Beneath the crouching creature's hair, matted together like seaweed, a bead of blood that had not yet dried clung to the tip of its nose. Shreds of torn flesh hung at the corner of its mouth, and its teeth were still chewing slowly. Taken as a whole, it looked like a normal human face.
But at the cheeks an extra pair of lashless, utterly indifferent eyes had grown.
The two eyes on its left fixed on Xialuote at the same time, while the two on its right locked hard onto Luosaier. The four eyeballs turned independently of one another, raising a chill—the sense that no matter where one fled, one would still be watched.
It was eating a person... What kind of monster was this? Xialuote's scalp prickled.
Even though she had already become an Extraordinary, and even though Weiyefu's booklet recorded the uncanny forms of monsters that humans became—living corpses, water ghosts, and the like—when she saw this with her own eyes her stomach still drew a little tight. She could hardly connect the thing before her with a "human" at all.
Luosaier, beside her, had also seen the monster's face clearly. His expression went plainly blank, but the next second he swiftly drew the flintlock pistol from the holster at his waist, aimed it at the monster's head, and pulled the trigger.
Bang. Flame and gunsmoke burst among the trees. In the roar of the shot, the bullet shattered one of the extra eyes growing on the thing's left cheek, then drove into the head and blew open a hole.
A human struck by a shot like that would be dead past any doubt. A thread of hope had only just risen in Xialuote when she found that the monster merely swayed a little and did not fall. Not even much blood flowed from the wound. The pale skin around the shattered eye only kept contracting, as if trying to heal.
Then it slowly stood and turned its body toward the two of them, revealing an equally pale, bare abdomen, clothing wrinkled as if it had been soaked, and limbs the same as a human's.
In an instant Xialuote realized that, before the aberration, this monster had been a living person. Knowledge of mysticism she had only recently mastered surfaced in her mind.
Monsters such as living corpses and water ghosts might also undergo mutation, but if extra organ tissue appeared on a body, or hair, feathers, and other things that ought not to exist, one should first consider an Extraordinary's corruption and loss of control.
And there were many reasons an Extraordinary lost control: consuming a potion while skipping the prerequisite sequence; forcing an advancement without having mastered the potion's power; changing midway to another pathway; or, because one's Inspiration was too high, suffering corruption from prolonged contact with a dangerous existence.
She did not know which kind it was. It already looked hard to deal with. At the very least, a shot to the head like that would certainly have left her unable to survive, and the great majority of low-sequence Extraordinaries ought to fare no better... Luosaier's gunshot just now should draw people from the camp, but that would take several minutes at least... Her thoughts raced. Her gaze swept the stream bank, the shrubs, and the distance between the monster and the two of them, and she decided at once.
If the monster moved slowly, they would retreat immediately and draw it toward the hounds and the servants. If its speed far outstripped theirs, then running would only turn their backs to it, and they could only delay until the others arrived.
She had only just meant to warn Luosaier when she saw that he had already flung aside the flintlock that had fired once, drawn the hunting knife at his waist, then pulled a spare dagger from inside his hunting coat and tossed it to her, sheath and all.
Xialuote raised a hand and caught it. The weight in her hand settled her a good deal.
Just then, the extra indifferent eye on the monster's right suddenly turned from black to green, and a dim light welled up from deep within the eyeball.
Xialuote's spirituality screamed a warning. She scarcely had time to think before her body lunged at Luosaier, knocked him aside, and, using that force, rolled the other way.
The next second, a dark-green ray pierced the spot where Luosaier had been and swept across several shrubs behind him. Those green leaves withered in an instant and turned gray-black; the branches lost their life and collapsed. The energy in the ray even spread a short distance along the twigs and leaves before slowly stopping.
Xialuote half-knelt on the ground, her heart pounding.
If the spirituality that had already far surpassed an ordinary person's after she became an "Arbiter" had not warned her just now, Luosaier would likely have lost his life just as those shrubs had.
She looked back at the monster and found it still standing where it was. The lashless eye that had fired the ray had burst into a mass of dark flesh, and no longer carried that uncanny feeling of peering out at the world.
One eye blinded by the gun, another spent firing the ray, and the other two human eyes did not seem to have mutated... This ought to be the best moment to strike back... Xialuote hesitated no longer. She drove with both legs, sprang out of the shrubs, and charged the monster over the gravel and grass at the stream's edge.
Luosaier scrambled up from the ground and followed close behind, the hunting knife in a reverse grip, circling in from the other side.
But even though he was a young noble who had undergone military training, with a physique far beyond others his age, he still could not match Xialuote's sprint, and so lagged behind as if he feared the fight.
Xialuote did not wait for him to arrive and form a pincer. She swung the dagger first, hacking toward the monster's two intact human eyes.
It only turned its neck a fraction and slid backward on stiff steps, dodging the dagger's point by a hair.
Xialuote turned with the motion, avoiding the right hand the monster snatched at her, and stabbed backhand at its chest. The monster seemed to have seen the strike in advance. It tilted a shoulder, and the blade only pierced a layer of flesh.
