Chapter 4
“K-Keugh…!”
It was an inexplicable tragedy that had unfolded in the blink of an eye.
At least, that was how it looked from the Were’s perspective.
To everyone else, however, the sight was strangely satisfying.
The Were possessed an absurd sense of racial superiority and looked down on nearly every other race.
Their discrimination against humans—the Sapiens in particular—went far beyond what anyone could reasonably tolerate.
Every action had consequences.
The Were had started the confrontation.
The Were had attacked first as well.
In that sense, what was happening now could be seen as justified punishment.
And yet, no one cheered or expressed admiration.
The scene was simply too gruesome.
Too cruel.
“Ghh… What the hell happened…?!”
The Were clenched his teeth as he pressed a hand against his wound.
The moment his opponent stabbed himself in the stomach, the Were’s own abdomen had suddenly been pierced as well.
This must have been the same mysterious power that had killed his companions earlier.
He could transfer the wounds he received directly onto another person.
What kind of ridiculous cheating ability was that?
But what shocked the Were even more was Yohan’s overwhelming regenerative ability.
Without taking any special measures, Yohan’s body rapidly returned to its original state.
And it happened in less than a minute.
In fact, the last injury Yohan had inflicted on himself—a sword piercing straight through his abdomen—had completely healed less than ten seconds after he pulled the blade out.
“This is impossible! How can a mere human do something like this…?!”
“Carelessness. Overconfidence. Those are the Were’s greatest weaknesses.”
Yohan strode toward the Were.
Then he thrust his hand straight into the hole in the creature’s abdomen.
“KAAAAAAAAARGH!”
Crunch.
Tear.
He casually forced apart the sword-sized wound, ripping the flesh even wider.
The Were’s thick Aura and tough skin desperately tried to resist him.
But neither offered the slightest resistance to Yohan’s actions.
Blood and screams once again filled the area.
Everyone remained silent, watching the slaughter unfold before their eyes.
Yohan dug even deeper into the Were’s body, reaching for the flesh and organs hidden inside.
Whatever fighting spirit the Were still possessed vanished completely.
All that remained was fear.
Fear of death.
And to Yohan, that expression was strangely pleasant.
As the Were trembled from head to toe and desperately struggled beneath him, the corners of Yohan’s lips twitched.
That tiny movement was unmistakably close to a smile.
“…Maybe this was what I wanted after all.”
Leaving behind those ominous words, Yohan continued his work.
Whether it should be called slaughtering or butchering was difficult to say.
As it continued, the Were’s screams, which had once thundered painfully through everyone’s ears, gradually weakened.
Danforth, who had been watching from nearby, suddenly remembered the name of the incomprehensible man he had mentioned earlier.
“The Mad Savior… Yohan.”
Yohan broke bones apart, reached between them, pulled out organs, and scattered them around.
Once he was finished, he casually wiped the blood from his hands on the Were’s mane before looking to the side.
Two other members of the same race were lying there.
They had gone through different processes.
But they had all reached the same ending.
It had taken Yohan barely ten minutes to completely overturn the situation.
Once everything was finished, he stood and muttered to himself.
“…Maybe everything constantly going wrong is because of your damn curse.”
[My beloved Yohan. You know perfectly well that dragging those stupid Were into the curse was your own choice.]
“……”
[You were the one who couldn’t resist the slaughter. You were the one starving to hear their screams. Do you understand?]
“…Is that so?”
He had no particular intention of denying it.
It had been a desperate measure.
A method Yohan used to remind himself that he was still a living being.
Of course, hearing it directly from the very being responsible for his curse was extremely irritating.
Yohan looked coldly at the corpses.
One had been crushed to death.
Another had died with its organs ripped out.
Another had died with brain matter spilling from its skull.
All three bodies lay limp, completely devoid of life.
This had originally been nothing more than a matter of returning something he had accidentally picked up to its owner.
Yet things had unintentionally grown far too large.
