It was easy to track the demonic beasts that headed north.

　All you have to do is follow the blood of the monster beasts that are dotted on the ground.

　While thanking Pelly for cutting off their legs to make a marker, I ran along following the blood trail.



　How long did I run for?

　Eventually, I arrived at a strange place.

　A village.

　Wooden houses lined up in a circle in the forest. They are not huts, but rather solidly built houses.

　Each house has a fence made of earth and a gate made of wood. The forest dwellers are often associated with elves, but this way of life is close to that of humans.

　The houses are made of wood instead of stone, which reminded me of eastern architecture such as Onigashima.



　There are more than 20 houses. With five people in each house, the total number of people in the village was about a hundred.

　This was the deepest area of Titis, where magical beasts had been strolling around since daylight. If there are more than a hundred people living in a place like this, it's impossible that people wouldn't talk about it.

　But until today, I had never heard of such a village.

　In other words, this place--.


Home of the demons?


　Probably so.

　Because in such an open area, it would have always caught my eye when I flew over it on the wyvern.

　But I never noticed it. There must be some kind of magic to hide this place from other people's eyes.

　A hidden village enclosed by a ward.

　I'm sure that the scenery in front of me is just like that.


But if that's the case...


　Why did I have to break through the wards to get in? Since I came following the blood trail, the demonic beasts should have already entered the village, so why is the entire village quiet?

　Did everyone evacuate?

　Even so, judging by the agility of the demonic beasts that attacked the Scythe of the Grim Reaper, it's unlikely that they would let more than a hundred villagers off the hook. It sounds inappropriate, but a corpse or two is to be expected.

　The fact that there were no signs of resistance from the villagers was also disturbing. Isn't it strange indeed that not a single fence or even a single arrow is in sight?



　After that, I entered the village following the blood trail of the demonic beasts, and my brows wrinkled more and more.

　Even though I escaped after being attacked by a magical beast, all the houses are tightly locked up. No, rather than locking up the doors, it's more likely that no one lived there in the first place.

　The windows were all closed and there was no sense of life in any of the houses. There were vegetables hanging out to dry on the porch, farm tools propped up on the eaves, and plants growing in flowerpots. Not a single one of these scenes could be found in the village.

　As I stepped further into the village thinking about this, I felt like I understood how I was able to get inside the ward.



　--I was looking at a forest that was being eroded by a sea of rot.



　The trees are decaying, the grass is dying and the soil is rotting. The muddy ground was rumbling, and the muddy ground was spewing out a miasma that constantly contained poison.

　From the dark-purple-tinted plants and trees came a strange, awful smell, similar to that of fruit on the verge of decay. Leaves from the trees, blown by the wind, instantly turned black like fallen leaves on a bonfire the moment they fell to the corroded ground.



　The scene of an ordinary forest being rewritten into a sea of rot.

　There is a huge tree that stands remarkably tall on this spot. The huge tree, which was probably the symbol of the village, has been swallowed by corrosion from its roots.

　Its roots are rotten, its trunk is cracked and its branches and leaves are torn off. In a few days, the corroded trunk would not be able to bear the weight of the giant tree and it would fall.


　I looked around in all directions and saw similar huge trees growing in the south, west and east of the village. Perhaps these four trees were the base of the village's boundaries.

　One of them had been swallowed by the rotten sea, making it impossible to maintain the warding - that speculation was just a guess, but it couldn't be far from the truth.

　Surely, the demonic beast must have sensed that the warding was lifted and headed here. To the demon beast, the demon man who was hiding in this village must be such a delicious prey. It didn't even matter if the 'Scythe of the Reaper' that was hiding in the bushes and trembling survived.

　Looking back, the members of the Scythe of Death had been attacked and killed by demonic beasts, but they hadn't been eaten.

　To a demonic beast, humans aren't even food, they are lowly creatures.

　That's why the demonic beasts didn't eat the Scythe of the Death God.

　That's why they can't even look at you now.


　I looked at the snake king (basilisk) attached to the trunk of a huge tree and lifted the edge of my lips.



◆ ◆ ◆



　If we were to sum up Basilisk's appearance in a nutshell, he was an eight-legged lizard.

　Rather than the king of the serpent, he should be called the king of lizards. Such a thought crossed my mind.

　The noxious dark red scales. I'm going to have to say that I'm not going to be able to get my hands on it.

　Three of the eight legs of the basilisk were taken away by Perrie, the Commander of the Scythe of the Grim Reaper, but since it is sticking to giant trees without a care in the world, it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on its movement.

　Even now, it is still sticking to the trunk with four of its five remaining legs and grabbing its prey with the other leg - the girl of the demon race.

　Two horns that look familiar. The face is certainly that of the girl I saved before, too.

　However, her complexion is so bad that you can see it even from here. She seemed to be unconscious, and her body was limp - just like a dead person.


　I'm not sure if I've ever seen it, but if you consider the toxicity of the basilisk, which can erode the earth as well, the danger is great just by approaching it. And even more so on the day it was grabbed directly.......that might be too late.


''--Centrifugal Excitation (Reiki).


　.........Well, whether that girl is alive or dead, it's a certainty that I'm going to beat the basilisk to death.

　The jin that I spread throughout my entire body goes into a critical state in the time it takes to breathe one breath.

　Having pulled out my heart-suit, I didn't notice us - or even if I did, I ignored it and waved my blade carelessly at the snake king who was opening his big mouth to swallow the girl.