The group of imperial soldiers, who had been moving with such urgency, did not linger long in the bustling Upper District.
They crossed the wide, clean streets, skirted the heavily guarded noble mansions, and finally turned onto a street that connected to the outer areas.
Helos and Julius followed closely behind.
As the two of them went deeper, the scenery around them began to change.
The once bright and pristine white stone brick walls gradually disappeared, replaced by gray brick buildings with a more older, more traditional style and heavier style.
Although the streets here were not as wide and smooth as those in the Upper District, they were still paved with sturdy bluestone slabs, and the road surface was kept quite clean.
This was the Old City on the outskirts of the Imperial Capital.
Though it lacked the luxury and refinement of the noble district, this was where most of the empire’s ordinary citizens lived.
The houses on either side of the street were mostly quite old, covered with the marks of time on their walls, but they had been neatly maintained by the residents.
Potted flowers in full bloom sat on the windowsills, and a faint scent of everyday life filled the air.
Julius did not let his guard down because of the change in environment.
The terrain here was more complex than in the Upper District, with crisscrossing alleyways.
The squad of soldiers ahead seemed familiar with the area. They zigzagged through the alleys and soon approached their destination.
When the view ahead suddenly opened up, a marketplace deep within the Old City appeared before the pair.
The market was not large; it looked more like a small trading post formed spontaneously by nearby residents.
Most of the passersby wore simple linen clothes, their expressions calm.
The stalls displayed various daily necessities and fresh fruits and vegetables. Though nothing was precious, it all felt full of the reality of life.
People were either picking out ingredients for the evening meal or chatting idly with a familiar vendor.
Julius stopped and pulled Helos into an inconspicuous corner.
“Something’s off.”
His jet-black eyes swept across the entire market like those of a hawk.
Although everything seemed normal on the surface, he keenly sensed a strangeness.
The sickening chaotic aura had become much denser here.
It was no longer a faint, lingering trace, but rather an invisible mist of dawn hanging over the entire market, jarringly out of place with the peaceful atmosphere of daily life.
“Then it looks like we’ve found the right place.”
Helos lowered her voice, her light purple eyes sparkling with excitement.
She didn’t have perception as sharp as Julius’s, but she too could feel an uncomfortable atmosphere.
Just then, the fully armed squad of imperial soldiers walked into the market.
“Everyone! Don’t move!”
The captain at the lead drew the longsword from his waist and barked:
“Routine inspection! Please cooperate!”
The crowd, which had been trading, stirred restlessly.
This sudden turn of events shattered the market’s peace in an instant.
Most people didn’t know why the soldiers had come.
Panic and confusion appeared on their faces. Some instinctively wanted to leave, but seeing the coldly glinting weapons in the soldiers’ hands, they reluctantly froze in place.
They were simply afraid of the army, the embodiment of imperial authority.
The soldiers began their operation.
Though they were few in number, their movements were swift and methodical.
Nine soldiers secured the market’s exits, while the rest started inspecting the vendors and passersby one by one.
“Open your bag.”
“What’s in that crate?”
Harsh questioning echoed across the market.
Julius did not rush to act.
He observed quietly from the shadows.
Where was the source of the chaos believer?
Was it the aunt selling fruit?
Or the old man repairing shoes?
His eyes darted rapidly through the crowd.
Until his gaze landed on a man in a corner of the market.
He was a middle-aged man, seemingly in his forties.
He wore a faded work uniform, was a bit stocky, and had a simple, honest expression.
He was squatting in front of a stall selling hardware parts, holding a brass valve in his hand.
When the soldiers questioned, he too acted frightened and confused, just like everyone else.
But Julius sharply caught a momentary anomaly.
Just as a soldier’s gaze swept toward that direction, the seemingly honest man’s lowered eyes flashed an extremely sinister look in the blink of an eye.
It was the venom of prey facing a hunter.
“Found him.”
Julius whispered in his mind.
At the same time, two soldiers also noticed the man in the corner.
“Hey! The one squatting!”
A soldier strode over, his halberd pointing at the middle-aged man.
“Stand up! Turn around! Put down what you’re holding!”
The middle-aged man seemed a bit slow.
He stood up slowly, his movements as stiff as a puppet.
He still clutched the brass valve tightly, and the simple look on his face began to twist.
“Sir…”
His voice was hoarse and low, as if gravel were lodged in his throat.
“I’m just a repairman—”
“Less talk!”
The soldier clearly had no patience for his explanation.
“Hands up!”
The soldier stepped forward, reaching out to search the man.
Just as the soldier’s fingers were about to touch the man’s clothes, a sudden change occurred.
The middle-aged man, who had been keeping his head down, suddenly jerked it up.
In his originally dull, lusterless eyes, a glaring red light flared up without warning!
“Roooar—!”
A howl that was not human burst from the depths of his throat.
The next second.
His body suddenly swelled a few sizes!
The work uniform was instantly torn apart, revealing the eerie dark-red muscles underneath.
This was mutated flesh forcibly catalyzed by Chaos power, even covered in nauseating slime.
