Continuously, lightning flashed. The approaching monsters had such horrifying forms that they couldn’t be called monsters or demons.

With four human legs and eagle legs for movement, the bizarre creature with eyes covering its forehead lurked in the distance, targeting them, only to disintegrate into dust without a trace. Hayden, carrying Rue, walked, and nothing could approach them.

Evil overflowed in all directions. Constant screams and eerie laughter mocking them echoed. In the suffocating darkness, even Rue involuntarily hunched her shoulders, but Hayden walked indifferently. He seemed to know this place well.

“You came here?”

Shadows of monsters lurking in the distance, eyeing them, flickered eerily in the emerald light. Those aiming at them, drooling and making predatory gestures, were more than a couple.

“Yes.”

“Not Persetha?”

“If it were, it would have been better. I ended up trapped inside the barrier between them.”

Rue looked around with a disgusted face. She didn’t even consider that there might be space inside the barrier, but this place seemed like another world.

“Is this Carlos’s creation?”

“He made the barrier, so yes.”

The air was heavy and stifling. There was only emerald light and white lightning that seemed no different from Hayden’s anger. And what the light revealed were all monsters.

Creatures made by forcibly piecing together parts from animals, humans, and monsters were there, dripping emerald poison as they growled menacingly.

As Rue’s hand trembled due to the enormous flesh, a sudden cool breeze blew. The wind swept away the darkness, dispersing the poisonous vapor.

“It’s not a good place to linger.”

The monsters, making eerie sounds, retreated and disappeared as if Hayden were controlling this place at will.

“Don’t worry about those scraps. There’s not much time left.”

“Is this all there is with not much time left?”

Perplexed, Rue asked him.

“Originally, even if you killed them, they would regenerate, but now the rate of regeneration has slowed down a lot. They piled up like that after not coming for a while.”

He answered calmly and sat on a chair made of carved stone. Rue just held onto him.

“Sorry. There are no comfortable chairs here.”

The fact that there were chairs here was surprising enough. Was there someone here? Rue cautiously looked around at the bright surroundings and was startled.

Emerald masses were approaching. It wasn’t just one or two. Though not monsters, they were undoubtedly things touched by Carlos. After the monsters and darkness vanished, this time, a bright light unfolded, and Carlos’s curses approached as clusters.

“What’s that?”

“They won’t harm you. Doesn’t it look familiar?”
“Do you feel like you’ve seen them somewhere? The shapes were familiar to Rue. The forms, shaped by the power of the bound Carlos, were all the same.

The curses bound to Rue were the same, and the curses bound to Ophelia were the same. The things visible were less delicate shapes closer to Ophelia than Rue.

As Rue silently contemplated, she was horrified.

“Could they all be people?”

All of them, people whose strength was taken away by Carlos’s curses?

“They are dead people.”

Getting a confirmation on the dreadful conjecture, Rue quickly inhaled, wincing her face due to the broken ribs. Hayden looked down at Rue and quietly shed warm light.

Then again, curses bound to her flickered, swallowing that light. It was a daily life that had become familiar but should not have.

“How can that be? Could they not be dead?”

Rue asked in a sickly pale tone. But Hayden answered solemnly.

“They’re dead. Their bodies might have decayed or been buried in the ground, but their consciousness is trapped, and they’ve come here.”

Those who approached sometimes vaguely appeared to have a human figure. However, they were extremely faint, with almost no expressions. They wandered around, bound by Carlos’s curses. Hayden held Rue tightly, sharing body warmth and murmured.

“There are only two places here. People who keep increasing as time passes and monsters created because of those people.”

Rue looked endlessly into the vast but rather stifling barrier. She couldn’t tell whether the ground she stepped on in the harsh scenery was made of soil or if it was a robust land with poison flowing through.

“A barrier, you say. Inside the barrier, inside the barrier…”

Rue muttered and burst into laughter. She had often wondered what the barrier was made of, but she never imagined that there would be something like ‘inside the wall.’

The wall was just a wall. Physically preventing Calleta and Persetha, an impenetrable barrier, even enhanced by magical power. But how could it be such a horrific ‘place’?

Sharp-witted Rue immediately grasped the meaning.

“Continuously…, those people keep increasing.”

When alive, they were exploited, consumed by Carlos’s curses down to their bones, and after death, they were immediately dragged here, used to maintain the barrier. There was no peace for them. It happened for 430 years. A chill ran down Rue’s dry back in an instant.

‘I’ll end up like that too.’