Chapter XIX: The Incoming Chaos

A midnight blue hue has visited the land where the apricity of the golden sun turns into a silvery claw-pale crescent moon in the night sky, with the stars appearing slowly one by one, twinkling like tears from above.

A silhouette of a man wearing a full black hood covering his head to toe with only his piercing look in his hazel eyes was visible, jumping on the roof of the houses in the narrow street of the gloaming night. 

Every step he took was so soundless that even a murmuring of the wind was incomparable to its ability.

He jumped like a wolf over the moon before he landed on the ground silently without any injuries or noise created by his footsteps, hiding behind the wall, carefully leaning his ears to bug the conversation of the people on the other side of the wall, squealing like dolphins in anticipation, predicting things that they only expected without any hesitation on what reality awaited their reckless ambition.

"Puwah! HAHAHA! Stupid guru! He's so daft to believe that we would lay low-PFTT!"

The man arrogantly boasted that it made the person on the other side of the wall form a smirk on his lips, grinning like a freaking psycho as he patiently listened to their foolish conversation.

"Who does he think he is? A God!" 

He screamed contemptuously, mocking Khalid behind his back, which made the other man standing in front of him wearing a malicious look on his face snicker before he began to speak.

"Now that the card of victory is in our hands, our guru will be the one who rules this land." 

He stated with a vicious grin on his lips, scratching his hands together as if they were about to bleed.

"Tomorrow will be the start of our legacy! Puwah-HAHAHA!" 

He continuously declared, which made the man sneer in excitement before he swiftly disappeared like a ghost in the cold night without any traces of shoe prints left behind.

Meanwhile, Khalid could be seen sitting in front of the creaking wooden chair in a figure-four lock posture while wearing aureblus clothing, with all his companions silently waiting for him to speak while they were patiently sitting like statues with their eyes fixed on him.

Their position did not last for long when a sudden man who was wearing a full black hood, covering his entire body except for his eyes like an assassin, sneaked in through the locked window, passing through it without leaving a piece of broken glass on the floor, as he had done it skillfully without making any shattering noises that made the others alarmed as they held their weapons tightly, preparing for an attack that just made the rugrat looking Khalid rest his cheek on his palm while the others left their eyes wide open in shock as they froze on their feet.

They seemed to have been glued to the floor after seeing the hooded man throw a dagger in a rapid state toward Erwin's direction, where he was left standing without any emotion, and in the blink of an eye, his body turned to dust within a second.

"Intruder!"

Garion had screamed as they were about to take charge of the man when Khalid immediately spoke, clapping his hands and signing them to stop in the middle of an almost-fight, leaving the man, who was wearing assassin clothing, on the spot, shaking his head in disappointment as if he didn't believe it was happening.

"You've done well, Erwin." 

He stated as he took off the shawl that covered his face, leaving the other in great shock. 

After seeing what the assassin's face was, he exactly looked like Erwin, which made their souls almost leave their bodies.

'I-impossible…what just happened?! ' 

They were left in confusion before Erwin began to speak.

"I've done the quest you have requested, milord, as I heard the verendus were planning to make a move tomorrow." 

Erwin had forewarned with his imaginary tail, which continuously wags in the air while bowing down his head in front of the child, who was quietly sitting.

"Good job, Erwin."

Khalid praised him as he patted him on the shoulder, which made Erwin go over the moon inside of his head, ignoring the scene that had happened earlier where he left the other dumbfounded before Khalid had explained everything thoroughly in great detail about sending Erwin to spy on the suspicious people in the land of Lusdouv to find out what the verendus was really up to with the help of Erwin's great abilities that even left Reinhardt confused on the spot.

"We all know that verendus were a type of being that was likely to start incendiary and kill without mercy. That's why tomorrow would be the start of our move, as I planned. We will all be disguising ourselves as citizens of this land."

Khalid announced with a blunt tone in his solemn voice.

"Our identity is still hidden from the citizens; no one knew that we'd arrived, and that's our advantage. So... we will secretly attack in pairs."

He stopped.

"Dal, you're coming with me." 

Khalid added that it makes Erwin's eyes widen as if he knew it would happen—no. He didn't expect it to happen, but he always knew that it was always Dal who would be chosen, and he just tried not to believe it.

