Raven leaped back onto the street, only to find a thin layer of scarlet mycelium already regrowing on the ground he had just cleared with fire.
Through the perception of his combat senses, he could feel countless spores drifting in the air. Even if he incinerated them, more would soon drift in from elsewhere.
Mohg remained unconscious on the ground. If left here, he would likely suffer a secondary infection from the rot. Raven scanned his surroundings and spotted Mrs. Morgan's boutique not far away. He hoisted the heavy frame of the Omen over his shoulder and strode toward it, kicking the door open.
As expected, while the interior had been tainted by the Scarlet Rot, the walls had acted as a barrier, making the contamination far lighter than on the street. At this level of exposure, someone with an ordinary constitution should be able to survive temporarily without dying on the spot.
Setting Mohg down, Raven breathed a slight sigh of relief, hoping the casualties this time wouldn't be as high as he feared.
He shut the shop door, sealing out the drifting scarlet spores. The wind chime above the frame let out a crisp, clear ring.
"Mrs. Morgan, are you there?" Raven called out, pulling the windows tight as well.
No one answered.
Beneath the cloying scent of rot, Raven caught the metallic tang of heavy blood. He frowned; those who died of the Scarlet Rot didn't typically bleed out. Where was the blood coming from?
He walked further into the shop, then froze.
The door to a fitting room was ajar. Two bodies lay entangled at the threshold.
One was a shop assistant; the other appeared to be a minor noble who had been trying on clothes. The noble's occipital bone was a pulpy mess. The girl had a Noble's Slender Sword buried in her stomach, but her hands still clutched a heavy vanity mirror, its frame stained with blood and brain matter.
The two had clearly killed each other. The servant had bludgeoned the noble from behind with the mirror, while he had run her through with his blade. Both had bled out shortly thereafter.
Raven stood in silence for a moment, then leaned down to close the eyes of the deceased.
He swept through the shop and soon discovered the bodies of other assistants and customers.
Mrs. Morgan was slumped over the counter, a blood-stained knife still in her hand. Her face was contorted in a hideous mask of rage, stripped of the grace and elegance she had shown just days ago. Her neck and face were covered in bloody gouges, seemingly torn open by human fingernails. The fatal wound was at her temple—a hairpin driven deep into the bone.
Raven recalled a text from the Academy mentioning that the Scarlet Rot could drive people to madness. It seemed that while the rot inside the building wasn't concentrated enough to kill instantly, it was enough to send ordinary people into a homicidal frenzy.
"Damn it!" He slammed a fist onto the counter, crushing a corner of the wood.
A rustling sound of fabric came from beneath the counter.
Activating his combat senses, Raven saw a lone shop girl hiding in the hollow space beneath the desk.
"Come out. It's alright now," Raven exhaled, relieved to find a survivor. He walked around to the back of the counter.
A girl slowly crawled out. Her clothes were stained with blood, but it seemed to belong to others; she didn't appear to have any physical wounds.
"Nova?" He recognized her as the girl who had helped Mohg try on clothes the other day.
Seeing that her eyes were clear and showed no signs of madness, Raven relaxed his hand, which had been resting on his sword hilt.
Nova stood up trembling, retreating a few steps until her back hit the wall. Her gaze flickered erratically, seemingly desperate to avoid meeting Raven's eyes.
"Don't be afraid. It's over," Raven said softly, stepping forward to comfort her, assuming she was simply traumatized by the carnage. "You're safe now, I—"
Nova suddenly lunged, grabbing a box of scented powder from the counter and hurling it. Raven raised a hand to swat it away, but the powder erupted, coating his head and shoulders in a white cloud.
While Raven's vision was momentarily obscured, Nova pulled a large pair of shears from a drawer and pounced without a word, the sharp points aimed directly at his eyes.
"What are you doing?!"
Raven easily wrenched the shears from her hand, caught her wrists, and pinned her against the wall.
Nova struggled violently, kicking and thrashing, turning her head sharply away from him.
Raven cast Flame, Cleanse Me. The fire purified the few rot spores clinging to her body, but the situation didn't improve at all.
