The air in the forest sat thick and stale, as though the night itself had shut its lungs to listen. A thin mist crawled low along the forest floor, wrapping around boots and tree roots like pale fingers. The body of Arden lay cold and stiff not far from them, the soil beneath already soaked with the rot-stink that had seeped into everything.
Klion crouched down beside the corpse, the faint rasp of fabric brushing against damp leaves.
He tugged his gloves tight, eyes narrowing as he reached for the body.
"Let's see what did this to you…" he muttered under his breath, more to himself than to Wolf. His breath came out slow, visible in the cold air. His hands shifted toward the neck, ready to check for bruising, punctures, anything.
But before his fingers even touched flesh, a firm weight pressed down on his shoulder.
Wolf.
Klion looked up and met his gaze—Wolf's eyes were steady, unwavering, dark as the soil around them.
"No," Wolf said low, his voice carrying a cold finality.
"The corpse won't give you good enough answers."
Klion stiffened for a breath, then slowly eased back, drawing his hand away from the body.
He knew exactly what Wolf meant—dead flesh couldn't explain intent. A corpse couldn't reveal why.
"So," Klion said, straightening, his voice dropping just above a whisper.
"You want answers from the living."
"Exactly."
There wasn't even a flicker of hesitation in Wolf's tone. The forest wind swept between them, rattling thin branches. They moved out soundlessly, slipping from shadow to shadow like wraiths, their boots sinking into the soft forest loam.
They crept to the edge of the open field where the Union settlement sprawled under the faint silver light of the moon. Crude huts lined the open clearing. A few torches still burned, their flames weak and guttering, casting restless shadows across the settlement.
Wolf and Klion hid themselves near the low brush that hugged the edge of the field. Wolf knelt down, one hand resting lightly on the ground to steady himself. Klion positioned behind him, quiet, tomahawk already in his grip.
Minutes bled away in silence. A lone night bird gave a soft call somewhere far off. Then, finally, a figure emerged—small, slight, moving alone.
A young woman. She carried a thin bundle of cloth under one arm and moved with the kind of exhaustion that made her steps drag. Her eyes were downcast, shoulders slightly hunched—
Easy prey.
Wolf's muscles coiled. His breath grew shallow. One flick of his wrist to Klion.
Now.
The girl barely had time to gasp before a hand clamped over her mouth and a body dragged her backward into the tree line. She kicked out weakly, muffled cries snapping against the night air like broken twigs. Klion pulled her in deeper while Wolf followed, quick and quiet, until the forest swallowed all sight of the clearing.
They stopped at the same spot where Arden's corpse lay. The stench of decay filled the clearing—she noticed it immediately.
The girl's breathing grew shallow and panicked.
"Who—who are you!" she yelled, voice breaking with panic the moment Klion's hand loosened.
Wolf's response was a smooth, merciless motion.
The wakizashi whispered out of its sheath. A silver arc in the moonlight. Then a thin, precise slash kissed her left cheek—not deep, but enough to spill a thin line of blood down to her jaw.
Her scream burst from her throat
Ah—!
But Wolf shoved the grip of the wakizashi straight into her mouth before the sound could fully form, wedging it against her teeth. His other hand held the blade with two fingers, steady as a blade resting on calm water.
His voice was low, controlled, like he was teaching a child how to breathe.
"When I move this out of your mouth… you're not going to scream. You're not going to run. You're not going to do anything except tell me everything that happened after the monster field incident up until now."
"Blink twice if you understand."
The girl trembled—her fingers clutched the fabric of her own clothes—but she blinked twice, jerky and desperate.
Wolf slowly, deliberately pulled the wakizashi grip out of her mouth and slid the blade back into its sheath with a soft, final click.
The sound alone made her flinch.
Her breath shuddered out. "Uh… ah… after that incident…" She glanced quickly between Wolf's blank stare and Klion's heavy silhouette beside her.
"N-no one wanted to go to the monster field again. No..not after that."
Her voice shook at first but gradually steadied as if sheer terror was forcing the words out.
"A few days later, Hyung-woo called us for a gathering and said that Arden had gone missing. He asked if anyone had seen him, but none of us had. Not even Maja. She just… shook her head. After that it got worse. We started starving. Eventually we had no choice but to go back to the monster field—Hyung-woo led us."
Klion crossed his arms, silent, shadowed eyes fixed on her.
"Then… some days later…" Her breathing grew shallow again, like reliving it was suffocating her. "He called us again. Said he'd slain the boss. That he'd gotten a skill that could… see the future. He told us the south had a blessing for him, that this blessing would grant him everything we needed. Hunger—gone. Shelter. Safety. He told us to keep starving, to keep acting hopeless."
"He said it was necessary for the blessing to come."
Wolf's expression didn't change, but something tightened beneath the surface—like a quiet tremor through still water.
"He went straight south after that," she whispered.
Wolf's inner voice cut through, flat and sharp.
Foresight?
The fragments began aligning in his mind, snapping together like glass shards fitting into an ugly mosaic.
That would explains why he could counter me during the monster horde. Why he was too confident. Why their trap—small pit, exact placement—worked so well.
But if it's true he got that skill from killing the boss… that doesn't add up.
He's lying.
The skill might be real, but the story isn't.
Did he have it from the start? Is that why I've been so aware of him since the beginning?
No answer. No certainty. Only possibilities.
The "blessing" could be a lie to cover his escape. Or… maybe he knows someone or something will pass through from the south. But to fighting us?
