As we got closer to where we thought the Queen was, the mist became denser and denser, to the point where someone felt the strain of it on a physical level.

The air could only be described as heavy.

The ground on the other side was becoming increasingly swampy, not muddy, just swampy.

The water was at my ankle level.

Suddenly, I caught hearing of something.

“Hon.”

“Yeah, I noticed it too. It’s coming for us. “

The sound became more and more audible, closer and closer.

It was the loud flapping sound of wing flapping. It wasn’t a feathery wing flapping but rather one of a bat-like wing.

“I guess, she spare us the trouble of looking for her.”

Han transformed into its second monster form, embedded the edge of my cleaver axes with lightning, then prepared for the approaching creature.

It was there approaching. It was there a few seconds later, and I could feel it on all of my senses.

“Oh my Goddess, what the hell is that thing?”

“What?”

“The queen Chrackt, I wasn’t expecting something that ugly.”

“Hein?”

The creature in question reassembled to a … It resembles nothing. Chrackts weren’t particularly good-looking either, but this one appearance was just ugh, It literally set up a new standard in terms of ugliness.

While the average Chrackts reassembled to what a chimera between a duck and a bat would look like, I had expected their queen to be at least; well, somewhere looking the same. Instead, what I got was a bald, furless, bat-winged, eye-less, nose-less, ear-less humanoid creature.

Despite remaining afloat in the air, I could tell the creature was bipedal. The creature horribly resembled a human, from posture to face, but its face lacked anything that should be expected of a human face except for the giant creepy mouth. Its hands were terminated by long nails that could be described as claws at this point. On its back were two massive flapping flesh-wings, and just beneath these wings were two limbs terminated with a sharp bone-like-thing, shaped to form a "U" around the creature's head.

“It told you it would be ugly.”

“... that is way beyond the realm of ugly. And seriously, the mere thought of usurping that thing’s body gives me, I mean me, shivers.”

“So you’re telling me that you will abandon that vessel we’ve been hunting for 3 months because it doesn’t look good?”

“Well put like that it feels like I’m the-”

The creature, which was only a few meters away, suddenly uttered a harsh and aggressive screech and flapped her wings powerfully at us, sending insanely powerful gusts.

“Whether you take its vessels or not, In either case, at this point we have no other choice but to kill that thing.”

“Well, I admit that it doesn’t look like it will let us go peacefully.”

The battle against the Chrackt Queen came to an end after a long, at least for me, battle.

During the fight, the creature used what I assumed was mist magic, causing it to vanish and then reappear out of nowhere, along with vicious wind magic.

I can't deny that it was a difficult opponent, but in the end, we prevailed.

The creature was now limping on the ground, and we had managed to dismember it of its eight limbs during the final moments of the fight.

“You won’t do your thing?”

“What thing?”

“Your heart-eating ceremony.”

“I think I’ll pass on that.”

“I thought so.”

With a swift move of my cleave ax, I cut the Crackht Queen’s head.

The beast's body began to convulse, and after a short time, it came to an end, immediately after something happened on Han's side, and its quadrupedal silhouette transformed into that of a Chrackt Queen.

“So you finally decided to take it in the end?”

“Well, I must admit that that creature was particularly strong and during the fight, I quite grew fond of its ability to fly around, so yeah.”

He flapped his wings, propelling himself several meters into the air. The wings appeared to be merely ornamental, as he didn't even need to flap his wings to remain afloat.

“So how does it feel?”

“I feel like… flying.”

“Do you want to try?”

Without even waiting for me to answer, he went to me, pulled one of my appendages, which then allowed me to hover in the air, just beneath him.

He then threw me into the air and then abruptly vanished, only to reappear almost instantly with a small explosion behind me, where I was tossed onto.

This was on the ability to Chrackt Queen, and it was similar to a short-range teleportation magic, or to be more precise, it just a magic that allows its user to dematerialize for a very brief moment of time.

