The ground shakes.
A cloud of dust rose up along with the sound of horses' hooves.
Late at night, it was Viscount Baldini who drove his horse to the rear guard post.
[Where is she! Where has she gone! Find her quickly!]
He barked orders at his men in an urgent tone.
Viscount Baldini, still feeling bad about granting a pass to a stranger with no identification, galloped his horse in pursuit.
But he found nothing all the way to the rear post.
In the poisonous archives in the back, he could find no record of the high-ranking demon's visit.
All he could see were corpses, the byproducts of war.
[Damn it. I hope nothing happened...]
In the end, Viscount Baldini had no choice but to turn his horse around and head back to his post.
....
Soon afterward, Viscount Baldini heard a noise in the wasteland where he had driven his horse back.
A few shadows stirred over the wasteland where only a few corpses of poisonous people were strewn about.
"Huu... that was the most unpleasant blanket in the world."
Tudor pushed himself to his feet, tossing aside the corpse of the poisonous people he'd been carrying.
"My body is soaked with cold sweat, I'd be in trouble if I were caught."
"I, I feel like my heart is the size of a pea."
"Euhhh... It's heavy and unpleasant"
Beside them, Sancho, Piggy, and Bianca also rose from the dead bodies of the poisonous people.
As the pursuers closed in, the Night Walkers, all of whom had been instructed by Vikir to do so, lay down on the ground, each with a few bodies on top of the others, to avoid eye contact.
"...That was dangerous."
Vikir pushed off the poisonous people bodies covering and stood up.
Then three others followed him to their feet.
The first to poke her head out from under Vikir's armpit was Camus.
She narrowed her eyes at Vikir's waistband on the other side.
"You're usually so slow, but you're so fast at times like this."
"I, I what?"
It was Dolores who poked her head up from Vikir's side.
This was where she'd jumped in at the last minute.
Camus glared at Dolores.
"They say a well-behaved cat enters the kitchen first... There is nothing wrong with the old saying."
"Well, it's not like that, because the bodies of the poisonous people were only here, and something similar happened to me once upon a time during a drinking game in the dormitory, so I did it unknowingly...."
"What? Dormitory? Drinking game? What happened, boyfriend?"
"Who's your boyfriend!?"
Camus and Dolores glared at each other in the middle of Vikir.
A voice intervened to stop them.
"We're in enemy territory, so let's be careful~ Do you really want to do that under a pile of corpses?"
Sinclair lifted her head with a meek expression.
But her head is still stuck between Vikir's legs.
"Hey, why are you sticking your head out of there, you're making this look even more innocent!"
" ...I don't think that's your place to say, Sinclair."
Camus, Dolores, and Sinclair began to engage in a subtle nervous war of words over Vikir.
"...."
But Vikir paid no attention to their bickering, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Soon, through the red haze, the poisonous people became visible.
The poisonous people inside the wooden fence stood idly by, doing nothing, or hovering around them.
"We're going to infiltrate the barracks now."
"We're going to break through the center?"
"Yes. We could just walk right past them, but the size of the poisonous people is alarming."
Vikir nodded in response to Tudor's question.
"These are probably the forces that will be mobilized for tomorrow's siege. If we can reduce them a bit, it will ease the hands of those left in the castle."
At Vikir's words, everyone's expressions became determined once more.
Now, if they could only break the siege, they could reach the water source.
Vikir and the others scrambled to the mound of dirt that had risen upward, crouched down, and peered through the gap.
'Baby madam, it would have been nice if that creature had been there....'
Vikir thought back to his days as a Night Hound.
He would have been able to move much more freely with his partner, but alas, he could not duplicate those movements now.
Then.
"How about digging a hole?"
Camus stepped forward.
Before Vikir could open his mouth in disbelief, she pulled out an object from her bosom and slipped it over her face.
It was a picaresque mask, a mask that could turn a man into a dog.
It was Dantalian artifact that Vikir had given to Camus before traveling to Nouvelle Vague.
Hack-Hack-Hack
Camus instantly transformed into a red-furred dog.
"C-cute...."
