"No, not that!"
Gavo jolted awake from her dream, sitting upright on her bedding and gasping for breath.
Fine beads of sweat had soaked through her clothes, making the drafty tent feel piercingly cold.
That dream just now had been far too real.
So real that she could barely tell whether it had actually been a dream.
"Eight blood paths... why does that feel so familiar...?"
She had an intense sense of déjà vu toward that blasphemous symbol.
But every time she tried to remember what it was, all she could recall was a hazy veil of fog.
It was obvious that it had something to do with those four horrors.
"Forget it, forget it. Better not think about it anymore. What if They notice me?"
She slapped her own cheeks a few times, forcibly calming herself down.
It was just a dream. Nothing too serious.
That was how she tried to reassure herself.
"Looks like it's mealtime. I should go get something to eat first."
Once she stopped dwelling on the nightmare, the hunger of waking up immediately washed over her.
Gavo straightened her body, stretched lazily, and put her mask back on.
Since joining the Tearblood Gang, two standard Terran years had already passed.
Over those two years of growth, every aspect of Gavo's body except her secondary sex characteristics had improved drastically.
The most obvious change was her height.
At eleven years old, she had already reached one meter seventy.
And although her frame looked tall and slender, beneath it was a body packed with powerful muscle, every line defined like a marble statue.
Looking at the dimness outside, she realized it was already evening.
Gavo had never woken up this late before. After all, she had a biological clock fixed on waking early to train.
That only intensified her unease.
"Well, look who's finally awake."
A sharp voice rang out just as Gavo was walking through the camp in a daze.
She did not even need to look to know that irritating tone belonged to Rabbit-Mouth.
After finding out he had a chance to join the Tearblood Gang, that guy had immediately dumped the story-listening duty onto Fish-Eyes and followed Mir and the others into Gavo's logistics squad.
"That's weird. Ever since I met you, you've always been the earliest one up every single day."
"Hey, hey, Boss, you didn't catch some weird disease and end up dying on us, did you?"
Rabbit-Mouth had clearly not noticed that Gavo was already in an extremely foul mood. He kept circling around her, constantly spewing all kinds of wonderfully "auspicious" nonsense.
Just when Gavo was about to hammer him into the ground, Mir happened to walk over from the opposite direction, coming out for dinner.
Over the past two years, that guy had shot up to over two meters tall. The chunks of muscle on his body were as hard and solid as granite, and when he walked, he felt like a small moving hill, exuding overwhelming pressure.
And it was only not long ago that Gavo had learned something.
Mir was only four years older than her.
She had seriously begun to suspect that the guy might have some Ogryn blood in him.
"Rabbit-Mouth, stop bothering Mask."
The moment Mir's deep voice sounded out, the surround-sound harassment system that had been tormenting Gavo for a full ten minutes finally shut down.
"Mir, I overslept today. Did anything important happen this morning?"
After meeting up with Mir, Gavo immediately asked the dependable guy.
Mir nodded.
"Wasn't Ironarm leading part of the team forward to scout the Wild Dog Gang's strategic setup?"
"They came back this morning."
Hearing that, Gavo's gaze flickered.
The Tearblood Gang's retaliatory war against the Wild Dog Gang had already been going on for two years.
Ever since the war began, the Tearblood Gang had advanced from victory to victory.
The Wild Dogs, who looked like they had the advantage in numbers, were completely unable to withstand the Tearblood Gang's elite warbands and their overwhelming firepower.
In a short time, the front had pushed from the eastern outskirts all the way into the northern district, where the Wild Dog Gang's main stronghold lay.
Not long ago, the First Warband they belonged to had even broken into the core region of the north. Beyond that lay the Wild Dogs' main base.
Out of caution, Griffin had personally led a small elite team made up of Weepers to scout the enemy.
While waiting for them, Gavo and the others had remained stationed in this camp.
And now that Griffin had returned, she could not help wondering what kind of intelligence he had brought back.
"So, what kind of setup do the Wild Dogs have?"
At that question, the skinless face of Mir twitched a few times before he slowly answered,
"The setup is... there is no setup."
"In fact, there aren't even that many enemies ahead who are capable of resisting."
"Ironarm thinks the Wild Dogs' main force might be gathered inside their stronghold."
Strange. Far too strange.
Gavo frowned deeply.
This did not make sense at all.
After all, the Wild Dog Gang had started this war, which meant they should have been fully prepared for it.
And yet even after the Tearblood Gang had pushed deep into the northern district, they still had not encountered any real resistance.
And was the Wild Dogs' main force really inside their base?
That intense sense of unease surged over Gavo again like a tide, nearly drowning her.
...
The underhive was an enormous concept.
And this hive city, called Euya, possessed the largest underhive on the entire planet.
Because of its vast scale, the underhive was loosely divided into east, west, south, and north according to the territories ruled by the four top gangs.
The four great regions remained independent from one another, rarely interfering with each other, and except in times of war, there was almost no exchange of information between them.
And now, under that isolated silence, the western district was slowly dying.
Layer upon layer of flayed human skin, still stained with blood, hung from broken walls and ruined structures, fluttering in the cold, murderous wind.
Endless corpses were piled into tower after tower, beneath which a crowd of Wild Dogs celebrated while waving their weapons wildly.
These were the true core main force of the Wild Dog Gang, the enemy the Tearblood Gang had been guarding against all this time.
Within the boundless mist of slaughter and blood, one soul after another wailed in miserable agony, becoming the ceremonial music of this blood sacrifice.
The poor ordinary people of the western district had done nothing wrong, yet they were subjected here to inhuman abuse and torment.
Boom. Boom...
A gigantic body, so huge it inspired instinctive fear, advanced step by step down a road covered in shattered corpses.
That terrifying bald monster was the leader of the Wild Dogs.
Warhound Longlin.
In his left hand, he carried a glaring severed head.
It was the head of "Falling Hammer" Orlf, the ruler of the western district.
His combat strength had been terrifying, and even after enduring dozens of rotating pit fights, he had remained ferocious to the end.
Unfortunately, Longlin had eventually grown impatient and chopped off his head with a single axe strike.
As he walked, he suddenly spoke, and the sound that came out of the monster's mouth was like rolling thunder.
"Do we have enough materials for the ritual?"
Behind his almost inhuman body, a hunched old man hidden beneath a crimson robe let out a ghastly chuckle.
"Just a little more... just a little more..."
"When the blood sacrifice is complete, the great Lord of Skulls will choose a mortal champion from this filthy underhive."
"And that one will certainly be you!"
(End of Chapter)
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