Not a Magical Beast

Even if it was only a split second, Samael saw purple energy shoot out from his body and toward the direction of the people that are chasing him. He can tell that the purple energy should be the reward that he received if he completed the Situational Quest.

As he was congratulating the person that got that blessing, his body abruptly stiffen.

Samael was stupefied when he heard a loud shout filled with anguish reverberating through the entire forest, the canopies of the thick forest acted as an amplifier that makes the scream even more ringing.

'What happened...?' He thought as the scream came out of nowhere.

Despite not knowing what had happened to make the person scream like that, Samael feels uneasy for some reason. 'It's probably nothing, one of them probably stumble across a magical beast. Just in case, should I help...?' he thought hesitantly.

If it's anything, he still feels he was the one that caused these people to be here.

Although it was unintentional as one of the people probably reported him when caught sight of him, there's still a mix of him in that so he feels obligated to help. But under intense deliberation, he forces himself to stop.

'Yeah... I don't have any responsibility to help them' Samael thought as he turns away.

This is the first time that he has ever felt like this. Usually, he doesn't get involved in any fighting knowing that he's slightly better than the average person since he can use a couple of neutral spells. Now that he has the power, he finds it rather hard to mind his own business.

Maybe because of his father teaching that wanted him to do good if he ever becomes a mage.

Samael knows that if he keeps on helping then there will be no end to their encounter, those people would just keep on chasing him even if he helped them from the magical beast they encountered.

Knowing that fact, he restrains his urge and walks away without intending to help.

Walking away with the Midnight Whipping Cat's carcass in his hand, he decides he would search for a good shelter and try roasting the carcass for him to eat. It's unknown how long he was inside the hellish plane, but the hunger just caught up at this current moment.

Back when he was still in the hellish plane fighting the Imps, he doesn't feel hungry at all.

It's probably because he's now in the real world instead of that supernatural place where hunger has become a thing again. Samael's stomach is growling, begging him for something to eat while his throat is dry, begging him to drink something.

Not even a minute has passed, and Samael's steps halted once again.

'I know I shouldn't, but I can't leave them like this...' Samael thought while clenching his fists.

Despite trying to make his cold side win against his good side, the temptation was too strong as he heard more screams from the back. Judging from the screams of the people, he feared that they met a strong magical beast and is now being slaughtered by it.

Samael dropped the carcass to the ground before he turns around deciding to help.

Using his Dash neutral spell, he managed to get close to the screams in a moment. Reaching there, Samael hides behind a tree and peeks to assess the situation. If the magical beast is too strong, then he would have no choice but to leave them.

Although he wanted to help, he didn't want to die in the process of helping them.

Looking at the dense dark green lush of the forest, his eyes search for the magical beast attacking the people. But he soon frowns when he finds that the scream recede, and he can't hear any pulse.

'There's no chance that they all already died, right...?' Samael thought with a troubled look.

Even though he doesn't want to believe that the magical beast was so strong that it can slaughter more than thirty people in less than a minute, his entire surroundings are covered in dead silence.

Not a sound can be heard, only the sound of insects filled the eerie night forest.

Samael hesitated as if the magical beast can slaughter them all this fast, it would probably be a third-ranked magical beast in the least. Against such a magical beast, he doesn't know how he will fare.

A third-ranked magical beast has already reached the realm above normal.

While a second-ranked magical beast can still be killed by normal people with normal weapons, a third-rank magical beast has already completely invulnerable against the normal.

Throughout his life, he has never heard of a normal human beating a third-ranked magical beast.

But since the third-ranked magical beast's natural constitution is absorbing mana to strengthen their bodies, it makes sense for a normal human to not be able to do anything to it. Only mages can hunt and kill third-ranked magical beasts.

Even though he was now a demon, he still needs to be careful against the perpetrator.

Gazing left and right in full alert, Samael started to make his way slowly into the forest in search of any sign of the magical beast. With steady steps, he keeps on going before he eventually came across a thick bush.

