“What the...”

One of the navy-skinned fairies—one of the magic spirits—opened her mouth. She was reacting to the sight in the far distance.

She didn’t seem especially surprised. After all, she had seen plenty of holiness before.

Still, spreading it that widely to block something was a rather unusual approach.

Of course, the Lord of Thorn Fortress didn’t live there alone. There were others besides him.

In addition to the monsters led by the Lord, there were assistants to aid his research and two magicians skilled in alchemy. There were also several monsters without intelligence but who fought as well as knights.

Among them, three magic spirits stood guard atop the fortress walls. Their role was to report anything that happened and to harass intruders.

More precisely, they were to wear the intruders down through relentless pummeling, then offer the exhausted materials to the Lord.

That was their job.

They were unusually expressive for fairies. Likely because they had absorbed the essence of the Demon Realm and lost their fairy-like nature.

They spoke to each other while watching the wall of white light from afar.

“Flailing in desperation.”

“A mortal’s thrashing. Should be fun to watch.”

“They think it’s over just because they stopped the plague ghouls.”

“Holiness, huh.”

All three magic spirits had replaced their fairy essence with the energy of the Demon Realm—commonly called demonic energy. Because of that, one of them could dominate the minds of monsters, while the other two used bows.

Naturally, they could imbue their arrows with demonic energy.

Though they were far inferior to the archer who had initially targeted Enkrid’s party.

Which was why they had been assigned to surveillance instead.

Also, just because they had fallen didn’t mean they’d lost their innate fairy traits. They still had agile bodies.

“That girl carrying holy power... we should skin her and examine it. I wonder if half-giant hide is thick. If so, it could be useful for making chimeras.”

The skin of a giant was like rock. If hers was similar, it would be highly usable.

These beings possessed a cruelty unthinkable for fairies. Whether that was due to the Demon Realm’s influence, or simply the time they had spent here, or both—no one could say.

They themselves believed that, having cast off the lineage of forests and flowers and become the Demon Realm’s adopted children, they now possessed superior strength and talent. And to any human observing from the side, there was indeed something distinctly un-fairy-like about them.

Slow.

Compared to Shinar or the fairies who had moved to the Border Guard’s city, the difference was stark.

True fairies never harm even a single blade of grass without reason. They cultivate it. Believing that their sharp sensitivity could just as easily harm themselves, they restrain and control their emotions.

But the fairies in front of him were not like that.

They displayed emotion openly and performed revolting biological experiments without hesitation. They were no longer delicate like true fairies.

Jaxon didn’t know all of this. He merely sensed that they were duller than expected.

And that was enough.

The moment he had sliced down two plague ghouls, Jaxon surged upstream—straight toward the direction from which the monster horde was pouring.

Even Enkrid wouldn’t be able to pass unnoticed between monsters who had sewn their mouths shut and would rather explode than live.

But Jaxon could.

The air of the Demon Realm is different.

As long as you understood that difference, adapting was simple.

Assimilation—a technique reserved for knights, known as “Blur” to the Dagger of Geor. It made the body faint, ghostlike. That’s where the name came from.

But what did names matter?

Distinctions are meaningless.

He had realized that long ago.

He could hide his presence and move in reverse through the ghoul horde—and that’s what he did. Lowering his posture, stepping quickly, he bounded along the outer edge of the swarm.

Then, when he saw the spectral mouth on the thorn wall glowing, he stepped and leapt up.

Some spirits reached out in a feeble attempt to stop him, but it was useless. Jaxon even used those reaching hands as footholds to climb the wall.

A few wraiths let out shrill screeches, half-emerging from the fortress wall with outstretched arms, but Jaxon calmly drew a dagger imbued with holiness and slashed them down.

Kiiaak!

The wraiths screamed in agony, but their cries were drowned in the dirge sung by the specters of the Thorn Fortress.

Only a few particularly sensitive ones reacted.

Thus Jaxon even deceived the gaze of the spirits. For him, this was normal. These were the techniques he had honed all his life.

Had they been as sensitive as real fairies, even he would’ve been caught. But this had been the product of many fortunate factors.

They were dull, and Thorn Fortress—this Demon Realm bastion—had never truly been breached before.

Several knights had seen or heard of this place over the years, but judged that nothing could be done.

To attack alone was suicide. To attack together... there were never enough hands.

Most importantly, these inhabitants never caused immediate problems. Outwardly, they seemed to stay quietly within the Demon Realm.

All of that had created this present situation.

Jaxon, by instinct, had exploited every single gap.

And so he climbed the wall.

Once he confirmed the three guards atop it, he appeared behind them and, with stilettos in both hands, pierced the backs of two necks.

From their perspective, it was pure horror.

“...!”

The remaining one couldn’t even scream. His eyes bulged as he turned around.

To him, it seemed as if a shadow had risen from nowhere and stabbed his two companions.

He immediately swung his longbow like a bludgeon. But Jaxon moved like flowing water. As he withdrew, the bodies of the two that should have collapsed instead stopped mid-fall with a thud.

Jaxon glanced back at them. That was not the normal reaction of someone stabbed. But there was no need to be surprised.

This was the Demon Realm. Anything beyond expectation could happen here.

The two stabbed ones froze with their backs bent unnaturally, then slowly lifted their heads. A crack came from their necks as bones misaligned. Their puppet-like motions lost all focus from their eyes. The whites showed. Their pupils had vanished.

Then, from the wounds Jaxon had pierced—specifically, the holes in the back of their necks—there was no black blood. Instead, with a glorp, their flesh swelled and new organs formed.

A long mass of flesh drooped like a giant serpent to the floor.

What could one call a thing like that, sprouting from the neck? A tail? An arm?

No one knew.

