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 forces and the Blood Moon's Demonic Beasts had fought back and forth across this land, burying countless bones beneath it.

During last year's Blood Moon Season in particular, the Frenzyblood Werewolves had erupted without warning and slaughtered everyone in the Sigh Defense Zone and the Graymist Defense Zone.

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

That was why a thick layer of gray deathly miasma shrouded this place year-round.

All that remained of the human fortress that had once stood here were broken walls and shattered pillars.

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

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

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

Above them stood a ruined stone throne, and the Ghoul Commander sat upon it.

He held a broken sword point-down in his right hand. The Holy Silver plating had not entirely peeled from its blade, and it continued to react violently against his transformed dark flesh.

Hiss! Hiss!

Blackened blood dripped down the sword's guard, leaving small, foul stains on the flagstones.

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, he had never let go of that sword.

The Gray Fog suddenly stirred.

A dozen or so swift-moving Ghouls leaped silently into the square, then crouched together at the foot of the steps.

Once all the Ghouls 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 shriek.

He reached the center of the square and looked down for a moment. Then he began tracing lines through the ash and frozen earth with his sword. Before long, a rough Sand Table encompassing 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 climb another step in rank.

He stared down at the Sand Table, soul fire burning quietly in his eye sockets. In his mind, the sixteen territories fell into three groups.

The first place he passed over was the main territory at the center of the Graymist Defense Zone.

The Sacred Flame there shone so fiercely that even its mere depiction on the Sand Table stirred his instinctive revulsion.

He had no interest in attacking a place like that. A frontal assault there would have to be paid for with countless corpses, and he did not have the forces. He could leave it to those mad dogs, the Frenzyblood Werewolves.

On either side lay two hard nails.

One was Ironthorn Fief. Its defender was a veteran Viscount who had fought for years at the Eternal Night Wall. He had strewn the land outside his territory with poisoned Holy Silver caltrops, and even the Werewolves had failed to break through during last year's Blood Moon Season.

The other was Radiant Basin. According to reports, a lesser Sacred Flame Tower stood there, along with a full complement of Church Knights permanently stationed at the site. Their formation was steady; a single Beast Tide would not crush them.

The Ghoul Commander held the broken sword and tapped each of those two locations.

As for everywhere else, the matter seemed much simpler to him.

Most of the newly assembled frontier territories were being held together by young nobles and motley crews. They were probably just expendables the Church had sent out.

The scouts' reports had told him everything he needed to know. Those places hardly warranted more thought.

But then it paused. At the very edge of the Sand Table, the scout it had sent to that corner—a scout of considerable strength—had failed to return.

The soul fire in the Commander's eyes flickered. It stared down at that spot and tightened its grip on the sword without thinking. The Holy Silver burned its flesh again, and the pain in its palm brought some clarity to its muddled thoughts.

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

It was unusual, but he did not immediately alter his entire plan over it.

As it saw it, there were still explanations. Perhaps the scout had simply been unlucky and run into a passing High-Tier Magic Beast.

Or perhaps the young noble sent to defend the territory had still been clutching a last-resort treasure bestowed by his Lineage and had used it at the critical moment.

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

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

With that done, the Ghoul Commander returned to the cold throne and sat down. It held the broken sword upright before it and slowly pressed both hands onto its hilt.

The hiss, hiss of corroding flesh continued.

It raised its head and looked toward the Blood Moon beyond the gorge, its color growing deeper by the day.

Gray Fog billowed back and forth at the mouth of the gorge. Wind surged up from below, stinging every face it touched.

This was the Shadow Demon Spider nest at the edge of Ashen Gorge, the hardest thorn to uproot anywhere around Blackpine Fief.

And so all seventy-odd Third Tier knights of Blackpine Fief had mobilized, forming a line behind the cliff's edge.

At the front of the formation, Fabien stood with sword in hand, his face taut. It was not the prospect of facing Demonic Beasts that troubled him, but the fact that Shien had come too.

Shien stood at the cliff's edge, looking down at the entrance to the abyss ahead. It looked as though a giant axe had split it open.

This was no ordinary cave. It was a whole system of funnel-shaped terrain collapsing downward, layer upon layer, with overlapping tunnels, countless forks, and steep drops. If they went straight in to clear it out, their losses would likely be devastating.

Shien watched for a while, then drew the short dagger at his waist. He used it to lift a piece of bloody raw meat from his attendant's hand and tossed the meat above the cave mouth.

The expressions 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 even, smooth and gleaming, as though an impossibly thin blade had sliced through it in the air.

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 wall.

Night Spiders did not hunt by sight at all.

They filled the entire underground space with nearly transparent venomous threads. The threads were almost too fine to see, yet astonishingly sharp, and their edges were highly corrosive.

One wrong step could cost a person a hand or foot. Worse, it could leave nothing of them, not even bones.

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

Fabien's eyelids twitched at the sight. In the end, 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, and he could not force it out.

"Proceed according to plan," Shien said calmly.

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

"Yes!" he answered in a deep voice, then sprang up and turned around.

The next moment, the order was passed down the line.

Fifty elite knights immediately spread out and rushed to their assigned positions.