Sweet Blood, It Was Singing to Me

Did this monster give birth to the fleshy ball we just saw?

Looking at the freshly baked, still steaming meatballs and the half-eaten corpse of his companion, Fan En roughly understood how this thing was made.

Putting aside the question of what special processing methods were used to turn human flesh into such a nutritious and energy-rich ball, the sheer inhumanity of the method alone made Fan En feel that killing the other person a thousand times wouldn't be enough!

The museum was filled with blobs of flesh, and countless others had already been removed. Just how many lives were lost in this tragedy!

However, before he could even throw away his weapon, the monster, which had swayed to its feet, launched an attack on him. Its arms, made of countless intertwined parasites, lashed out, showering Fan En with a rain of parasites. These insects had sharp mouthparts, and once they touched a person, their flesh would be torn apart and burrowed into the body in the blink of an eye, leaving no chance of survival.

I see. Compared to fighting, directly spreading parasites is clearly an easier and more convenient method.

Fan En didn't dodge or flinch, letting the parasites rain down on him—in fact, he had nowhere to hide—the parasites tore through his skin and burrowed deeper, and he seemed to feel no pain, unexpectedly rushing towards the monster.

The monster was stunned for a moment when it saw that the person in front of it wasn't dodging.

"Bang--"

The weapon struck the monster's waist in an instant, immediately giving Fan En a sensation somewhere between steel and flesh. This guy was tough; he was definitely not an ordinary creature.

However, Saw Cleaver is used for sawing!

Fan En suddenly spun around, using the momentum from the turn to easily slice a large gash in the monster's body with the Saw Cleaver, tearing off the surrounding parasites in the process, sending the remains of the parasites and blood flying everywhere.

At that moment, the monster lashed out with a whip kick at Fan En. He raised his arm to block, but the force of the blow sent him staggering, and a large patch of blackened skin appeared on his reinforced arm.

The parasites that had previously been scattered on his body burrowed inside him at that moment. He instantly felt the pain of the parasites rampaging and destroying everything in his body. If an ordinary person were to experience this kind of intense pain, they would probably be rolling around on the ground, but he just stood there, clutching his body and convulsing.

The monster breathed a sigh of relief. He had just seen Fan En face the swarm of parasites without flinching, and thought that the other party had some kind of trump card that made him immune to parasites. But it turned out that he was just a complete brute.

In battle, the easiest to die besides the weak are the reckless. The parasites all over its body hissed and laughed, and it immediately leaped up and pounced on Fan En with its limbs spread out.

Just then, Fan En, who had been unable to move due to the excruciating pain in his body, suddenly raised his head. His eyes showed no pain or numbness, as if he had been prepared all along. He rubbed the Fire Paper in his hand against the Saw Cleaver, and the blade immediately burst into flames that would frighten wild beasts.

[Fire Paper]

[Special frosting paper that coats weapons with flames through friction is one of the hunting tools from the Healing Church Workshop.]

It's true that parasites can control humans, but he now has the enhancements from the dungeon blood therapy, so how could he be afraid of being controlled!

With a fierce slash, Fan En's all-out attack struck the unsuspecting monster squarely, cleaving it in two at the waist!

Even after being severed, the latter retained its ferocity, swinging its upper body to counterattack. Fan En tried his best to dodge, raising his weapon to block the monster's arms, but parasites suddenly emerged from the severed part of its body, their sharp teeth instantly covering his entire body with wounds.

Even though his severed lower body didn't die immediately, he stubbornly stood up and attacked Fan En with a kick. The situation was still not optimistic, but the enemy's strength had indeed decreased.

After a bloody and fierce battle, Fan En threw a Molotov cocktail and set the monster, which had been torn to pieces but was still alive, on fire. Amid the monster's howls, he used a Blood Vial to heal the wounds on his body.

In the end, it was still his victory, albeit a humiliating one.

