Bear School Astartes

Just as Lann had anticipated, the sound of his heavy crossbow cannons firing drew the attention of the Healing Church.

They pulled manpower and dispatched it to the area.

Yet Lann relied on his superior mobility, stealthy footsteps, and the convoluted terrain inherited from Church Town and Yan’an.

Ultimately, he did not get entangled in further trouble.

After all, his action of killing Miklás was too swift and decisive.

When Lann managed to leave the area where the Healing Church’s reaction was most intense, he discovered Maria already standing at the mouth of the tunnel they came up from Old Yan’an together with Adeline, head lowered.

This female hunter, born from the Blood Nobility, was indeed an exceptional fighter. Despite battling the Healing Church personnel who gathered around her for quite some time, her single-shoulder cape bore not a single tear.

”You seem disappointed.”

Lann said while weighing two packages in his hand, each containing a segment of the corpse of a demigod, as he looked at Maria, who raised her head to look at him.

”Didn’t find your mentor? That ’First Hunter’ Gremman?”

Maria first shook her head, her expression somber, then replied, ”Didn’t find... But it shouldn’t be, given such a big incident, there’s no way he wouldn’t know, and where could he have gone?”

As she spoke, Maria pressed down her tricorn hat, allowing its shadow to obscure her worried face.

”This night... it seems to have made everything collapse.”

”By the way,” as if trying to divert her attention, Maria opened her mouth to ask, ”What did you mean when you told me ’don’t go too far’...?”

At this point, Lann instead furrowed his brows, his expression becoming uncertain.

Their expressions almost switched in a short time.

”No, it’s hard to say now.” The Demon Hunter sighed slightly and glanced at Adeline, who, though tense to the point of unconsciously clenching her fingers, was still striving to encourage herself, ”It’s just... an unverified conjecture.”

”What about now?”

Maria didn’t find the mentor she trusted and was disinterested. She didn’t pursue further, only continuing according to the current situation.

”Now,” Lann raised the two large packages in his hands, ”We need to make another trip to the small fishing village... to the scene of this murder.”

”He is already a corpse.” Maria involuntarily snorted, she was ultimately a Yan Nan person enamored with blood. ”Sending the corpse back, will it appease the Great God?”

”Appease the Great God?” Lann pursed his lips and shook his head, ”No, I just want to... Let him rest in peace.”

”Even for humans, errors and massive deaths will provoke a series of terrifying consequences. Intense and frenzied mental states paired with death is the most horrific catalyst.”

”A demigod who had not yet been born but was already murdered... At least, I want to hold a burial ritual for Him. Otherwise...”

Otherwise, this nightmare is supposedly the consequence of ’a demigod’s wrongful death.’

But Lann did not make things clear.

Because even if he did, would people trapped in this nightmare really understand?

Without more troublesome combats, their group quickly descended again from Church Town, leaving the still-burning Old Yan’an.

Maria’s carriage from Cainhurst was still waiting outside Yan’an, and fortunately it was outside, or it would have likely been set ablaze.

But when Lann was in the carriage, integrating the upper and lower parts of the demigod’s corpse into one bag, the Demon Hunter’s hand suddenly paused.

Adeline and Maria were both restless in the scent of the demigod’s fresh blood.

Only Maria, with better self-control, noticed this pause.

”Is there something wrong with this corpse?”

Maria cautiously asked.

Although normally a strong and decisive hunter, this night without Lann, she reckoned she wouldn’t fare any better than a headless fly.

Relying solely on herself... she couldn’t even see through the Healing Church’s true nature.

But Lann only lowered his head, his finger carefully tracing the enormous wound on the demigod’s back, as if using his experience and touch to feel this massive trauma.

This should be the fatal injury that killed Him.

However, this wound... it isn’t a sword wound.

In the previous battle with Ludwig, that Church’s First Hunter who witnessed the moonlight from beast transformation and climbed out from the abyss of bestiality said it was him who gave Kos’s Orphan the fatal blow.

Yet neither the finely crafted transformable weapon Ludwig initially carried, manufactured by the Healing Church Workshop, nor the other weapon now in Lann’s hand, the Holy Moonlight Sword... should have inflicted such scars.

What exactly is this...

Lann’s mind rapidly processed, but Maria’s inquiry beside him pulled his attention back.

”No, it’s nothing.”

Lann withdrew his fingertips from the colossal wound on the demigod’s corpse, shaking his head.

