Unedited*

"Ready to go?" Malakor asked at four in the morning the next day.

Ten minutes earlier, he had been in such excruciating pain that he had cried blood in agony.

And now he was acting as if nothing had happened.

’His mental fortitude must be his most impressive trait.’ Edward was certain of it.

"I think I am," he replied. "I just have one question."

"Go ahead. Just ask whatever you want."

Edward nodded. "Earlier, I was being followed by many groups. How are we going to escape them?"

"We’ll be able to escape many of them; with others, we’ll have to fight. With this head and the rocks in your body, it’ll be easy to avoid unnecessary attention, so we’ll just focus on fighting the ones that are unavoidable."

Edward nodded. "I understand. And one more thing. Yesterday I killed one of the Corrupted Sanguines, but he came back to life. How are we going to prevent that?"

Malakor frowned. "I’ve told you before that killing a Sanguine is impossible in the true sense of the word. What you can do is speed up their transition from living to dead, or from dead to living. That’s what you did to that headless guy who attacked you earlier."

"Even though what you did counts as killing him, he’ll be able to recover over the years. Right now, he’s just a blood puppet that lost its strings."

"However, I saw you kill one. The owner of this head," he said, pointing to the head above him. "I don’t know how you did it, but if you can do it again, that would be ideal. However, what you did afterward with the martial artist is usually enough."

"I understand." Edward nodded.

’My Butterfly’s second spell also has those destructive properties. Although it consumes a lot of energy, if I could manage to kill several at once, maybe I could level up a few times.’

The problem was time, once again.

"I’m constantly getting into trouble with people who are more and more powerful, and they haven’t given me time to learn new spells or improve my control over my beasts," he thought.

First the Red Moon Cave, and now a different world or something like that, involving a new race, a desolate Temple, and possible gods.

’I had planned to take some time to get strong and catch my breath... I wanted to learn as many spells as possible, but now I’m getting into more and more trouble.’

Edward shook his head in frustration. He couldn’t keep wallowing in self-pity.

If they wouldn’t let him get strong in peace, then he had to look for alternatives.

They reached the top of the cave after clearing away all the rocks, and after carefully scanning the area outside, they emerged.

"From here, we’ll keep walking south, but we’ll have to take a detour to find the Headless Dead’s Path. So let’s hurry. The Sanguines are usually asleep at this hour, so we can cover some ground before we have to fight."

"Alright."

The path through a heavily guarded forest like this was long. Along the way, Edward learned that the excessive security in this forest was due to the many evil beasts that emerge from the river and frequently attempt to attack nearby cities.

The Sanguines are locked in a life-and-death struggle against those beasts, so they keep a close watch on the situation.

"I didn’t see any evil beasts in the river... I don’t know if he’s lying to me or if I really was near such a dangerous place and didn’t notice it." Edward didn’t want to think about it any further.

After walking for more than two hours, they hid among the trees when they saw a pair of Sanguines standing guard in the area.

They were a martial artist and a mage.

"They’ll spot me when they get close enough, I’ll bet. However, they’ll think I’m an ally of theirs. Attack them the moment they get close to me." Malakor whispered and remained silent after seeing that Edward understood.

Malakor watched the movement of the two Sanguines’ feet and quickly gauged their speed.

In his mind, he counted: ’Three... Two... One.’

As soon as he counted to one, he made a little noise as if he were walking and revealed himself.

At that moment, he looked up as if he had noticed something.

The same thing happened with the other two on the other side.

The three Sanguines looked at each other for a brief moment.

They were more than 100 meters apart, but they had no trouble sensing each other.

"Why are you alone?" The two Sanguines who were traveling in a group approached and asked.

Malakor feigned a voice. "I got separated from my partner during last night’s search. Didn’t you know? A strange creature infiltrated us."

"A strange creature? An evil beast?"

"Yes. It had four legs and walked hunched over. That’s what I was told. We were looking for it, but my partner disappeared, and I haven’t sensed him since."

