Deceived by humans, he lost his nails and fangs. At last, the beast obtained a tattered glove that could conceal his claws. After washing the tattered glove clean and putting it on, the beast, whose nails had been peeled off and whose claws were still bleeding, touched the girl for the first time.
The girl’s hand was very small and very soft. The beast felt like he held a weightless ball of cotton in his palm. But it was this hand—so light, so small, and so very soft—that gave the beast a reason and strength to live.
Helping the blind girl through the forest, carrying the blind girl across the river, lying on the grass with the girl to enjoy the caress of the breeze—the beast’s heart was filled with fulfillment and tranquility.
He thought he had nothing more to ask for.
He was no longer a lonely monster.
But paper couldn’t wrap fire. The villagers discovered that a beast came and went from the girl’s home. They even saw the girl holding the beast’s hand intimately as they went into the forest at night to pick mushrooms.
The villagers surrounded the girl’s home and set it ablaze.
The sightless girl couldn’t escape the house sealed by flames, while the beast, seeing thick smoke rising from the direction of the girl’s home, rushed toward it without hesitation.
The beast knew that it was daytime now. Once he appeared in the human village, the humans would hunt him down. Because he was a beast, a monster, an aberration that shouldn’t exist in human eyes.
But ahead was the girl. His only friend, the only object of his admiration.
The beast descended from the sky. He didn’t care that his true face would be exposed to the girl. He carried her and charged out of the fire. But the villagers aimed plowshares, hoes, and sickles at him.
How could a beast without nails or fangs be a match for plowshares, hoes, and sickles? Just as his head was about to be chopped off, the girl struggled free from his arms and spread her arms in front of him, protecting him.
The girl was only blind in her eyes; her heart was not blind.
She had always known that the one treating her so gently wasn’t some human boy, but the “monster” the villagers spoke of.
She never exposed the beast’s disguise simply because it was the beast’s wish: he wanted to be human in her presence.
“No————!!!”
That day, Lang rolled off the bed from the nightmare, his claws still extended forward.
In the dream, he had become the beast, and the girl was Mary… Mary, who looked much younger than now, somewhat like Angeline.
That day, Lang scratched his head as he climbed up from the floor. He thought to himself that he must have had such a strange dream because he’d sung that song about the beast and the girl too many times lately—the bard’s song only went up to the beast getting the glove and becoming friends with the girl; it didn’t describe what happened after in detail.
Only after this dream did Lang start to wonder: Did the bard who wrote this song refuse to tell the world it ended in tragedy? Or were the villagers in the song too much like villains, so the part about them got deliberately cut from the tale during its transmission?
Of course, these were just his imaginings. Perhaps the original ending of the story was: “In the end, they lived happily together.” Who knew?
At this moment, facing the Cross Knights surging toward him like a tide, Lang thought of that dream again.
If he had to give a statement now, he would say: This was great.
He, who hadn’t lost his sharp claws and fangs, had the power to protect Mary.
He also had an answer to the question that had always troubled him: why someone so interested in human culture, who wanted so badly to become part of humanity, had been born as a werewolf.
—He was born a beast precisely so he could protect Mary at this moment.
Though Mary had encountered this danger because of him… Yes, if possible, after his death, he hoped Mary would forgive him for letting her face such terrible peril, in consideration of the life he offered for her sake.
“Oooohhh——!!!”
The werewolf’s roar echoed through the night sky. Lang swung a melee knight and smashed him flying, then grabbed another melee knight to use as a weapon, his nails scraping sparks across the melee knights’ silver armor, gouging three gashes, five gashes, ten gashes.
“D-don’t fear it! Knights! Charge forward! Charge!”
Seeing the bow knights catch up from behind, the Righteous Knight commanding the melee knights quickly ordered the bow knights: “You lot circle around to the back and catch the witch! Don’t let the witch escape through the back door.”
A fierce glint flashed. Lang’s eyes glowed like eerie ghostfire in the night. He leaped into the air, heard the Righteous Knight’s command, dropped the melee knights chasing him, and crashed into the bow knights trying to go around to Ye Tang’s house back door.
The bow knights wore light armor and weren’t good at close combat; their physiques were far inferior to the melee knights. Once their arrows ran out, their combat power was only a bit higher than ordinary farmers.
Facing Lang, who charged without regard for his life, the knights were caught off guard. Like bowling pins hit by a bowling ball, “Bang!” They scattered in disarray.
With the momentum of someone going to his death, Lang staggered to his feet from the pile of bow knights and threw his head back in a roar, scaring the knights into panicked retreat.
At that moment, the Righteous Knight leading all the knights realized something—this werewolf had no intention of killing humans. It only destroyed the weapons in the knights’ hands. The knights it threw or smashed were merely knocked unconscious. The light-armored bow knights were like infants in swaddling clothes before it; it could have slit their carotid arteries with a gentle swipe of its nails across their necks, but this werewolf didn’t.
