The night was as dark as ink.
Fangs, a lizardman scout, lay flat in the grass less than two hundred meters from the Benevolent Heart Clinic like a pile of limp mud.
He held his breath, not even daring to let out a sigh, fearing he would alert the dark castle that crouched in the night like a slumbering behemoth.
It was too eerie.
Everything here exuded an indescribable strangeness.
A few days ago, this place had been nothing but a barren ruin. How had a castle sprung from the ground overnight?
Could those necromancers be behind this?
Fangs carefully pulled a brass monocular from his vest. It was a treasure he had bought for a high price from a goblin merchant, allowing him to observe prey from a safe distance.
He brought the monocular to his eye, slowly aiming the lens at the castle's main gate.
"Hiss—!"
With just one look, Fangs sucked in a breath of cold air, nearly biting his tongue off.
In his field of vision...
By the castle gates stood a tall metal pole.
Hanging from the pole was a 'person'.
The person was completely naked, their skin a ghostly blue-white, clearly treated with some form of preservative.
He was held in a posture of repentance—kneeling on one knee with both hands raised high.
And in those upturned palms, he actually balanced a magic lantern that emitted a soft glow.
The lantern's light illuminated a face—one twisted in the throes of extreme terror and agony, stripped of all spirit.
Alive.
That was a living person!
Fangs could clearly see the chest of that 'Light Slave' still faintly rising and falling.
Turning a living person into a street lamp?!
What kind of cruel, perverted method was this?!
Fangs felt his scales practically stand on end. He had lived for twenty years, eaten goblins, and fought ogres; he considered himself a man of the world.
But this scene completely shattered his psychological defenses.
Just then.
Creak—
The castle gate opened.
A man wearing a bloodstained lab coat walked out, humming an unknown little tune.
In his hand, he carried a skinning knife that was still dripping blood, and behind him followed a beast girl who was also covered in blood.
Together, the two of them carried the carcass of a massive, recently deceased shadow leopard into the center of the courtyard.
"Alright, Mia, go play for a bit. Don't get your fur dirty."
That man—Victor—spoke gently to the beast girl.
Then, before Fangs' pupils, which were dilated to the point of nearly splitting from fear...
Victor picked up the skinning knife, his movements as skilled as if he were dissecting a frog.
He sliced the belly, gutted it, skinned it, and pulled the tendons.
The entire sequence was fluid and seamless, filled with a sense of violent aesthetics.
In a mere ten minutes, a whole shadow leopard had been transformed into a perfect pelt, a pile of neatly categorized organs, and a skeleton stripped clean.
"Hmm, this skin isn't bad. I can make Elizabeth a new cloak with it."
Victor shook the leopard skin in his hand with satisfaction, a 'kindly' smile appearing on his face.
He picked up the leopard heart, which was still slightly twitching, and held it up to the moonlight to examine it closely, as if admiring a rare treasure.
"Heart structure is intact, myocardial fibers are full. It's good material for a specimen."
This scene...
In the eyes of Fangs two hundred meters away, the meaning had changed completely.
That demon...
He tore apart a powerful shadow leopard with his bare hands!
He was admiring his freshly taken trophy—that still-beating heart!
He was smiling!
He looked at that heart and smiled so tenderly, so kindly!
How was this a doctor?
This was clearly a perverted butcher who found joy in slaughtering living beings! A terrifying collector who loved gathering hearts!
"Clack, clack..."
Just as Fangs was about to faint from terror...
The sound of rhythmic bone friction echoed.
A squad of low-level skeleton soldiers wearing black uniforms marched out of the castle’s side door in goose-step.
They didn't carry weapons; instead, they held brooms and shovels, beginning to expertly sweep the blood from the courtyard and clear away the scraps of meat Victor had tossed aside.
Those movements, that discipline...
Fangs' brain completely short-circuited.
Undead.
Living street lamps.
A beast girl who tore leopards apart.
And this white-robed demon who enjoyed admiring hearts...
What kind of dragon's den or tiger's lair was this ghostly place?!
