Chapter 40: Each One’s Answer
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
The black snakes were everywhere, obscuring vision. Their hissing filled the space with a sound that made the hair on every neck stand on end. The werewolves could see them pressed against their bodies, yet felt nothing — as if the snakes existed and didn’t exist at the same time.
“Teacher… answer me…” the warped voice repeated again and again.
A faint chewing sound rose from the center of the room. Everyone could picture exactly what that meant.
The hands choking Russell grew weaker until they slipped away and fell to the floor. Russell’s lips moved — he might have wanted to say something — but maintaining the killing magic had drained him to the point he could barely stand, much less speak. Looking into the face of his former student, he reached out and gently touched his head.
In that instant, Russell heard the last thread of thought in the young man’s mind: We’ll all be waiting for you in Hell.
Wizard whimpered a few times, then went silent. He never got his answer.
The black snakes coiled together, some as thick as an anaconda, others thinner than a finger. They flooded every corner of the Bunker, covering everything they encountered. Guards and prisoners panicked at first, then quickly realized the snakes had no physical presence — phantoms, nothing more.
John held Coraci close, afraid the snakes might still pose some hidden danger. Coraci’s breathing was slow. Slower than normal for a human. John didn’t know what Coraci had just endured and could only pray he was all right.
After nearly five minutes, the snakes began to vanish, slithering back toward the third gate, shrinking away into Russell’s skin.
The guards stared in shock. Russell stood motionless, like his soul had been pulled from his body. Before him lay a twisted skeleton that belonged to no known creature — only the skull hinted at human origin. Every scrap of flesh had been stripped away, the bones pitted with tiny bite marks.
“Warden…?” one guard called, edging closer.
Russell slowly came back to himself. He stared at the remains, then turned to John and Coraci. Coraci had regained consciousness but still looked dazed. Lifting his head from John’s arms, he saw Russell stumbling toward them in confusion.
Russell frowned, lips trembling. “Your soul… is too strong…”
Before he could finish, he collapsed.
The guards shifted back into human form, ignoring the problem of torn clothing as they rushed to check on their warden. Coraci knelt beside him, fingers on Russell’s pulse.
“Call the emergency number!” he ordered, though he wasn’t sure if calls could even be made from inside a monster prison. “Mr. Russell’s barely hanging on!”
The black snakes had devoured every monster in the room. Many had once been human — some even innocent guards. But the corruption of sorcery was irreversible; death was their only release.
The guards murmured among themselves. Everyone knew Russell was a wizard, but none had realized the extent of his power — or the cost.
And the cost had been steep. The spell had nearly killed him. Fortunately, Russell had sensed trouble early enough to place a call for help (he had just hung up when Hayden stormed in with Driftwood as his hostage). Reinforcements were already on the way.
The monsters were gone, but Hayden and Driftwood were entirely another headache.
While no one was looking, Hayden snatched the keycard from Russell. The guards caught him trying to make a break for it and, despite their exhaustion, cornered him in the office.
Coraci slipped away with Russell’s unconscious body, while John stayed with the werewolf guards to block Hayden.
Werewolf transformations weren’t as convenient as those of shapeshifters or bloodkin. Like Clade dogs, their beast forms tore through clothing, leaving them…less than presentable afterward.
Now, in human form again, Hayden was a completely naked, bearded giant with a knife at Driftwood’s throat, the hunter’s hands twisted behind him. Facing him were several equally unclothed guards — and one very fully dressed John.
“Move, or I’ll kill him,” Hayden growled. The knife was one he had just pulled from a drawer. “His hands are useless; he can’t fight back. Killing him would be easy.”
“Even if you got out, you’d run straight into the reinforcements. And they’re hunters. Don’t waste your effort,” one guard warned.
Driftwood tilted his head in that unreadable way of his. Then he sighed, pressed his lips together, inhaled slowly, and closed his eyes for a beat before reopening them.
The guards recognized the look — a hunter’s silent signal: Watch for my cue.
They didn’t know what Driftwood planned, or whether he might want to escape himself.
“Hayden.” Driftwood suddenly turned toward the werewolf pressed up against him.
The sharp knife nicked his neck, leaving a shallow cut. Hayden flinched, instinctively easing the blade aside.
Now that Driftwood was bloodkin, the wound was nothing.
