Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 33: When The River Turned Red
His senses, smell and sight both far beyond human, worked at full strength. In Lannor’s eyes, the whole world shifted color.
The corner of the wooden hut reeked of ghoul. In his vision, Mentos marked it in vivid red. That had to be where the monsters had entered, a burrow in the earth.
Studded leather gloves shifted through scraps of flesh. In his skull, each torn edge was analyzed.
“Fatal wound was a pierced heart. Half the heart’s been chewed by ghouls, but the cut itself remains. Sharp double-edged dagger ... decent quality. Interesting.”
The young man muttered to himself. Speaking helped him order his thoughts.
Trace Detection was still not good enough, but this was an investigation. Two thousand episodes of Conan Edogawa had not been watched for nothing.
“The angle of entry into the heart ... Mentos, same as I’m thinking?”
The intelligence in his head answered the murmur.
“Based on human model simulation, the dagger entered from the third rib on the left and angled upward into the heart. To ensure immediate death, the blade was also rotated approximately thirty degrees inside the body.”
“Ah.”
The young man raised a brow.
“Steady, accurate, and ruthless. A veteran.”
An inexperienced man, in his first fight, would breathe hard, shake at the wrist, and lose half his vision to panic. This technique showed not only a combat veteran, but a killer used to standing close and watching a victim die.
Lannor dug through the mess and found the victim’s shoes.
Thankfully, the three ghouls had not been hungry enough to chew tanned leather as well. Otherwise, even those would have been gone.
“Judging by shoe size ... victim was about one hundred seventy centimeters tall.”
To judge height, one did not look at the upper body. Most people’s torsos were much the same length. The legs were what created the difference.
After scraping together those details with difficulty, Lannor finally understood why they had been certain this was a “cannibalism case.”
The young man held a piece of upper arm bone. His fingers brushed over the pale surface.
“Tooth marks. Not ghoul teeth. Human.”
More than that, the killer had first cut away the skin from the victim’s upper arm, perhaps taking a large piece of flesh with it. Only then could a human jaw open wide enough to bite down on the arm and leave teeth marks deep enough to reach bone.
Before the ghouls had “worked” the corpse, that wound must have been far more horrifying.
“Beast.”
Lannor stated the conclusion calmly.
It was not an angry curse.
It was a fact.
In his own mind, the killer was no longer human.
There was nothing else of value. Lannor grabbed a handful of clean dirt from the floor and rubbed it over his hands, then rose from his crouch and headed outside.
By now, Phillip Strenger’s squad had gathered outside the hut after hearing the fight.
As captain and the highest-ranking man present, the burly Phillip was cursing at full volume.
“Did you fools crawl out of a nekker’s arse?”
When he cursed, no one in the squad dared meet his eyes, even though he was still rubbing his forehead from a hangover.
“The corpse! Our only evidence! Our clue! You left it here with no one watching it, and ghouls ate it? Been out of the army so long you’ve forgotten how to keep watch, have you?”
He paced around the men, his anger rising with every word.
They were old soldiers, recently returned from Temeria’s army in the war supporting the restoration of Cidaris’ throne, now serving a local lord back home.
And now, their assignment was about to collapse in their hands.
At that thought, Phillip suddenly seized one soldier by the armor at his collar and dragged him close.
“None of you wanted to spend the night beside a rotting corpse, eh? Then would you rather become the rotting corpse yourselves? Well? Speak!”
No one dared answer.
A higher rank could crush a man. An army rank crushed harder.
But even pupils sometimes resented a teacher’s scolding, let alone a pack of soldiers.
A timid voice slipped into the dead silence.
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