I Am the God of Games

The White Reef Shores on the Valla Empire.

Kristina was walking within the walls of the pillbox.

The fortification which stood facing the Tegrono federation from across the Kakatino inland sea was a gate and watchtower of the Valla Empire. At the moment, its appearance resembled an impregnable prison, sinister, wet but exceedingly sturdy even though the interior had long since changed.

“Commander! We’ve searched around and confirmed thirteen corpses out of the fourteen guards assigned here. One is missing, and we are trying to confirm if he survived…” A soldier in the inspector regiment reported to Kristina then.

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“You don’t have to look. The last one must have been abducted by the invading monster.” The young lady said confidently, shaking her head.

“What!?” The soldier did a double take.

“The evidence is the trail of blood stretching from beside the bonfire out to the main gates,” Kristina added.

In fact, the blood that splattered over the brick floor inside the pillbox had already oxidized become pitch-black, although there were no other clues such as footprints aside from the irregular trail of blood.

While the others couldn’t observe the more subtle clues from the blood trail, Kristina was different. She was a Scepter of the Temple of Glory whose eyes were strengthened through divine grace, enabling her to see what normal people couldn’t.

And she could clearly pick out the traces of a certain monster’s movement in the blood trail.

Foremost, the creature used all its limbs to crawl just like a sea beast coming on land, and its limbs were incomplete at that as shown from the clumsiness of its crawl. But soon afterward, there was another exceedingly huge splatter of blood on the ground, and the creature stopped crawling and started to walk on two feet, its missing limbs seemingly restored!

That meant that the guardsman whose corpse wasn’t found was very likely eaten—even if the principle of the conservation of mass doesn’t exist here, most magical creatures that possess supernatural healing possess a stunning appetite, just as it was common for them to hasten their healing through feeding.

That was the main reason why humans couldn’t exist in peace alongside them: to most of those beasts, humans were weak but many and rich in protein. They were the best food source indeed! At the same time, Kristina completed her deduction in her head: from the looks of things, a monster had ambushed the pillbox, kill every soldier and ate one of them, before strutting into the Valla Empire.

It would definitely be not easy to slay it too, given how it had hunted and killed every guardsman without triggering any alarms. If a bounty was put on mercenary guilds, it would be at least worth ten Abbys.

And though the others would never be able to tell, Kristina could see that the last clue she could find the blood puddle was a human footprint. That indicates that after the culprit had eaten the guardsman, it very likely had assumed a human appearance.

If that was true, it would be troublesome because searching for a doppelganger amongst vast populations wouldn’t work at all without certain divine grace.

That was when another soldier from the inspection regiment entered the room and gave his report.

“Commander, we’ve found something at foot of the cliff.”

***

Kristina promptly followed the soldier down the cliffs to find what appeared to be a few fish lying there.

It was neither a sea mammal nor some oceanic behemoth, but in appearance alone, it was a sardine that was several thousand times bigger than normal.

However, it had already been dead for some time, with its belly being torn apart by brute strength. Its dark red and white innards were dangling out and the whole scene stank pungently, with humming flies and squirming maggots making it appear even more revolting.

It was fortunate that Kristina had firsthand witnessed the carnage of battlefields and wasn’t spooked by the disgusting scene, and she merely frowned.

Her eyes are telling her something once again —the fish had its bowels split from the inside.

It appeared that the monster that attacked the pillbox had been hiding inside the fish stomach to cross the dangerous Kakatino inland sea and eventually reach this side of the shores.

“Look, commander!” The inspector regiment soldier who was pinching his nose pointed at inside of the fish’s stomach then.

Kristina looked towards it to find the flesh within carved full of letters.

With a closer look, once could notice that it was a rather short word being inscribed over and over again.

“It should be old elven from the morphology… Luckily, it’s not high elven arcane text or there’s no deciphering it.” The soldier carefully copied the word while murmuring in awe.

“So, the text can be deciphered?” Kristina asked him.

“More or less. We did manage to get our hands on many records of old elven text thanks to the empire’s partnership with the dark elves.” The solider whipped out pocket-sized notebook and began to cross-reference with the information he gathered beforehand. “Ruentner, Hayero, Kachumouth, Mitrayati…”

“What does it mean?” Kristina asked a little impatiently.

“In human, it’s ‘elf’s, synchronized, genuine, nation.” The soldier translated rather choppily.

However, before Kristina could press him any further, she suddenly noticed that the long-dead sardine eyes twitching abnormally, and abruptly began to thrash around with its massive body. It slammed heavily into the inspector division soldier, who coughed out a mouthful of blood as the blow knocked him into the sea.

The smell of bleed immediately drew a swarm of sea beast into a feeding frenzy, tearing the soldier into a million pieces before he could swim.

He’s not going to make it.

“Zombification after it was killed? The changing is slow, but… damn it!”

Grimacing, Kristina waved, and a luminous silver staff appeared in her hand. “It seems that the monster that came to Valla this time is really troublesome…”

***

Meanwhile, outside Crookes.

Almost every Player couldn’t understand what happened-how did the Tunnel Eye Serpent which had been steamrolling into the city get bitten in two?

Still, from the Players’ perspective, it was clear that the Tunnel Eye Serpent’s HP bar was not emptied. After it was split in two down the middle, both sections were still twisting and turning.

Be that as it may, most of the Players’ eyes were no longer fixed on the Tunnel Eye Serpent. Instead, they were staring at the head of the gigantic beast poking out from the ground outside the city which was far more massive than the snake itself, and the undead elf who appeared out of nowhere and was now standing over the beast’s head.

Things were getting chaotic and confusing…