CRASH!

  The dark, silent room exploded.

  Glass flew everywhere as a gruesome zombie head smashed down, carrying a storm of shards with it.

  And at that exact moment, Dulles was deep in the most critical stage of the ritual. His spirit was submerged in that sea of mad gibberish, struggling to communicate with the mysterious spiritual rune.

  He had no capacity to react.

  Or rather, he had no extra energy to spare to deal with the outside world.

  THUD!

  The gruesome head landed squarely on his chest.

  The immense impact sent him flying backward, his head cracking heavily against the cold floor.

  The collision instantly triggered his already-on-the-verge-of-collapse spirit, causing a violent, destructive backlash!

  “Gyaah—!”

  Dulles’s eyes, already bloodshot and red, flew open. He opened his mouth and violently spat out a mouthful of dark red blood, mixed with chunks of his organs!

  His body convulsed violently, like a fish thrown ashore. The veins under his skin bulged one by one, then quickly deflated. His face was ashen, his lips purple, as if all his life force had been drained away in an instant.

  It took a long while before he struggled, crawling to his feet from the mess.

  He looked at the messy, sparking console in front of him, at the two dark, shattered holes, at the scarlet fog that had spread from the first floor to the second, filling the entire space… only then, did he belatedly realize what had happened.

  “Y-y-you… bastard!”

  Dulles’s teeth chattered, his body trembling from the spiritual backlash, unable to form a complete sentence.

  He was going insane.

  In reality, due to the backlash from his failed advancement, he had already reached the edge of complete collapse. Even the power of the precious “Witch’s Blood” in his body, which was used to stabilize his mental state, was beginning to show signs of instability, like a string stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any moment.

  He knew clearly that if he couldn’t complete the advancement before the potion’s effects vanished completely, then, even if he managed to complete the ritual later, he would never have a chance of success. His path as a demon hunter would end here.

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  However… everything that had just happened had completely shattered his last remaining fantasy.

  Success? What was he thinking about, still dreaming at a time like this!

  That “Fruit” that was supposed to be his sacrifice, that girl who was supposed to be easily crushed by him… she had already fought her way up here!

  But… how was this possible? How could his plan have spiraled so out of control?

  In his mind, the plan had been flawless. Using his Warden status to crush an unripe “Fruit” should have been easy. A sure thing.

  Recall the “Live Iron Golems,” leave a trail to attract an investigation, use the long-established “bear-type Live Iron Golem” of the Forbidden Forest to weaken the opponent, and finally, seal the first floor, completing the ritual amidst the sacrifice’s desperate struggles…

  Everything was supposed to be so perfect.

  But why… why did he have to run into an existence so far beyond the norm?

  Why?

  Why? Why? WHY?

  Dulles didn’t even realize he was muttering it. He was half-mad.

  He was already losing control of his body and reactions. It was as if another self had taken up residence in his body. That other self was screaming at him, cursing his incompetence.

  It took control of his hands.

  SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

  Again and again, he viciously slapped his own face. The force was so great that his cheeks quickly became red and swollen, a bloody mess, but he couldn’t feel a single bit of pain.

  Dulles just used those crazy, hate-filled eyes to stare fixedly downstairs.

  In the scarlet, frenzied fog, those cold, calm eyes were getting closer. Closer. Even closer.

  Those eyes were approaching him.

  Dulles was afraid.

  The fear of death, originating from the depths of his soul, at this moment, even drowned out his boundless hatred.

  What to do, what to do, what to do…

  Drool trickled uncontrollably from the corner of his mouth. Dulles’s mind was a chaotic mess.

  His gaze, in his despair, swept across the messy room, finally landing in a corner of the monitoring room.

  There, was another independent cultivation tank, its facilities clearly more advanced than the ones downstairs.

  That was… the Warden’s final resort.

  He was never supposed to have the authority to use it. Not unless… not unless the orchard faced a high-level disaster, something that could overturn the entire base.

  But… in his half-mad state, what did he care about “authority”?

  He stumbled towards it, and with his already bloody, mangled hands, he frantically began to pry open the glass cover of the cultivation tank!

  The cultivation tank’s design itself didn’t defend against physical attacks from the outside. So, as Dulles, ignoring the glass shards slicing his hands to the bone, desperately, hysterically slammed against it…

  CRASH—!

  … the sturdy glass cover was pried open by him, creating a gap!

  “Gyaaaaah!”

  He let out a beast-like roar, using the last of his strength to tear the gap completely open, and then, from within, he dragged out a pale, gel-covered… second-rank Agile Live Iron Golem.

  However, it wasn’t activated normally. The pale, gel-covered body lay there silently, without any reaction.

  “So, you’re the one… who wants to kill me?”

  The girl’s voice drifted up from the fog below, close enough that she could have been standing right behind him.

  Dulles shuddered, and in his desperation, his half-mad mind came up with a crazy idea, one that could activate the golem!

  He no longer hesitated, grabbing a hard, sharp-edged component that had fallen from the console, and then, viciously, smashed it down towards the slumbering body—

  However, the sharp, hard corner did not hit the Agile Golem.

  It was caught, effortlessly, by a pale hand.

  It was the “body”… it had woken up.

  It grabbed Dulles’s hand, and then, bit by bit, slowly lifted.

  CRUNCH—!

  The irresistible force made Dulles let out a shrill scream as the bones in his arm were pulverized.

  “No! I am the Warden of this orchard! Your enemy is over there! The intruder is over there!”

  Dulles pointed at the blurry figure in the red fog not far away, screaming frantically.