Chapter Nine: The "Gift" of the Survivor

Page 1/3

[4ml of Dull, Tainted Blood]
[1 piece of Moderately Decayed Flesh]
[1 Corrupted Bone]

The battle concluded within a minute.

Colin suddenly realized that these small, barely one and a half meter tall aberrations—nothing but exposed, blood-streaked bone, with hardly any flesh at all—were what true aberrations should look like. They didn’t even have any special title or suffix, just “aberration.” By contrast, the “Confessor Priest” he’d encountered earlier must have been an elite creature, and a unique one at that.

But while these minor monsters were easy to deal with, their rewards were meager. They were visibly destitute.

“It finally feels a bit like a game now,” Colin muttered.

His pace quickened. The ordinary aberrations moved slowly, and unless a confrontation was unavoidable, Colin had no intention of wasting time on them. Unless one happened to bear “Thorns of Suffering,” he’d never stop to engage.

Yet, after only a few minutes, Colin’s brow furrowed.

He’d spotted blood.

Human blood.

“So, I’m not the only survivor who’s figured out how to light the lantern,” he murmured, slowing his steps.

He noticed signs in another direction—tracks left by another survivor. The footprints were chaotic, hurried, as if the person had encountered something dreadful; blood dotted each step. The blood was a dark, deep red, still fresh, barely congealed. When he touched it with his finger, it felt sticky.

Colin couldn’t tell human blood from animal blood by sight alone... but the system prompt confirmed it: this was human.

Which meant the survivor hadn’t passed through long before him. More importantly, it seemed they were both heading in the same direction. Less than ten minutes ahead lay the church of Father Cadis—the objective of the quest.

If this person reached it first, bringing the children “peace” (in the most literal sense) before him...

Page 2/3

“That’s certainly not good news.”

Colin broke into a run.

The trail of blood stretched far, soaking into the soil—a visible testament to the volume lost.

“If all this blood came from one person, they’d have to be dead by now,” Colin thought, just as doubt gnawed at him about whether the survivor was alive or not.

He soon got his answer.

Less than ten meters ahead, a figure lay silently beneath a dead tree—motionless.

A woman’s corpse.

Her expression... there was none. Her head was missing.

Blood gushed from the wide wound at her neck, flowing over her skin and pooling into the earth, saturating the ground in crimson. Her drab dress was soaked, slashed in many places—whether by monsters or from a desperate, panicked flight through branches and stones, Colin could not tell.

“She gave up resisting, just lay here waiting for death. Time of death: about twenty minutes ago...”

After the initial shock, Colin regained his composure. The stench of blood was nauseating, but his mind was already working.

He bent down, pulling his sleeve over his mouth and nose, and crouched beside the body to examine every detail, no matter how unsettling.

This was vital to what he might face next.

First, the woman’s blood was bright red, with no sign of poisoning—so she hadn’t died from toxins. Second, her posture suggested no struggle; she seemed to have simply given up and awaited death. If she’d resisted, the killer wouldn’t have left her so neatly arranged, nor given her time to tidy her clothes.

Her legs were wounded, her ankles swollen and twisted.

Clearly, she could no longer run.

Colin surmised that her final act was to sit beneath this withered tree, adjust her tattered dress, and then...

Her head was wrenched off in an instant.

Judging by the torn flesh at her neck, her head had been plucked away like a mushroom.

She’d bled so much that there hadn’t even been a violent spray.

Colin’s gaze shifted to a footprint two meters from the corpse.

It was a meter long and half a meter wide, vaguely human in shape...

Page 3/3

But no human could have such a massive footprint.

The prints appeared every few meters; fortunately, after killing the woman, the creature had taken her head and departed in the opposite direction.

[The owner of these footprints is no less than five meters tall. You cannot comprehend what manner of being this is, but you know that provoking it is tantamount to certain death.]

No kidding, Colin thought, dismissing the prompt from his mind.

He saw no sign of her servants nearby, but it was easy to guess—they’d likely been used to cover her retreat and met a grim fate.

“My lord, what should we do now?” Servant One whispered, unable to hide his fear. They, too, had seen the scene before them, but it was the giant footprint, more than the corpse, that filled them with dread.

From that print, they felt a chill that seemed to seep from their very souls.

Colin did not reply at once.

Before him, a [Select to Pick Up] option appeared.

Within, he saw 43ml of Dull, Tainted Blood—proof that she hadn’t died from the Gray Mist, and had even managed to store most of her blood in her backpack before the end.

That alone spoke to her final choice.

“If I get the chance, I’ll kill it for you,” Colin whispered, accepting her “gift.”

The dead are gone; the living must press on.

The sight of a fresh, blood-soaked survivor’s corpse served as a grim reminder: this was a game of life and death. Those who fell behind would be mercilessly abandoned by the “game,” left as nameless corpses in the wilderness, forgotten, without even a gravestone.

Colin felt a twinge of complexity within.

After stowing away all her belongings, he handed the lantern and axe she’d left to Servant Two. The lantern couldn’t be stored in the backpack, and while the axe offered no stat bonuses, it was still better than a broken stick.

Then Colin stood, offered the woman a brief salute, and said, “Let’s move on.

“The monster that killed her should be gone, and the church is near.

“We’ve come this far; not to try would be a waste...”

The Church of Suffering was close now—he could already glimpse its silhouette rising from the mist-shrouded forest.