“Bawk!”
“Caw!”
“Squawk squawk!”
The forest erupted in chaos, all kinds of calls mixing into a din.
Feathers flew through the air, and anyone would think a poultry market had opened here.
Although it sounded quite festive, Xi Ya’s situation was far from optimistic.
He was covered in scratches and wounds from those blood fowl.
‘How are there still so many?’
Xi Ya had lost count of how many blood fowl he had burned to death, but the number surrounding him showed no sign of decreasing.
To make matters worse, it wasn’t just the village poultry here; there were also many infected wild birds.
Those wild birds were very troublesome.
They were much faster than the poultry, and their smaller bodies made Fireball difficult to land.
Their attacks were also absurdly fast, making them hard to dodge.
To save mana, Xi Ya didn’t dare use Heal to fully close his wounds, only releasing Light Mana on them to prevent infection.
But even so, his wounds would periodically reopen, causing him so much pain that he had no strength to dodge subsequent attacks, leading to more injuries and a vicious cycle.
The most critical were the two deep scratch marks on his back, inflicted by a goose, which nearly made him pass out from pain.
So he was essentially trading his own wounds for their lives.
‘Tch, damn it. He couldn’t use Melody’s power.’
Xi Ya clicked his tongue inwardly.
He had thought that even his main body could use the unsealed Demon God Power, but when he opened his panel just now, he found no such option.
He puzzled over it for a while before realizing that Melody was sealed inside the Holy Sword, and the weapon he currently held was the Holy Staff.
There was no way the weapon panel would have that.
‘Damn!’
A blood bird swooped in from the side and above.
Xi Ya narrowly dodged, using the last of his mana to cast a Fireball and burn it to death.
Finally, he had lasted until his mana ran out.
Xi Ya glanced at his panel.
He had now leveled up to 7.
He knew he was being greedy—never transforming, risking his life to farm experience.
But he had a premonition that if he didn’t snatch this experience today, he might regret it deeply at some point in the future.
The blood fowl stopped their attack.
They folded their wings and landed on the ground and branches, encircling him tightly.
In the darkness, their dark red eyes were like clusters of ghost fire, greedily staring at this soon-to-be-eaten piece of meat.
Xi Ya looked around at them.
He knew that these blood fowl were about to swarm him and devour him completely.
“Cheep cheep cheep cheep!”
After the chirp, the blood fowl received the signal.
They flapped their wings and all pounced at him at once.
Xi Ya’s lips curled slightly.
“Heh heh, come on, all of you.”
“Take this Flashbang!”
“Castillo.”
The next second, a blinding white light burst forth from among the blood fowl, instantly engulfing everything around and illuminating the entire night sky.
“Gwaa!”
“Caw!”
The blood fowl let out agonized cries, falling from the air one by one like puppets with cut strings.
The intense Holy Light was devastating to these blood beasts.
Many blood fowl died on the spot, their bodies hissing and emitting white smoke.
[EXP +0.1] × n
The other surviving blood fowl were not much better off.
Their eyes had been completely blinded by the Holy Light, and they flapped their wings, careening around like headless flies.
The scene was even more chaotic than before.
Now it really had become a poultry market.
As the white light faded, Dolores did not take time to admire the chaos.
She drew her sword and pursued the scattering blood fowl.
Wherever her blade passed, blood fowl fell to the ground.
The blood fowl’s cries gradually thinned out, and the forest returned to silence.
Dolores flicked the blood off her sword, ready to sheathe it, when her peripheral vision caught a blood chicken running away.
‘A fish that escaped the net?’
She grabbed her sword and chased after it.
That blood chicken’s eyes were still glowing red, as if it hadn’t been blinded by the Holy Light.
But it seemed injured, running not very fast.
Dolores caught up to it in a few steps, ready to cut it down with one swing.
But the blood chicken did not dodge.
It didn’t even change direction, still running straight ahead.
‘Hm?’
Dolores’s sword hovered in the air, not yet falling.
Although the blood fowl were infected, they still had an instinct to avoid danger.
But this chicken showed no intention of dodging at all.
‘That’s not right.’
It didn’t seem to be fleeing; rather, it was running steadily toward a certain direction.
‘Did the vampire send it to deliberately lure me to its lair? Very likely a trap.’
‘Even if it’s a trap, what does it matter? I was planning to find the vampire anyway. The forest is huge, and I was worried about not finding it.’
Dolores sheathed her sword and followed the blood chicken at a moderate distance, running deeper into the forest.
As she went deeper, the smell of blood in the air grew heavier, so thick it was as if she had entered a blood pool.
‘I can’t take this. How much further?’
Dolores covered her mouth and nose with one hand, but the bloody smell still seeped through her fingers, straight into her nostrils.
She had no choice but to pull up her sleeve and completely block her nose.
The blood chicken passed through a thicket of dead wood and suddenly stopped.
Dolores immediately ducked behind a dead tree and slowly peeked out.
At the end of the thicket was a pitch-black cave entrance, half-hidden by weeds and dead branches.
If you didn’t look carefully, you would never notice it.
‘Is this the vampire’s lair?’
“Cluck~ cluck~”
The blood chicken called out a few times at the cave entrance, as if summoning someone inside.
Dolores wanted to wait for the vampire to show itself, but after waiting for a while, there was no movement except for the blood chicken’s calls.
‘Still not coming out? Patient, aren’t you.’
Another ten-odd minutes passed, and still no movement from the cave.
Even the blood chicken stopped calling, tilting its head and staring inside, as if it too was puzzled by the lack of response.
‘Where is he?’
Dolores found it very strange.
Logically, shouldn’t the mastermind show himself once he sees the bait taken?
Could this vampire also be a student of the cautious hero, refusing to come out until the target is completely in the trap?
‘Fine, fine, fine. You like to waste time? Then I’ll waste time with you.’
***
In the end, Dolores couldn’t stand the bloody smell anymore.
She strongly suspected that the vampire might have already left long ago, and she was here confronting empty air.
‘Can’t wait any longer. Since the enemy won’t move, I’ll move first.’
Dolores released her perception to scan the area around the cave entrance and found nothing unusual.
‘Oh no, it seems I really was confronting empty air.’
Dolores came out from behind the tree and approached the cave entrance, intending to probe inside.
But the cave gave her a strange feeling, as if there was something unclean inside.
‘What is all this? There seems to be a stone platform inside, and a magic circle drawn on it?’
Dolores retracted her perception, deciding it was better not to enter recklessly.
That magic circle might be a trap.
‘Headache. With a trap, how should I enter?’
Dolores glanced at the blood chicken at the cave entrance.
It was still standing there, occasionally letting out a couple of clucks.
‘I’ve got it!’
The blood chicken was still staring into the cave, unaware of the danger approaching it.
A shadow fell over it.
Sensing something wrong, it turned around and saw a white-haired woman standing behind it, her white-stockinged leg raised high, kicking toward it.
“Bawk!!!”
The blood chicken flew into the cave like a ball.