"What's this."
One of the indigo-skinned fairies—a Corrupted Fairy—spoke up, commenting on the distant spectacle.
He didn't sound particularly surprised.
After all, he'd seen Divine Power countless times before.
Still, spreading it out that wide to block something was a rather unusual tactic. Of course, the Lord was not the only one living in the Thornbriar Fortress.
There were several others besides him.
Apart from the monsters under the Lord's command, there were also researchers to assist in his studies, two mages skilled in alchemy, and, while lacking intelligence, several monsters that fought as well as knights.
Among them, three Corrupted Fairies guarded the fortress wall.
Their role was to report anything that happened and to harass intruders.
To be precise, they would severely wear the intruders down, exhausting them, and then offer up these weakened "ingredients" to the Lord.
That was their job.
For fairies, they were quite expressive with their emotions.
This was because, belonging to the Demonic Domain, they'd forgotten their own fairy nature. Looking at the distant shining white wall, they exchanged a few words.
"They're lashing out desperately."
"Watching mortals flail about like this makes for fine entertainment."
"They must think it's over now that they've stopped the Plague Ghouls."
"Divine Power, huh. Worthless."
The three Corrupted Spirits weren't filled with the pure essence of fairies, but rather with the energy of the Demonic Domain—what most called Demonic Energy.
Because of this, one of them had gained the ability to manipulate the minds of monsters, while the other two specialized in archery.
Naturally, they could infuse their arrows with Demonic Energy as they shot them.
Of course, they weren't nearly as skilled as the archer who had first targeted Enkrid's group. That was precisely why these three had been relegated to watch duty here.
Still, becoming corrupted didn't mean they'd lost their innate fairy talents. They still possessed quick, agile bodies.
"That woman with Divine Power—I'll have to skin her and see what's beneath. I wonder if the Half-blood Giant's hide is just as tough. If so, it'll make great material for a Chimera."
Giant skin was as hard as stone.
If the same held true here, there were plenty of ways it could be put to use. These Corrupted Fairies also possessed a cruelty never seen among true fairies.
Whether it was due to the influence of the Demonic Domain, the time they'd spent here, or both, no one could say.
What they did know was that, having cast aside their origins as children of forests and flowers and been "adopted" by the Demonic Domain, they considered themselves superior—stronger and more skilled than ordinary fairies.
Even to a human observer watching the three of them, they were obviously set apart from normal fairies.
Dull.
Compared to fairies like Shinar or those who had emigrated the Fairy City to the Border Guard, the difference was even more stark.
Original fairies are beings who wouldn't harm even a single blade of grass without good reason, and lovingly tend to all that grows.
They believed their hypersensitive emotions, if left unchecked, could end up harming themselves, so they dedicated themselves to restraint and control.
But these fairies before them were nothing like that.
They wore their emotions openly and committed vile acts of biological experimentation without hesitation.
There was nothing delicate or sensitive about them anymore. Of course, Jaxen didn't know all of these details.
All he realized was that these beings registering in his senses were far duller than he'd expected. And that was enough.
As soon as Jaxen cut down a couple of Plague Ghouls, he began moving against the flow, heading straight toward the direction the monsters were surging from.
Even Enkrid wouldn't be able to slip silently through a mob of monsters desperate to die—even to the point of sewing their mouths shut or tearing open their own bodies.
But Jaxen could.
"The air in a Demonic Domain is different."
Once you understand that difference, all you have to do is adapt.
Assimilation, a technique exclusive to knights, and an art that Georg's dagger called 'Blur'. The name refers to the way it allows one to make their presence grow faint and indistinct. But what did the name matter, really?
"There's no point in dividing everything up and giving it names."
He'd realized this long ago.
Jaxen easily concealed his presence and moved against the tide of ghouls, keeping low and nimble as he leaped along the fringes of the ghoul horde.
Then, seeing the shroud's gaping, radiant mouth atop the Thornbriar Fortress Wall, he planted his foot and sprang upward.
A few evil spirits reached out to block him, but it was useless.
Jaxen used even their grasping hands as footholds, climbing up the fortress wall.
Some wraiths half-emerged from the wall, clutching at him with shrill, keening cries, but Jaxen simply drew his dagger, imbued with divine power, and swept it through them, dispersing them with swift strokes.
Screeeee.
