"Mmph..."
The halfling had barely finished speaking when he sensed something was wrong.
His entire body suddenly refused to move.
It was as though something had bound him.
His eyes shifted downward with a hint of fear.
Streaks of pitch-black shadow crawled up his body and sealed his mouth.
He could only make muffled sounds.
Several more shadows reached his neck.
An icy sensation and the aura of death spread.
He could not help showing his fear.
Until-
Crack.
The shadows twisted, wrenching the halfling's head around to face backward.
His terror froze in place at that very moment.
Xiluo and the spellcaster who had acted ignored the corpse and headed straight for the low house the halfling had emerged from.
The others tacitly stayed outside to keep watch in case anything unexpected happened.
The dragon and the human had barely reached the doorway of the low house before they froze.
Inside the small room-
There was almost nothing. On the cold dirt floor-
A human woman lay completely naked and motionless. If not for the slight rise and fall of her body, she would have looked like a corpse.
Her face was filled with despair and numbness.
Recalling how the halfling had been pulling up his trousers when he appeared, along with his bare upper body, Xiluo and the spellcaster beside him immediately understood a great deal.
Xiluo remained expressionless.
Perhaps it was because he had long since ceased to be human, or perhaps it was because chromatic dragons were born wicked.
He had gradually lost his empathy for such things.
And so he felt little sympathy.
Of course, if she had been a subject of his own territory... he might have felt some anger, but that would only have been because something belonging to him had been stolen