Dolores reached out with a twinkle in her eye, but Camus swatted it away.
Then, as a dog, Camus began digging a burrow in the high mound of dirt.
papapapapag-
In no time at all, the mound of dirt was high and the underground passage equally deep.
Camus burrowed all the way through the wooden fence and barked loudly at Vikir with her tail flicking.
Camus's blatant gesture of petting prompted Vikir to stroke her head.
"You're putting the mask to good use, aren't you?"
"Of course."
Camus, now back in her human form, glared at Vikir.
Soon, the eight-member death squad came inside through a tunnel under the fence.
A dense red mist makes it difficult to see ahead.
But they can sense the occasional black and red shadows moving about.
Swoosh.
The Night Hound bared its teeth.
The heads of several poisonous people wandering around the tunnel rolled on the floor without a sound.
Vikir nodded as he saw the poison oozing from the cut side of the neck.
"...That's certainly a lot of poison in there. How on earth did they produce so much poison?"
The number of poisoners people is staggering, as is the amount of poison each one of them has stored in their bodies.
It would take a lot of effort to create such a large number of poisonous people.
'They're not that weak compared to the poisonous people I saw before the regression. They were only seen in the latter stages of the War of Destruction.'
Vikir couldn't help but think back to the question he'd had before the Tochka Destruction War began.
'How did they create all these poisonous people? Surely there must be a limit to the amount of poison that can be produced....'
Even before Vikir's regression, the mystery of how Leviathan had managed to produce so much poison had never been solved.
...But.
Something was different in this life.
"Brother. excuse me-"
Sinclair poked Vikir in the shoulder with a deft touch.
Sinclair's eyes spotted the black barracks beyond the red mist.
Vikir strained his eyes and stared into the fog for a long moment.
Only then did the landscape beyond slowly reveal itself.
Tsutsutsutsutsuts...
The sparse figures of the poisonous people peeking through the fountain-like mist were like charcoal left behind in a burned forest.
They were lined up in a row, and one by one, they were entering the black barracks.
And on the other side of the barracks, the same poisonous people who had just entered were coming out, one by one, twisting into even more grotesque forms, their bodies growing larger and their limbs even longer.
'... Are they charging up their poison in there, and even their strength seems to be increasing?'
Vikir turned his attention to a large poisonous man who was just entering the barracks.
[grrrr-grrrr...]
The poisonous man was covered in stab wounds and burn marks, possibly from the Tochka annihilation battle today.
After entering the barracks, it disappeared for a long time, but after a few minutes it crawled out through an exit on the other side of the barracks.
The long limbs were twisted and bent like those of an insect, and the originally hideous face was distorted into something horrifying.
[Geeeeeeek-]
The sword marks that had tattered its body were gone.
As if boasting of its overflowing poison and vitality, it creaked and twisted, disappearing into the red mist.
"Judging by the tension in my Money Hat, there must be some sort of artifact, a very strong one. I think it's charging the poisonous people with it."
Vikir nodded at Sinclair's words.
Sinclair was a new character, one who was not here in the original history, and what she had discovered and speculated might hold the key to reversing the original fate.
"Although we're not far from the water source,... we'll need to destroy some of this facility in preparation for tomorrow's defense."
It was necessary to put the brakes on so that Leviathan could no longer charge the Poisonous People.
For the sake of their allies who would face them tomorrow inside Fort Tochka.
Paralyzing the facility here was not exactly at odds with heading for the water source, so the group nodded in agreement.
"But how do we destroy the poisonous people factory? It seems like it's hard enough to just break through?"
Tudor asked.
Apparently, the black barracks high up in the dirt mountains housed the highest ranking members of Leviathan House.
Furthermore, the sheer number of poisonous people gathered there would mean death for anyone who trespassed.
To think that they would even destroy a place that seems so difficult to pass through.
But Vikir spoke with a confident voice.
"I have a secret weapon that I have reserved for this moment."
And then.
Swoosh.
Vikir drew out what he had been hiding deep within the thick fog of blood.
"Vikir! When did you get so big...!?"
It was enough to make everyone in the group's eyes widen.