A werewolf that didn’t kill humans… Could it be…? No! Impossible! According to the holy scriptures, all evil heretics had appearances different from humans. No matter how well they mimicked humans, they were still evil beings!
“Knights! Don’t fear it! I’ve discovered this evil thing’s weakness! It can’t harm us, the servants of god baptized in holy water!”
The Righteous Knight declared this as he sheathed his sword first and charged at Lang.
The reason Lang didn’t kill the Cross Knights was simple. If he killed anyone, even if it had nothing to do with Mary, the Cross Knights wouldn’t let Mary—whom they saw as a witch—go. They would force the villagers to hand her over to pay the blood debt.
But if only he died, the villagers would resist the Cross Knights to the end—after all, the Cross Knights had no solid evidence that Mary was a threat. In that case—
Seeing their own knight lead the charge and not get his neck snapped by the werewolf, the melee knights threw down their weapons and pounced on Lang.
One knight, two knights, three knights… Countless knights dragged and pinned Lang to the ground.
The Righteous Knight straddled Lang’s neck and drew his silver sword again.
Lang’s claws, pinned to the ground, twitched once as if to rise, but he quickly gave up.
In his life’s final moment, he thought in a daze: I wonder if Mary escaped through the back door? She should go to Ginny’s house, right? Ginny’s house was very close to Mary’s. If it was Ginny, she would definitely protect Mary…
“Return to hell, monster!!!”
Victory within reach, a bloody thrill twisted the Righteous Knight’s handsome face. His silver sword plunged straight toward Lang’s throat.
Bang!!
A gunshot shattered the silence. The silver sword in the Righteous Knight’s hand snapped at the hilt.
It was Ye Tang who fired.
“You…!! Witch—!!”
Turning to see Ye Tang walk out the front door of her own home holding a black hunting rifle, the Righteous Knight’s eyes nearly popped out. The surrounding knights were dumbfounded.
Just as the Righteous Knight pointed at Ye Tang, about to shout “Seize the witch,” Ye Tang raised the wooden crucifix hanging from her chest.
This wooden crucifix was very crude and extremely makeshift, clearly made of thin sticks bound with hemp rope. But no matter what it was made of, a crucifix was a crucifix; that wouldn’t change.
“Cross Knights can’t attack a crucifix, right?”
Ye Tang didn’t just have a crucifix on her chest; a crude wooden crucifix was also bound to her black hunting rifle.
She racked the bolt, this time aiming at the Righteous Knight’s head.
One of the greatest tenets of the Cross Knights was that they couldn’t attack anyone wearing a crucifix. Once they attacked someone bearing a crucifix, the Cross Knights would become “fallen ones.” The “fallen ones” would be lightly expelled from the Cross Knights at best, or treated as “enemies of the lord” and purged on the spot at worst.
In other words, now only Ye Tang could shoot the knights; if they fought back, they betrayed their own faith.
“Y-you cunning, treacherous, despicable witch!!”
The Righteous Knight roared in fury.
Ye Tang shrugged. “Oh? Night-attacking a defenseless woman isn’t despicable? In my view, you’re the cunning, treacherous ones—utterly shameless for attacking the werewolf precisely because he wouldn’t harm you.”
At that moment, a spark whooshed—”Whoosh—” from Ginny’s backyard, followed by “Boom!!” as it exploded, blooming into a massive red flower.
In two months, Abe Village would welcome the Harvest Festival. This was a test prototype of the signal fireworks Ye Tang and Ginny had prepared with the villagers for the Harvest Festival.
Because it was a prototype, the signal fireworks’ power still needed adjustment. For a moment, the explosion echoed through the mountains and forests. Not only did the miners at the Lem Mine tumble out of bed in fright; Ulysses in Lem Town heard the sound, looked out the window, and saw red lights drifting down from the sky.
“Eek~~!!”
The knights, scared by the signal fireworks, huddled together trembling. This bunch of country knights, crammed like barrels, completely mistook the signal fireworks for the “hell cannon” from the holy scriptures, thinking they would be blasted to oblivion in the next second.
More signal fireworks launched into the sky. Listening to Mama, Angeline had run to Ginny’s house to report the news. Though frightened, she still bravely followed behind Ginny.
Five minutes earlier, Angeline had knocked on Ginny’s door. Upon hearing Angeline’s news, Ginny sent the servant woman upstairs to open her jewelry box and fetch her crucifix—the ancestral cross rosary she kept well-preserved, though she wasn’t a believer.
Ginny herself rushed to the backyard and hauled out the signal fireworks she had developed with Ye Tang and the villagers. She lit the fuse.
As the fireworks bloomed in the night sky, Ginny, with the cross rosary wrapped around her hand, hung a crucifix around Angeline’s neck. The servant woman had already run off to spread Angeline’s news to the other villagers. Ginny herself picked up a hunting rifle she’d never touched before and led the way to Ye Tang’s house.