A long time passed. When Juxi pricked up his ears and listened closely again, he didn’t hear a thing. His senses had returned to normal.

He held the gun in one hand and pressed the other to his chest. After murmuring a spell, he quietly shifted a few inches of earth around himself underground.

He shifted the ground a little farther aside, sat up with the silver gun in his hand, and slowly poked his head out into the rain.

All around him was pitch-black, but Juxi knew it was already early morning.

He lit a small oil lamp and raised it. Strange shadows appeared on the wall, startling him a little.

“This isn’t funny…”

Juxi didn’t know what to say. All he knew was that his mind was completely blank.

It took a lot of effort for him to drag his aching, numb, frozen body out of the hollow in the tree.

Then he saw Yu Nai lying on her back beside the old man. Her leather clothes were in tatters, and she was clearly unconscious.

What a shame about that face. At first glance, the girl wasn’t much to look at.

Her little face was pale and gaunt. As for her chest… it was a little small, but still quite firm. She was filthy all over, but had the long blond hair typical of Westerners—though now it had turned somewhat pale.

“Phew…” Juxi breathed out a cold sigh and grumbled, “You sure know how to cause trouble… Hey, don’t forget you owe me another thirty thousand gold coins in mercenary fees!”

Juxi left the oil lamp in the hollow and knelt beside the girl, leaning over her. Her lips were very pale, and there were traces of blood on her arms.

“Uh, you don’t look too good. I’d better give you a proper checkup… You won’t mind, right?” Juxi took off his gloves and set the gun aside for now. He gently lifted her upper lip with a finger. Her teeth looked normal.

Something felt wrong. Juxi reached for the hand buried in her tangled hair. Before he could touch her palm, he saw her eyes fly open.

Wasn’t it a little too late for that?

Yu Nai raked her sharp claws deep across Juxi’s neck. His blood splashed across her face.

She roared and reached for his eyes with her other hand. Juxi lunged at her, grabbed both her wrists, and forcefully pinned her to the ground.

She tried to lunge at Juxi and tear at his face with her human teeth, but he acted at once, smashing his forehead into hers and gripping her tightly with both hands.

Yu Nai wasn’t like before. She now had a terrifying strength she hadn’t possessed earlier.

“Grrr… aaaargh…”

For now, all she could do was howl beneath him. But the sound was deeply ominous—a dreadful wail only a mutant could make!

But something else was even worse: Juxi’s blood kept pouring from his neck and into the girl’s mouth. He was losing it fast. There wasn’t much time.

“Damn it, stop that!!!”

Juxi couldn’t hold back a curse. He opened his mouth and bit hard into the girl’s neck just below her ear, squeezing her even tighter with both hands. He didn’t let go until her inhuman roar turned into a thin, desperate cry, then into sobs—the cries of an injured girl.

Only when she stopped moving completely did Juxi let her go. Still on one knee, he pulled a blood-soaked piece of cloth from a pocket in his sleeve and quickly pressed it against the wound on his neck.

“I hope this works. This trick usually does a good job of preventing corpse poison…”

He felt around for the sword lying beside him, held it to the unconscious Yu Nai’s throat, and bent down to look at her hand.

Her hand was filthy, broken and mangled, and covered in blood… It couldn’t have looked worse. It wasn’t a normal person’s hand at all.

He could only manage to struggle to his feet. At the far end of the forest, heavy gray morning light was already visible through the mist.

Terrible creatures were wandering everywhere. Juxi headed for the stairs, but suddenly stumbled and fell back onto the ground.

The cloth was completely soaked with blood. It kept running down his arm, wetting his entire sleeve.

He took off his leather jacket, tore open his shirt, and wrapped the strips around his neck one by one to stop the bleeding.

But Yu Nai didn’t have much time left. She’d clearly caught corpse poison. Unless they had a preventive medicine right now, she’d soon become one of those mutants.

“Hurry up. Let’s see what I brought with me.” Juxi rummaged through the waist pouch he carried with him.

It was too quiet all around them… This had to be the calm before the storm, right?

He’d pass out soon…

He finished bandaging himself just in time, then lost consciousness.

Across the lake, the cold birds shivered their white feathers in the chilly mist and gave a few faint calls.

Juxi opened his eyes and saw the wooden beams in the ceiling and the white walls. It was his room upstairs from the guard station.

He tried to turn his head, but even the slightest movement hurt terribly. He started to groan.

“This couldn’t get any worse. Those bastards…” Thick bandages were wrapped around Juxi’s neck, expertly applied by someone who clearly knew what they were doing.

“Lie still, Yu Nai.” Juxi carefully laid down the somewhat groggy Yu Nai. “Stay still and get some rest.”

