Chapter 21: Waste Product
[Congratulations]
[You have slain a Wretch: Vulture]
[The Heart Demon has progressed by 0.0004%]
[You have unlocked a new Severance Art: Crimson Tide]
[Due to how you used the Art, it has been altered to Death Tide]
[First form, containing three (3) techniques have been unlocked]
[Your blood vessels are in critical condition because of your forcible flow of essence through your closed meridians]
[Your hand is in critical condition and needs to be tended to as soon as possible]
Kage could hear all the buzzing and mumbling in the depths of his sleep. The slumber was growing dangerously sweet. But then Kage remembered somewhere in all that haziness—the Vulture was dead.
That spelled doom for him if he didn’t rise.
His eyes snapped open, and at the same instant he was assaulted by a vicious jolt of pain that made him wince and lean back as he tried to get up.
But he swallowed the agony and pushed himself upright. Then he looked at the corpse of the Impure.
He would have loved to harvest its flesh and bones—there were many uses for the body parts of an Impure—but sadly he was not in the position to do so.
And he had to move fast. As much as Impures were drawn by the sweet scent of one’s soul, they were also lured by blood. They’d sense the Vulture’s death and come to feast on its carcass.
Usually, they wouldn’t because of their rules, but Kage couldn’t determine if they cared enough for those rules right now.
He clicked his tongue in regret.
"I ended up not avenging the poor root."
He flexed his hand a little—it was still sore, but he could clench and unclench his fist. The mangled one was in a far worse state.
But Kage didn’t care. He gripped his sword and pulled it free, then slipped it into the scabbard at his waist.
Then he began to limp forward—out of the forest.
The glorious light of dawn had arrived, cool and blindingly bright from the forest’s open entrance. The sounds of morning were welcoming—several chirps of different rhythms and flows that felt almost like music to his ears.
Kage climbed down the hill at the entrance, heading toward the vast plain of Middlepass.
Beyond, the land rolled out in gentle valleys until it met the foot of mountains that rose like jagged sentinels, their peaks shrouded in drifting wisps of cloud.
The sky itself was a vast cathedral of blue, carved open by towering white clouds that sailed as if the world below was too small to contain them. Sunlight spilled across the grass, gilding every blade, every bloom, until the whole scene shimmered with the kind of beauty that felt both eternal and fleeting.
At the edge of the horizon, towering ruins stood defiant against time—arches of pale stone and a lone spire, its crown kissed by ivy, reaching for the heavens. Once a majestic bridge, now broken and fractured, it curved gracefully across the landscape, whispering of forgotten kingdoms and vanished grandeur.
Kage breathed in the fresh, crisp air, then continued to limp forward. He walked toward his left and descended lower and lower as if climbing down another hill. Soon the ground began to compress and there were fewer grasses.
Meanwhile...
At the westward end of the meadow, on the path that led further away from Middlepass, stood a strange creature carved of gleaming white steel.
The beast stood on six colossal wheels, each tread carved like the claws of a mountain wyrm.
Its body was a fortress of white iron, plates riveted and runed, as if forged by war-smiths for a lord who feared neither snow nor siege. Black slits of glass glared like the eyes of a sentinel, and on its flank a crest burned faintly—a sigil of black anvil with a silver sword piercing it. It was less a carriage and more a rolling citadel, built to crush storms, monsters, and men alike.
Beside it stood two men wearing sleek plates of silver trimmed with cobalt light, fitted close to their frames for swiftness rather than bulk.
White mantles flowed from their shoulders, while an emblem of anvil and sword blazed at their backs like a living sigil.
One had black, ruffled hair; the other sported a low cut with sharp hairlines and thin eyes.
They both folded their arms, waiting...
After a while of silence, the one with the low cut spoke.
"Aren’t we wasting our time?"
The black-haired knight, with dark, unremarkable eyes, looked at his partner and responded with a flat tone.
"We were given an order. Who are you to have second thoughts?"
The thin-eyed knight scoffed.
"Someone who can think, excuse me."
He leaned away from the body of the Carrier.
"Haven’t you heard stories about him? They say he’s befitting to be called the World’s trash. Here I am, hoping to curry some young master’s favor and get on their good side, and somehow I get called to pick up some bastard. I must have the worst luck in this world, bro."
The black-haired knight looked at him and shook his head but said nothing.
That caused his partner to frown.
"I know you just insulted me in your head."
The black-haired knight looked beyond him toward the downhill of the plain.
"You know, you always act like you’re the shit, like you’re above us all. We’re all just floor knights, let me remind you. And unless we find a way to join one of the big squads, we’re going to be floor knights forever—never meaning anything, cannon fodder to the clan."
The knight looked at his partner.
"Then train harder. Do that through your own determination and strength. Why leave your fate in the hands of people who don’t even know about your existence when you can claw your way up?"
The thin-eyed knight looked at his partner and laughed lightly. Then he patted his shoulder and asked with a mocking tone.
"And how’s that working out for you, pal? You’re picking up a waste product."
The black-haired knight’s face twitched, though his expression remained even and composed regardless of what his partner had just said. He was still looking beyond the thin-eyed knight’s shoulder.
Suddenly, the knight noticed his partner’s strange expression and felt something was off.
Then slowly his head turned back.
There he was...
Kage was smiling grimly and pointed to himself.
"Waste product... I guess that would be... me?"