But he had no time to celebrate; instead, he ran to the spot where the monster had devoured his companion, if he hadn't misjudged it—

He dug down amidst a mass of fleshy lumps and, sure enough, spotted a familiar figure – it was Bell!

She was wrapped in a thin film of mucus, seemingly asleep, not yet eaten and turned into a ball of flesh. Near Bell, Fan En discovered Yi Sha and the others, all wrapped in the film. When he saw that Yi Sha was safe and sound, he was truly relieved.

Tearing open the film, the people inside immediately woke up, their eyes filled with confusion, seemingly unsure why they were there. But Fan En didn't offer much explanation, instead urging them to leave this dangerous place immediately.

But just as people were about to leave, the museum trembled again.

No, it should be said that the fleshy spheres started to vibrate!

The fleshy spheres, large and small, burst open, and parasites emerged one after another. They combined with each other and eventually formed three monsters exactly like the one that Fan En had killed earlier!

Fan En's eyelids twitched; this thing was actually mass-produced!

Fortunately, there were only three of them. They were not as strong as me and might not be able to defeat the monsters on their own, but if we fought one in total, we might have a chance of winning.

"I suddenly have no strength left in my body!" Bell gasped for breath, leaning on her Threaded Cane, as if she had turned back into the frail old woman she was before entering the dungeon.

"What?" A bad feeling crept into Fan En's heart.

"Me too," Yi Sha said with a look of shame. The others also looked exhausted, barely able to hold their weapons.

They finally remembered that before they even understood what had happened upon entering the museum, they had been ambushed by a monster, lost consciousness, and been wrapped in a membrane secreted by parasites. It seemed that some kind of venom was injected into their bodies through the membrane, which then turned them into their current exhausted state.

Fan En frowned deeply, looking at how people were having trouble even running, took a deep breath, and finally made up his mind.

"You guys go first, I'll hold them off."

"I'll stay too." Yi Sha looked worried. "Shooting doesn't require much strength!"

"Bell." Fan En glanced at the old woman, who immediately grabbed Yi Sha along with the man beside her. Ignoring Isa's struggles, everyone except Fan En retreated outside.

The rule of preserving as many lives as possible with minimal sacrifice when facing danger was established before everyone discovered the dungeon and was trembling in fear in the shelter. Everyone agreed with it. Now, as the only one who still had the strength, Fan En had to stay and hold off these monsters.

He recalled the night he first came into contact with the dungeon. That night, faced with the attracted parasites, one of them, the outcasts, resolutely broke away from the group and used himself as bait to attract the monsters' attention, which gave them time to enter the clinic and obtain the medicine.

He is now just like that person back then.

Faced with a situation where death was highly likely, I found myself calmer than ever before.

He finally breathed a sigh of relief after everyone had run out of the museum and he could no longer hear Yi Sha calling his name.

"Look what I've learned from Gascoigne these days."

Faced with the monsters flanking from three directions, Fan En pulled out a Blood Vial, Yousefka's Blood Vial, but instead of injecting it into his body, he crushed the bottle, letting the blood splatter all over his arm.

"Sweet blood, it's singing to me."

Smelling the fragrance of blood, Fan En's eyes were gradually consumed by bestiality. His reason was diminishing, but his aura became even more terrifying, as if a wild beast was imprisoned in the cage of his body, and this beast was about to pounce.

"These are enough to make a person sick."

Does this sound familiar? That's right, it's Father Gascoigne's catchphrase. Whenever he's fighting someone and smells blood, he says this line, and over time, Fan En has picked it up.

Fan En had been thinking about how to temporarily increase his strength when facing life-or-death situations, and he found the answer during his battle with Father Gascoigne.

By actively aligning one's mental state with that of a wild beast, one can temporarily unleash the hunter's full power!

He had been pondering how he had managed to block Father Gascoigne's attack with just one arm. After much thought, he realized that he had been extremely excited at the time, and in his excitement, he had become reckless and lost in a state of self-forgetfulness, which had unleashed the hidden power within his body.

