The Mimic Beast was, of course, a terrifying entity, much like an urban legend, but it had no ability to mesmerize or control people with just its voice.
So, the reason he couldn’t bring himself to move his feet right now was purely because of his own indecisiveness.
“Haa.”
Even the breath he inhaled felt scorching hot.
While he hesitated—neither running away nor advancing—the flames had already stretched out, blocking even his escape route.
The fire could not grow beyond a certain extent, flaring up and dying down repeatedly.
However, the witch persistently reignited it, gradually closing off the space.
No matter how quick Hans was, it was nearly impossible to break through in the brief openings.
But if he didn’t take that risk, he would end up as a well-roasted corpse.
Should he throw himself into the flames, or remain frozen in place and be consumed by the encroaching heat?
It was another impossible choice, just like when he had first fallen onto the hill of corpses—where neither option was the right one.
The witch’s puppet that had protected him, the monster saint who had once healed him—both were gone now.
They were probably dead.
Fortunately, there was no need to mourn their deaths.
They were monsters, after all.
Unfortunately, there was no time to mourn them, either.
He would be following soon enough.
He didn’t know whether humans and monsters met in the same hell, but—As his mind grew hazy from the heat, and as Hans was about to resign himself to his fate—Rustle.
Hans saw a part of the corpse pile twitch and shift.
The sound was too clear to be a mere mirage caused by the heat haze.
It was as if something was swimming through the sea of corpses, heading in a single direction—toward the very center of the spreading flames.
‘No way…?’
The thought struck him like lightning, and Hans dove into the pile of corpses.
He moved his limbs without rest, digging through the decaying bodies, crushing their brittle forms to make his way forward.
Until now, he had never seriously considered diving deep into this mound—it had been too unsettling, too overwhelming.
Though he called it a hill, it was more accurate to describe it as an ocean of corpses.
But if throwing himself into this hell meant adding one less body to it, then so be it.
By all logic, the moment a spark touched these dried-out remains, the fire should have spread across the entire hill in an instant.
Yet some invisible force—something beyond his understanding—was restraining the fire, keeping it from spreading any further.
That same restraint applied not just above, but below as well.
However, as soon as he escaped the heat, another danger found him.
No matter how brittle and easy to break these bodies were, they were still corpses.
When piled by the dozens, by the hundreds, their combined weight pressed down on him with crushing force.
Like being squeezed by deep-sea pressure, Hans found himself suffocating beneath the weight of the dried, crumbling corpses.
He couldn’t even open his eyes properly, afraid of the dust and bone fragments that would get in them.
Then, suddenly.
‘ …! ’
As he struggled through the corpse sea, Hans instinctively opened his eyes at the sensation of something grabbing him.
She was there.
Amidst the weathered, indistinguishable dead, one face alone remained vivid—alive.
From the void of the girl’s hollow eyes, crimson seeped out, dyeing the world of white decay.
“…M!”
The dust filled even his ears, making it impossible to hear properly.
He could only try to guess the words from the shape of her mouth.
Alje had grasped Hans by the wrist and began pulling him somewhere.
In a situation where he could make no rational judgments, Hans instinctively followed the flow she created.
So her injured legs had been a lie, after all.
The weight of the corpses could not hold down a body that surpassed human limits.
Each time she swung her arms, the corpses yielded and parted.
A tunnel opened, collapsed, and then was carved open again through sheer force.
The two of them, who had sunk to the bottom of the hill, slowly clawed their way upward.
Guided by an instinct that neither humans nor monsters could sense, but only the saint could feel.
Little by little, the heat seeped back in.
At some point, Alje stopped swimming through the corpses.
She pulled Hans closer.
In the midst of all these dry, lifeless remains, something warm and soft pressed against him.…?!
“What?”
“EL!”
With his mouth open, bits of corpse dust poured in, making proper speech impossible.
Alje opened and closed her mouth several times before, at last, releasing Hans’s wrist.
The warmth that had briefly connected them was severed.
And in the next moment, she vanished—diving back into the sea of corpses at a speed incomparable to when she had pulled him along.
Hans was left behind, buried among the dead.
But these were mere husks—drained of blood, devoid of decay, immune to corruption.
And now, having been lifted up by Alje, Hans found himself able to shake off the crushing corpse weight and move.
‘Up.’
There was no rational thought, no logical analysis, no suspicion toward the monster girl.
Drowning in this suffocating abyss, Hans obeyed the single command given to him without question.
Desperately flailing his limbs, grabbing at skulls, stepping on tentacles, breaking and shoving through the bodies as he clawed his way up.
And then—At some point, his body broke through the corpses and shot upward.
“…!”
The suffocating heat engulfed him.
He was now at the eye of the firestorm.
His reaction was instinctual.
The witch’s floating eye, spinning wildly in the air, ceaselessly spewing flames in every direction.
The moment it flinched upon seeing Hans suddenly emerge from below—Hans let out a monstrous roar, one more beastly than any monster’s, and lunged forward.
“Khaaaagh!”
His voice, hoarse from inhaling corpse dust, was a rasping growl.
But the hunter’s hand did not miss its mark.
He snatched the floating eye out of the air.
No matter how transcendental her power was, the witch’s body was no different from that of an ordinary human.
Of course, she was likely immune to her own magic.
As the searing heat surged from the eyeball in his grasp, and just as something was about to burst forth, Hans clenched his fist.
Squish.
With a sound so absurd it was almost laughable, the eyeball was crushed under his grip.
Unlike the other corpses in this place, it oozed fresh fluids and thick juices.
Fragments of the optic nerve twitched and writhed in his palm.
But there was no time to recoil in disgust.
“Ah…”
Because something far more excruciating was consuming him.
He was standing in the very center of the inferno that the witch’s eye had been wildly igniting.
The final burst of flames it had attempted to unleash had been extinguished along with its destruction.
However, the fire it had already spread continued to rage.
It would burn out soon—but in Hans’s current state, even that brief “soon” felt unbearably long.
His body wavered, on the verge of collapse—And then, once again, a hand reached out to grab him.
The hand that had pulled him up before was now dragging him down.
This time, the touch felt cool rather than warm.
In that short span of time, Hans’s body had become so heated from standing in the heart of the inferno.
Before the flames could spread to where they stood, Hans once again plunged beneath the shifting tide of husks.
What happened after that—his disoriented mind could barely recall.
He had already been half-unconscious from lack of air.
He was tossed around, dragged back and forth by the hand guiding him, smashing through the dried-out, hollowed corpses as they ascended, then descended, then—And finally, with one last surge -“Pwah.”
Cold air touched his cheeks.
No, it was probably lukewarm in reality, but to him, it felt incredibly refreshing.
He inhaled deeply—only to cough and splutter, the lingering dust of the corpses still clinging to his face.
He spat it out, sucked in another breath, and wiped the fine, powdery residue from his eyelids.
Then, he took in his surroundings.
A vast white hill stretched before him, with a massive black streak cutting across it.
He and the girl had emerged far from it, suddenly breaking the surface.
Embers still flickered and danced, faintly illuminating the dark underground cavern.
In that dim light, the dying crimson sparks painted the space with a fleeting beauty, a momentary eternal dance.
And beneath that flickering glow—Even as she failed to completely conceal the sharp protrusions on her form.
Even as her layered amber eyes gleamed with a color no human could possess.
With nothing but pure sincerity—With a worry and kindness so clean and vivid that no decayed soul in this labyrinth, Hans included, could ever dare to hold.
“Are you okay, mister?”
A girl was looking at him.