everyone in front of her.
Trembling, Lena pulled a pocket watch from her clothes. It used a twenty-four-hour clock and was beautifully made, with the Skolevok Family crest on the back. People in the Underhive didn't care about time, but the nobles did.
They knew that above Nostramo's boiling purple-black clouds, a feeble sun was hidden.
Lena Skolevok stared at her watch, gazing at the movement of the minute and second hands with trembling hope. They moved slowly across the pocket watch's silver-white face. The mechanism clicked, keeping time with her heartbeat.
Almost there. Almost there.
The twelve hours were nearly up.
She began to sob, weeping in the filthy basement of an Underhive gang she looked down on.
Her clothes were filthy, her expression shattered, and the insides of her fingernails were black. The soles of her fine leather boots were caked with mud from her panicked flight.
But—
The twelve hours were nearly up.
Only five minutes remained.
If she could just make it through those five minutes, she could return to the Upper Hive. She could be Lena Skolevok again. She could use her family's power to hunt down that monster during the Great Purge. It might be able to withstand forty household guards, but what about four hundred?
Yes, yes. It would surely work.
She sobbed and laughed, despair and hope flickering across her filthy face in turns. She watched the pocket watch, counting its ticks and silently wishing time would pass faster.
Then.
At last.
Five minutes were over. The second hand moved, followed by the minute hand, then the hour hand. They passed the old-fashioned numerals and continued on, marking time through mechanisms only nobles could understand.
Lena stared at it in a daze.
One second, two seconds, three seconds.
She trembled as she stood, still crying, but now with joy. A smile inevitably spread across her lips. She almost wanted to burst out laughing. Outside the basement door, there was no sound of slaughter like before. That meant the monster hadn't found her.
It had lost track of her!
She made her way up the stairs one step at a time, her boots thudding against the wood. Full of hope, Lena Skolevok pushed open the basement door, and then she saw—
Corpses.
And a black shadow.
Finally, the low singing.
Low and drawn-out, with an unmistakable gloom. The tune was soft, yet it sounded like a blade scraping the tender skin of her neck.
"No, no, no—"
With her life at its end, Lena Skolevok let out a broken scream, her voice like that of a slaughtered beast.
First, I want to thank everyone for your monthly votes and support.
Now, I have two things to say. First, I've moved the update earlier. Midnight updates fit the Legion's standards, but they really are a bit too grim.
Second, some readers have probably noticed that I adjusted the timeline of this story. For example, Curze is only a year and a half old, but that bastard Count Tattoo is already an adult. After weighing the options, I decided to go with this.
After all, this is fan fiction.
And I really want him to die.
(Anyway, he'll die tomorrow.)
Before you continue