“So?”

The whole thing reminded me of something I have once done before. My hand went to a certain part of my body where a small spherical object was.

“It does have its appeal, but I’d rather be on the ground,” I said as he let go of me, allowing me to fall to the ground.

Slowly, but surely, the heavy atmosphere came along with the mist, allowing some ray of sunlight to enter this part of the forest.

Compared to the other part of the forest, this one felt particularly misty and heavy, which is precisely how we were able to pinpoint where exactly the Queen should’ve been.

Now that the source of all of this mist had been slain, the mist progressively vanished. Though I couldn’t witness it visually, it felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted away from my shoulders.

“So what do we do now?”

“I don’t, first let’s try finding that thing lair. From what I’ve read, Queen Chrackt has the tendency to collect things that have been scavenged by its army of lower Chrackt. Maybe we will find something interesting there, who knows.”

After all, only that would be my spoil of this battle. I can’t really harvest anything from the Queen corpses.

Her bone nor flesh was of no use for me, so only in her that maybe I would find something that would make this whole fight worth it for me.

We began exploring the area in search of the Queen's Nest after burning the creature's remains, and after a few hours of research meters, we discovered the beast's lair.

It was a small cave, a little bit similar to the one I dwelled in for some time in the Ivohy.

As we got closer, a foul stench became more noticeable, but we still went into the cave.

Inside was exactly what you'd expect from a monster's lair: carcasses from monsters ranging in size from large to small, fresh to decaying.

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I came here, but it wasn't quite what I expected; in fact, I was disheartened.

While moving my tentacle around, I noticed something that piqued my interest.

I dashed toward the thing, a spear tip protruding from a heap of monster rotten corpses.

I knew no one was supposed to have gone this far into the woods, so the presence of such a thing in such a place naturally piqued my interest.

I proceeded to pull the entire spear out of the mountain of corpses because I was curious about it.

And here's the thing: I shouldn't have.

“Aaah!” As I fell butt against the ground, I couldn't help but scream in surprise.

Something came out with the spear as soon as I pulled it out.

Something that felt like a human hand suddenly grasping at me.

And then I heard it murmuring “Ai… de…moi “

I'm not sure why I became so helpless, but the moment that hand reached out and grabbed me, I felt completely powerless.

Han, who was standing by, charged at the thing and threw it violently against the wall; based on the noise it made upon contact, it was safe to assume that the thing's corpse and flesh were now plastered on the wall, transformed into a squishy and poppy mess.

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah, but what the hell was that? Was that a human? It was alive, right? I felt it, It grabbed onto me. I even heard it speaking.” I asked, still panic-stricken.

“It was indeed moving but I wouldn’t say it was alive, for the human part I can’t say for sure.”

“Why?”

“I'm not sure what a human is to you, but that thing, that human, was already dead, but it was still moving. If you could see the wall right now, you'd notice that our "human" has been transformed into a lump of flesh and broken bone with not even a single trace of blood on it, instead, there's a green viscous liquid in its place.”

We both approached what was left of the “human”.

“Any idea what this thing could be?”

“No idea. I’ve never read anything about something like this. And why is there a human here in the first place?”

From what I know no one should be here. No one was mentioned having ventured this far, so what was that person doing here?

“Hey, Hon, I’m not sure of it. I think that… from that weird liquid… It was faint, but I sensed something similar to magic.”

“You think … “

“That “human” might only be moving because of that. Any idea of a monster that can keep a corpse alive?”

“I don’t kno- What the-”

“Holy shit.”

A sort of viscous liquid came to our hear,

It came from the “human”.

“Han, what if we leave this place. I think I’ve seen enough for today.”

“I was about to say the same thing.”

We left the cave, but of course, we sealed its entrance and exit.

At that time we thought that if we were to leave that thing there, we would be spared; but little did we suspect that that “human” we met was just an individual belonging to a way larger group.