"B-but milord-"

Erwin spoke, but his words were so simply cut off by Khalid that it made him fume in rage while watching Dal smile in joy.

"Let's call it a day." 

Khalid affirmed as he stood up calmly and was about to head towards the door when Erwin began to throw a fit like a child who had been robbed of his candy.

"N-no, you must be kidding me. Ha-ha. It can't be." 

He complained as he laughed sarcastically while his hands grabbed his hair in frustration.

"He's just a shield, a damn wing milord. How could someone recklessly protect you?! I can't believe it." 

Erwin's face turned red while he stared at Khalid with eyes that were about to water.

"T-that's maybe right, but I too have the power to..."

Dal whimpered as he tried to convince Erwin.

"Shut up! I'm not talking to you!" 

He continues to argue as he shouts at Dal, which may have left him unspoken.

"I am your knight, milord, your holy knight! who swore in the Goddess Iris to protect you with all my life. I can fight for your sake, milord. So why choose a wing who couldn't even protect himself to be your shield when I could be that one?!"

He stopped and took a deep breath, waiting for Khalid to look at him in the eyes.

"You're just putting your life in danger!" 

He added, and that's what made Khalid look right at him straight into his eyes, but his looks were like a thorn that pierced his heart as he stated the following word before he walked out of the scene.

"I couldn't care less." 

His eyes were so soulless that it left Erwin speechless as if his tongue were cut from his mouth. 

"…Vamoose." (Let's go.)

Khalid reminded before he completely left the room with Erwin, who left unspoken, standing through the door with a gloomy expression on his face, gritting his fist watching how Dal followed Khalid from behind.

"Just what makes him so special..." 

He mumbled in the air while others tried to escape the room, saving themselves from his amok.

A pair of men in a discreet action strolling through the narrow streets with disgusts painted on their faces, wearing mufti clothes from the land of Lusdouv while watching the verendus feast on the people's souls and flesh, letting out a deadly smell of a rotting corpse that made them frown, holding their breath as they left oblivion on the denouement machination of Khalid's scheme.

Suddenly, a passel of verendus started to appear one by one, covered by a dripping red liquid-like paint that smelled like copper, bathing with the people's blood that they'd preyed on without a bit of conscience or mercy. A being with the form of a human but crueler than Satan itself. No, they were devils with pretty faces that were enough to lure their prey and feast with them with their hideous forms that were like their nasty cursed souls.

Not so far from where the two normal-looking citizens' are standing, the wuthering air becomes tense, creating a heavy deafening fracas of chimes from the old wooden buildings. When a little boy with an adorable doll-like appearance was suddenly left frozen on his feet after hearing a scream of plead, begging to spare his life with a shaky cracked tone of his voice that made his ears widen, his expression was normal as if he were the only one who could hear everything at all. Khalid decided to follow the voice that was either from his head, leaving the man with an ethereal appearance but wearing plain mufti clothes clueless.

"Milord!" 

Dal calls, but he doesn't look back and continues to run so far away from him that even his long legs can't catch up on Khalid's short daikon legs, but he runs as fast as a cheetah.

'T-this…. It's impossible; I've never felt this suffocating aura before.' 

She began to panic with a hysterical expression left on her face. She may not be able to see it, but she was so sure that the one she was facing in front of her was death, ready to devour her whole. 

The situation makes her feel alarmed, so she forms a distance as she quickly pulls out her arms that were covered in tiny holes, piercing Khalid's chest, leaving a hole in it while blood continues to stream down unceasingly also regenerates rather quickly, which makes her grit.

'No way. Don't tell me he was this powerful as our guru!' 

She thought before she was immediately taken aback by her own words as she went ballistic and continued to strike with a jelly leg.

"Tssk! What complete nonsense!!!" 

She shouted, full of rage coming out of her mouth.

Her stretchy, sharpened arms stabbed Khalid and cut his body into pieces, making his flesh cut into perfectly sliceable lean meat as she turned Vad, looking at him in a perfectly fine state wearing a Halcyon remiss expression on his face that made her explode like an erupting volcano in dismay.