The next instant left everyone dumbfounded — especially Hayden. Driftwood twisted in his grip and kissed him full on the mouth. Hayden froze, rigid as if spellbound.
Seizing the opportunity, the guards surged forward, tackling him to the floor and wrenching the knife away. The human guards, who had just arrived, clamped an anti-wolf-transformation collar around his neck, locking it with a code.
As they cuffed him and hauled him upright, Hayden shot Driftwood a murderous glare. “Fine. You just wait! You’re a prisoner too. I’ll make you wish you were dead!”
“Suit yourself. I have my ways,” Driftwood said with a raised brow. “Even crippled, or even turned into something disgusting, I’ll still be a hunter. Remember — this is the second time I’ve put you in prison.”
The jab at “something disgusting” was clearly aimed at bloodkin, making John shrug helplessly. The werewolf guards dragged Hayden away, still cursing, while Driftwood allowed the human guards to escort him without fuss.
One by one, the heavy gates to the Bunker opened from the outside. The arriving hunters located the warden’s office and carried the unconscious Russell out for treatment.
John wanted Coraci to rest, but Coraci insisted on searching for the mothman — even if it was just the body.
“You really care about her,” John said, trailing after him.
Coraci stopped, a sudden realization dawning on his face. He turned back. “John… are you actually jealous?”
“What? Me?”
“When you were affected by the smoke, you asked what made you different from other creatures in my eyes. I suddenly wonder — was it because you saw me taking care of her all this time, so you thought…one of the prisoners here had stolen me away?”
John waved his hand in mock lightness. “No! I’m not some little schoolgirl!”
“In her middle age, she used to attack campers frequently,” Coraci said. “She’d rob them, and drove many into madness. Her sentence is long — in human terms, it would be an unimaginably long time. Have you ever seen The Shawshank Redemption? There was an old man in it who’d been locked away his whole life, completely cut off from the world. She’s like that. In a few more years, she’ll be released, and in her twilight years she’ll still have more than seventy years ahead of her…”
“Wait — seventy years?!” John was stunned. “That’s almost the same as a human lifespan!”
“That’s right. A mothman’s maximum lifespan is nearly five hundred years. She was over four hundred when she was captured, and she’s been shuffled among various secret facilities ever since. Only in recent years was she transferred to the Bunker. I help her because she’s physically frail. If it were Mr. Russell in her place, I’d care for him too. John, everything I said in the storage room was true. You’re not my rescue target — you’re…”
“I get it, I get it…” John cut him off awkwardly.
When he’d been jittery from the smoke, Coraci had made him feel safe. Now, sober, hearing it again would be as embarrassing as stripping naked in public.
And as it happened, there were indeed a bunch of naked werewolf guards nearby, picking their clothes up off the floor.
Coraci suddenly thought of something. “Oh — what about your suitor, Volvo?”
John only just realized he hadn’t seen Volvo at all.
“First of all, he’s not my suitor,” John corrected quickly, “and don’t make that kind of embarrassing joke.”
“You think you’re just a rescue case for the Association, but I have similar questions,” Coraci said as he walked ahead, his face hidden from John. “For example — what makes me different from an ordinary exorcist? To someone like you, a dark-born creature, wouldn’t another bloodkin — or even a werewolf — make a better friend than a human?”
“Coraci!” John could tell Coraci was teasing from the lightness in his voice, like he was doing it on purpose. “You know how I feel — don’t make fun of me. I know I was pathetic just now, like some kid scared his mom’s going to remarry—”
He suddenly realized how bad that analogy sounded and shut his mouth. After a moment, he tried again. “I mean, the teeth Volvo gave me weren’t meant like that. Though I really don’t understand werewolf customs. He’s made a lot of tooth necklaces. Besides Cleave, there was also Pelor the Holy Father…”
“I know. And Sigil, Flame Strike, Improved Initiative, Undeath to Death…”
“How do you know that?” John slowed his steps, surprised. “You even know some I’ve never seen!”
Coraci glanced around. “Haven’t you noticed? They’re everywhere.”
The werewolf guards, still gathering their belongings, greeted them cheerfully and went back to work. Scattered among torn clothes and misshapen shoes were plenty of wolf fang necklaces — definitely not their own teeth, since nearly all of them were carved with terms from Dungeons & Dragons.
