Chapter 38

“Kraaaar!”

The first to charge were a pack of rotting Dire Wolves. They had lost the agility of the living but gained the relentless persistence of the undead that feel no pain and the ferocity of plague. Black saliva dripped from their rotten teeth, and from their empty eyes burned a blind hatred for life.

“Kael, aim for their hearts. The head doesn’t matter. They’re corpses anyway.”

“Yes, master!”

No sooner had Rian finished speaking than Kael’s body melted into the darkness. He was no longer the clumsy boy who practiced stealth in the lord’s manor. He was a living killing instrument Rian had raised from the shadows.

Kael did not rush head-on into the charging Dire Wolves like a beast. He moved as if dancing, slipping past their attacks by a hair and weaving to the side. The black daggers in his hands caught the moonlight and gleamed coldly.

The moment the first Dire Wolf opened its jaws toward his throat, Kael’s body bent at an unreal angle and slipped into the creature’s flank. Ssshk! The dagger pierced rotten hide and muscle, striking exactly where the heart would be. Kael twisted the blade without hesitation, rending its insides. With a choking cry, black spores burst out of the wolf’s body and it collapsed, lifeless.

Kael’s movement did not stop. Using a collapsing corpse as a springboard, he leaped into the air and light-footedly landed on another’s back like a cat. His daggers never rested—neck, back, flank. His strikes targeted the most vulnerable points of bone and muscle with ruthless precision, a perfectly calculated dance of slaughter. Blood and rotten flesh and revolting black spores rained around him, yet not a speck sullied his black clothes.

But it wasn’t enough against dozens of corrupted monsters. While Kael cut down three, the remaining beasts tightened their encirclement and surged toward Rian.

Rian stood motionless. His eyes did not follow the charging monsters but tracked the minute movements of the black spores billowing from their bodies.

‘The molecular structure is unstable. Parasites that resonate with specific mana wavelengths and proliferate. If so….’

Thousands of formulas combined and unraveled in his mind. Finally, he found the most efficient and brutal solution.

Rian lightly waved his hand through the air. There were no incantations, no magic circles. Yet the air around him began to warp subtly.

“Grrr?”

The contaminated ogre that led the charge instinctively sensed a threat and paused for a moment. That instant, at six points in the air around the ogre, the space suddenly seemed to indent inward.

Ssssshk!

A localized vacuum formed. Outside air furiously rushed in to fill that void, creating dozens of invisible, razor-sharp air blades. Rian’s 3-circle Magic ‘Wind Cutter’ combined with his new understanding of magic was reborn as a transcendent killing spell, the ‘Vacuum Blade’.

“Qrraaaagh!”

The ogre’s massive body was cleaved into dozens of pieces like a fish sliced by a giant cleaver, collapsing in ruin. The cuts were so clean that not a drop of blood flowed—only black spore dust scattered into the air.

Rian’s gestures did not cease. Like a conductor leading an orchestra, he moved his fingers with grace. Following his fingertips, vacuum blades blossomed across the bodies of the surging monsters. Necks were severed, limbs disintegrated, torsos split in two—the horrific scene unfolded in the forest clearing. The monsters fell without even a scream; it was an overwhelming display of power.

“Y-you… what on earth are you?!”

Watching his creations torn apart like paper, the robed man shouted in a voice of horror. He could find no legitimacy in Rian’s magic. It was an utterly alien and efficient force of destruction, as if mocking the laws of this world.

“Identity? I’m simply… cleaning pests that entered my home without permission.”

Rian’s voice was as cold as ice. He spread his palm toward the last surviving monsters. This time it was a different sort of spell.

‘Every being has a unique frequency. If you amplify a wave of the exact opposite phase to that spore’s frequency and collide them….’

Wheeeeeee—!

A high-pitched frequency, inaudible to human ears, emanated from Rian’s palm. The moment that wave touched them, the surviving monsters began to undergo a horrific change.

“Kraaaargh!”

The black spores covering their bodies vibrated madly and swollen, then began to burst in a chain reaction from within. As if thousands of fireworks exploded inside them, their flesh disintegrated into black dust and rotten fluids, collapsing without form. ‘Resonance Collapse.’ It was Rian’s new creation that annihilated existence itself.

In an instant the clearing fell silent. Only the robed man, Rian, and Kael—who had been watching from the darkness—remained.

“You… you are not a mage. What… what are you?!”

The robed man staggered backward in terror.

“Who knows.”

Rian walked slowly toward him.

“If I must define it, call me a ‘physician’ who exterminates plagues like you.”

Eyes like the abyss of shadows finally fixed that cold gaze on the source of the plague.