The st eight beacons of light resided within an enormous divot.

  Nothing but walls of desote trees surrounded the lip of the divot. The gaping hole was so wide that Red had to physically turn her head to view it from one end to the other, and even that was not enough.

  Rays of light coming from the Sweet Thorns were barely able to breach the canopy of twisted branches. It was like looking at a bnket of pure darkness. Beneath that was the forest floor. They could tell because of the sound of magical gunfire and red fshes of light twinkling beneath the canopies like stars in the night sky.

  Scarlet Logic had a considerable presence down there. By the sheer size of the divot and the number of red, fshing light – Red approximated that there were at least a thousand.

  When she said this to Snow, the Healer shook her head and had to correct her.

  “Three thousand. In a few minutes, it’ll go down to a few hundred. I find it weird that Scarlet Logic figured out where to concentrate their forces. Unless… Have we been moving through the outskirts of the forest?”

  Snow believed that they were in the center of the forest.

  It was a silly thought that Red nearly dismissed until Snow revealed a vital piece of information regarding Corrupted Zones.

  Moving north did not necessarily mean moving north. Temporal distortion was but one component of a Corrupted Zone. Spatial distortion was commonpce, although, Snow described it as merely them not being able to perceive the true extent of a Corrupted’s mindscape.

  For example, if there were two doors id before them, the person who could interpret the spatial distortions would be able to see a third door.

  “Just don’t mistake a spatial distortion with the phenomenon that happens on the Gravity Trains.” Snow sighed.

  “The no-wheel one? I was just on that! Why, what’s the difference?”

  Red gathered a few brambles and tied them together. Afterwards, she looped the makeshift rope around a tree and gave one end to Snow.

  “We don’t talk about it.” She said with a hint of edge, striking a pose with both hands on her hips.

  Her eyes trembled with a type of rage Red hadn’t seen before. Questions such as: “Was Snow involved in an accident with a train like herself? Did she work on a train before coming here? Just what else has she seen?”

  Sometimes, Red felt like Snow was a well. No matter how intensely the light sought to pierce through the surface, or how many times the bucket was lowered to fetch those secrets – Red could never gauge the depths of her heart.

  It wasn’t a bad thing. But not being told the secret caused Red to frown.

  “… Sorry. I just wanted to sound cool for once.” Snow apologized. “We’ve been stuck here for seventeen days. I’d hate it if I forgot how to smile. Ahem. Spatial Distortions can make interiors of buildings or the trains much rger than they really are. But that comes at the cost of weaving two locations at once.”

  Light returned to Red’s face. She brimmed with excitement as the two wrapped their waists with thorn-ridden brambles.

  “Where to?”

  The two carefully dangled themselves off the side of the cliff face. Red went down first, expecting Snow to wait until she could bey her down once she reached the bottom.

  “They say it takes you to hell.”

  But to her surprise, the woman expertly handled herself. The techniques she used were not that of a defenseless Healer who had never rock climbed before. No. Not at all. If anything, Red’s way of descending was haphazard and, frankly, inferior compared to Snow’s.

  “How much you believe that depends on whether you believe hell exists. Red. Wrong foot. Check your bance, please. And um… well, if you do fall then you won’t die, but I really don’t want to see you take unnecessary damage.”

  “Aaaah~ It because you care about me?”

  “I do.” Snow smiled, swinging to Red and nudging her with her shoulder. “You’re all I have left.”

  Rockie, who scuttled along the walls, raised two hands and waved them around as if to say: “You have me too~”

  Snow giggled, revealing the same innocence she had when they first met. Seeing her able to smile caused a small, stinging pain in her chest. She didn’t know what it was, but she figured it must be heartburn.

  After all, they ate not too long ago.

  They descended past the canopies. A fifteen-meter gap between the twisted roof and the wall allowed them to pass through unhampered. Red kept her bde between her teeth, expecting to have to engage on the wall, but to her surprise, they weren’t attacked by Envious Brambles.

  In fact, there didn’t seem to be any Envious Brambles at all.

  However, the cracks of deafening gunfire were evidence that there were other looming threats. Bitter Thorns no doubt, but that did not mean they could rex.

  One small pse of judgement could end them. And while Red knew that could always come back, it didn’t change that survival was of utmost priority.

  Plus… What would’ve happened to me if I didn’t reach the light? Would I have been taken by the sea? Agate. Death doesn’t come without risks, right?

  < Risk: Significant >

  As I thought. Thanks, weird voice thing.

  Snow held onto the fragmented shell that she had taken from the infected Rock Bug like a shield. Rockie kept close to her.

  “Hm? Ah? Rockie? What’s wrong?” Snow wondered what the bug was doing behind her legs.

  “Brrr!”

  “Eh? O-Oh. You’re… really kind. Thank you.”

  It swiped her off her feet, throwing her onto its back. The surprised Snow was disorientated for a moment. With how round and slippery the metal on Rockie’s back was, she could just barely stay on.