"Four legs, but he was walking hunched over? Those bastards are coming out of the water more often." One of the pair complained.

"All right, then come with us." The other said and tried to approach him.

They were ten meters away at that moment.

However, when he took another step and moved one step closer, the Sanguine trembled. "You..." he shouted. He tried to warn his companion that this guy wasn’t one of them.

But suddenly, a shadow loomed behind them. A serpent floated above them, while a sword glinted in the rays of the morning sun.

The sword swung horizontally in a perfect motion, striking at his opponent’s neck. Meanwhile, the serpent coiled around the halo floating above the other.

[Incineration Pollen has been activated.]

[Striking a creature similar to an undead.]

[All buffs have been activated.]

[Damage is multiplied.]

At the same time, Edward’s title activated, and the multiplied damage raining down on the other Sanguine began to inflict heavy damage.

Malakor smiled at that moment, and suddenly, a ball of blood shot from his hand into the abdomen of the Sanguine, who wasn’t going to die so easily.

The ball inside him bloomed like a flower and began to destroy his organs, bones, and everything around them, slowly making recovery impossible.

However, the Sanguine still fought back. Even though it was two against one and Malakor far surpassed this Sanguine in strength, they still faced a few minor delays in killing him.

Death by Incineration Pollen was more than ten times faster.

While it took about three minutes for the Sanguine to die from the Pollen, it took Malakor and Edward 30 minutes to kill it when they attacked it together.

"You have a strangely efficient pet. What kind of magic is that?" Malakor asked when the battle was over.

"Hehe. It’s fire magic, just very powerful."

"Very powerful?" Malakor shrugged. "That word doesn’t do justice to what that thing is."

Although Edward laughed, he gave no further explanation.

They resumed their journey shortly after. The rest of the way to the Headless Dead’s Route saw many similar skirmishes.

They fought strategically and avoided any direct contact with the Sanguines. Thanks to Malakor, it was easy to do so.

Now, Edward realized that Malakor wasn’t very good at strategizing. He wanted to use the same strategy on every Sanguine they encountered. Obviously, it didn’t work every time, so they had to resort to a Plan B.

That’s why Edward took charge of the strategy after that, and so they finally reached the Headless Dead’s Path.

"You expect us to walk through there?" Edward asked, seeing that the Path of the Headless Dead was, in fact, a huge, linear cemetery.

On either side were ancient corpses and...

"Those clearly died recently," Edward said, pointing to a corpse that couldn’t have been dead for more than a year.

"Heh. Yeah, this route is dangerous. But would you rather face the hordes of Sanguines patrolling the area? If we take the forest path, we’d have to pass through two cities and several towns before we get there. In both cities, there are people as strong as me—more than 5,000 active Sanguine troops, just as strong as the ones we’ve already faced."

Malakor looked toward the Road. "Here we only have one or two enemies and a few shadows that’ll be bothering us. Everything else will be peace and quiet."

"One or two enemies and shadows?" Edward felt a slight headache coming on. "Why do I feel like we’re walking into the lion’s den?"

"Hahaha." Malakor burst out laughing. "It’s not as dangerous a place as you think. The enemies we might encounter, for starters, are already dead."

"Undead?" Edward nodded. It made sense that there would be undead in a cemetery.

"Um... maybe. I’d call them more like restless souls, but if you prefer to call them undead, that’s fine too." Malakor smiled awkwardly.

’Restless souls?’ Edward’s eyebrows shot up.

’Path of the Headless Dead... A cemetery...’

’It’s strangely reminiscent of the myth of the Headless Horseman...’

He felt a chill as he recalled it. Back home, he wasn’t from a country where that Horseman was popular. However, he had read a bit about the story one night, and it was truly terrifying.

’I just hope it’s nothing like that.’

They both began to make their way down the vast, desolate path through the cemetery. Fortunately, it was daytime. Unfortunately, the sun never reached this place, due to its location next to the mountains and the many trees that shaded it, making the path look eerie.