Chapter 13: Lub Dub

  A naked man hummed a jolly tune as he washed his hands inside a water basin.

  Within it however, clear blue waters rapidly turned into deep shades of thick and murky red.

  Behind Levian was the butchered corpse of another victim. Laying on a wooden table, his innards were all but hollowed out, for the cannibalistic fiend felt like having liver with a side of other organs for breakfast.

  However as Levian washed his hands of blood, the pleasant and disarming smile on his face instantly transformed into one of dark dread. There was no indication of the coming shift, he had so easily switched between expressions like he was switching on masks.

  Levian’s scrubbing movements started to become more and more furious as the waters swashed and splashed about. His eyes were looking straight ahead, and yet, it felt as if he wasn’t staring at anything at all.

  The former ranger had scoured a twenty-mile radius south of the forest, and still, the traitor’s son was nowhere to be found.

  Had the boy already crossed the boundary between Aelin and Emiendel?

  Levian needed proof of his death, and if not an intact corpse, then a foot, a finger, or a decapitated head would do just fine. Even decomposed, he knew the serpent-agents of the crown had a way to identify the lion-duke’s son. It wouldn’t bode well for him however, if Vendus was already chewed meat in the belly of a beast, or digested into nutrients by some carnivorous plant.

  Was the boy taught the art of stealth and erasing his traces? I should still be able to find him despite it all. Am I looking in the wrong place?

  Levian grunted as he started to scrub the skin off his hands. His own blood had then started to swim within the bloody mix. ‘That’s more than what most of these imbeciles were taught.’

  Their armor was heavy and clunking— they shouted at each from a distance, as if they weren’t looking for someone actively trying to avoid them— and lastly, they knew nothing about tracking.

  Perhaps if his former colleagues were involved in the search, chances were they would have already found him. Of course, his own services wouldn't have been employed if they were willing.

  Levian stopped “washing” his hands. The sponge he used to scrub had all but been grinded to dust, whilst layers of toughened skin had been gnarled to expose flesh and blood.

  ‘This’ll have to do.’ He wiped his hands with a towel, wringing his hands dry so hard that blood once again stained them.

  Turning the corner, he made his way towards the dinner table.

  Currently he was inside a remote cottage that belonged to his victim, and seeing as he had already killed the unfortunate soul, Levian treated the house as his own.

  Atop the dinner table was a single plate surrounded by herbs, and neatly placed on the platter was a still-beating heart. Unlike his gorging on fresh liver and other organs however, Levian seemed to take careful procedures to make sure that the heart was tidy, and relatively clean.

  ‘The heart should only be soaked with heart-blood.’

  ‘The body should only be tainted by its own filth.”

  The naked Levian approached closer to the dinner table, and grabbed the herbs surrounding the devilish meal.

  ‘Nightshade, hemlock, wormwood, crow feathers, bloodroot…’

  Without any sense of ceremony or decorum, he stuffed them all inside his mouth in a mad craze. At times he chewed, but mostly he just forced himself to swallow.

  Not mentioning the taste, visible lumps could be seen moving down his throat, as he suppressed the instinctive urge to vomit.

  Levian then suppressed both his mana and his body’s defense mechanisms, as his vision started to blur. Right before collapsing to the ground, he grabbed the still-beating heart from the dinner table.

  A body thudded, followed not too long after by the shattering of a porcelain plate.

  Levian’s naked body twitched constantly, before devolving into erratic violent convulsions. Limbs thrashed wildly in a chaotic and random flurry, his neck bent in strange angles, whilst the eyes in his head started to roll around like they were marbles shaken inside a jar.

  Anyone privy to the scene could see that something was wrong with the man’s health, yet although he may not look it, Levian’s thought process was calm and unperturbed. The former ranger had his full senses focused on the throbbing heart held in his spasming hands.

  From the time it took him to wash his hands, up to the point where he was now having a heart attack combined with a stroke, only two minutes had passed. Finally by the twenty-seventh second mark, the removed heart suddenly stopped beating, and that was when Levian used all his willpower to force it inside his mouth.

  Stolen story; please report.

  However, an adult heart was way too big to fit inside his jaws. Steeling his resolve, Levian grabbed his forehead with one hand, and his mandible including his lower set of teeth with the other. Then, he mercilessly pushed down.

  The muscles, skin, and flesh at the edges of his mouth tore open to enlarge. A few bones dislocated to allow a bigger, wider, and horrifically unnatural range of motion for his mouth. It went without saying, but it was a gruesome sight.

  ‘Do not…! Shed…! A single drop…!’

  The adult heart barely fit inside, but as it did he closed his mouth, and kept it shut with his other hand. Blood leaked out of the gnarly edges of his mouth, but he assured himself it was not the kind he needed to worry about.

  Once the heart was inside, his erratically trembling hand pushed his lower jaw up and down in a bid to chew, though, as little as possible as to keep the overall shape of the heart intact.

  A large lump moved down his throat, and finally after a few dozen moments, Levian’s body had stopped convulsing.

  Oddly out of place, morning sunlight pierced through a window to shine on his naked, unmoving body.

  If Levian’s body stayed motionless it would have been a blessing upon the world, but instead his body started to twitch awake. Once, then twice and thrice, before a heavy hand slammed down on the cabin floor.

  A wooden boom echoed through the remote cottage. Normally the former ranger kept his touch light and swift, but with how exhausting the previous process was, that habit temporarily went away.