The small fishing village was still enveloped in drizzly rain.

The fire ignited by the hunters’ large-scale hunt had already been extinguished.

Only smoldering wood remains, along with the corpses scattered all over the ground.

The heads of those Fishmen corpses have been damaged... or rather, the signs of torment are extremely evident. One glance is enough to know that those skulls suffered inhuman treatment.

I fear that those hunters or accompanying scholars must have dug their fingers into those skulls, searching for something inside, right?

There are no more enemies here, only a dead silence remains.

Lann led the way forward, Maria protecting Adeline who followed behind.

Although the small fishing village, due to its terrain, was built more complexly and windingly than most places in Yan’an, fortunately, the signs of battle and advancement left by the hunters were very clear.

Under Lann’s Demon Hunter vision, they followed all the way forward and found the place where the murder occurred.

The three of them found an elevator in a building in the small fishing village.

The sound of the machinery operating, in this damp and gloomy village, carried the ’gurgling’ sound of wet wood rolling.

”All those are...”

On the elevator, Maria looked down through the hollowed-out railing, struggling to utter half a sentence.

Adeline’s reaction was even more evident, the Blood Saintess suddenly covered her mouth, making a near-vomiting whimper in her throat.

The ground where the elevator was about to land was covered with an unknown thickness of... large, plump white worms.

Their slimy skin resembled that of sea creatures like squids.

The only thing acceptable was that they all seemed dead, completely motionless. Because of this, the unknown thickness of worms didn’t wriggle like a tide, nor did they make the slippery sound of rubbing against each other.

Adeline’s reaction was purely physiological, but Maria, being a thorough Yan Nan Hunter, reacted more with... regret.

Because these worms’ shape was exactly like the parasites Lann had cultivated from the blood of a gray blood disease patient in the research center experiments!

Only their size was larger.

A ’creak’ sound echoed as the elevator stopped, Lann opened the railing.

”So...” But Maria only lowered her head, looking at the thick worms outside the elevator, speaking with an almost ludicrous tone.

”These are the worms brought by the Great God Cos, and these worms in the human body would become... gray blood disease?”

The parasites on the beings above, after being discovered by humans and brought back to Yan’an, became an artificial plague.

Now, the entire chain of events has been clarified.

Lann said nothing, just shook his head, carrying a large cloth bag containing two pieces of a corpse, and walked off the elevator, heading toward the deeper parts of the cavern.

Maria seemed dazed, now it was Adeline supporting her.

The tactile sensation of boots stepping on the thick layer of slimy worms underneath made the hair stand on end.

Further inside were misshapen women kneeling toward the depths of the cave.

The men of the small fishing village, influenced by the Ancient God Cos, turned into Half-Fishmen.

However, the women seemed to have become Snail Girls, their bodies slick and pale, residing inside shells.

Their mutation seemed to be very deep, as when their humanoid upper bodies protruded from the shells, even their internal organs resembled those of a seashell, entwining the outside of their humanoid form rather than growing inside.

They remained motionless, which was perhaps why the hunters who arrived earlier were uninterested in killing them.

The deeper part of the cave led to an exit, connecting to a flat beach outside.

The ocean and the beach appeared murky and black on this night.

Only the reflection of light on the moving waves helped discern between sand and water.

Amidst this murkiness lay conspicuously the enormous pale corpse of a marine creature.

Mighty white membranes covered its body, obscuring its underlying structure, with numerous tentacle-like appendages extending beyond the membranes.

Occasionally visible limbs had fish fin-like organs and features such as fish scales or webbed fingers.

Much like the abnormal growth of limbs seen in most extraordinary creatures in Yan’an.

Yet... this oddly grown corpse carried a sense of tranquility and desolation.

In stark contrast to the madness and bloodshed of other things.

The waves ’shushed,’ washing against the part of its body near the waterline, making its membranes and tentacles on one side shift passively.

Lann found a broken fishing boat, placed the body of Cos’s Orphan upon it, piecing it back together, and gently folded its grotesque hands on its chest.

The emaciated form revealed the outline of bones, its body did not fully develop.

Not even the skin had the chance to form completely, which was why its face appeared crumpled like an old man’s.

A premature child, an orphan...

It was said that the Great God Cos was an Ancient God of the ocean.

Sending this orphan’s body back to the ocean might be a way of returning it to its mother’s side, right?