Their surroundings were dead quiet. Crossing the familiar stone bridge and then passing the three crumbling walls of the fortress, Chi-Woo looked around anxiously. Since it was early in the morning, it was understandable that no one was wandering about, but even so, this was a bit… strange. 

Chi-Woo couldn’t pinpoint what was so strange about the place, but it appeared as if time inside this fortress had stopped, and everything before him was at a standstill. He didn’t know what had happened during his absence, but it was clear that it was something grave. He had felt this way since he saw the fortress from its outskirts; the outer walls were broken in half, while its entrance was completely crumbled. Moreover…

“The smell…”

Even Hawa, who didn’t usually display her emotions, scowled. A foul stench coupled by a disgusting, fishy smell of blood was oozing out of the rotting corpses all over the floor. 

“Perhaps they’ve left,” Hawa murmured while looking at the pile of monsters and heroes stacked on top of one another. “They wouldn’t have left the fortress in such a state otherwise…”

Chi-Woo thought the same. This place had been their precious base and living space. If people had stayed here, they would’ve cleaned up the area by burning or burying the corpses, not leaving them as they were.

‘If they were attacked…’ Monsters didn’t only reside in the Evalaya mountain; they also existed in the regions that used to belong to the Salem Empire, and some of them could’ve attacked this fortress. And the recruits could’ve been annihilated,...