“Gahahahaha…”
Corpses lay piled like mountains at his feet, yet Charles felt neither fatigue nor pain in his chest.
Instead, a burning, almost pleasurable shudder welled up from deep within him and spread through his body.
It was a bloodthirsty ecstasy born of blood and slaughter, nearly impossible to suppress…
“Ding… ding… ding…”
Just then, the bells of the distant Grand Cathedral pierced the bloody mist, their faint toll carrying a cold, strangely soothing rhythm.
When Charles abruptly came to his senses, the battle on the bloodstained street was nearly over.
Only a handful of people remained, mechanically swinging their weapons.
Most of the “comrades” who had briefly fought beside him had revealed signs of complete Beast Transformation, either during the battle or afterward.
As one final act, whether of mercy or cruelty, Charles granted them a relatively dignified end with his cane or pistol.
Compassion?
He no longer had the right or the strength to carry such a luxurious emotion.
In this strange and desperate world, there were only two choices: life or death.
For these Yharnamites, trapped by the Blood Ministration and bound by a curse, a clean and swift death might have been the best release they could hope for.
The lingering heat of battle still roared through Charles’s veins, and absurdly, he found himself wanting to hold on to that intoxicating thrill.
Perhaps, without even realizing it, he had already stepped across the boundary of madness.
“Sanity is a curse; madness is freedom.”
Perhaps that was the deepest and most horrifying truth of the Night of the Hunt.
…
Stepping over mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, Charles wiped the sticky blood from his blurred eyes.
Dragging his exhausted, unsteady body along, he took shelter beneath the eaves of a house that seemed relatively intact.
“You… are you an outsider?”
A youthful yet unusually calm voice came through a crack in the wooden door beside him.
Charles had no strength to answer.
He simply sat in silence on the cold stone steps, leaning against the door as he gasped for breath.
“Oh, sorry. I… I don’t want anything to do with outsiders,” the young man inside muttered, seemingly to himself.
The young man seemed to inspect Charles more carefully through the crack.
Once he confirmed that Charles truly was an outsider, his cautious tone immediately turned to open disgust.
“Please leave as soon as possible! Don’t stay in front of my house!”
The shout seemed to be a signal.
In an instant, hostile rebukes and cries of rejection rang out from behind the tightly shut doors and windows around him, clamoring like a flock of crows.
“Damn outsider, get lost!”
“Who would open their door to a stranger like you on the Night of the Hunt?”
“Leave at once! Right now!”
“You’re not welcome here! We don’t need you!”
“Cursed monster! Stay away from us!”
“Filthy Executioner! Murderer!”
Rough male voices, childish voices mimicking the adults, the shrill and bitter voices of old women, the impatient voices of young women.
They all merged into a single torrent of fear and rejection, directed at the “outsider” who had just indirectly saved the entire area from the monsters’ claws.
Though Charles had eliminated the immediate threat to their lives, he received not the slightest gratitude in return.
Only deep-rooted prejudice and cold rejection.
But none of that mattered anymore.
He had never belonged here, and eventually, he would leave this troubled place behind.
“Haah…”
Charles let out a long sigh.
Bracing his hands against his knees, he struggled to his feet, turned in silence, and returned to the street strewn with corpses and flowing with blood.
Suppressing his discomfort, he began searching the bodies for anything useful: Blood Vials, bullets, and the occasional coin.
Finally, driven by something he could not tell was hypocrisy or merely habitual “compassion,” he laboriously dragged several gravely wounded survivors, still barely clinging to life but clearly beyond saving, toward the only place he remembered that might offer “help.”
Iosefka’s Clinic.
Knock, knock, knock.
He struck the clinic’s tightly shut door, which bore a medical symbol, and called out in a hoarse voice, “Is anyone there? There are… injured people here who need emergency treatment.”
“Please wait a moment.”
A short while later, a young woman’s weary voice came from behind a window on the second floor.
Through the clouded glass, Charles could vaguely make out a fully enclosed white protective suit, stained with grime. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Her face also seemed to be covered by a mask.
“Were you the one who brought these injured people here? Thank you for your kindness. Please leave them in the safe area outside. I’ll take care of the rest.” Her voice sounded muffled through the glass.
“Don’t you need help carrying them inside?” Charles asked hesitantly, glancing at the dying people on the ground.
“No, truly. I can manage on my own.”
She studied Charles carefully, especially his blood drenched appearance and the Executioner’s cloak that clearly did not belong to him.
A faint tremor suddenly entered her voice.
“Are you… are you carrying out a Hunt? I’m sorry, but for safety reasons, I… I can’t open the door for you.”
“Why?! They’re badly wounded. They need treatment immediately!”
The doctor’s refusal stirred an uncontrollable, nameless anger in Charles, and his voice rose.
“Sir, please understand! I cannot expose the other patients being treated inside Iosefka’s Clinic to an unknown risk of infection,” Dr.
Iosefka hurriedly explained, her tone pleading.
“Please rest assured that they will receive treatment as soon as possible, but it will take time and require strict quarantine procedures. Until then, I hope you can… leave for the time being.”
She paused, as though gathering a great deal of resolve, then added, “I know… I know you may be out there hunting those… things for our sake. But please, for the safety of the clinic, I beg you to leave.”
Her words sounded reasonable, yet were riddled with contradictions, leaving Charles deeply confused.
But faced with her firm refusal and the clinic’s tightly sealed door, he finally chose to comply.
His exhaustion had overwhelmed any desire to argue.
As he turned to leave, Dr.
Iosefka hurriedly passed a small glass vial through a gap in the broken window.
It was an amber Blood Vial.
“Sir, this… this is all I can do for you right now. May… may your Hunt go well.”
Her voice was low and laden with complicated emotion.
Then she quickly shut the window.
Charles stood outside the clinic, clutching the still warm Blood Vial.
He looked down at the “wounded” lying on the ground, their survival uncertain, then at the life saving liquid in his hand.
The madness and contradictions of this land felt deeper and more suffocating than any monster he had ever seen.