The Hunter

The Graymist Defense Zone and the Sigh Defense Zone lay on the front line of the Eternal Night Wall.

For centuries, the Church's Expeditionary Army and the monsters of the Blood Moon had fought back and forth across this land, burying countless dead beneath it.

Then, during last year's Blood Moon Season, the Frenzyblood Werewolves had suddenly surged forth and slaughtered everyone in both the Sigh Defense Zone and the Graymist Defense Zone.

Only after the Blood Moon Season ended did the Church retake the Graymist Defense Zone at enormous cost. The Sigh Defense Zone, however, had fallen completely.

That was why a thick shroud of gray deathly miasma hung over this place year-round.

The human fortress that had once stood guard here was now nothing but broken walls and ruined pillars.

High above, charred stone beams jutted upward. From a distance, they looked like the exposed ribs of some dead giant beast.

And in the half-collapsed square at the heart of the ruins stood an army of Ghouls.

Hundreds upon hundreds of Ghouls stood silent in the cold wind.

Above them stood a battered stone throne, with the Ghoul Commander seated upon it.

He held a broken sword point-down in his right hand. Its Holy Silver plating had not entirely flaked away, and it constantly repelled his mutated dark flesh.

Sss! Sss!

Blackened blood ran down the sword's guard and dripped onto the flagstones, leaving small, filthy puddles.

The pain would have tortured a Third-Tier Ghoul to death, but he seemed long accustomed to it.

From the day he had risen again as a Ghoul, that sword had never left his hand.

The Gray Fog suddenly churned.

A dozen or so swift Ghouls leaped soundlessly into the square, then crouched low together and stopped below the steps.

Once every Ghoul had arrived, the Commander rose slowly from his throne and descended the steps, dragging the broken sword behind him.

Its tip scraped across the flagstones with a piercing screech.

He reached the center of the square and studied the ground for a moment. Then he began tracing lines through the ash and frozen earth with his sword. Before long, a rough Sand Table covering all sixteen

territories of the Graymist Defense Zone had taken shape beneath his feet.

In five months, the Blood Moon Season would descend in full. This would be his main battlefield, and his chance to prove himself. Only if he fought well enough would he earn the right to rise to a higher rank.

He stared down at the Sand Table. Soulfire burned steadily in his eye sockets as he divided the sixteen territories into three groups.

The first he dismissed was the central territory of the Graymist Defense Zone.

The Sacred Flame there burned so brightly that even its mark on the Sand Table stirred his instinctive revulsion.

He had no interest in attacking a place like that. A frontal assault there would take countless corpses, and he did not have enough troops. Let those mad Frenzyblood Werewolves handle it.

On either side stood two hard nuts to crack.

One was Ironthorn Fief. Its defender was a veteran Viscount who had fought at the Eternal Night Wall for many years. He had spread poisoned Holy Silver caltrops outside his territory, and even last year's Blood Moon Season had not seen the Werewolves break through.

The other was Radiant Basin. According to intelligence, a lesser Sacred Flame Tower stood there, along with a full-strength contingent of Church Knights. Their formation was solid; a single charge from a Beast Tide would not crush them.

The Ghoul Commander held his broken sword and tapped each of those two places.

Everything else looked much simpler to him.

Most of the newly assembled border territories were held by young nobles struggling along with motley forces. They were probably just expendable pawns sent out by the Church.

The intelligence brought back by his scouts said enough. Those territories did not warrant much thought.

But then he paused. At the very edge of the Sand Table lay one territory whose scout, a capable one, had failed to return.

The soulfire in the Commander's eyes flickered. He stared down at the spot and instinctively tightened his grip on the hilt. Holy Silver seared his flesh again, and the pain in his palm helped clear his muddled thoughts.

A border territory had somehow swallowed one of his elite scouts without a sound.

It was unusual, but not enough for him to change his entire plan at once.

As he saw it, there could still be an explanation. Perhaps the scout had been unlucky enough to run into a passing High-Tier Magic Beast.

Or perhaps the young noble sent to defend the territory still had some lifesaving trump card bestowed by his family and had used it at the critical moment.

Either way, it was not enough to make him disrupt his plans for the entire Blood Moon Season.

Still, after a moment's silence, he raised his broken sword and carved a deep cross over Blackpine Fief.

With that done, the Ghoul Commander returned to his cold throne. He sat, set the broken sword upright before him, and slowly pressed both hands onto the hilt.

The corrosive hiss continued.

He raised his head toward the Blood Moon beyond the valley, its color growing deeper by the day.

Gray Fog rolled back and forth across the mouth of the gorge. Wind rushed up from below, stinging every face it struck.

This was the Shadow Demon Spiders' nest on the edge of Ashen Gorge, the hardest threat to uproot near Blackpine Fief.

So all seventy-odd Third-Tier Knights of Blackpine Fief had turned out, forming a line behind the cliff's edge.

Fabien stood at the front of the formation, sword in hand and face taut. It was not the monsters that troubled him, but the fact that Shien had come too.

Shien stood at the cliff's edge, looking down at the entrance to an abyss that seemed to have been split open by a giant axe.

This was no ordinary cave. The entire terrain sank in a series of funnel-shaped tiers, with tunnels layered over one another, countless forks, and steep drops. Charging in to clear it out would likely cost them dearly.

After studying it for a while, Shien drew the short dagger at his waist, picked up a piece of bloody raw meat from an attendant with its tip, and tossed the meat toward the space above the entrance.

The faces of several knights in the front rank changed at once.

The meat was still in midair when it struck something invisible and split into more than a dozen pieces without warning.

The cuts were perfectly clean, gleaming smooth, as though an impossibly thin blade had sliced through it.

The scraps had barely begun to fall when they rapidly turned black. Before they hit the ground, they dissolved into foul-smelling black liquid that dripped down the rock face.

Night Spiders did not hunt by sight at all.

They filled the entire underground space with nearly transparent Venom Threads, almost too fine to see but astonishingly sharp, with fiercely corrosive edges.

One wrong step could cost a person a hand or foot. Worse, it could leave no remains at all.

The Night Spiders had long since woven the whole of Ashen Gorge into a natural meat grinder.

Fabien's eyelid twitched at the sight. At last, he could not hold back. "My lord, you should go back. If something—"

Shien cut him off before he could finish. "Everything's ready. What are you afraid of?"

Fabien's throat tightened. The rest of his warning stuck there, unsaid.

"Proceed as planned," Shien said calmly.

In the end, Fabien swallowed everything he wanted to say.

"Yes!" he answered in a low voice, then rose sharply and turned.

A moment later, the order passed down the line.

Fifty elite knights immediately spread out and raced toward their assigned positions.