"Hey, look at me." Raven forced Nova's face forward, but she instantly squeezed her eyes shut. "Why won't you look at me?"
Finally sensing something was fundamentally wrong, Raven hesitated, then used his fingers to pry her eyelids open. She looked as if she were staring at something utterly repulsive; her pupils darted wildly and her features twisted in disgust.
"Gah—" Nova suddenly began to retch.
Raven stepped aside to let her lean over, patting her back. "What is wrong with you?"
After vomiting until there was nothing left, Nova finally stood up. Sensing that Raven meant no harm—or perhaps realizing she was completely outmatched—she didn't attack again.
She backed away, forcing herself to meet Raven's gaze. Her eyes were still filled with revulsion and horror, but a flicker of confusion had begun to seep in.
"&%# &¥ @&¥%..." she suddenly spoke, letting out a string of turbid sounds—a mix of hisses and low growls. Her tone had clear inflections and the syllables were complex; it wasn't the mindless roar of a beast, but sounded like some bizarre, primitive dialect.
"I can't understand you." Raven watched her expression closely. "Can you not understand me either?"
Nova spoke a few more lines, but Raven couldn't grasp a single word. He looked around, grabbed a lipstick from the counter, and began writing on the wall.
[Can you read what I'm writing? If so, nod.]
Nova stared at the letters on the wall. Her expression shifted drastically, and she finally gave a slow nod.
Raven held the lipstick out to her. She hesitated, then reached out, pinching the tube between her thumb and forefinger as if Raven's hand were covered in filth. No—she wasn't just disgusted by his hand; she seemed utterly repulsed by the lipstick itself. She refused to hold it directly, using her sleeve as a barrier to write on the wall.
[Are you human?]
Raven looked at the words, his expression grim. He didn't take the lipstick back. Instead, he pressed his index and middle fingers together, using a staffless casting technique to extend the slender blade of a Carian Slicer from his fingertips.
[I am Raven of Caria. We met just two days ago.]
He paused, then etched another line.
[What do I look like to you?]
After finishing the sentence, Raven looked at Nova and saw that her eyes were brimming with terror and disbelief.
She slid slowly down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees and sobbing in low, broken whimpers.
Raven didn't rush her, nor did he step forward to comfort her. He stood for a moment, pulled out a chair, and sat down to wait in silence.
Eventually, Nova stopped crying. She picked up the lipstick and wrote a single word on the floorboards.
[Monster]
As if needing to vent a hidden floodgate, Nova didn't stop. Her handwriting became a frantic, jagged scrawl as she continued to write.
Raven finally understood why she had attacked him. In her eyes, he was a writhing mass of raw meat. At the top of the mass sat a clump of long, disgusting bristles, and below that were five holes of varying sizes. Every time he "spoke," the bottom-most hole would snap open and shut, belching out a putrid, rotting stench.
Four tentacles protruded from the sides of this meat-mass. One of those tentacles had just pinned her to the wall, the smell of decay hitting her nostrils so hard she had vomited on the spot.
But it wasn't just him. To her, the ceiling and floor were a bruised purple-black, resembling the exposed walls of a rotting intestine, slick and slimy to the touch. When the "floor's" countless dancing cilia brushed against her skin, it felt more terrifying than ten thousand ants crawling over her body. That was why she refused to touch anything directly.
This had all happened in the span of a few minutes. After a world-shaking impact, she had blacked out, and when she woke, she found herself surrounded by hideous alien monsters.
The monsters had quickly begun slaughtering one another. She had fled under the counter, covering her ears and shaking in terror. A wounded monster had crawled over the counter to attack her, and in the struggle, she had stabbed it to death with a hairpin...
[It turns out I am the monster. Save me.] she wrote at last.
As Raven rose from his chair to move toward her, Nova covered her face and began to cry again. She grabbed the lipstick and desperately smeared over the words she had just written, changing it to [Don't come near me], then smeared that out as well.
Raven stopped in his tracks. He looked down at the last three words she had carved into the floor.
[Kill me now]
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Elden Ring: The Unborn One's Journey Through Elden Ring(170 Chapter - Ongoing)
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