"I can't die!"
"I can't die!"
"I haven't obtained the immortality I desire yet. How could I possibly die!"
Lorenzo crawled along the dimly lit street, like a mangy dog whose legs had been broken.
And indeed, his legs were broken. Blood continuously gushed from the smooth stumps, leaving two straight trails in his wake.
If he could retrieve his legs at this moment, magic might still reattach them. But he didn't even dare to look back. Fear drove him relentlessly forward.
Images flooded his mind—
People he had killed.
People who had died because of him.
People who wanted him dead.
All of them stood in the flames, hatred glaring from their eyes as they reached for him, as if to drag him into the hell with them.
"Get away! Get away!"
In terror, Lorenzo waved his hands, trying to dispel the visions from his sight.
"I won’t die! I won’t die!"
Then he heard footsteps.
Casual footsteps, like someone leisurely strolling.
But in his ears, they were the relentless steps of a pursuing demon, inching ever closer.
"Mr. Lorenzo, can you answer my question now?"
That calm yet low voice echoed behind him, polite and aristocratic, as though inquiring about the arrival of death.
"Stay away! Stay away!"
He kept crawling, crawling forward. The sharp stones on the ground tore into his palms, leaving them bloody and raw—but he did not notice.
He turned his head to scan both sides of the street. Evidently disturbed by the commotion outside, a faint light flickered to life in a window.
Hope flashed in Lorenzo’s eyes. He scrambled to the door and began pounding on it forcefully.
"Save me, please save me!"
"Even if you don't save me, call the city guard, have them lock me up—anything! Just don’t leave me out here with this monster!"
"Save me!"
Suddenly, the light inside went out.
In the dark, a man let out a terrified gasp, then swiftly closed the window with a loud thud.
At night, never go out.
At night, never trust anyone.
At night, no matter what sound you hear outside, never respond.
These were the survival rules of the chaotic Lower City District.
"Look, Mr. Lorenzo, the Lower City District that you so depend on seems to hate you just as much."
Moen lightly swung his short blade, effortlessly slicing through Lorenzo's armor, leaving wound after wound on his body.
The injuries weren’t deep, but they continuously bled.
Moen drove Lorenzo forward, allowing him to bleed out little by little.
A slow march toward death—for someone like this, wasn’t that the best ending?
"I won’t die! I won’t die!"
Even though he was close to bleeding out, Lorenzo shouted defiantly, almost as if in a final burst of energy.
"I still have the Lord! The Lord! Save me, save me! I’ve done so much for you guys, you can't abandon me!
And immortality—that’s what you promised me!"
"The Lord?"
Moen frowned.
Since earlier, this lunatic had been muttering about the Lord, along with some mention of immortality.
He didn’t understand what it was about, but just to be safe, he decided not to delay.
Moen stepped forward, ready to send Lorenzo to hell.
He raised the pure-white short blade in his hand. Under the moonlight, which had just emerged from behind the clouds, Elizabeth shimmered with a cold, eerie gleam.
Being able to die under such a beautiful moon—it was a luxury for a scum like him, Moen thought.
The blade fell.
But in that instant, Moen suddenly felt the world darken again.
The moon still hung in the sky, coldly and indifferently gazing upon the world.
Then where was this darkness coming from?
With a chill running down his spine, Moen looked up in horror.
A tall, thin shadow had appeared right before him.
The figure wore a thick, heavy raincoat, smudged with filthy, colorful stains. On his head was a bizarre mask, as if it were made from raw, bloody flesh.
Suddenly, the mask split open, revealing a bloodstained grin on the shadow’s face.
A deathly premonition exploded in Moen's mind. In an instant, he adjusted the trajectory of his blade, aiming it at the butcher knife swinging toward him from the shadow's hand.
"What the—"
The knife's terrifying force rushed through him. Pain and numbness surged through Moen's arm, and he almost dropped his weapon.
What monstrous strength!
Moen’s mind raced. Using the momentum, he retreated rapidly, putting a safe distance between them. While suppressing the trembling in his arm, he cautiously eyed the tall, thin figure before him and demanded:
"Who are you? Why did you attack me out of nowhere?"
The figure did not respond. In his hand, he held a mass of twisted shadow, gnawing at it with unsettling, crunching sounds.
"Lord! My Lord! You've finally come!"
Lorenzo looked at the figure before him as if a lost traveler in the desert had stumbled upon an oasis. Grabbing at his feet in ecstatic desperation, he cried, "Save me! Save me!"
The figure still did not respond. He only lowered his head, gazing at Lorenzo in silence.
His gaze, however, wasn’t that of someone looking at a person—rather, it seemed like he was looking at a dish of food.
"Have mercy, Oh Lord! Have mercy on me! Save me! I can do more for you! I can capture more people for you! You want more blood—ancient dragon's heart blood! The ancient dragon's heart heart blood is on him!"
"Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!"
Lorenzo suddenly knelt before the figure he had called the Lord, bowing his head in reverence as though worshiping a deity.
He began to kowtow fervently, his forehead slamming into the ground over and over, quickly drawing streaks of blood on the earth.
"Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!"
The figure tilted his head, observing Lorenzo for a while. Then, he suddenly extended a hand… and grabbed Lorenzo's shadow.
In Moen’s bewildered, horrified, and unbelieving eyes, the figure yanked Lorenzo’s shadow right off the ground.
What the hell—how could a shadow be physically seized? That was impossible!
But before Moen could start pondering whether applying scientific principles to a magical world was absurd, he watched the figure bring Lorenzo’s shadow to its mouth.
With a crunch—it bit down.
A piece of the shadow was missing.
What made Moen's hair stand on end was that the missing piece wasn’t limited to the shadow—an identical section of Lorenzo’s flesh disappeared from his body as well.
Where the flesh was gone, a wound appeared that bled profusely. The edges of the wound bore irregular marks, resembling bite marks.
Yet Lorenzo seemed utterly oblivious. He kept bowing and muttering:
"Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!"
Crunch. Crunch.
"Lord, have mercy."
Crunch. Crunch.
"Lord, have mercy."
The figure continued to chew.
Like an obedient child, every bite was meticulous, slow, and deliberate—twenty times, no more, no less.
Lorenzo’s flesh vanished bit by bit, as if someone were eating a pancake one bite at a time.
In the end, in Moen’s gut-churning line of sight, Lorenzo stopped muttering those pitiful pleas. He ceased his obsessive pursuit of immortality.
What remained of him was just a pile of bones—bones that looked licked clean, polished to a morbid sheen.
"Burp—"
The figure stepped on the bones, crushing them to dust. With a satisfied burp, it remarked:
"Delicious."
