Chapter 4: Day 4

Night came.

The girl, in the already dark forest, climbed up a tree and hid herself in the dim darkness.

She escaped from hell and until nightfall.

The girl wandered the forest like crazy.

The reason was simple.

To run away.

And to survive.

The first monster she met in the forest, a giant snake with two heads.
And the next monster she met, a beast that ate the two-headed snake.

Starting with those two monsters, the girl encountered a variety of monsters throughout the forest.
And ran away from those monsters.

Some were foxes with six tails.

Some were wolves in packs of dozens.

And some were something similar to an eagle, flapping huge wings.

Like that.

The girl encountered numerous monsters while wandering the forest and realized two things.

One was that this world was crazy.

And the other was.

“F*ck, I escaped from hell, only to find another hell waiting for me.”

Someone said.

There is no paradise at the end of the escape.

It was just like that.

This place she had escaped to, thinking it was hell, was definitely not a soft place like paradise.

Where in the world was this place?

Considering the place where all kinds of monsters were swarming.

And the strange hell… no, the place where she first opened her eyes.

“Is it a fantasy world?”

The girl muttered.

However, the girl couldn’t be sure of her thoughts.

In martial arts novels, it was often described that another world was created through formations that were cut off from the outside.

Besides, even if it wasn’t a fantasy world, there were many worlds where monsters roamed around.

Like that, the girl hid in a tree and waited for the night to pass.

Darkness was familiar.

Although she was familiar with ‘darkness’, not ‘night’, it wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t sleep for a day or two.

No, in her true heart.

“How can I sleep comfortably in a place like this?”

The girl’s gaze turned to the ground.

There, monsters different from the ones she had met during the day were roaming around.

Hundreds of centipedes intertwined like a ball and rolled on the ground.

Huge ants with exoskeletons that looked so hard at first glance, roamed around.

In some places, plants were eating insects.

In other places, insects were eating insects.

In other places, insects were eating plants.

If the daytime in the forest was the time of the ‘beast monsters’.

The night of the forest was the time of the ‘insect monsters’.

The girl, who was staring blankly at the insect monsters crawling on the ground, suddenly shed tears.

Sob, why.

“Why did I have to fall into this f*cking world?”

If only it were a more normal world.

The girl muttered, and burrowed deeper into the tree to escape the eyes of the insect monsters.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

Day turns into night.

After repeating that phenomenon a few times, the girl realized that a week had passed since she had survived in the forest.

Although hell… no, this whole world was hell, so there was no need to call that place hell.

Therefore, the girl decided to call the place where she first opened her eyes solitude.

There was no particular reason for calling it solitude.

Anyway, the girl became more devastated in just a week of living in the forest than in the three years she had lived in solitude.

The dress she was wearing at first was no longer even embarrassing to call a rag, barely covering her important parts.

Her hair, which reached down to her feet, was not only disheveled but also tangled and matted.

However, that didn’t mean that the forest was a more terrible place than solitude.

At least.

‘There’s plenty to eat,’

The girl muttered inwardly.

During the week she lived in the forest, the girl never once felt the terrible hunger or thirst she had felt in solitude.

Monsters fight with monsters.

The loser in that fight loses its life, and the winner eats the loser.

The girl carefully watched that, and ate the remains of the corpse left by the monster.

Besides, this black forest, being a forest, had streams and puddles of clean water here and there.

Honestly, if she could avoid the monsters of the forest well, this place was a paradise on earth that couldn’t be compared to solitude.

No, it was paradise on earth itself.

At least, if she could ‘well’ avoid the monsters.

‘Why the hell isn’t that bastard leaving?’

The girl’s expression hardened as she muttered inwardly.

Not far away, a huge porcupine was roaming around.

The girl knew that porcupine well.

And how terrible a monster that porcupine was.

The quills that covered that f*cking monster’s body were not ordinary quills.

They contained a deadly poison that could melt the bodies of terrible monsters with just a slight prick, and even more, those quills could be launched like modern bullets.

How surprised she was when she saw a monster that had been aiming for the porcupine at first, being pierced and melted by hundreds of quills that the porcupine had poured out.