  He heaved as if he was previously drowning for air, and well, he actually was. Yet, Levian’s focus was not on catching his breath, but observing the changes that had happened within.

  Mana-sight was impossible without reaching towards Champion, but with his years of experience it was possible for him to feel the undulations happening within.

  Miraculously, a nascent form of a mana-node was swirling within him.

  ‘It worked…’

  It was unstable and tainted with a feeling of dark heaviness, yet it was there nonetheless.

  ‘Approximately five-percent…Amazing.’

  ‘At this rate I’d need only nineteen more hearts to recover darksight.’

  Considering it had taken him a year to first form that ability, then five years to light up his first node, such rapid progress was nothing short of miraculous…or wickedly unnatural.

  Levian let out a low laugh. With hair covering his face and his naked body heaving, the former ranger looked especially unnerving.

  Thoughts churned in his head whilst emotions swirled in his heart— that of both sick satisfaction, and plans moving forward.

  ‘A hundred hearts to form the first node…’

  ‘Can I assume it would take two or three hundred for the second?’

  ‘No, the workings and conditions might be different.’

  ‘It might take a thousand hearts instead, or, it might need me to hunt down individuals with stronger hearts— vessels with mana-enhanced bodies.’

  ‘Hm. It could also have me hunt down pure virgins, or priests and saints.’

  ‘Worse, maybe the conditions for higher breakthroughs will have me hunt down other heart-eaters.’

  “...I’m getting ahead of myself, hahaha!” He laughed out joyously, until he found the edges nearing his mouth to hurt like hell. The heart-eating ritual seemed to have mostly healed his injuries caused by both the deadly herbs and the mutilation of his mouth, but not fully.

  Standing up, he went to go find a change of clothes whilst organizing his priorities.

  ‘If I butcher a village or small town, the authorities and surrounding military will quickly notice and hunt me down.’

  ‘I can quickly form my first node, but that isn’t enough. Traversing the outer outskirts with that strength will still get me killed.’

  ‘It isn’t possible for me to swallow a hundred hearts in quick succession either, nor do I have a way to preserve them.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘Fleeing from this mission is impossible. The prince recruited me as an outside agent, only so I could ensure the boy’s painless death. If I went missing just as he did, it might take them longer than a few months, but I’ll eventually be caught dancing between the borders.’

  ‘Moreover…my former colleagues might refuse to hunt down the lion-duke’s son, but they might join in on the hunt to remove my head from my body.’

  Finally Levian sat down in a set of his victim’s clean clothes. Tapping his fingers on the dining table, he continued to ponder, ‘My best bet is to find the boy, whilst having a few commoners and peasants go missing here and there.’

  “Like this, my future doesn’t look too grim afterall…”

  The former border ranger stood up, before proceeding to erase the traces of his act.

  He had briefly considered burning the cottage down, but he had need for a place to conduct his meals and rituals. Furthermore, doing such a thing would attract more attention, and would most likely bring in commoners and peasants to poke around. It was simply more trouble than it was worth.

  ‘The owner of this remote cottage didn't seem too friendly with the closest village either.’

  ‘At most someone will report his disappearance, but the authorities in this area are slow, and don't care too much. They’d probably respond to a house fire faster than a missing persons report.’

  ‘I know how they are. They’ll do a routine checkup in a few months, but by that time I’d be long gone…not that they'll find anything anyway.’

  With that, Levian exited through the front door, and headed into the main camp.

  Besides rummaging through their dried provisions or pilfering a few daggers and arrows, he was required to report for duty every morning and night.

  The prince imposed upon him measures to keep him on a leash, although it obviously wasn’t tight enough.

  It would get tighter however, if he failed to show up.

  Upon arrival at the main camp, he was either stared at with disgust or spitefully ignored. Word had probably reached even the most witless soldier an account of his vile crimes.

  It was a shame however. The title of a border ranger was often met with gazes of astonishment and admiration. He too had that luxury, and Levian often found it entertaining because of what he did behind closed doors.

  Unfortunately he was not the cold and calculated type he thought himself to be. Whence the time came for his magnum opus, the emotions within his shattered psyche gushed out with uncontrollable madness. Inevitably it was what led to his failure, and his subsequent death sentence.

  Levian ignored the stares and made his way towards the center of the camp.

  Once there he saw a large circular military tent. It was wide enough to probably occupy fifty people in its berth.

  He walked up to it intending to open the tent’s flap, but before he could grace his superior officers with his presence, he could hear a woman shouting.

  “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “I should be scouting further south, near where the borders meet!”

  “Not frolicking with the rabble just a few hundred meters from our camp!”

  Luther put a palm to his face while replying calmly, “You’re searching for the boy more thoroughly, with a group of skilled individuals ten miles away from camp.”

  “This is what you should be doing— what everyone else around you is doing.”

  “But I swear I saw him!”

  “We went over this, I already told you—”

  “Did you now?” A voice interrupted their back and forth.

  Two heads turned to the source of the voice, seeing a tall man with medium-length black hair. Luther clenched his fists behind his back, but the gesture didn’t go unnoticed to the former ranger.

  “Yeah.” The young woman said casually.

  “Wait, who are you?”

  ‘Godsdamnit Ruby…’

  “Now? A soldier, just like you…” Levian’s words trailed off.

  The former ranger’s gaze turned to the other person in the room, “...You know Commander, I’ve noticed the traces heading further south, have been a little too clean…”