  But once she found her bance, she patted the cold steel beneath her and hummed: “You know, if someone saw me riding you like this, they’d give me weird looks.”

  “I bet they would. Rockie’s not a good mount. They make for a better boat and a mobile shield. I doubt a wooden boat would work on va.”

  “No, not in that way… Nevermind. Is it a good idea for me to be riding Rockie? I feel like I’d be an easy shot.”

  “They have terrible aim. You know a lot about Scarlet no-Logic. Are they supposed to be bad?”

  “Their goal isn’t to kill the Corrupted. They’re meant to die to it. Having low lethality means they can gather as much information as possible.”

  “Weird. I think they’re stupid. Sending a thousand people to fix a small problem doesn’t seem right. I guess I have more common sense than the average Fodder.”

  They lowered their voices from here on out, right as the sound of gunfire subsided.

  Distant battle cries surrounded them now. Red led the way and kept them moving along the walls. Then, when they were staring at the light of a Sweet Thorn just ahead, they moved from the wall and silently approached it.

  The darkness kept them out of sight. Scarlet Logic’s apparel faintly glowed in the light, making them stand out like targets in the middle of a field. What were thousands had been reduced to a few hundred.

  “Gh. Lots of bodies.” A string of resounding crunches caused Red to comment on the bodies underneath her.

  Her boots cracked their skulls open, and Rockie’s heavy legs left holes in their chests. Before long, the ground became a mixture of gore and soil. Countless eviscerated bodies of Bitter Thorns and Scarlet Logic Fodder paved the ground in every direction.

  The stench of death was unbearably thick. They had become soft in mere hours, as the time acceleration had caused them to rot. Amongst the corpses Red noticed that there were bdes and belongings that did not match what vilgers nor Scarlet Logic possessed.

  “Nice helmets. Armor. Are these what you call a bra? Why is it so spiky?”

  “It’s considered armor.” Snow said, causing Red to put on a displeased look.

  “Armor? This thing? It barely protects your body and people call it armor? Are they dumb?”

  “Bikini armor? I don’t like it either, but Bards are a big fan of it.”

  “Might as well wear nothing. But why are there so many pieces of armor here? I thought only the vilges around Hearth got caught up in the Corrupted Zone?”

  Red stopped for a moment. After checking that there were no Scarlet Logic members secretly watching them, she dug through the soft, graining tissue of the decaying corpses.

  “I’m… not sure. They could have entered here on their own accord. It’s difficult to tell where the boundaries of a Corrupted Zone are. There’s also a good chance that a Guild’s put up a notice for Adventurers.”

  But Red wasn’t too concerned about who or how they were here.

  “Are they supposed to work alongside Scarlet Logic?”

  She was wondering why there were so many bodies indiscriminately polluting the forest floor.

  “Cooperation is the least of their concerns. But I’d be surprised if the two groups interacted at all outside of Scarlet Logic scouting an Adventurer.” Snow said. “Still, I wouldn’t put it past them to keep their hands off people. Like with you for instance.”

  Eventually, she dug up a pte body and held it high into the air. Light from the distant Sweet Thorns passed through bullet-shaped holes, nding on Red’s chest as her eyes narrowed with hatred.

  “Snow. Do you think they’d kill people for no reason?”

  “Is that even a…” She was about to say: “Is that even a question?”, but she stopped herself in time.

  Red’s depiction of Scarlet Logic was that they were heroes.

  But what kind of a hero kills people? There was a chance that the Adventurers were infected, but there were no cracks, tears, or brambles to be found here. One can even run away from a Bitter Thorn, while the Envious Brambles were far more difficult.

  Yet there were no Envious Brambles here.

  Snow opened her mouth, ready to answer.

  But those words were interrupted by gunfire.

  “Brrr!?”

  A barrage of bullets came whizzing past Snow. Rockie rolled over, throwing her to the ground before she could even process what was happening. Then, it threw its body on top of her, tanking the bullets with its shell.

  The shape of its shell alongside its absurd DEF stats meant that Rockie could shrug them off. However, it released a pained growl. This was because while Rockie’s exterior body was fine, its MAG DEF was not high enough to stop it from causing internal damage.

  Rockie | HP: 14,220

  Red didn’t waste any time.

  By the time eight bullets had been fired, eight seconds had precisely passed. She was already dashing through the woods for a fnk, and the moment the ninth second had struck–

  “Sustain fire for the next twenty-one seconds–!”

  –Red’s bde cleaved the head of a Fodder.

  “Why did you stop shooting–?”

  At first, they were not considered enemies.

  But after the first kill, the bloody trail appeared. It strung their throats together, and all she had to do was follow it.

  Remorse? Sorrow? Guilt?

  Nothing of the sort hampered her.

  All she could see was red.

  The bde cut through their necks with zero resistance. In mere seconds, seven Fodder had already fallen. It was seven out of what looked like twenty.

  “What gives you the right to try to kill my friends!?”

  Syringe