There was nowhere on the mountain behind the estate that moonlight could reach.
The treetops pressed against one another. Dead branches crossed into a net, blocking out all light from the sky.
Yaha walked deeper through the fallen leaves. Beneath his feet, dry ground turned damp, solid earth giving way to moss-covered rotten wood.
Something moved inside his bones.
It wasn't pain.
It ran deeper than pain, as though a pair of hands had gripped every bone from within and was forcing them outward, inch by inch.
It was most pronounced around his shoulder blades. Every few minutes, those two fissures pushed outward along their old paths.
Something seemed about to break out of its shell, only to fall just short each time.
The System Panel flickered twice on the right side of his vision.
[Flesh Vessel reconstruction progress: 34%. Energy deficit continues to expand. Host is advised to replenish high-concentration essence.]
Yaha glanced at the line and ignored it.
The hunger had already spread from his stomach to the tips of his limbs.
It wasn't ordinary hunger. It was an extreme thirst, every muscle demanding energy from his cursed energy channels.
Like a furnace stuffed with coal, its fire burning so fiercely that the iron walls themselves began to melt.
He stopped beside a jutting rock.
A cave lay to the rock's left. Its small entrance was half hidden by shrubs.
There was a presence inside. Not human, but the murky, sour aura of a demon, steeped in the stench of rotten flesh.
Yaha tilted his head and glanced at the entrance.
The thing inside moved first.
The lesser demon crawled out of the cave, its body grotesquely twisted. Four arms grew from different parts of its torso, its head hung crookedly against its shoulder, and scraps