Chapter 39: Thorns and Black Serpents
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
The warden’s office sat right next to the third gate which was usually locked. Inside the office was a keycard that could open it. Russell already knew what was happening deep inside the Bunker. After hanging up the phone, he pulled out a pillbox and swallowed a large handful of assorted tablets.
When he took a sip of water, he choked and clutched his chest, coughing hard. Normally, whenever he coughed or took a fall, the guard stationed in the outer office would rush in to check on him. Today, there was only silence.
Someone had walked in — but it wasn’t a guard. It was a tall, reddish-brown, half-wolf.
Hayden had one clawed hand hooked around Driftwood’s neck, having slipped away from the prison block during the chaos. He moved faster than the guards, and unlike most monsters, he knew the layout of the Bunker well enough to make it to the warden’s office before anyone else.
Russell finally lifted his head from his coughing fit and recognized only Driftwood.
“Mr. Driftwood? And the wolf at your side — which one… no, which gentleman is he?”
“I’m Hayden,” the werewolf said, looming over him.
“Oh, right. The fur color matches.” Russell braced himself against the desk and motioned them over. “Come here. Look at this screen — this red signal in the system…”
“I’m not here to look at that.” Hayden moved closer while dragging Driftwood. “Hand over the keycard.”
Russell’s eyes widened. His gaunt face made the expression look almost like that of a little leaf monkey. “So you’re not here to protect me? You’re here to…escape?”
“No kidding.” Hayden kept advancing. “Give us the card, or I’ll find it myself.”
Russell patted his chest, indicating the keycard was in his suit pocket. “I wouldn’t recommend that. You won’t make it out.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I mean,” Russell clarified, “something’s coming from that direction. If you head for the gate now, you’ll meet it face-to-face.”
Only then did Hayden glance at the monitor. Dangerous inmates had tracking chips implanted in them. If one left the prison block, the terminal in the warden’s office would flash a warning. Red signals marked inmates; green ones were the werewolf guards. On the screen, several guards were moving toward the office, but near the third gate — just outside — two red signals glowed.
“What’d you do to the guard outside?” Russell asked.
“He should still be alive.”
Russell nodded. “Oh, then please drag him in here, will you? I’d hate for the monster to make a meal out of him.”
“You’ve seen it?” Hayden asked, a flicker of tension in his voice he tried to hide.
Russell tapped a few keys, switching the display. The feed shifted to a live camera — normally handled from the monitoring room, but that place was silent now.
On screen, something halfway between beast and insect was tearing into a corpse. There were two of them — one similar to the creature Hayden had faced in the dining hall, the other even larger, its entire body slick with blood. It lifted its head toward the camera, revealing the face of Wizard.
Hayden’s stomach turned. Driftwood swayed on his feet, staring at the screen and then at his own hands, furious at his own helplessness.
“Stay here,” Hayden told him, then dashed out, slinging the unconscious guard over his shoulder before returning.
Russell pointed at the monitor again. “One monster’s staying by the gate. The other is coming here. Wizard himself is on his way.”
“Why?” Hayden’s eyes fixed on the nearing red dot. “If he wants to escape, he could just grab a guard’s keycard—”
“You didn’t just grab a guard’s keycard either,” Russell interrupted as he sat back in his chair.
“That’s because I don’t want to waste energy fighting a werewolf!”
Russell swallowed a few more pills, careful this time not to choke. He exhaled, resting his head in one hand. “You figured robbing me would be easier, right? But Wizard’s different. He doesn’t want the card. He left a monster at the gate so I wouldn’t get away. He wants to kill me.”
Hayden frowned. Inmates hating the warden was common enough, but compared to freedom, killing the warden usually wasn’t worth the trouble.
He thought back — how Wizard had always collected strange materials, conducting foul, stinking experiments on rats and even on his own body. Recently he’d demanded a mothman’s feather, but most werewolves found a mothman’s gaze unsettling. Hayden had refused to help and had even punched him over it.
Could it be that Wizard’s real goal from the start had been to kill the warden? That he’d even gone so far as to turn himself into a monster just for that?
“He hates me,” Russell said, pulling open a drawer and dumping a pile of packets and jars onto the desk. “I broke his leg, put him in prison — of course he hates me. And he’s not that strong. In a straight spell duel, he’d lose to me. My guess? He’s been trying to transform into a stronger species so he can kill me.”
Hayden glanced at Driftwood. He had once hated him with the same intensity. Since his transformation, Hayden towered over the young hunter, who now looked fragile, almost pitiful. Hayden had imagined countless times seeing him humiliated and in pain. Strangely, now he felt none of that.
“Luckily, our people have arrived as well,” Russell said, pointing at several green dots on the screen. “You two — come here and help me. I’m going to set up a magical trap.”
Driftwood looked at him coldly. “Mr. Russell. If you keep using sorcery, you might die.”
“Thanks for the concern. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.” Russell nodded in genuine gratitude, then rolled up his sleeve. He wrapped a rubber tube around his arm, picked up a needle with his right hand, and, without hesitation, drove it into his flesh.
The monster Wizard had become twice the size of the other monsters. Not only could it speak and retain memories, but a pair of human arms jutted from in front of its beastlike forelimbs. It crouched low, stalking toward the warden’s office door.
Two werewolves burst from a side room, slamming into the monster and biting down hard. The creature quickly threw them off, its fur bristling into barbed spikes. Its claws dug deep into the floor, and those grotesque human arms began moving in twisted, deliberate gestures.