Snap!
A faint, almost imperceptible sound.
Due to excessive fear, Fangs' tail—the most fragile and sensitive part of a lizardman—actually... snapped off on its own as his muscles tensed violently.
"Argh—!! (Silent)"
Agony surged through him. Fangs clamped his mouth shut, not daring to make a sound.
He looked at the half-tail on the ground, still twitching slightly, and tears immediately streamed down his face.
It was over.
The tribal chief loved eating roasted tail most of all.
If he went back without a satisfactory 'tribute', he would surely be used as dinner by the chief.
But now, he couldn't care about that.
He just wanted to escape!
Right now! Immediately!
Fangs didn't even want his severed tail; using both hands and feet, like a gecko whose tail had been stepped on, he scrambled and crawled toward the swamp in a mad dash.
...
"Hmm?"
Victor, who was processing the materials, suddenly stopped his movements.
He looked toward the patch of grass where Fangs had just been lurking.
"Strange,"
He muttered to himself.
"I thought I heard something snap just now."
"Could some small animal have been startled?"
He shrugged, not giving it another thought.
To the current him, a 'small animal' of that level wasn't even qualified to be an appetizer.
He picked up the leopard heart and turned toward the room he had been thinking about—
The Constant Temperature Morgue.
...
Black Swamp.
When Fangs rolled into the temple crying, dragging his bare, stubby backside...
Saak, the lizardman lord, was impatiently picking his teeth with his claws.
"Roar! (What's going on? Why the wailing?)"
Saak watched his most capable scout in such a pathetic state, a flicker of dissatisfaction crossing his murky vertical pupils.
"Did you find anything valuable?"
"Chi... Chief!"
Fangs scrambled to Saak's feet, his scales trembling all over.
"Don't... don't go! You absolutely must not go!"
"That place... is hell! It's a true hell!"
Incoherently, he described everything he had seen, adding his own flair to the details.
From the unlucky fellow made into a living street lamp...
To the white-robed demon who tore leopards apart and ate hearts raw...
To the disciplined army of the dead responsible for cleaning the battlefield.
He described it so vividly, it was as if he himself were the one hanging from the pole.
The temple fell into a dead silence.
Saak's massive frame froze, and his tooth-picking stopped.
His already none-too-bright reptilian brain was working hard to process this information that went beyond his understanding.
"Roar... (Are you sure... you didn't see wrong?)"
Saak's voice was a bit dry.
Though he was tyrannical, he was only a common local bully.
But the place Fangs described...
That was simply the mortal palace of a legendary Abyssal Demon King!
"It's the absolute truth, Chief!"
To prove he wasn't lying, Fangs even pointed to his bare backside.
"My... my tail... was snapped off by that demon from two hundred meters away, just by him glaring at me!"
"..."
Saak fell silent.
He looked at the bloody stump of Fangs' tail.
The cut was so smooth it didn't look like it had snapped on its own.
Then, connecting it to the horrific scenes Fangs had described...
A terrifying thought formed in his mind:
That white-robed demon was not only brutal, but he also possessed the terrifying ability to sever tails from a distance!
His own tail... seemed quite succulent and tender too.
"Roar..."
Saak swallowed hard, feeling a chill at the back of his neck.
Treasures, profits—at this moment, they all turned into death warrants.
Living as neighbors with such an existence?
What a joke!
What if that demon was in a bad mood one day and wanted to taste roasted lizard?
What if that beast girl got hungry in the middle of the night and ran over to tear him apart?
No.
Absolutely not.
They couldn't stay here anymore!
"ROAR!!! (Pass down the order!)"
Saak stood up abruptly, letting out the loudest and most terrified roar in his history.
The surrounding lizardman guards flinched and fell to their knees.
"ROAR! (The whole tribe shall obey!)"
The lizardman lord's murky vertical pupils were now filled with unprecedented determination and decisiveness.
"Pack your things! Take all the eggs and food!"
"ROAR—!!!"
"We're moving tonight!!!"
"The further from that pervert... the better!!!"
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