An evil spirit let out a piercing scream as it died, but its voice was quickly drowned out by the song of the restless spirits that echoed off the Thornbriar Fortress Wall.
Only a few with particularly sharp senses even reacted.
And just like that, Jaxen slipped past even the notice of the restless spirits.
To him, this was natural—after all, this was the craft he'd trained in his whole life. If these spirits had been as sensitive as the fairies, even he would have been caught. Really, this outcome was the result of many factors piling up.
The spirits were dull, and the Thornbriar Fortress—a Demonic Domain fortress—had never experienced a full-scale intrusion like this before.
A few called knights had seen and learned of this fortress's existence in the past, but they'd decided they could do nothing about it for the time being.
To rush in alone was suicide; to attack as a group, they lacked the manpower.
Above all, these beings hadn't caused any major problems—at least, not outwardly.
From the outside, it seemed as though they were simply keeping to themselves within the Demonic Domain.
All of that led to the situation they faced now.
Jaxen had instinctively exploited all their weaknesses, using them to scale the wall and arrive at this very moment.
He spotted three sentries watching from the wall, slipped behind them, and with a stiletto blade in each hand, drove the points into the backs of the necks of two of them.
From their perspective, it must have been a terrifying shock.
"...!"
The last one, unable even to make a sound, turned with eyes wide in shock.
From his perspective, it must have seemed as if a shadow had suddenly risen up and stabbed his two companions.
He swung his longbow like a club. Jaxen moved as fluidly as flowing water.
As he retreated, the two who should have fallen dead from their wounds suddenly froze in place. Jaxen's gaze shifted to them.
This wasn't a normal reaction for men who'd just been stabbed. Not that he was particularly surprised.
This was the Demonic Domain.
Anything could happen here, no matter how unexpected.
The two who had been stabbed stopped with their backs half-bent, then slowly raised their heads. There was a grotesque cracking sound as bones misaligned in their necks.
Like broken dolls, their movements were stiff, and their eyes lost all focus—only the whites were visible, their pupils completely gone.
Then, from the nape of their necks—specifically, from the holes Jaxen had pierced—something began to bulge and writhe in place of black blood, swelling to form new body parts.
Long masses of flesh uncoiled, dangling to the ground like giant serpents.
You couldn't call those things tails or arms coming out of their necks, so what exactly were they supposed to be?
There was no way to know. Neck-hand?
Neck-tail?
Whatever you called it, the new, deformed organ of the corrupted spirit dangled along the floor, its muscles—if you could call them that—coiling and uncoiling as it moved.
In an instant, the end of the fleshy mass sharpened like a blade and shot toward Jaxen. It was as fast as an arrow.
Jaxen studied the newly formed organ as it attacked. Thick, dark veins bulged between the navy-blue flesh. In some ways, it resembled an oversized earthworm. Jaxen dodged and slashed with his Stiletto.
Ssshk.
Even this grotesquely transformed organ had what looked like a joint, so he cut through that spot. He used the force of the creature's own charge—a technique of the Flowing Sword.
The pinnacle of the Sword of Chance, perhaps.
His blade moved calmly, as if he'd anticipated every move.
If Enkrid had been there, he would have applauded Jaxen's sharp eye, unable to hide his admiration for how Jaxen used his enemy's momentum against them.
Black blood splattered under Jaxen's slash, but the strange organ ignored the wound, whipping around like a serpent and lunging for the back of his head.
"You bastard."
In that moment, the only relatively unscathed third corrupted fairy nocked an arrow into his longbow.
But the instant he did, a blade struck his forehead. Crack!
The knife sliced smoothly through his skull.
It was the Silence Dagger that Jaxen had thrwn while dodging.
As Jaxen dodged the two fleshy earthworm-like appendages coming for his back, the one struck in the forehead by his knife had its pupils go slack, the light disappearing from its eyes as its body began to tremble violently.
Time to observe again.
"A curse? Or does death trigger something?"
It seemed like something had been implanted to set off that exact reaction.
Darkness settled in, restricting his vision, but Jaxen was someone who actually found the dark comfortable.
Even in complete darkness, he had no trouble perceiving his surroundings. Any lack in vision was easily compensated for by his other senses.
As he continued to look, listen, and sense his surroundings, the Dagger embedded in the creature's forehead dislodged itself.