At the same time its left arm lashed backward and parried the cut Luosaier brought from behind.
This monster's speed was nowhere near as outrageous as the gray-clad beggar's, and its movements were none too agile, yet it could always avoid a dangerous attack, as if it sensed the threat beforehand.
"It can foresee attacks!"
Xialuote shouted the warning.
"I know!"
Luosaier answered, twisting aside from the arm the monster swept at him. The blow grazed the cuff of his hunting coat and tore the whole sleeve clean off, baring the linen shirt beneath.
Xialuote circled to the monster's flank and rear. In the instant Luosaier had it held in check, she suddenly dropped low and stabbed the dagger down at the back of its knee. At last, before it could react, she split the flesh and drew a stream of viscous blood.
The monster only staggered, then wrenched half its body around and drove a shoulder at Xialuote.
She retreated in time, yet the force still grazed her arm. She was driven two steps back and nearly stepped into the stream.
Before she could steady herself, her pupils contracted sharply.
The skin of the monster's forehead was changing rapidly. Two masses of flesh rolled back, revealing another pair of equally lashless eyes, which looked at Xialuote with indifference.
The next second, both new eyes lit with dark-green light at once.
Done for... Xialuote's heart sank. With her body not yet balanced, she drew on the power of an "Arbiter" and shouted a command in the Hermes language she had only just learned:
"Lower your head!"
As she cried out, she also tried to kick off and throw herself aside, but in her heart she held no great hope. At the speed with which the monster had fired its ray before, hitting her from so close would be effortless.
And the "Majesty" of Sequence 9 would do little against a monster that looked very likely to be Sequence 7 and able to wield formidable power.
But the two dark-green rays, loosed one after another, shot toward the far bank of the stream. In an instant they turned a stretch of grass to flying ash, and blasted the pebbles beneath into spraying shards.
A faint sound of glass breaking came with it, but the rush of the stream covered it.
Not lowering the head, but turning it? Some force seemed to have caught its head and turned it at an angle... Xialuote was somewhat astonished, but she did not let the precious chance slip. The instant she landed and found her footing, she changed direction, closed swiftly on the monster, and slashed the dagger in her right hand hard across its neck.
The keen blade cut through skin, muscle, and certain fine tissues that were not like flesh, nearly opening more than half the neck.
A great quantity of blood finally gushed out, thick with dense short black hairs and pinpoints of glimmer like star-dust. It looked too uncanny to have come from a human body.
The monster staggered backward, its neck tilted to one side, yet still did not fall at once.
Its two remaining human eyes turned together toward the other side of the stream, as if it had sensed some existence more dangerous than Xialuote and Luosaier.
The next second, a clear phrase in the Hermes language rang out.
"Sun."
The voice was not loud, yet it was as if a rift opening onto noon had been torn above the monster's head. A column of fierce light appeared out of empty air from no great height and fell straight down to envelop the monster. Gold-white flames of light burst across its body. The heat quickly charred the skin black and curled it, and the eyes on the forehead that were still trying to repair themselves gave off faint sounds of bursting all at once.
The monster finally made a sound like a scream. Its human-shaped arms clutched its head; its legs bent, and it crouched where it was, trying to lessen the scorch of the blazing sunlight.
Immediately after, two glass bottles smashed down from different directions, almost at the same time.
The bottles shattered. Clear holy water splashed over the monster's charred skin and the curled, gaping wounds. A pale-gold light flared at once, and a great deal of white smoke rose, carrying a sharp stench of burning.
That lethal blow made the monster's remaining eyes quickly lose their luster. It crashed down beside the stream, and blood welled from the neck cut halfway open.
Xialuote gripped the dagger, her chest heaving. Only now did she realize her arm was shaking.
Forcing herself to look calm, she turned back toward the camp. Three men wearing Sun Holy Emblems on their chests were walking out of the woods. The one in front wore a long dark coat, with unobtrusive gold thread at the cuffs and collar. Each of the other two held a holy water bottle, as if ready to throw again at any moment.
Xialuote did not know them, but she guessed who they were at once.
They were all "Purifiers" of the Eternal Blazing Sun.
The first to arrive were actually official Extraordinaries? They did not seem to have been mixed in among the guests of the hunt. They must have come tracking this out-of-control Extraordinary... Then the one just now, on the other side of the stream—could that have been... Xialuote thought, and glanced toward the direction the monster had last faced. She saw nothing.
Behind her, Luosaier was still standing where he was, staring blankly at the column of sunlight as it gradually dispersed, and at the monster on the ground that no longer moved, as if he had at last confirmed that this world had another side he did not know.
Watching that expression on his face, Xialuote suddenly showed a trace of a smile.
"Haven't you always wanted to know the secrets the Church is hiding?"
She returned the dagger to Luosaier and, with the motion, leaned close to his ear and said quietly,
"This is it."
Chapter 27