“Tell me about this potion! Who did you get it from?!”

  The red-haired female adventurer, with eyes gzed over, responded calmly, trasting Shalltear’s agitated state.

  “A man in bck robe gave it to me at the inn.”

  Shalltear looked at her fusedly for a moment.

  What about it?

  The female warrior’s answer seemed to leave that unsaid… and Shalltear’s body froze over.

  “...No way… no, this ’t be… but… where… in which city is this inn?”

  “It was an inn located in E-Rantel.”

  A gasp of shock escaped her lips as she felt the world spin. This was because she had a rough idea of who the bck-robed man actually was.

  If her guess was correct, that only raised more questions. Why did this woman have this potion? That person would not give out potions for no reason.

  “Could it be…”

  Had that person given the female warrior an order? Or perhaps he had given it to her in order tthen their good retions?

  Shalltear recalled the figure of the absolute ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick. The unease she felt at possibly having ruined one of her master’s pns filled her with limitless frustration.

  “Why did you e here? What was your objective?”

  Shalltear was no longer in the mood to dance around the topic. She had to find out as much as possible, and so she stared at the female warrior with eyes that were now bloodshot for a pletely different reason.

  “Yes… Our job is to protect the city, so we came to iigate when we heard there was a bandits' nearby. In the end, we found something strange, so we split up our team. Our party was responsible for a reaissan force, which brought us here.”

  “You split your team?”

  “Yes. We didn’t know how many bandits were present, so we decided to split up and draw the enemy into a trapped area the other party was setting up.”

  “So there’s aeam…”

  Shalltear muttered, then clicked her tongue as she realized that this meant more trouble for her.

  “Then, how many of you came here?”

  “There were seven people including me, and then—”

  “Hm? Wait, seven people? Not six?”

  Shalltear ted the corpses around them. Three warriors, one mage, one cleric — and this woman. The numbers did not add up.

  The female warrior’s ao Shalltear’s doubt-filled gaze was dired to the point.

  “Yes, there was alser. He said that he would hurry back to E-Rantel for help if an emergency occurred.”

  “Say what…?”

  The are magic caster’s voice had been very loud — loud enough that everyone in the depression could hear him.

  “Kuh!”

  Eyes wide open, Shalltear charged up the sides of the lownds, faster than the wind. She leapt over the edge and looked around, but even her dark vision capable eyes could not pee the depths of the forest, and though she listened carefully, she could only hear the wind blowing on the grass and trees.

  Shalltear did not possess aion abilities or divination magider these circumstances, finding a single person iire forest would probably be impossible.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He had escaped; she had been too careless. Shalltear groueeth as she realized that she had let two of her prey slip away.

  “Familiars!”

  Shadows wavered ienear her feet. The shapes of a number of wolves appeared, their fur bck as night ans their eyes radiated with a malevolent crimson glow.

  They were Vampire Wolves, simple level 7 monsters summoned by one of Shalltear’s skills called [Household Summons], which allowed her to call forth various monsters.

  The wolves were the ones best suited for trag and pursuit.

  “Hunt down and kill everyone in the forest!”

  Upon hearing the shouted order, the ten Vampire Wolves surged into the woods as one.

  “Ahhhh! Yuuji-sama… Will he be disappointed in me…?”

  Shalltear muttered so softly that nobody could hear, grabbing her head in agohought.

  “If only I didn’t have this [Blood Frenzy]... no, saying that would be disrespectful to my creator, Perorona. But if only I could trol this [Blood Frenzy]…”

  The disappointed visage that would appear in Yuuji’s tenan her imagination filled her mind with agony and twisted her heart.

  But… It was too te for as, and no matter how she dealt with this woman, it seemed a scolding would be iable. The question now was how to minimize the damage which had been done.

  “Worse” was still better than the “worst”.

  Shalltear thought and thought, until it seemed smoke would start to e out of her ears, before ing to a clusion.

  Rather than killing her, letting her live gave her more options. She could not take back the fact that she had killed her, but sparing her allowed room for the situation to py out.

  That was what Shalltear had decided. Or rather, this was how desperately she was trying to delude herself.

  “What is your name?”

  “Britta.”

  “Got it… I’ll remember it!”

  Shalltear ordered the girl called Britta to stay where she was, then brought

  her tire Bride servants some distance away.

  “In any case, let’s recover everything here and thereat right away–”

  Just then, she felt an imaginary thread that symbolized her e with her familiars snap.

  It did not feel like the disappearance was of magical banishment. That would feel like the thread suddenly dissipating in the wind.

  No… her e was snapped. It felt like the discorporation of being killed.

  “Follow me after you take care of that womahe marker ready!”

  Having made a decision, Shalltear paused only to snap off a terse and before sprinting out at lightning speeds.

  --------------------------------X--------------------------------

  Although she was forced to slow down in the forest, as long as her targets were human beings, they could not escape from Shalltear’s clutches, even when mounted.

  She burst from the forest, to the st known position of her familiars. There were twelve people before her.

  Each person was attired in a full equipment which varied between each of them.