A few fortunate things were that the porcupine monster had very poor eyesight.
It also had very poor hearing.
Instead, it had an overwhelming sense of smell that could distinguish smells from kilometers away.

With that sense of smell, poor eyesight and hearing were not significant drawbacks.

Then, how was the girl able to avoid the porcupine monster’s sense of smell?

The reason was very simple.

‘I didn’t know this was that monster’s territory.’

How unlucky could she get?

The girl was just moving to get out of the forest full of all kinds of monsters.

But then, she heard a ‘thump! thump!’ sound, and then the thick tree was smashed and that porcupine monster popped out.

The girl was startled by the porcupine monster, which was snorting and charging directly at her, and ran away, using her wits.

That was.

‘F*ck, the smell is amazing.’

Excrement that was presumed to have been excreted by that porcupine monster.

To put it simply, she hid in a pile of
poop as big as a mountain.

This terrible stench of
poop would instantly cover up her own scent.

‘Go away.
Please just go away.’

So, the girl, hiding her body in the
poop, prayed that the porcupine monster would go far away.

However, the porcupine monster was still lingering nearby, snorting.

‘It has a f*cking good sense of smell.’

It was probably because of her scent lingering in the air that it wasn’t leaving.

What should she do?

What should she do?

How the hell could she escape from that monster?

The girl, buried in
poop, racked her brain as much as possible.

Think.

Think think think think think.

There must be a way.

Please remember.
Just remember anything.

‘Ah, I’m f*cked.’

She couldn’t think of any way to escape from that monster.

Right now, that monster couldn’t find her because of the
poop smell covering her whole body.

If she got out of this
poop and tried to run away, the
poop smell would dissipate in an instant.

Then?

‘Then what then?
It’s over then.’

Because of the experience of missing her once, there was a high possibility that that monster would launch its f*cking quills if it found her again.

If she didn’t want to die.

If she didn’t want to face the terrible death of having her whole body melted by those f*cking quills, she had to find a way.

There must be a way.

Didn’t she get out of that goddamn solitude?

But.

‘How?’

No matter how much she thought.

No matter how much she worried, she couldn’t think of a way.

Getting out of solitude?

That was thanks to luck, where coincidences overlapped.

What was in front of her then was a human like her.

That human didn’t even think the girl would be there.

And the girl had a bone knife in her hand.

Besides, the rampage of the food insects, and so on.

A miraculous escape made of various luck.

That was what happened in solitude.

But what about now?

That monster recognized and acknowledged the girl’s existence.

The girl didn’t have any weapons in her hand.

Was she going to have to die buried in
poop like this?

Hope dwindled.

As if to fill the void of dwindling hope, despair raised its head.

At some point, the girl’s eyes were flowing with the murky light unique to humans who had given up on life.

“Hmm.
A Thousand Poison Hedgehog.
This is definitely the Golden Spirit Gate’s breeding ground.”

In front of the porcupine monster, an old man appeared.

Black martial arts uniform and black hair.

The old man, whose eyes were also pure black, looked unusual at first glance.
No, he looked dangerous.

Meanwhile, the porcupine monster roared fiercely at the suddenly appeared old man and raised all its quills.

“Hehe!
You have a f*cking temper.”

The moment the old man laughed at the porcupine monster, which showed fierce hostility.

Splash.

Huh?
What happened?

The girl made a blank expression.

With a simple hand gesture, the huge body of the porcupine monster turned into a handful of blood and disappeared.

A thick fog of blood settled on the ground.

In it, a small, shiny green bead floated.

The old man grabbed the green bead in the blood mist and said.

“By the way, child.
Why are you in the dirty
poop?”

He spoke in a gentle.
But somehow eerie voice, and his eyes met the girl’s.

At that moment, the girl felt fear rising from her spine and ran out of the
poop.

Instinct shouted.

That old man was dangerous.

That old man was not human like her.

Run away from that old man right now.

But.

“Child.
Why are you in the Golden Spirit Gate’s breeding ground?”

The old man, who appeared in the blink of an eye, wiggled his fingers, and the air in the atmosphere turned into a rope and wrapped around the girl’s neck.

“Gack!”

The girl, whose neck was held by an intangible rope, coughed and looked at the old man with frightened eyes.