Chapter 154: Blood Fiend
“Ug-uuuugh!”
A silent scream tore from Scarlett. Her tongue had been sliced, and the arm that held her mouth lay severed on the floor. Even wracked with pain, those half-lidded eyes still glared daggers at Rihanna and Isaac.
BWOOM!
But only for a moment. One casual kick from the Grandmaster sent Scarlett sailing through the air and out the door.
“S-Scarlett!”
“Nooo!”
The men wailed at the sight of their beloved woman smashed to pieces—yet none dared rush in. For all their professed love, not one was willing to die meaninglessly.
“Haa, Isaac… your Adam’s apple is just so sexy.”
Isaac matched his stride to Rihanna’s as he carried her, pretending not to hear the comment. Instead, he asked the Grandmaster:
“Think she’s a Transcendent?”
“No. Not that,” the Grandmaster replied calmly, stepping outside first. The men parted to either side, like the river splitting open the day before.
Even with Scarlett sprawled on the ground at the end of the path, the villagers couldn’t muster real resistance—fortunate for Isaac’s party, who had no wish for needless bloodshed.
“She’s human—just someone who abandoned her humanity and offered herself to them.”
“…So it’s not only nobles who do that,” Isaac muttered, earning a nod.
“Those fiends hardly picky about noble or common blood right now. The question is: can that woman actually control the thrall-making process herself?”
“Good point.”
Scarlett bared her teeth at them from the dirt—a pitiful sight for someone said to enthrall every man in town. Their hesitation vanished.
“Hm.” The Grandmaster hefted her great saber onto one shoulder, chuckling. “Come to think of it, I had a few questions for her—but I went and sliced her mouth to ribbons.”
Scarlett glared back, eyes brimming with hatred—and confusion.
“No other mouths hiding in there? I can wait while you grow one,” she mocked.
“Shut up!” she spat.
Surprisingly clear diction for a tongue freshly severed—did it regrow already? She didn’t look like a Transcendent, yet her body clearly bordered on their level. Much like the old Galenia.
Crack.
Isaac tightened his hold on Rihanna. If a vassalization command reached her, she might lose control again.
“Hngh…”
Rihanna felt a very different kind of stimulus. Though they hadn’t been running, her breathing turned ragged, a faint sweat misting her skin—tension or excitement pulsing straight into Isaac’s heartbeat.
“Hah-up.”
A wet sensation traced down Isaac’s nape, making his eyes fly open. Something—no, a tongue—slid along his throat, licking from Adam’s Apple to collarbone: Rihanna’s tongue.
“…Riha?!”
Startled, Isaac hugged her tighter instead of letting go—a rational choice, though the contact felt anything but rational.
“Ah-nn…”
Rational choice, irrational result—leaving him flustered.
“W-what the hell is wrong with those two mutts?!” Even Scarlett yelped at the sight.
The Grandmaster gave an awkward shrug. “You created this, did you not? My poor disciple’s suffering. At this rate, they’ll skip straight to family planning.”
It sounded half–joke, half–truth. She suspected Rihanna Helmut would never fully return to normal, even after the vassalization bond broke.
“Now then, speak. Whatever you yap, that woman’s too deep in her boys-love fantasy to hear it.” He gestured toward Rihanna.
“Just kill me.” Scarlett growled.
“Tempting. But you should know something first: your so-called master already abandoned you.”
“…What?”
The woman’s pupils trembled. Through tears and smeared blood, the faintly crimson irises came into focus—proof enough she now hovered somewhere between human and Transcendent.
“Let me guess,” the Grandmaster said. “Your master sent you to ‘test’ us. If that’s so, she must be nearby—and she certainly knows what we can do.”
Isaac nodded, recognizing the same line of thought. Sharen, who hadn’t noticed a thing, whipped her head around and clutched her great-sword even tighter.
“She… abandoned me?”
“She only wanted to see how we’d react. A single human pawn doesn’t cost him much.”
It was just like Viscount Hellerwain. The Blood Fiend probably never thought the viscount could really harm them. She simply advanced her pawns, waiting to see the counter-move.
“Pawn…? Abandoned…?”
Realization drained all fight from Scarlett. Shocked, helpless on the ground, she looked every bit the tragic heroine.
“No—no way! I served her for years—sacrificed men for her! Thirty years! I went from a shriveled crone to this body for them—!”
Snap.
A single finger flick echoed—like the curtain falling at the end of a play, or an apple plucked from a branch.
And that was it. Scarlett’s eyes rolled back; she collapsed.
The Grandmaster no longer spared her a glance. His ears twitched toward the sound, tail stiffening.
A being, the ancients called a Blood Fiend sat cross-legged on the roof, smiling as lightly as a sparrow—but her presence weighed like a millstone.
Helmut were said to resemble roses, yet in truth they were closer to clots of blood. Against Helmut’s vivid red, the dead-black ichor oozing from her felt chilling.
“That girl was pitiable,” the Blood Fiend said, lips curved in a crimson-tinged smile. “She claimed she’d do anything to reclaim youthful beauty—”
A soft laugh.
“—but the truth is, she was never that beautiful. Perhaps I left her alive because her very futility was… lovely.”
Scarlett had cast away humanity, past, and memory to become what she was. But was that worth abandoning everything? The Fiend’s smile answered: hardly—yet that, perversely, made it beautiful.
“What drivel,” the Grandmaster snorted. “You’d get along with Nameless.”
She felt neither swayed nor impressed; nonsense could only resonate with those who saw meaning in it.
“Fufu.”
As always, monsters like her cared little for understanding—they simply acted.
Isaac locked eyes with the Blood Fiend. Rihanna had said it wasn’t Hellic but this creature who commanded the vassalization.
“Did you come to take Rihanna?”
The Blood Fiend chuckled at the “interesting question.”
“Well, a bit of this and that, really. I never imagined Rihanna would survive. Whether she succeeded or failed in assassinating the princess, I figured Rihanna was as good as dead.”
Yet here she was—alive, fighting to break the spell.
“Feels like I’m running at a loss here. Then again, you look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
“…”
Isaac glanced down. Rihanna had her teeth sunk into his shirt, biting hard to keep from speaking. Fabric crumpled in her mouth; saliva trickled down. It was resistance of a sort, but tinged with a strange sensuality.
“She’s actually having a tough time.”
“…”
Sharen peeked over and tilted her head.
“I’ve never seen Unnie look that happy…”
Isaac pretended not to hear the mutter.
“Hehe, if you say so,” the Blood Fiend replied, legs swinging.
“In truth, Rihanna’s just a side piece. Whether some filthy fool loses an arm over an old flame means nothing to me.”
“…”
“There’s only one thing I care about.”
She pointed at Scarlett.
“That Jonathan you mentioned—the boy who resembles me. Is he truly a half-blood, or just another tool like Scarlett? I want to know.”
“…”
Now Isaac understood Scarlett’s sudden attack: a sample. The Fiend was comparing Jonathan—possibly her own blood—to Scarlett. Determining if Jonathan was really her hybrid child meant everything to her.
While Isaac weighed his answer in silence—
“If you tell me,” the Blood Fiend offered, “I can teach you a way to break the vassalization bond without killing anyone. After all, that spell was born from us, Blood Fiends.”
---The End Of The Chapter---
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