"Ha, don't you have any emotion at all?!" 

She complained, but Khalid just looked at her with a lassitude yet dauntless expression on his pretty face.

"What can I do? I was created this way." 

His words made the verendus stop, but then she smiled viciously, wrapping Khalid in her arms just to drain his blood, making him look paler than a ghost, but it made her feel the epicurean pleasure of paradise.

Khalid didn't bug or move an inch, but instead, he looked at the sky to find the moons staring at him from embers that made him smile insincerely, high in thoughts, expecting that the fight wouldn't be that long.

'Oh, look at the moon; it shines so brightly that it makes me feel sick.'

He sarcastically thought as he looked at the verendus, just to find her in a great infatuation with sucking his blood, which Khalid had already gotten inure about.

He looks at the ground as he lets out a deep sigh and stares back at the verendus, tilting his head before he begins to speak. 

"God, this THING stinks!" 

He affirmed deeply, which made her frown in annoyance. She was fuming in rage as she tightened her arms on him, making his limbs and bones crack to dust, while his body cut in half, leaving the upper part on the ground.

"Kekekekrke!"

She laughed immensely standing in front of Khalid's corpse that was left lying on the ground to find out that he wasn't breathing anymore….but then her laugh turned into an eerie silence as she felt a sharpened ulu knife pointed at her mouth with Khalid behind her, looking completely fine and well that left the verendus in extreme shocked without knowing that her lummox action for tearing his body in pieces has created a great opportunity for him to choose which part of his body to regenerate; and so Khalid created a suspenseful gambit action of distracting the verendus by letting her drain his blood so that his body could regenerate from the piece of flesh behind the verendus without her noticing.

"Caught you…..."

He affirmed, snickering from behind, holding her chin, and forcing the ulu knife into her mouth.

'Ah, it took me a while to find her mark.' 

After a long time of scanning her body, Khalid just found out that the mark had been carved inside her tongue all along.

The verendus was left frozen with her feet glued to the ground as she pleaded for mercy.

"N-no…. D-don't *ack* K-kil...M-me." 

She begged.

"Don't be ahead of yourself; you're too useless to die." 

Khalid bluntly stated while tightly holding her chin, which was about to be crushed, when suddenly he threw up blood as he felt a warm liquid of red paint flowing out of his body, only to find out that the verendus had replaced the position of her other arm on her calves, injecting out a bubbling green liquid from the hole in her body right straight on his back. It was already too late before he could form a distance, putting Khalid in a cumbersome situation.

'This is bad.' 

A tall man with long blond hair that shines in the light of the moonlight has been biting his nails for ages while standing in the middle of the mountain with the passel of a beast cornering him in a circle.

'If Erwin has found out about it!'

His thoughts were distracted when a group of beasts jumped over him, which he quickly avoided as if he didn't care a thing at all.

"This is bad. This is bad. This is bad.!" 

He panicked that only repeated words came out of his mouth. 

He was so devastated to find Khalid until he felt his extreme aura covering the entire mountain before it quickly vanished, but enough for Dal to notice.

"M-milord!!!" 

Dal shouted, but no one answered; he couldn't hear anything except for the beast howl that made him feel irritated, enough to make his blood boil from rage.

"This won't do." 

Dal then grabbed his hair tie, which turned into a long tulwar, as he charged an attack towards the beast, but instead of decreasing its number, the beast kept multiplying, which made his blood boil even more.

"AHH! DAMN IT!" 

He furiously stated that a faint black smoke went out of his hands, making his eyes lit in red like a rose. 

"JUST DIE ALREADY!" 

His voice echoed as he put some magic on the sword to light it up in blue before he charged a forceful blast of mana that enormously left a big fract on the ground.

"Ha-"

When the fight with the beast was over, he was panting and catching his breath before he arrived on the scene where Khalid was the only one left standing while his body was covered in some sizzling liquid melting his flesh, which may be dangerous for him, he thinks, while the verendu's head was cut in half and pinned to the tree.

"M-milord, you make me worried!" 

He exclaimed in worry, but Khalid just looked at him with a wabbit eye.