“Stop him! He’s casting a spell!” Coraci shouted. Human guards opened fire, while the werewolf guards seized the moment to attack again.
John took advantage of the werewolves’ bulk, darting into their blind spots before suddenly revealing himself. His hardened nails pierced the base of the creature’s forelimb, slicing open the artery there. Vampires could locate major blood vessels by their pulse alone, even in creatures they had never seen before. Blood sprayed high into the air. The monster let out a hoarse roar, its wings beating furiously as it slammed itself — along with the werewolves clinging to it — straight into a distant wall.
One werewolf bit its neck and refused to let go. The monster bit back, and from its jaws rose a thick, red-black mist. In midair, the mist took the form of thorned vines, writhing as though alive, multiplying rapidly.
The other guards and John tried to aid the trapped werewolf, but the living thorns barred their way, their sharp points forcing them back.
Coraci was no fighter, and the spells he knew were hardly suited for combat. He decided to help in another way, edging toward the warden’s office to set up a protective enchantment from inside.
The door opened on its own. A werewolf’s claw reached out, yanked him inside.
The office was a scene from a nightmare.
On the desk sat a crystal bowl carved with demonic incantations. Inside, black blood bubbled, giving off a foul stench. On the reddish-brown werewolf’s left shoulder was a raw, bloody wound where a chunk of flesh had been cut away — currently boiling in the black blood. The wound itself was already knitting together.
Russell, looking exhausted, wiped his face with one hand before turning around. He held a small knife in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other; gripped in the pliers was a sharp fang.
Driftwood sat slumped in the warden’s wide armchair, staring blankly at the ceiling. Judging by the tools, the tooth must have been his.
“Did I accidentally stumble into Hell?” Coraci muttered, already half-turning to retreat.
“Sorry, I know it’s not a pleasant sight,” Russell said, tossing the tooth into the bubbling black liquid. A puff of black smoke rose from the bowl. “Coraci — long story short — I need a bit of your soul.”
“My soul?” Coraci didn’t understand.
Russell walked over and placed a hand on Coraci’s head. “It might be uncomfortable, so stand steady. I’m going to take a bit of your life force. You’ll be fine, but afterward you might feel weak and feverish — kind of like your body’s immune reaction after a flu shot.”
At first, Coraci almost cried out. A sharp, stabbing pain — like an awl thrust into his forehead — flashed through him, making his knees buckle. The hand on his head was frighteningly strong, pinning him against the door.
It wasn’t Russell’s physical strength; his arm muscles were relaxed, completely at ease.
The pain passed in an instant, leaving only weakness behind. Coraci narrowed his eyes. In his Eyes of Truth’s vision, Russell was no longer the frail, thin middle-aged man he had appeared to be. Black serpents coiled around his limbs, slid across his face, and slithered from his arms into Coraci’s head before flowing back into Russell.
Hayden and Driftwood couldn’t see any of it. In his normal state, Russell didn’t reveal such a terrifying side.
Coraci could even make out the runes etched into Russell’s pupils — arcane letters twining across his irises, turning slowly, steadily, like a wheel.
When Russell lifted his palm, Coraci collapsed onto the floor.
It was a good thing he had fallen — because in the very next second, the upper half of the door was torn open with a deafening crack. The monster that had once been Wizard screeched as it lunged inside.
Several of its major arteries had already been severed. John had a grip on its wings and was dragged in along with it. As it hit the ground, the monster rolled, but John leapt away with feline agility, scooping Coraci into his arms and pulling him to a safer distance from the monster.
With another thunderous crash, the werewolf that had been chasing it burst through, smashing what remained of the door. The thorny vines still hunted them, snapping and lashing so viciously that no one could get close to the monster itself.
Blood dripped from the creature’s mouth, and its head turned at an unnatural angle. “I could never make up my mind. I always…”
The thing could speak, even in its warped form, its words broken by a harsh, rattling chuckle. “I finally have my chance. I will never forgive you — never…”
Russell sighed deeply. The crystal vessel in his hand was now empty — the last of the black liquid already swallowed.
“I was the one who led you into the darkness. I’m sorry, Walter.”
The beast’s claws dug into the floor tiles. At the sound of that name — Walter — it gave a howl that no human could ever produce.
“Traitor! Butcher!” Its human arms swung, and more thorns erupted, lashing out in every direction. They writhed like the tentacles of some cephalopod, forcing the werewolves into a desperate defense just to avoid injury, with no hope of counterattack.
John darted about the ruined office with Coraci in his arms, dodging frantically. He heard Russell shout over the chaos, “Sorry! Watch yourselves — I can’t protect you and fight at the same time!”
The thorns couldn’t touch Russell at all. They couldn’t even get close. Black serpents poured from his body, tearing apart anything that came within reach. Step by step, he advanced on the monster, the snakes chewing their way through the thorny barrier.
The creature didn’t retreat. Instead, it lunged forward in a final, desperate gamble, trying to seize Russell with its massive frame.
The snakes multiplied, doubling in number with every passing second. The monster didn’t flinch, letting them tear at its flesh as it stubbornly closed the distance and clamped a clawed hand around Russell’s throat.
It looked savage, but in truth, it no longer had much strength left.
“Why did you do it…” Its voice was thick with blood, each word bubbling in its throat. “Why betray us… Teacher?”
By then, Russell’s serpents filled the room, spilling through the doorframe and ventilation grates, slithering outward into the rest of the building.
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