When Charles once again made his way through the streets of the town, the situation had deteriorated even further.
A thick crimson mist had spread from some unknown source, blanketing every street and alley and sharply reducing visibility.
The air reeked of blood, heavy and nauseating like a slaughterhouse, almost dense enough to touch.
The doors and windows of the houses lining both sides of the street were not only tightly shut.
From behind wooden boards and iron bars came a new, even stronger scent of incense.
The surviving residents were burning mixtures of spices and unknown herbs in a futile attempt to ward off some unseen threat, or perhaps to conceal their own scent.
All manner of coffins lay scattered along the streets.
Some were tightly bound with thick iron chains, while others had been nailed shut from the outside with long iron spikes, as though something utterly horrifying had been imprisoned within.
“I haven’t turned into a Beast! Let me out! Please!”
“Blood… give me blood… just a little…”
“It hurts… Someone… please save me…”
The wails and delirious muttering from inside the coffins alternated between the pitiful begging of addicts and the desperate roars of trapped beasts.
Together, they formed a chilling murmur that made it seem as though the entire street were whispering.
Meanwhile, those still wandering outside had descended completely into a hell of indiscriminate slaughter.
The moment someone fell, they would be torn apart and devoured by former neighbors and passersby.
Even stray dogs had joined the feast of flesh, plunging the entire town into unprecedented, total chaos.
In barely an hour, everything had changed beyond recognition.
Everyone had gone mad.
They tore at one another and devoured each other like true Beasts…
Hidden beneath the Executioner’s cloak, Charles finally understood that the so-called “monsters” had not come from outside.
The Scourge Beasts were perhaps only the surface of the problem.
The true horror was the town itself, and the internal mutations and collapse of reason brought about by the “Blood Ministration” upon which Yharnam depended.
The prey they pursued with such fanatical hatred, swearing to Hunt and destroy, was ultimately nothing more than a twisted and corrupted reflection of themselves.
Charles no longer wanted to dwell on that hopeless, horrifying truth.
He wanted only to escape this living hell that was devouring itself as quickly as possible.
He carefully avoided the eyes of the mutants whose gazes gleamed with an inhuman light and whose mouths still dripped with the blood of their own kind.
Yes, he had to stay far away from these terrifying “Beasts” transformed from humans and, on this Night of the Hunt, search for his own faint, pale hope.
“Woof! Woof!”
A shrill bark suddenly tore through the dense crimson mist like an alarm. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
A stray dog with bloodshot eyes and drool streaming from its jaws lunged out from behind a heap of debris, snapping straight for Charles’s ankle as he crept past.
The commotion immediately drew the attention of several nearby mutants.
Their cloudy yellow eyes all turned toward him at once.
“Damn it!”
Charles cursed under his breath.
Exposed, he struck back with the Threaded Cane like a venomous snake.
With a sharp crack, the whip shattered the dog’s skull.
He immediately rolled to the side and slipped into the shadows beneath an overturned carriage.
Almost the instant he disappeared from sight, a gunshot rang out from a high window.
The bullet skimmed the carriage’s metal frame, throwing off a burst of bright sparks.
A group of Yharnam hunters who had fallen completely into madness began closing in like sharks that had scented blood, torchlight flickering across their distorted faces.
“It’s all your fault! You brought the Beasts here!”
“Stay away from us! You plague-bringer!”
“Damn outsider! Get off our streets!”
They brandished rusted cleavers, axes still wet with blood, and gleaming steel pitchforks as they began frantically hacking at and prying apart the carriage where Charles was hiding.
Even though their reason had long since been consumed by bestial instinct, their deep-rooted fear and hatred of outsiders remained branded into their very bones.
“You hopeless madmen and monsters!”
A cold gleam flashed in Charles’s eyes.
From beneath the carriage, he suddenly thrust out the Threaded Cane, transforming it into whip form and sweeping it violently along the ground.
Crack!
Several sharp snaps rang out as the whip struck the shins of the nearest attackers with precise force.
Screaming, they collapsed to the ground.
Charles seized them by the ankles and, with astonishing strength, dragged them one after another beneath the cramped, dark carriage.
There, the tip of his cane stabbed and smashed with silent efficiency, executing them before they could recover.
These Beast Transformation victims possessed tremendous strength and seemed almost numb to pain, but their intelligence had fallen drastically.
Their movements were driven almost entirely by primitive instinct.
Charles calmly exploited that weakness, turning the confined space beneath the carriage into a deadly trap.
“Die!”
He lured the remaining enemies, who had begun hesitating to approach, into a dead-end corner cluttered with trash bins.
Then he turned and blocked the only exit himself.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
The relentless blows sent blood and flesh flying, accompanied by hysterical screams and wails.
Before long, the mottled walls were stained dark red with splattered blood.
The last weak cry finally faded away, leaving only the metallic scraping of the whip retracting into the cane.
The Threaded Cane could defend with the elegance of a gentleman’s walking stick, yet transform just as easily into a brutal serrated whip capable of tearing flesh apart.
It reflected the two sides of a Hunter.
Perhaps a trace of mercy remained for the innocent, but enemies were met only with absolute resolve.
On this blood-soaked Night of the Hunt, violence could only be answered with violence, and blood repaid with blood.
At the far end of the street, Charles had drawn away so much attention that several hunters who had been cornered in nearby alleys, people who still retained a shred of sanity, or at least the instinct to survive, finally had room to breathe.
Seeing an opening, they immediately found their courage and launched a desperate counterattack.
“Kill them! For Yharnam! Purge the Beasts!”
For a time, the roar of gunfire, the clash of steel, the screams of the dying, and frenzied shouts merged into a deafening symphony of hell.
Blood flowed like streams through the gaps between the cobblestones, while corpses piled up at a horrifying pace.
The moment a friend or family member showed irreversible signs of Beast Transformation, those around them would kill them without mercy, whether through tears or driven by fear.
If they did not, they themselves might be torn apart and devoured in the next moment.
Burning remains of monsters hung in the middle of the street like grotesque decorations, filling the air with the stench of charred flesh.
Starving Beasts crouched over still-warm corpses, feeding greedily.
Life here had become cheaper than weeds.
There was no longer any distinction between right and wrong in the slaughter.
Only the most primitive and naked struggle between survival and death remained.
“Bang!”
Charles pulled the trigger.
Another Quicksilver Bullet ended an enemy attempting to leap down at him from a rooftop.
By now, his entire body was soaked in thick Blood, some warm and some already cold.
He could no longer tell which belonged to him and which belonged to his enemies.