“Now, captain, are you going to arrest me, or are you going to keep barking and funting your undeserving authority?” Aedan taunted.

  “Are you aware that the more you speak, the worse this will get for you?” the soldier retorted, barely keeping his composure together. Veins were showing on his temple. A nerve was struck.

  Aedan smiled and extended his arms, presenting them to the soldier to be cuffed.

  The soldier did not move. He continued to gre at Aedan with his hands on his sword, as if preparing to draw his bde at any moment. “You don’t fool me, boy. Criminals only become this obedient when they are up to something or when they are in absolute despair. You are certainly not someone deep in despair.”

  Aedan rolled his eyes and retracted his hands. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Make your damn mind, already. Don’t drag others down to your gaping pit of insecurity.”

  “Fucking cunt,” the soldier growled. “I’ll put the cuffs on you once my men have arrived. Until then, you will stand there and not move a muscle.”

  “What? You forgot your cuffs?”

  “Silence.”

  Just then, the body of the headless Ogre twitched brazenly, making noises.

  The soldier paled and turned to the Ogre just as its hands moved to push itself off the ground. “What in the name—”

  “It ain’t dead after all, Your Grace,” Amyra said.

  “I can see that.”

  “What fuck is this!?” the soldier shouted.

  Blood began to spray and spurt from the fresh stump on the Ogre’s neck.

  “I knew there was something wrong with this Ogre,” Aedan muttered. “To think it would be this… abominable.”

  Something popped out of the stump. It was a gaunt hand with long cws, or at least it looked like a hand. Then, more and more cws emerged from the stump, until the picture became clear. Those weren’t cws of hands. They were legs— dozens of them, much like a centipede.

  “Your Grace, I might be seeing things, but I think a giant centipede is crawling out of the Ogre’s body from the neck stump.”

  “You’re not seeing things, Amyra. That is a humungous centipede.”

  “But how? I didn’t see this in its status.”

  “People are getting more and more clever. Seems like it’s getting easier and easier to trick the System as the days go by.”

  “What manner of monster is this?” the soldier shouted. “What have you two done!?”

  “Shouldn’t you be sying that thing first before asking questions?”

  “Damn you…” The soldier didn’t have the luxury to press Aedan for answers. The headless Ogre was up on its feet with a centipede dangling from its neck stump, fying in the air like a fg.

  The Ogre turned its attention to the soldier, or at least it seemed that way. It was turning its whole body towards the soldier as it lumbered towards him. The Ogre was barely keeping its bance. It looked like a simple push would be all it took to tip it over.

  A vibrant glow enveloped the soldier’s drawn bde. “Die, you monster!” he cried and charged at the Ogre.

  The Ogre pivoted on its foot and swung its fist.

  The soldier met the hook with his sword. The result ended in the soldier’s favour, at first. He lopped the Ogre’s arm off, but that was not the end of it. Another giant centipede sprouted out of the shoulder that was now missing an arm.

  The soldier turned ghastly pale, but he moved fast enough to dodge the centipede’s bite. Perhaps angered by the Ogre’s abominable state, the soldier retaliated with a wide swing that emitted an aura projectile.

  The projectile struck the Ogre square in its torso and cut through its body, turning the centipede around the neck into two halves. The one on the arm was fortunate and clever. It had abandoned its host when it saw the aura projectile. It was already darting towards the soldier.

  The soldier reined in his stance, but the centipede was faster than he had anticipated. He couldn’t recover his stance fast enough. He managed to slice the centipede in half, but not before it scratched his cheek with its mandibles.

  “Fucking piece of shit!” the soldier growled as he stumbled from the sliced, motionless centipede while clutching his face. Still wearing this enraged and indignant expression, he turned to Aedan. “You will pay dearly for this.”

  “What did I do?” Aedan asked innocently.

  “You—” Barely one word out of his lips, and the soldier suddenly fell to his knees. His hand went from clutching his face to clutching his chest. His mouth was wide open, but only croaks came out of it. His eyes were blood red, not in the figurative sense. His other hand was still gripping his sword. He pnted his bde into the ground, attempting to use it as a clutch to push himself up. However, he soon lost strength in his grip, and he fell face-first to the ground.

  “What the hell?” Amyra blurted out.

  “Hell of a venom, that’s what. Poor bastard. Terrible way to die.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “No yet.”

  “What do we do, Your Grace? Do we save him?”

  “Not our problem,” Aedan said.

  “Lady Erynthea would save him.”

  “She’s not here right now, and I don’t have half the heart she does. Come on. We'd best leave this pce before his reinforcement gets here.”

  Saying that, Aedan and Amyra quickly left the scene before the city guards could arrive and catch them on the scene.

  ****

  “Kyu...” Ruri whimpered as she coiled herself on a table beside a jar of ice honey lemon tea.

  “What a waste,” Erin grumbled after downing a whole gss of tea in one gulp.

  “Kyu…”

  “There, there. She’s not bming you,” Amyra comforted the Kirin.

  “What do you mean by we might be on posters on the morrow just now?” Lyra asked.

  “Did I say that?” Aedan questioned back.

  “Yes, you did. You were mumbling it when you entered the room, but I heard the words leaving your lips. So, what did you mean by that?”

  Erin was pouring herself another gss. “I’m curious about that, too. What do you mean by that?”

