Chapter 47: Call Me Orochimaru

As we continued along the stone-paved path, I could hear Cecilia’s small footsteps behind me. Because of the wound in my left shoulder, I carried the bat with only my right hand, occasionally dragging its spiked end across the ice.

Umbrella had already repaired the damaged section of the armor, but the wound underneath still hadn’t healed. White Serpent’s effect was slowly reducing the pain, but the moment I tried to raise my left arm to shoulder height, a sharp ache spread through my muscles.

After a while, I noticed that the footsteps behind me had become uneven.

When I looked back, I saw Cecilia trying to walk with only one slipper. She grimaced every time her bare foot touched the ice, but she continued following me without complaining so she wouldn’t fall behind.

"Stop."

Cecilia froze in place with a worried look.

"Did you see something, Sir Guardian?"

"No, I saw your foot. If you keep walking like that, your toes will freeze before we find the Nexus Node."

"I couldn’t find my other slipper."

"I can see that..."

Sighing, I knelt in front of her. When I touched her bare foot with my right hand, I realized that her skin was even colder than I had expected.

I focused on Umbrella. The black substance separated from my armor and flowed toward Cecilia’s foot, forming a simple shoe within seconds.

The girl’s eyes widened as she examined the black shoe on her foot.

"Is this part of your Nexus too?"

"Sort of."

"What’s your Nexus called?" she asked, her eyes shining with curiosity.

Since I had no reasonable answer to that question, I remained silent for several seconds.

"Black stuff that changes shape."

The girl tilted her head.

"That’s kind of a long name."

"That isn’t the name of my ability. It’s a description."

"What’s its real name?"

"You ask too many questions."

I stood and started walking again.

"Sir Guardian, what’s your name?"

I opened my mouth to tell her, but immediately changed my mind.

If I managed to get this child out of here alive, she would tell her family, the real Guardians, and probably the authorities about the person she had met. Having her talk about a young man named Noctis who wore black armor and could shape his weapon however he wanted might cause new problems for me.

I didn’t want people learning about my abilities while I was still weak. Especially since Noctis had been cast out by the Evernight family for not having a Nexus. If he suddenly gained powers like these, people would start asking questions I couldn’t answer.

There was no way I could explain how I had these abilities without possessing a Nexus.

I needed an alias.

"What am I supposed to say...?"

I could choose a name connected to Umbrella or White Serpent.

After thinking for a few seconds, only one name came to mind.

Orochimaru.

He was a character from an anime I had watched in my previous life. He was a little psychotic and extremely weird, but I also thought he was the coolest character in the series.

Since his appearance and abilities matched White Serpent quite well, using his name seemed like a reasonable choice.

Then again... maybe all of that was just an excuse.

The truth was, I wanted someone to call me Orochimaru.

"Orochimaru," I said confidently, expecting at least a little admiration.

The girl frowned.

"Oromaru?"

"Orochimaru!"

"Ochamaru."

I gritted my teeth.

"You can keep calling me Sir Guardian if you want."

The girl’s face immediately brightened again.

"Okay, Sir Guardian!"

I sighed.

After walking in silence for a while, we reached a fork in the road. The path on the right disappeared between the dense trees, while the one on the left continued toward an area filled with ruined stone buildings.

I still had no idea which one I should choose.

Although I was mostly certain Cecilia was human, I hadn’t forgotten the trick the first creature had used. Because of that, I stopped at the fork and decided to ask her a few more questions.

"Do you know where your parents are?"

The girl’s cheerful expression disappeared, and she innocently shook her head.

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"I was in bed. I woke up because it was really cold, but one of the walls in my room was gone." The girl wrapped both arms around herself and lowered her eyes. "When I went out into the hallway, our house was gone too. Everything had turned into trees and stone."

"What did you do after that?"

"I called for my mom, but she didn’t answer. When I heard footsteps, I hid between the broken walls."

"What was it?"

"I didn’t see it. I only heard it crying."

