Reincarnated as the Final Villain's Vessel

Chapter 260: Beautiful Things

"Hooo..." I let out a long breath of relief.

The sound of the blood pouring crept out like a small waterfall, mixed with the rustling of the leaves, while a foul smell spread through the pitch darkness... the smell of rotten blood.

I didn’t see it of course... honestly, I don’t want to see this thing’s body, all that was guiding me was the picture my sense draws.

The pain spread through my exhausted muscles... I didn’t get hurt much during this, just a few surface wounds, because I tried to avoid getting injured as much as possible, following Mary’s instructions.

"I think I should go back now," I muttered as I turned to walk the way back... after all I wasn’t going to purge this forest alone.

Why would I do that when there are twelve slaves waiting for me to use them.

But soon enough I realized something. "I don’t know the way back... how stupid!"

This darkness that looks like black ink made me mix up the directions, especially since I’d been moving randomly for the past hours... and unfortunately even with stretching out my sense I didn’t feel the edge of the forest.

"Huh..." I sighed and decided to pick a random direction until I reached one of the edges of the forest.

So, I did... I moved between the giant trunks without hitting them, at some point I found the way back by following the corpses I’d left along my way.

I came across many other monsters and killed them, but at some point, I stopped and turned my head toward a certain direction inside the forest.

There a soul shone in the middle of this darkness... one at intermediate Rank 5, it was far from me and fixed in its place without moving.

And human too... and since there’s a strong person here then obviously it’s one of the guards spread across the islands.

So, without paying much attention to this, I set off and finished my way out of the forest.

...

"Damn it!" I cursed because of the bright light that pierced my eyes the moment I came out from between the trees.

Blinding yellow light... it was the sun, and that means it’s daytime, so how the hell long was I in there.

I stared at the watch on my wrist showing seven in the morning before I heard a voice calling me from far away. "Hey!... Caius"

Of course, it was Ivan beside the camp at the edge of the island, with all twelve people gathered on the fallen trunks used as chairs, so I walked toward them.

When I walked toward them they all stared at me, the girls’ expressions looked disgusted, while Garon’s eyes glimmered with curiosity, the rest looked at me strangely and Ivan let out an amazed whistle. "Wow... you look disgus—"

I raised my hand and cut him off to shut him up. "I know how I look."

Of course, I looked disgusting with all that foul black blood stuck to every inch of me... even I found this annoying let alone them.

But thinking about it I smiled. And maybe my smile wasn’t pretty now, no, it definitely wasn’t, because all their faces twisted in horror.

"Let me show you something beautiful."

...

A ball of light shone at a height of a few meters, driving away the darkness and revealing the place.

The rustling of the leaves echoed, while I leaned against the trunk of one of the trees, propping one of my feet on it and looking at my bracelet, checking the messages that came to me from the others.

Behind me and away from my sight a loud, disgusting sound echoed, cutting through the rustling of the leaves.

"Urgh!.... bleh!" Someone was throwing up near one of the trees, a tall young man named Mark.

His long body bent violently as he emptied the contents of his stomach. "Urgh!.." Our blonde healer was trying to calm him down as she stood behind him and patted his back. "Close your eyes... take a breath."

What he did set off a collective hysteria, which made everyone move away from him, they were about to grab their own trees and start throwing up too.

And of course, the reason that set off this reaction, is the corpses thrown on the ground.

Those black round heads with dozens of bleeding holes, sticky and sharp limbs torn everywhere and all of them gathering toward the main body... well let’s not describe it, it brings a lump to my throat.

With the foul smell of their blood, it was a mix that makes your guts turn in this darkness... any weak person is going to get nightmares tonight.

Ivan walked around wiping the blood off his hands and chattering, like he’s one of those crazy cults that gather in the mountains. "They cursed us on this island... someone on this team is cursed, maybe it’s you Valia."

What followed that was a hard slap on the back of his head.

Garon sat on a big root staring at Mark who was throwing up with disgust, Sarah came closer to me with her big bow in her hand, she was the archer I faced in training, and she’s from another academy.

"At this rate we’ll be late purging the island." This kind of tough girl spoke as she complained... yeah, she was complaining to me about the others.

Like I could put a piece of cloth in Mark’s mouth, and whip everyone like the pharaohs used to do with the slaves to push them to work... I won’t deny, it was a nice idea.

I looked at her for a moment before I put my focus back on the messages on the bracelet and shrugged. "Alright."

She tilted her head. "Alright?... what does that mean."

"It means there’s nothing I can do... there are a lot of Rank 4s here, and you guys can’t handle them, so splitting up would get many of us eliminated." I explained, as I put my focus back on the messages, they were from the other groups of course... unfortunately these bracelets’ ability to communicate is very limited.

And they did this on purpose, and made a limit for the messages that can be sent, which is two messages a day for each person... so chatting wasn’t an option.

And from what I see everyone had already reached their places and started purging those islands, making good progress.

Kyle’s message described the approach the other Empires are using, whether Auerlion who purge every island they pass in the northern part, or Luminar who pick their bases and their islands carefully.

As for Erebus they never showed up, and from the points they have Kyle said they probably haven’t moved from their place, planning to steal other people’s work later... and that’s good.

No, it was great.

I mean Erebus will climb from below which makes them fight with at least one of the groups, which leads to eliminating some of them or reducing their numbers... and that’s in our favor... of course if things go like that.

"Hmm..." I let out a low hum which made Sarah tilt her head. "What?"

I pushed myself off the trunk, my voice cutting through the darkness to alert everyone. "Stop playing around, there’s something big and hideous that wants to have us for dinner."

For a moment everyone looked at me in confusion, blinking at me with the dark shadows covering their faces a little like we’re in the old haunted house at an amusement park.

But of course, we weren’t there... we were in a cursed forest.

The next moment a loud sound of scraping a board echoed from far away, the ground trembled and the giant trees fell.

Everyone looked in that direction, at the line of light far from us and the silhouette there, that’s when the sound of Mark throwing up echoed, followed by the cursing of eleven other people.

"Fuck!"