“Get it away! Help me take this disgusting thing off!”
Bella staggered back after vomiting, her face pale as she pointed at the puji she had just covered in her own vomit.
The captain of the guards looked bewildered but did as told, picking up the still-struggling puji and casually tossing it back into the pile of pujis.
Only then did he ask, “What happened?”
“Too… disgusting… ugh…” Seeing those chaotic blotches for the first time, Bella couldn’t control the revulsion. She vomited until her stomach was empty, then finally managed to steady herself.
After catching her breath, Bella refused to go near those pujis again.
If she hadn’t known beforehand that they were allied familiars, she would have gladly chopped them all to bits and thrown them into the sea to feed the fish.
Meanwhile, Lin Jun—controlling his puji—lay in the pile of pujis in utter despair, too lazy even to wipe the sticky vomit off himself.
Humiliating!
For Dylan, he had stooped to acting cute and begging for affection!
And what did he get?!
The puji got corroded by stomach acid!
That stupid woman—this humiliation will be repaid a hundredfold… on Dylan!
…
Sofia’s decision to send Bella ashore to assist had indeed been the right call. The captain had truly planned to withdraw once the Pigmen scattered.
To him, every extra moment ashore was an unnecessary risk to the Hero.
In fact, he didn’t even agree with risking themselves to rescue these people in the first place.
But as one of Sofia’s retinue, Bella insisted on carrying out the Hero’s orders.
Under her urging, the guards had no choice but to help rouse the Puji Masters who had been knocked out by the hallucinogenic spores.
“We’re not dead?” a young Puji Master sat up, rubbing his forehead and looking around blankly.
“The Church saved us!” another man cried, staring at the guards with gratitude. “Bless the Light!”
As people awakened from their chaotic dreams and realized they had survived by some miracle, sighs of relief and lingering fear rippled among them.
Angela herself was surprised to be alive; when she saw the faint filaments of mycelium visible in her wounds, she felt somewhat dazed.
At that moment, two Church warriors led Baron Morton and his daughter into the center of the crowd. The girl’s face was streaked with tears; Morton looked ashen.
The instant they appeared, someone spat and shouted angrily, “Traitor!”
“Let me kill him! He’s the reason so many of us died!”
The survivors, fresh from the brink, wanted nothing more than to rush him and beat him to death, but the guards blocked them. Clearly, Bella and the captain would decide his fate.
Morton pressed his forehead to the ground, seeing no hope for survival, and made a last plea: “I deserve death! But please… spare Lucia—this was not her doing.”
Lucia sobbed uncontrollably, “Father…”
The captain of the guards drew his sword without a flicker of expression. “Traitors have only one fate: to lose whatever they wished for.”
Morton wept and crawled to the captain’s feet, begging with all his strength: “It was me! Everything was my fault! She’s an innocent child! For the sake of the Light Ixion, spare her life!”
“You who consort with Demons and betray your kin are unworthy of calling our Lord’s name!” the captain answered coldly.
“No—!”
Under Morton’s despairing eyes, the captain swung and cut off his head.
Lucia let out an inhuman scream and collapsed to the ground, trembling violently; the terror had taken her voice away.
The captain flicked blood from his blade and, without hesitation, strode toward the collapsed girl.
His tall figure cast a shadow in the moonlight that completely engulfed Lucia.
“That’s enough!” Bella leapt forward in a single bound and pressed her hand against the captain’s sword arm. “The traitor has already received his punishment in the deepest despair. He has been punished. But this girl—she is innocent!”
The captain did not wrench his arm free, showing the respect he had for Bella as a comrade, yet he still shook his head. “The Scripture records: ‘The blood of sinners is not to be redeemed.’ The Unified Kingdom’s laws likewise state: those who betray their race implicate their kin. If we spare her today, other traitors will cling to the hope of saving their families through a single sacrifice—and will act without restraint!”
Saying this, he gently pushed Bella aside.
During the earlier journey, Bella’s bravery and wit had won the captain’s respect; he treated her as a comrade. Though they now disagreed, he did not despise her, so he kept his force measured.
Bella was shoved back one step. Seeing the captain move toward the girl again, she inhaled deeply and, in a voice only he could clearly hear, said: “But Lady Sofia… would she want this? Would she want the sword of her followers stained with the blood of an innocent?”
The captain paused. He turned his gaze past Bella toward the ship on the distant sea—now only a hazy outline beneath the moonlight—as if he could pierce the hull and feel the Hero’s possible gaze.
After a long moment, with a twist of his wrist and the crisp sound of a blade sheathing, his sword slid back into its scabbard.
“She in this state,” he said without looking at the girl, a faint and indistinct emotion in his voice, “living may not be easier than dying.”
He then fell silent, ordered the Church warriors to gather quickly, and prepared to leave.
As for the surviving soldiers of Golden Valley City, their future survival would be for them alone to shoulder.
These Church warriors bore the highest duty of protecting the Hero; they could not stay behind to babysit these broken troops.
Fortunately, the survivors had no unrealistic expectations.
Back on the ship the sails and rigging were adjusted; driven by the sea, the boat gradually put distance between itself and the shore.
For the Hero team, possessing an incomplete artifact—the Ocean Staff—the vast sea was undoubtedly safer than the land.
For a long time to come, they would avoid stepping ashore if at all possible.
However, with the continent’s war situation worsening, Sofia could not remain completely detached.
At her insistence the ship altered course and slowly moved north along the coastline, trying to do what they could within their capacity.
At the stern, Bella rested a hand on the rail, squinting slightly as she watched the coast recede and thought back to a scene before they left.
She had seen one awakened Puji Master thank them and then reattach his severed arm—no medical tools, just jam it back on—and within a short time his fingers could move.
Seeing that, she felt a chill run up her spine and wondered if these people were still human.
But since Sofia said nothing, perhaps it was some Kingdom technique…
Still, thinking about those pujis made her feel nauseous again.
…
When the sun set once more, Angela’s group returned to Golden Valley City.
They had lost half their number but brought back far more fresh corpses than expected.
Elsewhere, Dylan—who had just finished greeting Bianca as she left work—leaned against his shop doorway and exhaled.
The lively girl had recently healed his tired heart; he slept more peacefully than before.
When he closed the shop and prepared to rest, he found a note on the counter that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.
Seeing the words on it, his heart clenched:
[Want to know the whereabouts of your daughter? Midnight, 2:00 a.m., the abandoned village north of the city.]
“Boss… did anyone come into the shop a moment ago?”
“Sorry, I didn’t notice!”