The voice of the little girl carrying the teddy bear came back to me.

Cecilia had probably encountered one of the same creatures, but it hadn’t noticed her because she was hiding. If I had found her a few minutes later, the monsters disguised as the elderly couple might have reached her.

That thought bothered me more than the wound in my shoulder.

"Don’t leave my side from now on," I said. "No matter what you hear, you won’t go anywhere without my permission."

The girl immediately nodded.

"Okay."

"If someone I don’t know calls out to you, don’t answer."

"Okay."

"Even if they look like your mother or father, don’t go near them without my permission."

The girl didn’t answer this time.

When I saw the look on her face, I realized how harsh my words must have sounded to a child. She was hoping to find her mother, and I was telling her that anyone who looked like her could be a monster.

Still, hiding the truth wouldn’t protect her.

"The things I killed earlier weren’t human," I said, softening my voice a little. "They can look human, but they can’t speak properly. If we really find your mother, we’ll ask her a few questions to make sure."

After hesitating, the girl nodded.

"My mom doesn’t call me Cecilia."

"What does she call you?"

"Lia."

"Good. If someone doesn’t know those names, she isn’t your mother."

My words seemed to reassure her a little. I chose the path on the left and continued toward the ruins, with the girl following behind me again.

The ice covering the road slowed us down. I checked our surroundings with every step and raised my spiked bat at even the slightest sound coming from between the trees.

After walking for about ten minutes, I noticed red stains on the snow.

At first, I thought they were leaves that had fallen from the trees, but after taking a few more steps, I saw the stains growing larger and spreading all the way to the edge of the stone path.

That’s blood!

---

A large section of the pure white snow had been stained dark red.

I extended my arm to the side to stop Cecilia from looking and slowed my steps. A human body lay between the trees.

A middle-aged man sat motionless with his back resting against a tree trunk. His thick brown jacket had been torn apart, and the blood flowing from his chest had formed a large stain across the snow around him.

Someone else was crouching beside the body.

At first, I thought it was a person who had rushed over to help the wounded man, but the moment I saw its pure white hands and knees, my breath caught in my throat.

It was one of the faceless creatures.

Its white body rippled as eyes, a nose, and a mouth slowly formed on its face. A brown jacket emerged over its skin while dark hair appeared on its head.

Within seconds, a perfect copy of the body appeared in front of me.

The same face...

The same clothes...

Even the bloodstain on its chest was in the exact same place.

"Oh my God..."

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

These things take the form of the people they kill.

The little girl and the elderly couple I had encountered earlier came back to mind. If their appearances hadn’t been faces randomly created by the creatures, then they had been copies of real people.

There really had been a little girl who carried a teddy bear.

The old man and his wife might have been taking a walk through this park together.

"Were they also..."

A heavy ache formed in the center of my chest, but I didn’t have time to think about that right now. The creature hadn’t noticed us yet, and if we quietly backed away, we could escape without fighting.

I rested the bat against the ground and held my right hand in front of the girl’s eyes.

"We’re going back," I whispered.

The girl lowered her head without saying anything.

We started back the way we had come, moving as quietly as possible. After walking several meters, I felt the girl suddenly stop and turned around.

Two people stood in the middle of the stone path.

I hadn’t seen or heard them arrive.

The first wore old, torn clothes that clearly belonged to another era. His dark armor was covered in rust, and one of his shoulder guards had been completely shattered. In his right hand, he held a long sword with a broken tip and a surface covered in rust.

The man beside him had only one arm. The empty sleeve of his dirty shirt moved in the wind as he tilted his head to the side at an unnatural angle.

Both of their mouths were open all the way to their cheeks.

They were smiling at us with mouths filled with sharp teeth.

"Oh, fuck..."

When I heard a growl behind us, I quickly turned around.

The creature beside the body had noticed us as well. It had risen in its newly copied human form and stepped onto the stone path before beginning to move toward us.

We were trapped from both sides.