Rattle, thunk.
The Dagger fell to the floor.
Then, from the hole in its forehead, new flesh sprouted—forming yet another mutated organ identical to the ones still attacking him.
Even as this happened, Jaxen didn't stop observing, listening, and sensing—until suddenly he noticed something peculiar.
He'd thought the prominent lines bulging on the surface of those flesh worm organs were blood vessels, but they weren't.
Those thick lines broke through the upper skin layer, and on top of them, a black flower bloomed.
"They planted something like a cursed seed."
So, what is it that truly makes them move now? Will takes action.
Jaxen's Will moved in a different direction than the rest of the Order of Knights.
As his Will sharpened his senses, it went beyond mere observation—delving deep, his awareness penetrated and scrutinized their interiors.
If it's still moving even after life is snuffed out…
Then it must've become either the undead or possessed by an evil spirit.
Having previously faced Plague Ghouls down below, he had a sese of the enemy's preferences. They implanted plague evil spirits inside the ghouls.
In this case, though, they had planted a bizarre plant that grows in the Demonic Domain. Jaxen's heightened senses were extraordinary—even magical in their accuracy.
While this was normal for him, it would've astonished anyone else.
His eyes saw, within the moving, mutated bodies of the three creatures, dark, pulsating oval entities.
From the black flowers blooming on the deformed organs that had burst out of the Corrupted Spirits' throats, a black powder drifted through the air.
If inhaled, it was a poison that could incapacitate even a knight; for an ordinary person, just touching it to bare skin meant certain death.
But Jaxen had trained his body from childhood, enduring dozens, even hundreds of different poisons.
That didn't mean he was reckless enough to breathe in an unknown toxin. He pulled out a small hood and covered his mouth.
It was a Spell Object made in the Fairy City, designed to purify any air that entered through the mouth or nose.
Back in the days of the Madmen Squad, he'd built trading networks far and wide. Even in the City of Fairies, he had a knack for getting what he needed.
No one—not even Enkrid—knew about this.
So, using the Spell Object, he protected his breathing, and what little poison touched his skin posed no threat.
The frenzied thrashing of the fleshy worms—twisting, scattering poison everywhere, slamming the ground, sweeping through the air—wasn't any more dangerous than a wild barbarian swinging an axe.
In his countless fights with those Madmen, he'd grown much better at taking opponents head-on.
He hated having to admit it, and he'd never say it out loud, but yes, those lunatics had actually helped him.
Jaxen slipped through the openings between attacks and struck at the seeds inside the bodies of all three.
Controlling information is the foundation of battle—he completely agreed with Luagarne on that point.
He had taken action precisely for that reason: whatever was happening in front of the fortress now would take just a little longer to reach the ones inside.
That satisfied Jaxen.
It wasn't the first time he'd used his skills for something other than Krona or killing people, but he wouldn't deny that he was enjoying himself right now.
Someone was benefiting from his efforts, and that someone was marching toward a grand ideal. He heard the voice of his Master echoing as an illusion.
"That's right, you brat—it looks good on you. Use the talents you were born with. But only for what you truly believe is right, you hear me? I've said it hundreds of times—doesn't it make your ears bleed?"
His Master's tone had always been so light and nonchalant.
Now, Jaxen understood it was because he himself had always been so gloomy.
'I know.'
Words he'd heard so many times they should have made his ears bleed were only now finally settling in his heart.
When had that all started?
Jaxen had learned what was right by watching Enkrid.
For that reason, anything that stood in Enkrid's way was his enemy.
And now, that sense of rightness—and all the rest—were approaching the front of the fortress.
The air around them should have been so foul with the bursting Plague Ghouls that even getting this close would normally have been impossible, but Teresa's Hymn purified the path they walked.
Enkrid glanced upward.
He saw several shadows that had been lurking above suddenly collapse one after another.
At a glance, it looked as if they'd started spasming and dropped to the ground, but it was obvious—without anyone needing to say it—that the cause behind those fits was Jaxen.
'What is that supposed to be now?'
As the fallen creatures began to transform, a fight broke out. Only then did Jaxen's shadow become visible.
Should he help?
The thought barely lasted a moment, and Enkrid made no move.
There was no need.
Soon enough, those three bizarre beings also crumpled to the ground.
He had no idea why something like a snake would burst out of something that looked human, but