Shrugging the bush out of the way with caution, a clear shock suddenly appears on his face.

Instead of finding the magical beast that should be still on its onslaught for having humans disturb its hunting peace, Samael was greeted by the sight of the severed bodies of the people chasing after him earlier scattered all over the place.

Blood can be seen splattered everywhere, showing the horror that has occurred here.

The fresh scent of blood infiltrates his nose, forcing a frown onto his face.

Under such an intense aroma of blood and death, Samael pinch his nose as he was not used to the scent at the very least. Out of the gore he has ever seen in his life, his own city burned and slaughtered were the most bloody sight he has ever seen.

Compared to this, that scene was more bloody, but that happened two years ago.

Samael was not exposed to this kind of thing daily and he can feel the sickness crawling to his stomach. Even though he feels unwell, he decided to press on to look for clues that he can find to point out where the perpetrator has gone to.

Kneeling beside a corpse that has its neck bloodied, he started inspecting it.

Using his hand to inspect the wound on the corpse's neck, Samael can't help but finds it weird as the man surely died from a bite on his neck. What makes it weird was the fact that the bite mark doesn't look like a mark from an animal.

As he sometimes hunts in the forest to see his brother in action, he knows a little bit.

Most of the aggressive magical beast has fangs that are deep enough to cut at least halfway through a person's neck, the bite mark is also usually quite big. But the one in front of him doesn't match those two conditions at all.

It looked small and is not that deep, about the size of a fist and a quarter deep.

The only thing that killed the man is the fact that whatever bites him did it a couple of times and ripped his neck gruesomely. But once again, that shows whatever bits the man doesn't have sharp fangs.

Finding this to be odd, Samael stands up before a sound caught his attention.

Without even wasting any time, he quickly dashes to the sound to investigate further. Since there might be some people that still survived, he needs to act fast as this magical beast is very fast in taking out a large group of people.

Swish!

Coursing through the forest, Samael tries to be as fast as he can.

As he was going in the direction of a scream from a man, he finds there was a trail of blood on the ground which should be from the magical beast. After a moment, Samael can't help but frown as he finds the magical beast seems to be faster than him.

Despite his increase in power, he doesn't seem to be able to catch up to the magical beast.

Even the man that he heard shout before was already a minute behind, he was killed with a penetration wound to the center of his chest, causing his heart to either explode or be taken away by the magical beast.

'Killing for fun instead of eating the prey? What kind of magical beast is it?' Samael thought.

Samael started to feel that he was not dealing with a magical beast, there was no reason for the magical beast to leave its prey scattered all over the place like this. It should've stopped and eaten at least some of them, but he didn't find any half-eaten corpses.

A moment later, he didn't realize it but he now reach back to Zlile City.

"Raarggh!!"

"Kyaaah!!"

"Killer! There's a killer on the loose!"

From the outside of Zlile City's wall, Samael can hear chaos has already ensued throughout the entire city. Shrill screams from everyone penetrate his ears, and this makes him even more confused.

Curiosity builds up inside of him, 'I have to see what it is...' he thought in concern.

Although he's still expecting a rogue magical beast is going-on a rampage from being disturbed, he started to feel nervous, and the bad feeling started to crawl and wrap around his heart.

Quickly going inside the city, the scenery that he expected can be seen.

People running around with extreme fear on their faces were abundant, some of them even pushes each other out of the way to save themselves, and even some saw Samael and quickly become even helpless as they thought an Erovian is also attacking the city.

But Samael disregards all of them and heads where the chaos is at its peak.

With a swift movement, Samael reaches the city square and finds more dead bodies scattered around. Instead of only dead bodies, he now caught sight of a figure covered in blood with glowing purple eyes.

Upon seeing this figure, Samael realized that it was the woman he saw earlier.

It was at this moment that he caught sight of the woman's glowing purple eyes, and an extreme air of bloodlust covering her entire being. From a look, Samael's expression pales in disbelief, "N-No, this is not right! T-This can't be happening..."