There was no benefit in attracting even more attention.
It was about time he left.
“No one is held responsible for disturbances occurring in lawless territory outside any jurisdiction.”
Yohan was about to walk away when Danforth stopped him with his voice.
“…That is the Sanctuary’s rule, but we’re not completely without responsibility this time either. We’ll take care of these things.”
“Do whatever you want.”
Danforth wiped the blood from his sword as he spoke.
“I suppose introductions are overdue. Danforth Corsida, commander of the Ascaltier Empire Expedition.”
“I know.”
“…Dexter told you, huh? Anyway, you said you’d come to our territory soon, right? The dungeon opens in two days. If you want to talk, tomorrow is your only chance. Keep that in mind.”
“……”
Yohan stared quietly at Danforth’s outstretched hand.
Then he abruptly turned around and walked out of the tavern.
Creeeeak—
Silence descended over the establishment.
Only the rattling sound of the door echoed loudly through the room.
After Yohan left the scene—
The expedition members stared blankly at the spot where he had disappeared for quite some time.
Dexter Boyle, who had now witnessed Yohan’s slaughter twice, once again realized just how fortunate he had been to survive.
He stared at the Were corpses that had been reduced to chunks of meat and at the pools of blood covering the floor.
He unconsciously took a step backward.
That could have been him.
Perhaps everyone had become captivated by Yohan’s overwhelming display.
Even those who had shown no interest in the earlier disturbance were now staring toward the expedition members.
From the expedition’s perspective, they had unintentionally attracted far too much attention.
“…He’s even more insane than the rumors say. The Mad Savior.”
“…What do we do now, Captain?”
“What do you mean, what do we do? We clean this mess up first. Get moving.”
The owner of the tavern was an elderly dwarf well over 120 years old.
He was so old that very little could still bother him.
Karaam, the Sanctuary, was a place where countless minority races gathered alongside the Four Great Powers.
Disturbances of this level happened far too often.
Danforth briefly considered simply leaving the bodies where they were.
But leaving corpses inside someone’s tavern certainly wouldn’t earn them any goodwill.
And so, Danforth and his men disposed of the bodies first.
The damage to them was so severe that decomposition had already begun quickly.
And as expected from Were corpses, the stench was terrible.
Danforth watched his subordinates continue working while holding their noses and let out a quiet sigh.
“Whew…”
Whether it was rescuing Dexter alone or the overwhelming power he had displayed against the Were—
There was no longer any reason to doubt it.
The Mad Savior, Yohan, had returned to the Sanctuary.
After several years.
“…I thought I’d never see him during my lifetime.”
The Dark Land had been created by the Great Old Ones and the Absolute Gods.
As its name suggested, almost the entire land was covered in darkness.
Less than five percent of the entire Dark Land received even the faintest trace of light.
And even those areas had already been occupied by the Four Great Powers.
Other creatures could not even approach them.
For expedition members who had not been born within the Sanctuary, the darkness of the Dark Land was practically a disaster in itself.
A human thrown outside the Sanctuary alone had less than a one-percent chance of surviving.
And—
The man who occupied that tiny one percent was none other than Yohan Blake.
A man who had wandered alone throughout the Dark Land for more than two hundred years, repeatedly carrying out acts of salvation.
A man whose methods of salvation were sometimes so horrific and brutal that he had earned the title—
The Mad Savior.
And despite that, he had almost never properly revealed himself to the world.
These days, there were very few people who even remembered that he existed.
“What the hell are you trying to accomplish…?”
After roughly burying the Were corpses in the cemetery near the Sanctuary’s southern gate, Danforth returned to their territory with his expedition members.
The entrance to the Sapien-controlled district was surrounded by walls three meters high.
A flag bearing humanity’s symbol, a golden eagle, flew above its entrance.
“Hmm?”
“Captain?”
Several young men in armor who had been standing guard at the main gate immediately waved cheerfully when they spotted Danforth.