Allowing one's mind to actively transform into a beast is undoubtedly the simplest way to maintain a highly excited mind. Even though the consequences of doing so are severe, his level is already very high, and it's hard to say whether leveling up again will stabilize his mental state. He might even turn into a complete beast.

But if you want to break through in a difficult situation, you must first be ruthless to yourself, even more ruthless than to your enemies!

The power generated in this way may not be as great as it was back then, but it's enough. That state back then was something that could only be encountered by chance.

"Let's see if you kill me first, or I kill you first."

Fan En grinned and exhaled a breath of stale air, his expression resembling that of Father Gascoigne, who was addicted to hunting.

The three monsters pounced at him all at once. He roared as if unleashing his true self and charged forward to fight like a real wild beast!

The scene was filled with spurting blood, making it impossible to distinguish who the beasts were.

On the other side, people were looking for a safe place to hide. Fortunately, there were basically no traces of parasites here, and the weakened people were temporarily safe.

"Yi Sha, calm down!" Bell tried to persuade the girl, but her struggles showed no signs of stopping and instead became more intense. People then realized that she was recovering her strength faster than everyone else, and they could hardly hold her back!

"You can go back now—"

"Shut up, that's my brother!"

Suddenly, Yi Sha's small body burst forth with a strength that even strong men couldn't hold back, and she broke free from her restraints. Just as people were about to grab her, a gunshot rang out, and they all stopped in their tracks, looking at the crater left by the bullet at their feet.

"You all go, I'm going back," she said without turning her head. "Don't follow me. Everyone in the shelter needs to be taken care of. You must go back."

With that, she used the little strength she had just regained to hurry back towards the museum.

Bell and the others exchanged glances. She scratched her head of white hair in frustration and said, "You're not getting any younger, and you still cause us so much trouble!"

When Yi Sha rushed back to the museum, she was immediately struck by the pungent smell of blood as she approached the building—a smell only parasites possess.

"Elder brother?"

She called out cautiously, gripping her Hunter Pistol tightly, but heard no sounds of fighting.

As she entered the museum, bathed in light streaming through the large pit in the roof, she saw Fan En standing there, surrounded by the charred corpses of several monsters—more than three in total.

Yi Sha's face lit up with joy, and she was about to run over when she suddenly saw Fan En raise his Saw Cleaver and slash at the monster that wasn't quite dead yet.

Blood splattered everywhere, and the monster finally stopped moving. But he didn't stop. Like a butcher chopping meat, he kept hacking at the monster's corpse until it could no longer bleed. Then he went berserk and chopped at the surrounding fleshy spheres, grabbing the parasites that were hatching inside and squeezing them to burst. His face was full of enjoyment.

"Brother! Are you alright?"

Yi Sha was startled by the scene. As soon as she made a sound, Fan En looked in her direction and their eyes met.

What eyes they were! They couldn't see any rationality in anyone, only an addiction to hunting. Every blood vessel on the surface of their eyeballs seemed to symbolize the insects they had killed.

Yi Sha instinctively took a step back, but then remembered that this was her brother, so she stopped and cautiously approached Fan En, taking out a tranquilizer she had obtained from the dungeon. This thing might be able to suppress his madness.

"Don't move, bro. Just stay there quietly, and I'll help you wake up."

But Fan En clearly didn't listen to that and pounced on him!

Facing her former family, no matter how good Yi Sha's Gun Parry skills were, her momentary panic prevented her from finding the right moment to fire, and she was about to be Saw Cleaver!

"Rub--"

Suddenly, a long spear was erected between the two. The white spear body was spotless, and the tip gleamed with a cold, eerie light. It was clearly a rare and excellent weapon.

"Finally, I see living people! Can you explain the situation to me?"

A female voice came from above. When Yi Sha looked up, she found that a young girl was squatting at the very top of the gun. Her wide robes fluttered in the wind, and a smile appeared on the lower half of her face, which was hidden by Bamboo Hat.

Then he kicked Fan En from one end of the museum to the other!