John couldn’t help but be impressed by the Guard Captain’s engraving hobby. He caught up with Coraci. “Coraci, this at least proves he’s not pledging allegiance to the chieftain or getting engaged…”
He nearly ran straight into Coraci when the man stopped suddenly at the corner.
Coraci made a gesture to be silent and pointed around the bend.
John peeked out — and saw a scene straight out of a movie.
The corridor was wrecked from the fighting earlier, the floor littered with broken weapons and the walls pocked with bullet holes. Most of the lights were out — only one still glowed.
Under that lone light, Guard Captain Volvo, bare-chested and still not dressed, knelt on one knee, cradling a small, pale foot. The foot extended from beneath a blood-stained white robe, its owner seated atop a cluttered utility cart.
The sole of her foot was cut by shards of glass, and Volvo was tending to it. He looked up at her with a smile, and the “girl” returned it sweetly.
The angelic wings were down to one; blood stained her body, making her skin and feathers look even paler by contrast. Her injuries had been given emergency treatment — bandages wrapped around her frail frame — making her look both fragile…and beautiful.
When she smiled, only her mouth moved; her eyes remained lifeless. Of course, those “eyes” weren’t real — they weren’t even part of her head.
“Thank you…” The mothman’s collarbone and upper chest flushed slightly red — because that was her real face.
“You’re welcome. Does it still hurt?” Volvo finished bandaging her foot and stood to inspect her wing.
“I’m fine now. Really — thank you. You and Mr. Coraci have been so good to me, I…I don’t deserve it.” Her voice trembled with the hint of tears.
“This isn’t your fault. You’re a victim. Wizard was cruel beyond belief…to do this to you.” Volvo’s face tightened in pain as he looked at her frail body and her single wing.
The mothman’s voice shook. “They turned into monsters. And one of them ate my wing. He grew bigger and fiercer than the others… They dragged me around for so long, then threw me aside — threw me to other monsters. I thought I would die there…but you came.”
“It’s over. You’re safe now.”
Volvo hesitated, then gently drew her into his arms.
John and Coraci exchanged wide-eyed looks, full of unspoken amazement.
“Later, Coraci will be leaving. You can rest assured — after he’s gone, I’ll keep taking care of you.” Volvo cradled the mothman gently in his arms, careful not to brush the injury on her back.
“Guard Captain…” The mothman’s voice was timid. “I…I still don’t know your name.”
“Call me Volvo. Uh — though, normally, it’s better to call me Guard Captain… Oh, right. I have something for you — a necklace made from a wolf’s tooth I lost myself…”
Like some chivalrous knight from the old stories, Volvo carried her all the way back to her cell and presented her with a fang pendant carved with the words Astral Apostle.
“You think Volvo knows she’s a mothman?” John whispered.
“Of course he knows. He’s a guard here,” Coraci replied.
“Then… does he know her ‘head’ is a mimicry and her real eyes are those ruby-like things on her shoulders?”
“I think he does.” Coraci sounded just as baffled. “Didn’t you notice? When he knelt earlier, his gaze wasn’t fixed on her face — it was aimed around her neck. He was…looking directly into her eyes.”
“I thought werewolves feared making direct eye contact with mothmen!”
“Well, maybe there are exceptions. Or maybe…because Volvo saved her, she decided to truly speak with him for the first time. Honestly? I can’t explain it either.”
Coraci rolled his shoulders, clearly ready to head back to the dorms now that the mothman had been found. “John, after seeing that scene, are you finally done worrying she’ll steal me away?”
“Why are you still bringing that up?”
If John had been human, he would’ve been red in the face. Instead, he shot back, “Then you can relax too, right? No more worrying about me being pledged loyalty to — or proposed to — by a werewolf?”
Coraci didn’t answer — he just kept grinning to himself. The expression was contagious, and John found himself grinning back.
“Coraci,” John said, “everything was resolved because of Mr. Russell… So why do I feel like I accomplished something?”
“No idea. I also feel the same way.”
Just like Volvo’s hesitation with the mothman earlier, John paused for a moment before reaching out to put an arm around Coraci’s shoulders and give him a couple of firm pats.
Coraci returned the gesture, and together — like two young athletes after a victorious game — they walked on, weaving through the crowds of werewolves still picking up their shredded clothes from the floor.
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