Chapter 139

The creatures remembered the day they first met Rohanes.

The young human who had first reached the place they lived had come crawling desperately toward the lakeshore, his blood-soaked body reeking with a foul stench, his face pale and bloodless.

He dragged one leg behind him, a sword too large for his small frame strapped to his side. Dark, blackish-red blood clung thick to the blade.

A young one not yet grown — a fragile life that should have still been under its parents' care — had come to the lakeshore, retching up blood gone black and dead.

"An...antidote……."

The creatures hid in the brush and watched the child. With trembling hands, the small life pulled something out and gulped it down in a rush, then began washing the blood from his body with the lake water.

The clear, transparent water turned red in an instant. With their keen noses,…