An irritated laugh escaped me.

"Hahaha... Great."

I tightened my grip on the spiked bat with my right hand. The one-armed creature and the new copy looked disturbing, but there was something different about the one holding the rusty sword.

Its posture wasn’t crooked or unbalanced like the others. It held the broken sword comfortably at its side and distributed its weight evenly between both feet.

What disturbed me most wasn’t its appearance, but the pressure it gave off.

Even though there were still dozens of meters between us, breathing had become difficult, and my instincts were screaming at me not to go near it.

Could these creatures copy not only the appearance of the people they killed, but also their powers?

If the man carrying the rusty sword had been a powerful Nexus user before he died, then the thing in front of me might have his abilities too.

I had no intention of finding out.

I leaned slightly toward Cecilia without taking my eyes off the creatures.

"The moment I tell you to run, run and hide, okay? Until then, don’t leave my side."

The girl nodded, trembling.

The lone creature behind us was moving slowly, as if it were still getting used to its new body. Instead of trying to pass between the two creatures in front of us, I could take it down and open a safe escape route for Cecilia.

"Follow me."

Without waiting for her answer, I started running toward the new copy beside the trees. I could hear the girl’s small footsteps directly behind me.

The creature opened its mouth as I approached.

I swung the spiked bat at its head with all my strength, but the monster pulled back at the last moment. It managed to avoid the blow to its head, but the spiked end struck its left shoulder.

A dry cracking sound came from its shoulder as its arm bent to the side.

I could hear rapid footsteps behind us.

The other two creatures were about to catch up.

I pointed Cecilia toward the ruined stone wall at the edge of the path.

"Now! Run and hide over there!"

The girl ran in the direction I had pointed without hesitating for even a moment.

The creature in front of me grabbed the bat with its uninjured hand. As it tried to pull the weapon toward itself, I kicked it hard in the chest and opened some distance between us.

The moment it released the bat, I swung the weapon again.

The second blow struck its knee and bent its leg in the opposite direction. When the creature staggered, I struck beneath its chin with the spiked end and knocked its head backward.

After the third blow, it collapsed onto its knees.

I raised the bat above my head. With one final strike, I could shatter its head and turn toward the other creatures behind me.

Just as I was about to bring the weapon down, I noticed movement at the edge of my vision.

The creature carrying the rusty sword had closed the distance between us in a single instant.

I hadn’t even seen it move.

"Huh?"

The broken sword swung horizontally.

When the rusty blade struck the spiked bat formed from Umbrella, I thought my weapon would stop the blow. Instead, the sword shattered the black bat through the middle and continued forward as if it had met no resistance at all.

The two halves of the bat scattered through the air as black droplets.

The sword reached the armor covering my chest.

As Umbrella’s black surface shattered, the sword tore through my clothes and the skin underneath, cutting from my collarbone to the center of my chest.

Burning pain engulfed my body.

I wanted to scream, but the pain was so intense that I couldn’t even do that.

After swinging its sword, the creature struck me from the side with the back of its free hand. The impact passed through the armor and reached deep into my body, and I heard several of my ribs crack at the same time.

My feet left the ground.

I flew several meters through the air before crashing onto the ice-covered stones and rolling along the path. When my back finally struck the frozen ground and brought me to a stop, all the air had been forced from my lungs.

I tried to breathe, but the pain in my chest wouldn’t let me.

Blood seeped between my lips, ran down my cheek, and dripped onto the ice.

Unable to move my head, I continued staring at the sky. The moon visible between the bare branches split into several pieces in my blurred vision.

After a while, tiny blonde girls began appearing around the moon.

They all looked like miniature versions of my angel, circling my head and smiling at me with their blue eyes. Holding hands, they danced to a sweet melody that seemed to come from nowhere.

The fact that I could actually see them was clear proof that the blow to my head had been more serious than I thought.

Even so, the sight was incredibly peaceful.

A weak smile formed on my bloody lips.

"My angel... I missed you..."