Chapter 141: The First Friend
Lily's eyes sparkled.
“What do you think, Keros? Isn't that person fascinating?”
“Woof!”
“You think it's no big deal? Could you do sothing like that?”
“Woof!”
“You don’t know because you’re not human?”
Her gaze followed Arthur as he disappeared into the forest, her eyes filled with curiosity.
But that curiosity lasted only a mont. Her hair fluttered wildly in the gusts of wind, and she frowned, shaking her head to keep it out of her face.
The rough night wind whipped through the air.
Below her, the scenery of the forest passed by rapidly. Lily was currently riding her broomstick, floating high above the ground.
“I like it when it’s bright.”
She lifted her head and glanced at the moonlight illuminating her path.
A brilliant full moon.
It was her favorite kind of night, the kind that brought her the most comfort.
Reaching out her slender hand into the fierce wind, the moonlight shimred as if dancing along her fingers.
The Witch of the Moon.
Blessed by the moon itself, she was a witch beloved by the light of the moon—a being graced by "divine will."
The pale yellow glow of the moon reflected in her eyes, twinkling softly.
“The backdrop is so beautiful!”
She couldn’t resist.
Taking out a small mirror, she used the moonlight as her background to examine her face from various angles. Her translucent skin seed even more radiant tonight, blending perfectly with the soft glow.
“Mm!” she nodded in satisfaction.
Just then, Keros playfully nipped her head as if telling her to focus.
“Ah! Okay, I get it!”
She shook him off and resud flying on her broomstick.
While she could move faster by flying closer to the forest floor, the ominous black fog that blanketed the surroundings made her hesitant to get too close. The energy emanating from the fog clashed entirely with her own attributes.
“Huh? Where did he go? He’s already gone.”
Distracted for a mont, she lost track of Arthur's trail. Lily closed her eyes and scrunched her delicate brow in concentration.
A mont later:
“There!”
She snapped her eyes open, gripped her broomstick tightly, and abruptly changed direction.
It wasn’t hard to track him down.
After all, he’d vanished alongside the Hero’s Companion, the wielder of "Sacred Power." If she simply followed Karl Bastain’s traces, she’d find Arthur.
Squinting, she caught sight of a large river in the distance.
"Is he heading there?"
As she sped up, her long black hair whipped violently in the wind. Keros, clinging to her, dodged her hair as best as he could, but eventually gave up and bit the back of her head again.
The two bickered briefly before settling the matter with a red ribbon. While Lily tied her hair back with the ribbon, Keros posed a question.
“What??”
“Woof!”
“Ah, what do I think about him? Hmm.”
Letting go of the ribbon, Lily thought of one man.
Arthur Clayton, the Divine Hunter.
She’d first t him beneath the traces of golden light. Since then, she’d observed him closely. Her conclusion? He was “special.”
“Well, he seems connected to the elves, so that earns him one point of favor.”
The elves were the most amicable of the non-human races to witches.
“Grandma Elder always said that elves only fight for humans if they’ve ford a deep bond. Unlike humans, elves can’t be swayed by money.”
“Woof!”
“Right? Even you agree, don’t you?”
Both Lily and Keros nodded in unison, recalling the fierce dark elf who’d fought valiantly against that obnoxious pervert. She had been like a magnificent warrior.
There was no doubt she was one of those kindhearted elves untouched by greed.
“And he killed that obnoxious human in the end, didn’t he? That’s another point of favor.”
“Woof!”
“You think it should be two points because he killed two? But their faces were the sa. It counts as one person.”
Beyond that, she admired how Arthur risked himself to save his companions. The golden light radiating from his hand that caused pain to the black sorcerers also left an impression.
A friend of witches.
He fulfilled the criteria Grandma Elder emphasized: self-sacrifice for others and hostility toward black sorcerers.
There was only one concern—after observing him in combat, she worried he might be a zombie. But that was sothing she could confirm later. Her conclusion? "As long as he’s not a zombie, he might be a good companion."