  Their gear was not simple and funal, but as decorative and unique as her own equipment. They looked quite potent at a gnce. Of course, Shalltear did not have any skills to dis the power of magic items, so she had to go by her gut, but she felt that their magic items might be of legendary css or above.

  There was a look of shock, both on their expressions and hers.

  Doubts appeared in Shalltear’s head, given that she had no idea where these people hailed from. These twelve people seemed pletely different from the others that Shalltear had seen in this world. It was the differeween a lion and a mouse.

  Shalltear sidered the twelve men and women, and her gaze finally rested on one of them. A man who stood at the forefront.

  That man… is he strong?

  Shalltear was surprised and had no levels in dedicated warrior csses, so her assessment of her opposition’s strength told her that he was not only strohan the Vampire Brides she had brought along, but stroill than Solution, the Pleiades battle maid.

  Shalltear took a closer look at the man.

  The gear he wore seemed to have been designed for use by a man, which was why she had pegged him as a male, but he seemed quite androgynous in appearance.

  His hair was bd long, almost reag the ground, while his keen eyes had red pupils which regarded Shalltear with caution. He carried a pin looking spear which seemed ingruous with the rest of his equipment.

  “—Use it.”

  The man issued a clear, crisp and — like the surface of a frozen ke — and panic broke out in the rest of the party. Shalltear had no idea what those words meant.

  However, she imagihat whatever was being used owerful, possibly enough to rival Shalltear’s sole divine-css item.

  The others sprang into a in respoo the and, but Shalltear paid them no heed. There was only one person who stood out in her reing; the others did not seem like much of a threat.

  The group’s formation was tered around a woman in a strange dress. It had a high-necked colr, with two long slits oher side, so it robably some sort of dies’ full length dress.

  It was silver in color, with a five-cwed dragon picked out in gold thread along its surface.

  In Yuuji’s world, this sort of dress would be called a qipao.

  However, the woman wearing it was very old, her face was full of wrinkles, and her exposed legs looked like burdocks or dried potatoes. That dress was thhly unsuitable for her and frankly speaking, it made onlookers frown. Shalltear eve so far as to avert her eyes.

  It was then that she felt it…

  A sensation that made her… shivered.

  This was the first time that Shalltear — a Guardian, one of the highest rankiies in the Great Tomb of Nazarick — had ever shivered.

  Shalltear’s eyes turned, intending to seize the old dy her instincts were warning her about.

  That human had to die at all costs.

  The spear-wielding man rushed at her just as she realized this and was about to make her move.

  “Get lost!”

  Shalltear batted him aside with all her might. However, when subjected to a strike that would pulverize a weak human being, the man was simply knocked bad did not perish on the spot. In addition, his will to fight was still intact despite being blown away.

  Shalltear cast a spell, tered on the old dy.

  “[Mass Hold Species]!”

  She wao capture several people. This was because she had a premonition that capturing these people would not only make up for her previous errors, but earn her praise.

  But in that moment, as she thought that, Shalltear’s mind suddenly turned white.

  A searing white.

  It felt as though part of her thought processes were gone, because she could not prehend what was happening. And then, when she realized what had happened, Shalltear was shaken to the core, fear filling her undead heart.

  This was mind trol.

  As an undead being, she should have had plete immunity to mind trolling items, yet her will was still being dominated. She desperately tried to engrave hatred and anger on her gradually-whitening sciousness, and as her mind pondered tless variations of the worst-case sario—

  With the worst being… turning against her most beloved one…

  “AAAAAAHHHHHHHH—!”

  She wailed, tears of blood flowing down the ers of her crimson eyes, as she struggled to fight back against the dominating force which was corrupting her, a Guardian of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

  But in the moment, the light that sought to corrode her mind suddenly dissipated.

  A look of shock appeared on Shalltear’s expression, as well as all of their expressions.

  The searing white that encroached upon her mind disappeared, along with the agonizing pain…

  Shalltear had no idea what had just happened… But, she didn’t let it hold her surprise for long.

  Having regaihe full faculties of her mind back, Shalltear instantly used a css skill to create a [Purifying Javelin]. It was a gigantice of the holy element, ae her own evil alig, it could still cause massive damage to her foes.

  The most important thing was that she could spend MP to imbue it with perfect accurad trag ability.

  As she marshaled her utmost opposition, Shalltear gred at the user of the teique, the old dy who nning to defile her. To take her away from her beloved…

  She did not take the man who held the rge, mirror-like shield standiween her and the old dy into sideration.

  And then — she threw.

  She used that skill of hers to the full extent of its power, striking an augmented blow.

  The strike fshed by in a streak of light and struck the old dy after peing the body of the man in front of her and the shield he was holding.

  She saw the panicked group and the two of them coughing up blood in agony.

  And just as she was about to finish the job and kill every single one of them here, a voice from above stopped her.

  “Shalltear. Stand down.”

  All eyes looked upon the skies and saw a figure with six pairs of jet-bck feathered wings.

  “Fallen Angel”

  That was the term that came to the minds of the mortals who witnessed his figure from the ground.

  VergsX