Chapter 57 – After the Storm
After more than two hours of nonstop combat, the area around Sofia’s base had turned into a landscape of devastation—a battlefield recently abandoned by gods of war. The air was thick with the scent of blood, metal, and the faint trace of gunpowder, blending with the soft breeze blowing from the west as the sun began its slow descent.
Dug... Dug... Dug...
Sofia’s heartbeat echoed like a heavy drum in her ears. She let herself fall onto the now-cool asphalt, the sun slanting low in the sky. Her hands, still clutching her sacred spear, slowly loosened their grip, letting the weapon fall to the ground with a soft yet weighted clang.
"Hah... hah... more than three hundred... or five hundred? I... can’t count anymore..." she muttered weakly, her breath labored, but a faint thread of satisfaction laced her exhausted voice.
Around her, Altair leaned against a cracked concrete pillar, his body covered in minor burns. Yuna sat on the curb, hair disheveled and chest heaving. Vivi sat cross-legged in a meditative posture, eyes closed. Yuki was inspecting her nearly-frozen weapon, and Rina was changing the bandage of a wounded soldier. Viktor stood not far away, eyes vacant yet vigilant as he surveyed the field littered with kobold corpses.
Wounds and sweat coated their bodies. But for the first time in the past two hours—there were no screams. No gunfire. Just silence... and the sound of human breath.
Yet in that silence, something stirred.
Ssshhh...
From the heaps of kobold corpses, an eerie phenomenon began to unfold. They did not rot like normal creatures. Instead, their flesh and skin slowly unraveled into crimson mist-like particles, a bloody vapor dissolving into the air.
"...Sofia," Viktor murmured, straightening up slowly. "Look at that."
Sofia turned, her eyes half-lidded at first. But what she saw immediately sharpened her awareness. She had heard of this before—from Sylvia.