“Didn’t you say earlier that you were going to drink all day? What happened?”
“All day, my ass. Who the hell do you think is a drunkard?”
“That’s a strange thing to say for someone who visited the brewery the moment we arrived. Heh heh.”
“No, I wasn’t going there because I wanted to drink… Ah, forget it. There’s no point explaining it to rookies.”
Danforth grumbled, then waved the men beside him away.
“You lot stop asking pointless questions too and go get some sleep! We deploy in two days!”
“Come on, Captain! You have to finish the story first!”
“That man earlier really was Yohan, right? That’s why he helped us?”
“So the rumors about him avoiding the Sanctuary were false? He showed himself openly this time!”
“Will you bastards get lost already?!”
Danforth forcibly chased away his subordinates, who were bombarding him with questions.
Then he grabbed Dexter by the back of the neck just as Dexter was quietly attempting to slip away.
“A-Ahaha… I haven’t gotten proper sleep either. I think I should probably head back to the quarters…”
“You’re not going anywhere, you bastard. You disappeared on your own without reporting anything and then suddenly crawled back here! You’re going to tell me everything that happened first!”
“Ow! That hurts! Let go and we’ll talk! Let go!”
At the same time.
Within the territory controlled by the elves in the northeastern part of the Sanctuary—
Around ten people had gathered inside an underground refuge on the western side, the area closest to the dungeon.
Their purpose was to punish a dissident.
Tap.
Tap. Tap.
The one who had declared himself the leader of the group blinked his huge, bulging eyes while repeatedly tapping his long staff against the butcher’s head.
“You’re calling that an excuse? Hmm?”
The middle-aged elf interrogating him in a rough voice retained only one feature of his original race.
His pointed ears.
His once-slender body had completely disappeared.
Only his shoulders and upper arms had become grotesquely enlarged.
His back was hunched, and his knees had weakened so badly that he could no longer walk without a staff.
His jaw protruded outward while his mouth had sunk inward, exposing only his front teeth.
“The altar was destroyed. The living sacrifice escaped. My proud son and three of our brethren lost their lives. And you’re telling me that you, the only bastard who survived, didn’t even see the culprit’s face? Hm?”
“…Yes.”
Crack!
Douglas Olmsted slammed his staff violently against the ground and snapped it.
Then he held the sharp broken end against the butcher’s throat.
“Your filthy mouth speaks lies… but your eyes are honest, child.”
After all—
Eyes could never lie.
With that thought, he casually pushed the staff forward.
“K-Keugh…!”
Sharp magical energy coated the pointed tip of the broken wooden staff.
It sliced effortlessly through flesh.
The butcher’s throat was pierced straight through, leaving him unable even to scream.
Blood bubbled from the wound and streamed downward.
Instead of breathing, only air leaked uselessly from his ruined throat.
Douglas stepped down on him, cutting off even that.
Then he shouted loudly.
“HUMANS! IT WAS HUMANS! HUMANS KILLED THE LAMBS OF GOD DAGON!”
His thunderous voice was filled with such fury that the death of their own brethren was quickly forgotten.
Naturally.
To these people, even death itself was nothing more than another means of worship.
Douglas shouted again.
So loudly that his throat seemed ready to tear apart.
“WE, THE BEINGS OF THE DEEP, SHALL TAKE THEIR HEADS AND OFFER THEM TO INNSMOUTH! THEY SHALL BE OUR SACRIFICE AND OUR TOLL!”
“Iä!”
“Iä!”
“Iä—R’lyeh Cthulhu fhtagn!”
At once, every remaining elf willingly fell to their knees upon the blood-soaked ground.
With all their strength, they cried out the name of the god they had sworn themselves to worship.
As the butcher lost consciousness from blood loss, the final sight reflected in his unfocused eyes was—
The maddened gazes of the believers.
Believers who dared to speak the profane names of the Great Old Ones.
