The Hunt

“I know where he's hiding.”

After Gale agreed to Elena's request, his very first words startled Clement so much he almost jumped.

“What did you say?”

Because Clement was from the church, Gale let out a cold snort and said with a rather hostile attitude, “Daytime is his feeding time, so he comes into the territory. The white mist is his way of blocking out the sunlight. At night, he goes to the reefs near the sea to hide and rest.”

“Finding him isn't hard. The hard part is controlling him. After all, the church's purification ritual isn't that simple, is it?”

He emphasized the word “purification,” then looked at Lovene.

Clearly, even now, he still did not believe this young girl could purify Marcus, even though her reputation had already spread throughout the Oswell territory.

This was a prejudice born of his past interactions with the Church of the Morning Light.

Lovene gave Gale a sweet smile and chose not to explain. After all, whether the purification ritual was complex or simple depended entirely on her own plans and needs.

If she could absorb everyone's emotions to increase her own strength, she wouldn't mind making the purification ritual highly complex. If she couldn't, she could purify Marcus with a mere wave of her hand.

Everything centered around her.

The real Saintess of the church was indeed such a selfish person.

“Just finding him is enough. Leave the controlling to me,” Clement said in a deep voice.

As a Heresy Inquisitor, he had many ways to deal with contaminated monsters. While these methods might not necessarily kill them, controlling them was an easy task in his eyes.

And this solved their biggest problem in purifying Marcus.

After thoroughly discussing their strategy, Gale grabbed his coat from the door. Taking advantage of the cover of night, he led Lovene and the other two out, heading toward the seashore. Elena returned to the lord's manor.

She possessed no combat power, so she could not participate in the purification of Marcus.

...

The seashore.

The tide had receded into the distance, exposing a vast stretch of black reefs that had been submerged for a long time. A layer of grayish-white tidal marks remained on the edges, looking like secretions left behind after something had repeatedly crawled over them.

Mist rose from the sea, spreading along the surface of the water, so thick that it was almost impossible to distinguish the boundary between the seawater and the air. A strong, nauseating, salty fishy smell filled the air.

Gale walked at the very front, carrying no weapons.

“He is in this area. After the tide recedes, he will run aground in the shallow waters, using the mist as cover to recover his strength. His feeding time is during the day, so now should be when he is at his most sluggish.”

Mia walked beside Lovene, her gaze sweeping across the grayish-white mist and the looming silhouettes of the reefs within it. Her right hand remained resting on the hilt of her sword.

Clement walked at the rear, pulling out a silver-white chain.

The chain made a low metallic clinking sound with his steps. It was engraved with countless seals—a magic tool from the Church of the Morning Light that possessed the ability to suppress contaminated monsters.

Soon, as if sensing their arrival, the mist suddenly surged forward.

The sea breeze died down, and the sound of the waves seemed to be suppressed by something, leaving only a dull, low-frequency vibration that sounded like a giant heart slowly beating.

Lovene stopped in her tracks.

“He's here.”

As soon as she spoke, the surface of the sea split open.

A tentacle shot up into the sky. It was so thick that it would take three or four people joining hands to wrap around it. Its base was covered in a large number of suckers, each the size of a washbasin.

Only when the tentacle rose more than ten meters high did its base reveal itself—a massive octopus head that, from up close, looked like a lopsided hill.

A second tentacle thrashed up from the left, sending waves crashing against the reefs. Immediately after came a third, a fourth...

Finally, amidst the cascading waterfall of seawater, the monster fully emerged from the water.

It was a giant octopus-like creature about thirty meters tall. A dark red crack was located slightly below the center of its torso, pulsing rhythmically like a beating heart.

Gale looked up at it, his face filled with complex emotions.

He knew that the monster before him was Marcus, the brother-in-arms he had once gone through life and death with.

“...Marcus, do you still remember me?”

The only response to Gale was silence.

“He can't hear you anymore,” Lovene said softly, stepping up beside Gale.

“Has the contamination gotten that severe?” Gale muttered to himself, then shook his head. “Do it. He has completely reduced to a monster.”

Mia drew the longsword at her waist, her aura instantly becoming dangerous. The monster did not wait either; its thick tentacles, like massive tree trunks, came crashing straight down.

Boom!

Mia dodged out of the way just in the nick of time. Clement took a step forward, the chain in his hand gleaming with a golden light.

“Give me three minutes.”

“Understood,” Mia replied with a frown.

The monster seemed to sense the danger of the magic tool in Clement's hand. Its tentacles suddenly lunged toward him. Mia no longer held back her strength, channeling her mana into the longsword in her hand.

Splat!

The brief sound of slicing flesh rang out, and the monster's blue blood sprayed everywhere. With the enhancement of her mana, Mia swung her sword, severing the incoming tentacle and shielding Clement.

This completely enraged the monster.

“Roar—!”

The monster let out a thunderous shriek. The terrifying acoustic shockwave nearly kicked up a tsunami over ten meters high. Gale did not have time to cover his ears, causing a sudden, agonizing throb in his brain, his face contorting in pain.

Clement and Mia fared no better, desperately gritting their teeth to suppress the intense discomfort. Lovene, however, had it far worse. As someone who was only at Rank Two, she nearly blacked out under the assault of this acoustic shockwave.

Stumbling to the ground, a sweet, metallic taste rose in her throat, and blood trickled directly from her ears. Fortunately, she possessed the Holy Light, so this minor injury was nothing to worry about.

Still, the experience startled her.

Even at Rank Two, she had been so heavily injured. If she had been unranked like before, wouldn't she have died on the spot?

Battles between high-level powerhouses were indeed not something one could easily spectate...

To protect Gale and Lovene, Mia slashed through the incoming tsunami with her sword. However, because her combat rhythm had been disrupted by the monster's roar, she was repeatedly struck by tentacles.

But relying on the light armor provided by the church, though she was at a disadvantage, her injuries were not severe. On the other hand, the monster, unable to defeat her quickly, seemed to show a hint of retreat.

But Clement would not let it have its way.

“Now!”

Clement flung the chain in his hand.

The chain uncoiled in the air like an awakened serpent, carrying the blinding golden light of sealing runes as it precisely wrapped around the monster's tentacles and head.

The moment the chain made contact, a searing hiss rang out, like red-hot iron hitting wet wood. The patterns of the seal rapidly expanded along the links of the chain, weaving into a dense golden net that completely covered the monster.