  Aedan smiled wryly and looked to Amyra.

  The Augur only looked away with a nonchant face.

  “Traitor,” Aedan muttered under his breath.

  “I’m waiting,” Erin said. She had pced down her gss and crossed her arms.

  Aedan sighed. “After Amyra took down the Ogre, we were caught by a city guard, someone who might be of a high position. The usual arrogant sort. He wanted to arrest us, but the Ogre wasn’t dead. And since the soldier warned us not to move, we didn’t. The soldier took on the Ogre by himself, and he died fighting the Ogre. Amyra and I left before the other city guards arrived.”

  “No one saw you?” Lyra questioned

  “We were definitely seen, but not by any of the living city guards. It’s up to the onlookers’ discretion now.”

  “Your faces will definitely be on the posters by dawn of the morrow,” Siv said.

  “What about us?” Lyra asked. “We weren’t with you. Would we be on the posters?”

  “We did make quite the ruckus. If they can deduce the association between you and me, then yes, your faces might just be on the posters too.”

  “...Fuck,” Lyra groaned. “This is just great.”

  “I am not surprised at this point,” Erin muttered.+

  “Oh, I forgot to mention. Amyra cut off the Ogre’s head, and it came back to life without its head, and also with giant centipedes popping out from its body. The guard was killed by one of these centipedes with its venom.”

  “Centipedes?”

  “Yes, centipedes.” Aedan noticed the strange look on Erin’s face. “Do you know something about that, perhaps?”

  “It’s a ghost story from my former world. The dead get revived by the demonic bugs and insects. I forgot the whole story, but that’s the gist of it. Some madman got this concept and idea to work, although not perfectly, but it worked to some extent. If this is indeed Marsh’s work, then he really is Ivan Soze.”

  “Well, it doesn’t change anything. We still need to stop him. But now, at least we may have an advantage. What more do you know about these… dead-reviving bugs?”

  “They’re not exactly reviving the dead. They simply take over the dead’s body and use it as their own. The dead remain dead, but their bodies are being used by others. To kill them efficiently, you’ll need to know where the bugs or insects are. In other words, destroy the entire body together with whatever’s inside of it.”

  “In other words, we burn them to ashes, right?” Amyra said.

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  “For you, that is.”

  Amyra grinned. “Looks like I will have a lot of opportunity to funt my prowess.”

  “What’s our next move?” asked Lyra. “Back to our original pn?”

  “I have another idea that might smooth the path ahead of us.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I was giving chase to the girl when she disappeared underground after going into a building and through a hatch. I followed her into the hatch, and that’s when the Ogre emerged from out of nowhere and surprised me. That entrance is in the middle of a retively busy area of the city. If Marsh wished to cover the tracks, they wouldn’t be able to do so easily. Which means—”

  “The entrance might still be there?”

  “Exactly. We can try our luck there.”

  “But it would be heavily guarded, considering it was a scene where a fight with an Ogre had recently taken pce.”

  “That works to our favour. It gives us even more time to pursue that window of opportunity.”

  “Great idea and all, but how do you propose we sneak past the guards?” asked Lyra.

  “Why, my dear Lyra, don’t you know we already have the means to do so?”

  “Oh… We do already have the means, don’t we?”

  ****

  The corridor was dark with only a few strands of light to give way to one’s sight. However, Marsh was unperturbed by the darkness and simply strode through the corridor without hesitation or caution, dragging his shadows along and across the dimly lit walls.

  “What’s the emergency?” Marsh asked as he burst into the room at the end of the corridor.

  In the room, there was a bed, and the frail girl was lying on it. Her skin was pale, and her breathing was ragged. There were various bags of various fluids dangling on a pole beside the bed. Those bags of fluids were connected to the girl’s arms through translucent tubes.

  “Genna here was nearly caught,” said Baloc, who was standing beside the bed. “Oh, the guards are dead. Killed by her pursuers.”

  Marsh tutted. “At least that’s two fewer loose ends to worry about. How is she?”

  “She’ll live, but she’ll be of no use to us for at least a week. She overdid herself. It’s a miracle that she’s still with us. Most would have already died from using that much Spatial Magic.”

  “Do whatever it takes to keep her alive. Her death would be a tremendous loss to us.”

  “Oh, how sentimental of you, William.”

  “This whole operation is sentimental.”

  “That’s true, I suppose. Oh, also nearly forgot. The guard dog is dead.”

  “We have a guard dog?”

  “I meant the Ogre, and it didn’t die discreetly.”

  Marsh narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “Your men didn’t tell you anything?”

  “They were very hesitant and fearful when they were making the report. They only told me that there was an emergency, and I came here as fast as I could.”

  Baloc chuckled. “It seems like Genna let the Ogre loose to throw her pursuers off. The Ogre ended up emerging into the public street. Oh, it killed one of our own, too.”

  “Which one?”

  “The guard captain of the merchant district. He died fighting the Ogre. Funny, if you think about it.”

  “Nothing is amusing about this thing, Baloc. This is a mess. A disaster.”

  Baloc sighed. “You’re right. It’s a mess. There’s going to be a lot of questions.”

  “...Maybe this isn’t entirely terrible,” Marsh mused.

  “Oh? An idea?”

  Marsh grinned. “They don’t care about the truth of this havoc. They sought only a scapegoat. I will give them just that.”