“My… sword…”

“Oh, right… The most important thing, of course, is your silver sword, you exorcist. Here it is. Don’t worry, everything’s here. You still owe me thirty thousand gold coins. Right, right, don’t say anything. I’m a complete idiot, and you’re the clever exorcist. You’ve been saying that for two whole days.”

“I’m… I’m sorry!”

Yu Nai gradually regained some awareness, which came as a great relief to Juxi.

He immediately rummaged through everything upstairs and downstairs, trying to find some water.

“I hope we get lucky. I, Ye Juxi, am not the kind of person who dies young. Please, let us be blessed…”

At last, just as he finished saying those two words, a water flask appeared in the cupboard he’d just opened.

“Haha, there it is!”

Juxi soon found something that could help her recover. It would only make Yu Nai feel a little better, though. If this went on much longer, her body might not be able to take it.

“That’s unfortunate. If I weren’t so weak right now, I’d have escaped already!”

“Yeah. You clawed a huge hole in my neck—you could see everything inside. I lost a ton of blood because of you. But I got lucky, too: I managed to restrain you at the second rooster’s crow. Otherwise, you’d be just like them by now!”

Juxi anxiously checked Yu Nai’s wounds all over again. He’d have been better off not checking: although the corpse poison had mostly been dealt with, the mutants were still wandering outside. If he took Yu Nai with him, there was no way they’d escape the mutants hunting them down.

But leaving too early wouldn’t do anyone any good. Juxi knew that well enough. They should rest a little longer and wait for Yuanhui. If he really didn’t come back… then Juxi would have to go look for him on foot.

Juxi saw that Yu Nai still seemed to have her eyes open, so he went over and asked, “Yu Nai, still not asleep?”

“How am I supposed to sleep when I can’t close my eyes? You guys made a whole lot of awful noise over there… Sigh, I’m not bothering you by talking, am I?”

“…Probably not. I’m bored out of my mind, too.”

Juxi tried to reassure Yu Nai. With enemies like grim reapers all around them, who could possibly fall asleep?

“Heh-heh. Your princess is an exorcist too, isn’t she?”

“…Why do you say that?”

As soon as Juxi mentioned his princess, Yu Nai’s expression changed ever so slightly.

“The princess, huh? She’s a skinny, clever girl. Tough, and not one to cry easily. But everyone around her says everything will change, so I guess things can’t get any worse, right, Juxi?”

Juxi slowly closed his eyes.

“All right, all right, I’m going.” Juxi stood up. “Get some rest. Before I leave, you’d better be back in top shape. I can’t promise I won’t leave you behind otherwise.”

After saying that, Juxi fell into a deep sleep.

…

“Juxi, what are you doing?”

Early the next morning, Yu Nai suddenly lifted her head from her sleep. The sun was already high, and glaring sunlight streamed through the gaps between the wooden boards, sending golden shafts of light across the room.

She reflexively raised a hand to shield her eyes. Through her bleary vision, Juxi’s figure came into view.

“It’s getting late.” As he spoke, Juxi used a crowbar to pry the boards off the window. “You’ve had enough sleep, right, Miss Yu Nai? Come on, let’s go. What are you waiting for?”

Yu Nai sprang up and bent down to pick up the clothes that had fallen to the floor.

A dry, cracked lip print marked her shoulder—the spot where Juxi’s lips had pressed against it the day before.

“Wait…” she began uncertainly. Juxi glanced at her, then quickly turned his head away.

He looked different now. He didn’t look like Mad Max at all—not like the god of slaughter who’d glimmered in the early morning light.

Yu Nai blinked her emerald-green eyes and kept shaking her head.

Juxi’s nose bridge, chest, and shoulders were covered in scars of all shapes and sizes. They suited his leather armor, making him look a little more masculine.

But in the morning’s hazy dream, Juxi hadn’t noticed her scars.

Ashamed and embarrassed, he realized he regretted that she couldn’t become what he’d dreamed she would be. If someone died because of him for the first time, he’d never forgive himself for thinking that.

Ah, ever since Yukari’s father had died right before his eyes, literally killed by a ghoul…

“Wait.” Yu Nai handed him a map. “Juxi, I think…”

“Instead of telling me what you think, how about hearing what I think? I think I should have a nice talk with them. Maybe they’ll give me a chance to get out.”

“Don’t say anything, Juxi,” Yu Nai said. “They won’t answer you. They’re just walking corpses.”

Yu Nai draped a cloak over herself and padded awkwardly toward the door barefoot, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

She didn’t look normal at all anymore…

“Yu Nai—”