“Do you think I could beco friends with him?”
Lily smiled brightly.
He was a presence she learned about through divine will.
Out of curiosity about that will, she left the forest and t him. For the first ti in her life, she was imagining a friend.
Her first friend.
The excitent in her chest was short-lived, as her broomstick suddenly ca to an abrupt halt.
“But... is it okay to approach him just like this? Humans’ reactions when they see are always predictable.”
They either rushed toward her because she was too beautiful or ran away because she was... well, too beautiful.
Either way, her beauty always caused trouble, and neither scenario was what she wanted from Arthur.
“Woof!”
“A bone would solve everything? A premium one?”
Picturing a bone seriously, Lily shook her head. Even with her lack of experience in human relationships, she knew a bone wasn’t the answer.
“Too tasteless.”
While Keros barked insistently about his bone idea, a great change occurred in the forest.
BOOM!
“...?”
A massive explosion erupted in the distance, sending black smoke billowing into the sky. The initial explosion was only the beginning.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM—!!
“Wow…?”
The chain of explosions shook the entire forest.
The destructive force was wild and overwhelming.
It was coming from the direction where Arthur had disappeared.
“Sothing’s blown up again.”
“Woof!”
“A battle? Why is soone so desperate to go after him? Who’s tornting him this ti?”
Her questions didn’t last long. While heading toward the source of the explosions, Lily abruptly stopped, gazing silently below.
A disturbing energy stirred.
Monts later, as she noticed the shift, her eyes widened.
“It’s moving.”
“...?”
“The black smoke forming the barrier—it’s moving rapidly.”
The massive barrier covering the forest was gliding beneath her at an alarming speed. As the black smoke began to rise and swell, she instinctively flew higher.
From her elevated vantage point, she tracked the direction of the moving smoke. It was heading straight for the site of the explosions.
Toward Arthur’s location.
The smoke moved with the speed of a wind-borne storm cloud, and it would engulf Arthur in monts.
“Doesn’t that look dangerous?”
The energy was filled with darkness, the opposite of light.
If its master was Jess Milo, the King of the Dead, it could only an death was imminent.
“If he dies, there’s no point in leaving the forest, right?”
“Woof!?”
“Exactly. I don’t want to go back to the forest. I want to explore the world more, eat delicious food, and experience new things. Hmm… Should we pretend to help him and stick around?”
Scratching her cheek, Lily pulled out her hand mirror.
Her deliberation didn’t take long.
Lily’s broomstick began soaring after the black barrier.
“Woof!”
“I’m not getting too close. I don’t want that smoke touching my skin—it’d cause a breakout.”
The radiant moonlight shone on her.
Admiring her reflection in the mirror, she murmured with a worried expression:
“What if he falls for because I save him?”
“...”
“Ah, that’d be troubleso. Being too pretty is such a problem, isn’t it, Keros?”
Keros let out a small sigh and shook his head.
It was shaping up to be a very exhausting night.
***
“Aaaaah! Damn it!”
Arthur dodged the golden mannequins charging at him like wild boars, their aggression completely ignoring the dagger Karl had thrown at them. Five mannequins were advancing on him, their golden forms glinting ominously in the moonlight.
“Roll to your right!”
As the shout echoed, a barrage of crimson arrows fired from the Ring of Blood.
Karl dove to the right, and a fierce volley of arrows rained down on the golden mannequins that had been lunging at him with bared teeth.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The air exploded as though magic shells had detonated midair.
With a thunderous blast, the golden mannequins were flung backward, soaring through the air. They crashed hard onto the ground, so skidding and tumbling, but only for a mont. The mannequins twitched, then slowly rose again and charged forward once more.
The crimson arrows—imbued with the power of blood magic—carried the destructive force of magic bullets with every shot, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the mannequins.
Under the moonlight, the arrows should’ve been more effective, yet they had little impact.
Cursing under his breath, I backed away. That’s when Karl ca running up, yelling at .