Back to where Khalid and the Verendus were fighting, Khalid was so eager to win the battle between them that he swiftly threw the ulu knife in her direction when she was about to laugh, which made its mouth rip and cut in half while it was pinned to the tree.

*Caugh! * 

"Ha, I survived the fight by the skin of her teeth." 

He pants while walking wobbly towards Dal.

But then......Khalid suddenly froze, making Dal feel uneasy, watching him continuously vomit a red-tainted paint that smelled like copper streaming down from his mouth.

"So tired~…" 

He calmly stated that he could feel the lightness of his own body as if he were just a wandering soul, not a human or a living being, while his eyelids were slowly closing, making his vision blurred with a glitching pitch-black on his sight, and that all happened before he passed out on Dal's arms, covered in a thick liquid like wine with a strong metallic smell of iron.

"Mi-milord?"

"Kha...khalid?"

Dal's heart skips a beat while his eyes tremble. He just stares with wide-open eyes that cannot shut, like the whole world is crumbling apart around him. He didn't even shake; he was like a statue holding the little boy's pale body in total paralysis without realizing what just happened.

His eyes began to let out a stream of tears, making his vision so clouded that he didn't have time to blink, caressing Khalid's face as he carried him with wobbly legs, slowly marching towards the town, covering Khalid's face with his hood. 

Every time he took a step, he felt that it was too far for them to reach the inn as if time were slowly running.

When Dal arrived in front of the wooden door of the two-storey wooden building, he didn't just stand there but quickly opened the door, with the others and Erwin standing there in front of him with a distressed expression. 

Dal didn't move an inch while bathing in his sweat, staring at the wooden floor as if his body had already left his soul while holding a two-body child in his arms.

"M-milord?....."

Erwin slowly walks towards Dal, stumbling in fear, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"I-it's….my f-fault…"

Dal bit his lips as he spoke.

The room was in silence after his words while their eyes were fixed on him when Erwin, who was just caressing Khalid's face, suddenly looked at him in enragement with a mirk expression on his face, clenching his fists as he landed an extreme blow on Dal's cheek that even echoed in the room, leaving the others with wide eyes of shock.

"I knew this would happen. Hahaha, YOU DAMN WING!" 

Erwin's voice echoed as he screamed right straight on his face.

"You're the wing of Milord! Your job is to protect him, but you failed!" 

Erwin's voice cracked, followed by the dripping liquid of water in his eyes, which left Dal frowning with a teary eye.

"I-I tried…"

Dal stated as he whined in guilt, taking the blame on himself while Reinhardt had put the two on the bed.

"Tried? Don't make me laugh; if you could have tried to protect him, then he wouldn't be lying there on the bed in that state! You don't even have many wounds on your body; if that's how you protect him, then we were all in the wrong to almost trust you!" 

He added furiously, fuming like a bull while holding Dal's collar, which left it crumpled like paper.

"Erwin!" 

Shouted by Reinhardt, who was holding Erwin to calm down.

"I'm-I'm…so-sorry.." 

Dal mumbled, but Erwin's following words left him unspoken in woe, followed by the roaring thunder and the heavy tears that poured on the sky.

"Tssk! No wonder your father had never accepted you." 

He stopped. 

"Pathetic: You shouldn't have taken the job if you couldn't do it." 

Just like that, Dal was left there standing like a statue while the words that Erwin had spoken echoed in his mind, Reinhardt even patted him on the shoulder before he followed Erwin, who was stomping like a giant with an irritated expression.

Not so far from the inn where they were staying, Garion felt an eye that was watching them from the window. When he caught a glimpse of a person hiding behind the trees spying on them, it sparked Garion's curiosity and took him outside the inn, soaking wet while chasing the person who was covering himself with a piece of cloth. 

When he almost caught it in his arms, a strand of familiar light pink-ish hair that was like cherry blossoms had glistened on the night while the shawl that covered its face had been left dropped on the ground, making Garion feel a burning sensation in his heart as he looked at the lady that was standing in front of him with a sorrowful expression on her face while tears had dripped on her cheek, and so the rain that was continuously pouring from the Caelum night.

"Liena…." 

Garion stated in the melodious tone of his voice as he stared at the beauty of the lady who was standing in front of him like a goddess.