That doesn't align either. The simplest explanation is…
He fled.
The girl's voice snapped him back.
"With all the desperation," she continued, shoulders hunched, "it didn't really matter whether we acted or not. We were already starving. Already hopeless. So we did what he said."
"We… just waited."
Silence. Only the rustling of the trees around them and the corpse's quiet, rotting stench.
"That's all," she whispered, almost to herself.
Her voice died in the mist.
Klion blinked slowly, her words sinking in like cold water trickling down the back of his neck.
That's all? he thought, his brows knitting tightly. His gut twisted — not out of shock, but because something about all of this sat wrong from the start. The pieces were too clean, too rehearsed.
Wolf shifted his weight, leaning a little closer to the trembling girl, voice low and cutting through the silence like the edge of his blade.
"Has anyone actually seen him kill the boss?"
The girl flinched as if the question itself had teeth.
"Y-yes. He… he killed the boss with help of his team — Maja and Aleksander," she stammered.
Wolf's brow arched faintly.
"Oh… Aleksan…der? Alek?" His voice dipped into a murmur. A dry, humorless chuckle caught in his throat.
"Ah, that old man."
Klion crossed his arms, his stance tense but steady.
"And where are they now?" he asked.
The girl shook her head quickly, eyes wide as if she feared saying the wrong thing.
"I… I think they just follow Hyung-woo."
Wolf's tone sharpened abruptly, like a blade pulled from its sheath.
"They follow him?!"
The subtle shift in his voice made the girl flinch backward a little.
"Y-yes," she said quickly, hands clutching the dirt. "I haven't seen them for days now."
Wolf fell silent, but something in him moved like a storm breaking behind his eyes.
No… His thoughts ran fast, uncoiling like wire.
Clearly they just set it all up like this. They already planned to flee from the start.
His breathing deepened, shoulders tensing.
Was everything — every scrap of this farce — just to slow us down as much as possible?
His jaw tightened. If I hadn't decided to come here tonight, I would've kept wasting more time.
Every day — just a little slower, a little more tangled in their mess. All of it… just to delay me.
His tongue pressed hard against the inside of his cheek; his pace of thought sharpened into something precise, dangerous.
Ridiculous… he'd go this far just to drag down our progress? Let them cling to a nonexistent hope like starving dogs chasing scraps.
Wolf exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound quiet but weighted. His hand brushed the hilt of his wakizashi without thought — a familiar gesture, almost absentminded.
Enough of this.
He lifted his gaze, eyes narrowing slightly. The night around them was still — too still. It made every breath, every shift of their boots in the undergrowth sound louder than it should.
Wolf sighed. A quiet, tired sound — not because he was weary, but because the conclusion had already been made in his head.
"I shouldn't waste any more time," he muttered under his breath, voice low and even.
"Tomorrow, if Exploration Team two still isn't back, I'm going into the deeper forest myself."
His eyes drifted back to the girl, and that soft, final click in his mind sealed the moment.
I should call it a day.
Klion's face went slack for a heartbeat—then he quickly turned his head away. He couldn't watch. He had never liked the things that Wolf did when Wolf decided there were no alternatives, and tonight was one of those times.
Wolf's wakizashi flashed once, clean and merciless. The blade slid across the girl's throat with a clinical motion; she gurgled, went still. It was quick and efficient.
He stood over her a moment, breathing shallow, eyes dark and unreadable in the moonlight.
"Call them for a meeting tomorrow," Wolf said without looking at Klion, his voice flat like a stone dropped into deep water.
"Announce this place is under the Heaven of the Forsaken. If anyone chooses to stand against us, they'll get the same example."
Klion only stared at the motionless body for another long second, then finally moved. He wiped his hands on his trousers, the gesture abrupt and impatient.
He didn't answer.
He gave Wolf a single look—an expression of something between resignation and warning—and turned and walked back toward their camp. His shoulders were a little tighter than before; his stride more hurried.
Wolf waited.
He stood motionless over the body, his silhouette dark and looming in the torchlight, until the faint sound of Klion's retreating footsteps completely disappeared into the night.
Only then did he move.
He bent down, scooped up the dead girl's limp body with surprising gentleness, and carried her out and into the even deeper, darker shadows of the forest. The air grew heavier here, the scent of damp earth and old pine overwhelming the smell of fresh blood.
He carefully set her down at the base of a massive, gnarled old tree. His movements were methodical, strangely detached.
First, he took off her clothes, folding the cheap fabric into a neat pile. Then, he stripped off his own garments, his pale, muscular body illuminated by the weak moonlight filtering through the canopy. He lifted her body again and placed her against the rough bark, her head lolling back.
He moved behind her, his arms wrapping around her stiffening form, pulling her close into an unsettling, macabre embrace. He buried his face in her long, unwashed hair and body, inhaling the scent of fear, sweat, and pine, his eyes closed.
His large, cold hands moved slowly over her body, exploring every part of her rigid form with a strange, detached curiosity.
After a long, silent moment that stretched into an unnatural intimacy with the dead, he pulled back. He moved away from the tree and retrieved his long, saber—from where he had left it leaning against a nearby rock.
His breathing was heavy, ragged. With a single, swift, and clean stroke, he decapitated her, the head falling silently onto the dark ground. He then carefully lifted her head by the hair, his grip firm.
He brought the dead, slack-jawed face toward his own body and, in a horrifying and private ritual, he inserted his things into her mouth.
And the night continued...