“Hey, you idiot! I almost died!”
“I told you not to attack the mannequins recklessly. They can counterattack!”
“But Lochter was in danger!”
Karl had intercepted the mannequins targeting Lochter’s back, but the fact that he had to act first only underscored how dire the situation was.
No, it was getting worse by the second.
From behind the five charging mannequins, the bushes rustled violently, and more golden mannequins erged.
This ti, there were fifteen of them.
“...Fuck. We’re not breaking through this. Let’s get out of here.”
“Agreed.”
I nodded grimly.
If we couldn’t break through the encirclent in one go, we’d end up in a situation just like this—completely surrounded. And if we delayed any longer, even more would swarm in.
“Lochter!”
At my signal, Lochter, who was battling multiple mannequins at once, used his Aura Sword to create an opening and barely managed to retreat to my side.
His chest heaved with ragged breaths. His expression was utterly exhausted.
The sword trembling in his grip was proof of how much his body was struggling.
“Can both of you still run?”
Even a quick glance revealed that Lochter’s stamina was at its absolute limit.
The sa went for Karl.
Both of them nodded heavily, and I pointed toward the Korun River.
“Turn around, and just run straight ahead. Don’t look back.”
“And you?”
“The one with energy left has to do the hard work. Find a spot and rest. I’ll distract them and be right behind you.”
At my instructions, the two didn’t hesitate. They turned and sprinted in the direction I pointed.
I stood firm in their path, gripping the Ring of Blood tightly. The crimson band pulsed as it sucked up blood, glowing an even deeper red.
Narrowing my eyes, I glared at the oncoming horde.
The five mannequins rushing at .
The ten that had surrounded Lochter earlier.
The fifteen that had just appeared.
All of them converged into a single, overwhelming charge aid straight at .
“Damn it.”
Taking a short breath, I focused my gaze and pulled back the bowstring, releasing a flurry of arrows like a man possessed.
Five. Five. Five. Five. Five.
Each summoned crimson arrow flashed and vanished in rapid succession.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOM!
The mannequins were caught in a massive explosion, flung in every direction by the impact.
But that was it.
Even after such a large-scale detonation, one by one, the fallen mannequins began to rise again.
And worse still, more mannequins poured in through the gaps between the scorched and shattered trees on the forest’s outskirts. Their numbers continued to swell as they sward toward like predators eyeing prey.
I began to move, trying to draw as many of them as I could away.
This was our goal all along: distraction.
The only way to break free of the golden mannequins was to head for the lower reaches of the Korun River, but the entire path was blocked by them.
We had initially planned to punch through with sheer force, but our firepower fell short. On top of that, my party’s stamina was far worse than expected.
“Co on! Bring it on, you bastards!”
So I chose the next-best option.
Instead of breaking through, I’d lure them away to disrupt their encirclent.
I fired arrows wildly in all directions, drawing the attention of as many mannequins as I could.
Tat-tat-tat! Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
The eerie sound of their footsteps echoed throughout the forest.
Every single one of them began to converge on my position.
It felt like the ground was shaking under their weight.
Shit. Did I overdo it?
The scene was like sothing out of a horror movie.
Frantically shooting arrows to lure them further, I moved in the opposite direction of my companions. But suddenly, a fierce gust of wind swept through, and my vision went dark.
“Huh??”
At first, I thought sothing was wrong with my eyes.
But that wasn’t it.
Even after rubbing them, nothing changed.
The moonlit forest was abruptly swallowed by darkness.
The shadow of death had arrived.
In a desperate bid to confirm what was happening, I activated an ancient glyph. A faint glow erged, only to flicker and die out imdiately.
The black barrier.
The mont I realized what it was, a chill ran down my spine.
“...Fuck. What the hell is this?!”
Screeeech! Screeeech!
From all directions ca the distorted cries of the golden mannequins, their presence more ferocious and wild than before.
Before stretched the domain of the dead.
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