Julius instinctively wanted to shout a warning.
“Watch out!”
But it was too late.
The man’s speed was inhuman.
He didn’t use any weapon, simply swinging his now thickened and twisted right arm.
A dull, heart-stopping boom rang out around them.
The imperial soldier standing in front of him, who hadn’t even had time to react, had his head burst like a watermelon smashed by a sledgehammer!
Red and white debris splattered everywhere.
The headless corpse swayed in place for a moment, then fell stiffly to the ground.
Blood gushed out, staining the clean stone pavement.
“Ahhh—!”
“Murder! Monster! There’s a monster!”
Only then did the surrounding crowd realize what had happened.
Piercing screams instantly tore through the air above the Old City.
The market was in complete chaos.
People cried, shoved, and surged madly toward the exits.
But the fully mutated middle-aged man clearly had no intention of letting anyone go.
His blood-red eyes were filled with pure brutality and a lust to kill.
“Roooar!”
He roared again.
His beast-like twisted limbs suddenly pushed off the ground, and his whole body shot into the panicked crowd like a cannonball.
He was like a meat grinder.
Whether it was the stalls in his way or the terrified civilians, they were all as fragile as paper in the face of his terrifying strength.
“Pfft!”
A man who was too slow to run was torn in half by his claws.
A woman trying to hide behind a cart was turned into a mist of blood together with the cart by a single punch.
In just a few seconds, this once-peaceful market had become a bloody slaughterhouse.
“Form ranks! Form ranks!”
The remaining imperial soldiers, though pale with fear from the scene, were still rigorously trained soldiers of the imperial army.
After a brief moment of panic, the captain immediately shouted orders.
“Evacuate the civilians! He cannot be allowed to leave here!”
The dozen or so remaining soldiers quickly assembled.
They raised their shields, set their halberds, and formed a steel barrier, trying to trap the rampaging monster in the middle.
Their bodies glowed with varying degrees of mana radiance, clearly using magic to strengthen themselves.
“Kill!”
The soldiers roared and thrust their halberds viciously at the monster.
However, their attacks were like tickles to the creature completely corrupted by chaos.
The sharp halberd tips hit the monster’s dark red muscles with a metallic clang, leaving only shallow white marks.
The monster swung its arm back.
“Boom!”
The immense force sent three or four soldiers, shields and all, flying, crashing heavily into the wall—their fates unknown.
“Damn… What the hell is this monster?!”
After a hard struggle, anger flashed in the captain’s eyes.
These well-trained soldiers were being completely overwhelmed by a monster that had come out of nowhere, unable to fight back.
“Where did those damned cultists get such power?!”
In the corner, seeing this, Julius’s expression grew more solemn.
His hand had already gripped the hilt of his sword.
That monster…
was a “living weapon.”
Unlike the Chaos Demon Beast that Helos had summoned in the forest, which was entirely made of mana, this monster was directly transformed from a living person.
Had that middle-aged man done it willingly, or was he forced?
Julius didn’t know.
But he knew that man was beyond saving.
His soul had been completely devoured, leaving only a shell driven by the instinct to kill.
If they didn’t stop him, everyone here would die.
Julius took a deep breath, ready to draw his sword and charge out.
But he glanced instinctively at the girl beside him, only to find that Helos was not showing any fear or panic at all.
She stood in the shadows.
Her delicate little face was expressionless.
There was no pity in her eyes, nor anger.
She was staring fixedly at the twisted man rampaging through the crowd.
The girl’s light purple eyes were now as cold as ice.
Only a kind of calm observation and scrutiny, as if she were examining an experiment subject.
“Helos?”
Julius was about to speak.
Suddenly, he felt his mind inexplicably waver for a moment.
It wasn’t dizziness or fatigue.
But rather, an illusion that the entire space of the world had been distorted by some invisible force in that instant.
Then, he saw a faint blue light flash without warning in Helos’s eyes.
The light was extremely faint, almost impossible to detect in the dim alley.
But Julius saw it clearly.
That light was just like the time in the forest when she was invaded by chaos.
That cold, lofty, all-disdaining blue.
But this time, when that blue light flashed, Julius did not sense any chaotic aura.
Similarly, he felt no fluctuation of mana.
It seemed to be a purer power, one that acted directly on the mental level.
It was Helos’s will.
Before Julius could figure out what was happening.
Not far away, the monster that had been crazily slaughtering, its claws raised to disembowel a young soldier…suddenly froze.
“Urgh… ah…”
A howl of ultimate agony squeezed out from the monster’s throat.
The sound was so piercing it made one’s hair stand on end.
The next second.
The unstoppable monster fell directly to its knees!
“Boom!”
Its knees slammed heavily into the ground, creating two deep craters.
It wasn’t injured.
No one had attacked it.
But it acted as if it were suffering an unbearable torture, its hands clutching its head.
In its blood-red eyes, the former brutality was instantly replaced by deep fear and confusion.
The wild power within its body also weakened sharply in that moment.
The swollen muscles even began to tremble unsteadily.
It was as if…
its brain had suddenly been struck by some invisible heavy blow?