A neck-limb? Neck-tail? In any case, the deformed new organ of the magic spirit extended along the floor, its muscle-like structure tensing and releasing, until the end suddenly sharpened—and flew at Jaxon.

It was as fast as an arrow. Jaxon’s gaze followed the new appendage closely.

Beneath the navy flesh, black veins stood out starkly. In a way, it looked like a thick, writhing worm.

Jaxon dodged and slashed with his stiletto.

Swish.

Even that mutated aberrant organ had joints—or at least gaps that looked like them—so he split through that part. It was a blade art technique that used the enemy’s own momentum.

One could call it the pinnacle of accidental swordsmanship.

But it looked as if he’d anticipated all of it, striking with perfect composure.

If Enkrid had been here, he would’ve applauded the sharp insight and marveled at how Jaxon had used the opponent’s charging force.

Black blood sprayed from Jaxon’s cut, but the aberrant organ ignored the wound. Like a snake changing direction, it coiled and aimed for the back of Jaxon’s head.

“You bastard.” 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Meanwhile, the last remaining relatively intact magic spirit notched an arrow to its longbow—but the moment it did, a blade struck its forehead.

Thunk!

The crisp sound of a blade splitting a skull. It was the Silence Dagger Jaxon had thrown while dodging.

As Jaxon slipped past the two mutated flesh-worms lunging at his back, the one struck in the forehead twitched, pupils rolling back and light vanishing from its eyes. Its body began to tremble.

Once again, Jaxon observed.

A curse? Or is death the activation signal?

It seemed something had been implanted in them to function that way.

Darkness descended, limiting vision—but Jaxon was someone who preferred the dark.

He had no trouble perceiving his surroundings even in pitch black. Whatever vision lacked, his other senses compensated for.

As he continued watching, listening, and feeling, the Silence Dagger embedded in the fairy’s forehead wrenched itself free.

Rrrk—thunk.

It dropped to the floor. And from the hole in its forehead, flesh sprouted—another organ identical to the aberrant one still targeting him.

Yet even then, Jaxon did not stop watching, listening, and sensing. Doing so, he noticed something odd.

What he had thought were veins bulging beneath the surface of the flesh-worm organ turned out to be something else.

The thick black lines pierced through the epidermis and then... bloomed.

A black flower unfurled.

They planted a cursed seed.

Then what was animating them now?

Will. Will was moving them. But Jaxon’s Will, unlike that of the other knights, moved in a different direction. Stimulated through his senses, his Will didn’t just observe—it intruded, dissected, and reflected inward.

For a body to move even after death...

It would have to be undead—or possessed by a spirit.

He had already seen the plague ghouls below and could guess a bit of the enemy’s methods.

They embedded spirits of the plague within the ghouls.

And now, in these, they had planted some kind of unique plant that grew in the Demon Realm.

A sharpened sense could achieve things like magic. It was obvious to Jaxon, though astonishing to others.

Within the three aberrant beings, Jaxon saw a pulsing black oval shape beating from within.

From the black flowers blooming out of the necks of the magic spirits came drifting black powder.

It was a poison that could intoxicate even knights—and would kill an ordinary person on skin contact. But Jaxon had consumed dozens, even hundreds of poisons since childhood.

That didn’t mean he’d foolishly inhale an unknown one.

He pulled out a small hood and covered his mouth. It was a spec object from a fairy city—capable of purifying air taken in through the nose and mouth.

Back in his days with the Mad Platoon, he had established trade all over. He’d gotten what he needed even from the fairy city.

No one, not even Enkrid, knew about it.

Thus, with the spec object protecting his respiration, poison absorbed through the skin posed no threat.

The writhing, whipping, dust-spraying, floor-pounding flesh-worms flailing all around him were no more dangerous than the axe swings of a rabid barbarian. His skill at frontal combat had grown significantly after endless battles with the Madmen.

He hated to admit it—and would never say it aloud—but yes, those maniacs had helped.

Jaxon pierced into the openings in their attacks and stabbed at the seeds inside their bodies.

Information control was the # Nоvеlight # core of battle. He wholeheartedly agreed with Lua Gharne on that point.

That was why he’d gone ahead—to delay as long as possible the moment when what was happening outside the fortress reached those deeper within. And he was satisfied with that.

It wasn’t the first time he’d used his strength for something other than killing for krona. But if he said he wasn’t enjoying himself now, it’d be a lie.

He was helping someone—and that someone was walking toward a great ideal.

Then, in his mind, he heard the voice of his master speaking like a ghost:

“Yeah, you bastard. You look good right now. Use your damn talent. Just use it for what you believe is right. Didn’t I say it a hundred times? Your ears not bleeding yet?”

His master’s tone had always been annoyingly light. Jaxon now knew it was because he himself had been too gloomy.

I know.

Words he’d heard to the point of bleeding from his ears had finally etched themselves onto his heart.

When had it begun?

Jaxon had learned what was right by watching Enkrid. And so, anyone who blocked Enkrid’s path was the enemy.

And right now, that righteousness—and everything else—was approaching the fortress.

***

The explosion of the plague ghouls had made the air thick and foul. Normally, just approaching this close would’ve been impossible—but Teresa’s sacred hymn was purifying the path they walked.

Enkrid looked upward. Several shifting shadows were toppling over, one by one.

It looked like they were suddenly having seizures—but no one needed to say it to know the name of that seizure was Jaxon.

What the hell is that now?

The fallen enemies began to change shape. A fight broke out. Only then did Jaxon’s shadow become visible.

Should he help? The thought barely lasted a moment. He didn’t move.

There was no need.

Not long after, the three aberrant beings collapsed to the ground like discarded skins.

Why something that looked human suddenly sprouted serpent-like limbs was anyone’s guess.