At that moment, Charles was racing in the opposite direction from the crowd, deliberately avoiding the main thoroughfares and anywhere he might be seen.
He slipped through the maze of narrow alleys and shadows beneath the eaves like a true ghost.
Yet when the familiar sight of the town’s tightly sealed main gate came into view again, he stopped short.
Without realizing it, he had somehow circled back to where he had started.
He did not linger.
Instead, he quickly turned into a narrow path to the right of the gate, half concealed by debris and almost impossible to spot.
A mountain of discarded objects blocked the way ahead: overturned abandoned carriages, cracked empty coffins, sacks filled with sand and rubble.
None of it had been dumped there at random.
Everything had been deliberately piled together into a seemingly impenetrable makeshift barricade.
It was clearly a desperate line of defense erected by the local residents against some threat, whether from outside the town or within it.
Charles had no intention of destroying the barricade and risking enough noise to expose his position.
He triggered the mechanism in his Threaded Cane.
With a click, the metal whip sprang out and wrapped around a sturdy gargoyle ornament on the opposite rooftop with the precision of a living tendril.
“Hup.”
Using the tension to propel himself forward, he leaped in a smooth arc, silently clearing the obstacle and landing on the other side.
Beyond the barricade lay a cramped, oppressive communal courtyard.
Every door and window had been tightly shut, many reinforced with thick wooden planks.
It was as though frightened souls were huddled inside, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of drawing the attention of whatever lurked outside.
And the source of that terror was prowling through the center of the courtyard.
An exceptionally burly Executioner.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk… Little Beasts hiding away, come out now… I can smell the sweet scent of your fear…”
He had once been an Executioner in the service of the Church, but after years steeped in bloodshed, he had descended completely into madness, becoming even more bloodthirsty and violent.
The severed limbs scattered across the ground, some still faintly twitching, and the dark red sprays of blood across the walls stood as silent proof of his frenzy.
“In the name of the Holy Healing Church, I shall grant you eternal release… from these beastly bodies!”
Beneath his tattered black executioner’s garb, thick muscles bulged and knotted like twisted tree roots.
The enormous battleaxe in his hands was a weapon an ordinary man would need both arms just to swing, yet to him it seemed almost weightless.
A heavy black hood concealed nearly his entire face, leaving only a suffocating impression of bloodlust and madness.
The instant he noticed Charles, the unwanted intruder, the Executioner showed no hesitation whatsoever.
His massive axe was already descending with a shriek of displaced air.
Charles’s extraordinary agility allowed him to dart backward and to the side, narrowly avoiding the blade.
Even so, the axe smashed into the ground with such force that shards of stone and splinters of wood flew outward, opening several burning cuts across his cheek and arm. This chapter is updated first at novelping . com.
He had no time to pay attention to such minor wounds.
He immediately raised his pistol and fired in rapid succession.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Quicksilver Bullets infused with his own blood tore through the Executioner’s crude mixture of leather and iron armor, punching several bleeding holes into his heavily muscled torso.
Yet the man’s resilience far exceeded anything Charles had expected.
Wounds that would have killed an ordinary person outright merely made the Executioner’s massive body sway and slowed him for a brief instant.
He did not fall.
“Blasphemous Beast! Go to hell!”
The Executioner roared with a voice that no longer sounded human.
His enormous axe swept horizontally with even greater violence, the blast of air from its passage striking Charles’s face so hard that he could barely keep his eyes open.
Charles knew he could not meet the blow head-on.
In that split second, an extremely dangerous idea flashed through his mind.
Instead of retreating, he charged straight toward the Executioner like an arrow loosed from a bow.
At the same time, he kept firing his Hunter Pistol, aiming at the man’s face and his axe arm in an attempt to disrupt his vision and movement.
The instant he entered a dangerously close range, Charles suddenly dropped low, letting the sweeping axe pass above him.
At the same moment, the sharpened tip of his cane shot forward like a scorpion’s stinger, driving straight into the Executioner’s unprotected throat.
“Shhk!”
The weapon sank into flesh with a muffled sound.
Scalding blood erupted from the wound, splashing all over Charles.
Yet the Executioner remained standing like a boulder, as though even a grievous wound to the throat could not immediately extinguish a life sustained by sheer madness.
“ROAR!!!”
The madness of impending death unleashed his final and most terrifying burst of strength.
He abandoned the massive axe and threw both arms around Charles like enormous iron clamps, locking him in a crushing embrace at point-blank range.
The pressure hit instantly.
Crack!
The sharp sound of breaking bone was enough to make the scalp crawl.
Agony flooded through Charles like a tidal wave.
He could hear the horrifying sounds of his own ribs snapping and his internal organs being crushed and ruptured.
But he still refused to give up.
His trapped right hand moved with agonizing effort until he managed to draw his pistol.
Gathering the last of his strength, he pressed the muzzle firmly against the forehead hidden beneath the Executioner’s hood.
“Die!!!”
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The gunshots exploded through the confined courtyard like thunder.
At point-blank range, the Executioner’s head was nearly riddled with holes.
At last, the arms crushing Charles lost their strength, and the enormous body toppled backward with a tremendous crash, throwing up a cloud of dust.
Charles staggered as well, collapsing into a thick pool of blood.
Every breath sent tearing agony through his body.
Fighting off the darkness threatening to swallow his consciousness, he shakily pulled out a Blood Vial and drove the needle hard into his jugular vein.
The cold liquid, carrying an astonishing vitality, surged through every part of his body.
His fractured bones gave off faint grinding sounds as they shifted back into place, while his damaged internal organs began to heal under the influence of some incomprehensible power.
Life gradually returned to his nearly broken body, like a tide rising again after having withdrawn.
At the same time, Charles failed to notice wisps of blood-red vapor beginning to rise from the Executioner’s corpse.
They twisted and spiraled like living things before streaming into his body.
It was exactly the same phenomenon that had occurred when he killed the deranged residents earlier, except this time the vapor was far thicker and far more obvious.
But Charles’s entire attention was focused on enduring the pain and absorbing the power of the Blood Vial.
He had no awareness to spare for anything else.
By the time his mind had fully cleared and the agony receded like a retreating tide, he was astonished to discover that both his terrible external wounds and his internal injuries had completely healed.
Only a faint soreness remained beneath his skin.
“So this is… the true power of Blood Ministration…”
He murmured the words with an almost imperceptible tremor in his voice.
There was relief at having survived, but also a trace of awe and uncertainty toward the power that had saved him.
The way forward had been blocked by towering buildings and further obstacles.
His only remaining option was to return to the noisy and dangerous main thoroughfare.
“I can’t let my identity be exposed. I can’t afford to be surrounded again.”
Charles’s gaze settled on the Executioner’s black cloak.
Though tattered, it was large enough to conceal him completely.
Without hesitation, he stripped it from the corpse, brushed away the blood and dust clinging to its surface, and wrapped himself in its heavy shadow, concealing his weapons, his appearance, and his origins.