I looked at Nisha, expecting a response. Not everyone had caught on yet — some people were busy swatting the flies away from their faces, unbothered. But the ones who had noticed, the ones with tension coiling behind their eyes? Those were the real deal.

Nisha's brows furrowed together and she said:

"We are spirit-fucked…"

'What a colorful way to… Circle back to the main point!'

My gaze intensified on her.

"And that will mean?"

She looked at me and said calmly, almost smiling even, but the smile was worn thin. She looked like she was tired all of a sudden.

"Spirit Beasts, C…"

Something like relief washed over me.

"Oh…"

'I've dealt with those before. I can do it again.'

With this many people, and Kassie, alongside Maggy — whom I hoped would cooperate now — things would go smoothly.

However, Nisha suddenly gave me a confused frown.

"Is that relief I sense in your tone?"

I looked at her and shrugged. "They're just a bunch of mindless monsters. How bad can it really be?"

Some people on the wagon turned to look at me like I'd just shattered some priceless, ancient jade vase that had been in someone's family for twelve generations.

The old man shook his head slowly.

"The ignorance of youth."

Tristan buried his face in his palm, disappointment radiating off him in waves. Levi just laughed, openly mocking me.

Nisha sighed and reached for my hand, gripping it firmly as she stared into my eyes with a grim expression.

"Listen, C. This amount of Tercet flies means only one thing." She paused, letting that marinate. "Bodies, C. Bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies. Lots of bodies. Beast bodies."

She placed my hand against her chest, pressing it deeper. It almost warranted a frown from me — I glanced down instinctively — but her tone snapped me back to attention.

"Look at me, C! Tercet flies don't swarm together like this. Never. There's only one thing that brings them together in these numbers." She pressed my hand deeper still. "Food."

I low-key felt like she was being slick yet again, but the moment, the atmosphere — she owned it all. The tension hung so thick that if I pointed out what she was doing, I'd definitely be the unserious one.

'Smooth, Nisha. Real smooth. That's 1–0.'

"Tercet flies feed on essence that leaks from broken bodies and souls," she continued. "But the thing about them is, instead of crossing the threshold and becoming Twisted, they multiply. This many Tercet flies tells you exactly how many dead Spirit Beasts are around us right now." Her grip tightened on my hand. "Now I want you to think. If these little flies — mere feral tiers — can already sense this many corpses and come swarming to feed and breed, what do you think the actually dangerous Spirit Beasts are doing? The ones who can smell the feast from miles away?"

I looked at her, absorbing every word like a student who'd just realized the exam was tomorrow.

"They're already on their way…?"

Levi stood up and gently removed Nisha's grip from my hand, pushing her aside with an irritated glare on his face and settling between the two of us.

"What Nisha simply means to say is… a lot of Spirit Beasts are coming after us, Cade. And we don't know what their ranks will be." Her voice was steady, but I caught the undercurrent beneath it. "What we do know is that there'll be a lot. We might be looking at facing every Spirit Beast prowling the edges of Brackenfell and Ferndale combined."

The old man cleared his throat thickly, adding:

"Expecting them? Lord of Conquest!" He spat the words like a curse. "They might be here already. Spirit Beasts are cunning — their intelligence varies wildly, and all of them adopt kill styles native to their nature. Never expect the same tactics twice when facing one."

At that moment, the caravan was stopping.

The old man opened his cloak, revealing a black sword hidden at his waist. His hand settled on the grip.

"Pity beats my tongue for the settlements around here. I don't think they would've survived." His voice dropped, heavy with something that might have been grief. "They might all be dead… from days ago."

Everyone was getting up now, dropping from the wagons one by one.

I stood up too, but Levi immediately looked at me with an arched brow.

"What are you doing?"

I retorted confidently.

"I want to fight too. I'm a summoner."

Tristan looked at me and said in a low tone, his voice barely audible as everyone busied themselves forming a blockade around the wagons:

"Let us handle this. We can't risk revealing them."

I frowned. "I know. I can fight without them."

The look in my eyes was strong. I knew this was exactly the kind of moment where I should sit down and let others do the work. This wasn't some savior complex — I wasn't trying to be the guy who rushes in to save everyone.

This was about me.

I couldn't afford to be useless without my villainesses. Every opportunity like this needed to become an advantage, a chance to get stronger. And if anyone was going to die from all of this… well, it might as well be me.

'Not that I plan on dying without a fight.'

Although, I suspected my soul might be tougher than most. Hard to kill what refused to stay down.

I gave Tristan one last defiant look and jumped down from the wagon, landing beside a man with rows of earrings lining his ear. He had a dull face and black eyes, but he was smiling — the easy smile of someone who'd done this before.

"Hey there… watch my back, okay?"

I nodded seriously, faking the confidence of someone who has done this before and hoping it actually worked.

The atmosphere was grim. Everywhere went silent while the buzzing of the Tercet flies increased, drowning the place in a sickening drone that crawled under my skin.

People who couldn't fight remained on the wagons. The rest of us stood with our backs to them, facing the forest directly — knowing that whatever was coming would most likely plunge out from those depths where the dead Spirit Beasts lay rotting.

Tension twisted the air and made everyone wait. Terrifying patience really. The kind that stretched seconds into small eternities.

I couldn't help but wonder:

'But… what could've killed those Spirit Beasts in the first place?'

The stench hit me before anything else — every foul thing in the world crammed into a single breath. Before I had time to process it, before I could even turn, the ground beneath me loosened.

And exploded.

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