Chapter 498

Chapter 378: Holy Emblem

On the cobblestone road between the dark woods southwest of Tivyán.

By the roadside on this dark night, in the pitch-black carriage, Dorothy was sitting upright on the carriage seat, her eyes wide open, filled with astonishment. Her originally rosy face, reddened from the cold, was now pale as a sheet.

Just moments ago, all the zombies in Barret’s villa were instantly annihilated. Whether it was the male butler zombie in the secret room flipping through documents or the other zombies monitoring inside the villa, they all turned into bl**d at the same time.

‘Oh no… That guy found us! What happened!? How did he find my zombies? And how did he use them to discover me!’

In her panic, Dorothy thought to herself. Her small body was trembling violently, and she was drenched in cold sweat under her thick clothing. It had been a long time since she experienced such intense emotional fluctuations.

“Huff… Huff… This is a rare crisis situation… Suddenly creating a Red Tier derivative completely out of the blue… However, there’s no time for hesitation now…”

After taking two deep breaths, Dorothy tried to calm herself down. After slightly easing her panicked expression and regaining her rationality, she immediately took control of the coachman zombie, making him quickly restart the carriage and drive the horse back toward the city, galloping away. The sound of the horse’s neighing and the wheels rolling echoed through the dark forest.

Inside the swaying carriage, Dorothy began rubbing her temples, frowning deeply as she seriously pondered over where she went wrong.

‘Calm down… Calm down… Think about where we went wrong and got discovered…

‘First, it was that Spider Fang Priest of the Red Tier derivative. From his performance just now, he seems to possess the ability to transform into bl**d mist. This ability is likely an evolved version of the chalk-tier vampire’s bat transformation at the Red Tier level.

‘That guy must have completed the bl**d mist transformation above the villa where I couldn’t see him. Since I didn’t see what happened, I wasn’t prepared and fell into his trap.

‘After he transformed into bl**d mist, I didn’t sense anything unusual from the zombie’s perspective. Combining that with the fact that the bl**d mist gradually appeared denser when he returned to his original form in the villa, it seems he can control the distribution and density of the bl**d mist in the air.

‘If the range is wide enough and the basic components of the bl**d mist are sufficiently dispersed in the air, the bl**d mist would become so faint that it is invisible to the n*ked eye. Thus, he could silently cover the entire villa without me noticing.’

Rubbing her chin and frowning, Dorothy used all her mental capacity to analyze the essence of the Spider Fang Priest’s abilities. Although his powers were bizarre and unpredictable, they were not entirely traceless. If Dorothy could catch even a few clues, she could still deduce many truths.

‘If the opponent can indeed decompose themselves into countless tiny red particles, invisible to the n*ked eye, to form bl**d mist… then such a large-scale, invisible bl**d mist could envelop the entire villa undetected. When I wasn’t aware, those tiny crimson particles created by the Spider Fang Priest might have permeated the air in the villa. In theory, these particles should be like tiny droplets of bl**d.

‘Last year, when I first went underground to the ruins beneath the school, I was targeted by Claudius. At that time, he used countless bats split from his bat transformation to rapidly search the entire underground ruins. Now, the countless tiny bl**d droplets created by the Spider Fang Priest’s bl**d mist transformation should also have investigative capabilities. Since these bl**d droplets can locate Barret’s secret room, their infiltration ability must be strong. If… these bl**d droplets can penetrate human bodies and corpses, he should be able to distinguish what is a real corpse and what is a zombie.

‘That guy found my male butler zombie in the secret room and determined it was a zombie rather than a living person by allowing the bl**d mist to enter the butler zombie’s body. Realizing that the corpses in the villa might all be problematic, he then allowed the bl**d droplets to seep into all the corpses, thus identifying all my hidden zombies.’

Dorothy’s mind was racing as she quickly reconstructed the possible truth behind the events. She had already deduced why her zombies were exposed. Now, she needed to understand why she couldn’t sever the connection to her zombies.

‘I concluded that my zombies were infiltrated by the guy’s bl**d droplets because when he made his move, I encountered resistance controlling all my zombies. This resistance came from within; I could feel it—the zombies seemed to come alive, and I sensed a powerful resistance from within.

‘This guy used bl**d to corrupt the Shadow Faced Man named George to create the derivative standing here. Judging from this phenomenon, his bl**d might have a corrosive effect. The bl**d droplets diffused in the air, quietly eroding the zombies, turning them into part of him.

‘My spiritual threads should have been affected by this corruption, making them impossible to sever. After all, the nature of spiritual threads is ‘Cup’ and ‘Enlightenment’. Given the guy’s powerful ability to corrupt flesh, it makes sense that it could affect the absorbed spiritual threads as well.

‘Now that guy is coming after me along the spiritual threads. My best option is to return to the city as soon as possible, to a place with stronger influence from the Archbishop. I am eight kilometers away from him; this distance should be enough for me to reach a safe place…’

Using the information processing capability of a Scholar, Dorothy quickly analyzed the situation in the villa. Then, her judgment was to run immediately toward the city. Since the Spider Fang Priest mentioned that the area was far from the city, where the Archbishop’s Tiered Vision influence was weak, and he only dared to appear here due to some tricks, running to the city where the Archbishop’s influence was stronger would render the guy powerless.

With this in mind, Dorothy continued to focus intently on driving the carriage while closely monitoring the distant Spider Fang Priest through her spiritual thread. Although she couldn’t use the corrupted spiritual thread to gather intelligence, she could still pinpoint his location.

…

At the same time, in Barret’s villa, the elderly-looking Spider Fang Priest silently observed the distant scene. Kneeling before him, Kenk was stunned and loudly exclaimed upon hearing his words.

“Y-You… You said we were being watched by zombies? But zombies are extraordinary creations of the ‘Cup’, right? I have spiritual perception related to the ‘Cup’. Why didn’t I feel anything?”

Listening to Kenk’s words, the Spider Fang Priest slowly turned his head, glanced at Kenk’s astonished face, and calmly replied.

“In this extraordinary world, anything is possible. The thread controlling the zombies is special. Perhaps he has some means to add a concealment effect to his zombies.”