The stench hit like a curse, potent enough to make anyone recoil in horror.

  Just then, Niel pushed Rumi from behind and followed her inside.

  “Huh? I don’t smell any—ugh!”

  Niel, unprepared, stepped into the barn and immediately clutched her nose, gagging.

  "God, this must be ground zero for that awful smell. Ugh!"

  Rumi quickly switched to breathing through her mouth, shuddering at the lingering stench in her nostrils.

  “Ugh, Rumi, help me!”

  Niel also clutched her nose, stomping her feet in distress.

  In the midst of this chaos, Rumi managed to pull herself together and looked around the barn.

  But instead of being filled with corpses, the barn was packed with life-sized dolls.

  Aside from the dolls, the interior was surprisingly clean.

  It looked more like a modern chapel, with tiled floors extending deep inside. The space was crammed with abandoned dolls and machinery that seemed to be used for making them.

  “This pce... looks more like a doll factory than a funeral home. Or... maybe it was a funeral home that got turned into a factory?”

  Hummm... hummm... huuuuuum!

  Just then, they noticed a vibration rumbling through the building, previously masked by the overwhelming stench.

  It was the strongest vibration they’d felt so far.

  “Ugh, the vibrations are really intense...”

  Rumi decided to ignore the vibrations for now and continued investigating the barn.

  Examining the floor in the dim moonlight filtering through the second-floor windows, she could make out muddy footprints leading deeper inside before gradually fading away.

  Moreover, the deeper parts of the building were pitch bck, with no moonlight reaching them.

  “I think we need to go further inside.”

  “So we’re going into the pce where the mummified grandma might be holding sickles?”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got sickles too.”

  “...”

  Rumi held a sickle in one hand and covered her nose with the other as she ventured deeper into the building.

  Niel stuck close behind her.

  But once they got inside, all they found was a wall decorated with what looked like chapel ornaments.

  “Huh? This can’t be it, right?”

  Rumi focused as hard as she could in the darkness, searching the wall for anything unusual.

  She realized this was the spot where the vibrations and the stench were strongest.

  That meant there had to be something behind the wall.

  Rumi reluctantly removed her hand from her nose and sniffed around like a dog, trying to find any small gap where the stench was leaking from.

  Immediately, she felt like all the food she’d eaten was about to come back up.

  “Ugh!!”

  Fighting off dizziness, Rumi found a crack in the wall where the smell was the worst.

  “Ugh... there’s something here! Ugh!”

  Rumi carefully wedged the sickle into the crack and pushed with all her strength to widen it.

  With a creak, a small stone door slid open, revealing a hole just big enough for a child to crawl through.

  “Ah... found it!”

  “Whoa... this is crazy.”

  Rumi and Niel stared at the hole in disbelief.

  Warm, humid air seeped through the hole, carrying the same foul stench.

  “Wait, are we really going in there?”

  Niel asked.

  “Of course. And this time, you’re going in first.”

  “What...?”

  Rumi suddenly grabbed Niel and shoved her toward the hole.

  “Ahh! I’ll go in, you don’t have to push me!”

  Niel yelped in surprise, but Rumi ignored her and kept pushing.

  “Alright, then go in quietly.”

  “Fine...”

  Niel, startled by Rumi’s sudden aggression, reluctantly crawled into the pitch-bck hole.

  After a moment, Rumi called out to check on her.

  “How is it in there? Are you okay?”

  “Um... not really. But at least there’s no mummified grandma trying to kill us.”

  Rumi took a deep breath and covered her nose tightly.

  Then she crouched down and carefully crawled into the hole.

  Inside, the air was hot and humid, clinging to her skin.

  The stench was so strong she could taste it on her tongue.

  As Rumi moved through the dark space, she suddenly heard a squelching sound under her feet.

  “Ugh! What was that? Something just popped!”

  “Uh... there’s something... something squishy down here...”

  Huuuuuum!

  At that moment, the ground shook violently, as if an earthquake had hit.

  “Ahh!”

  “Ahhh! What’s going on?!”

  “Sigh... so this is definitely where the vibrations are coming from... But what the hell is under here?”

  “I don’t know...!”

  Rumi looked around a bit more and confirmed that there was no one else in the room.

  “Luckily, it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else here...”

  “Yeah... I told you. But... why did you push me in here alone? That was really dangerous...”

  "What danger could there be for you?"

  “Huh...? What do you mean?”

  “You’re just like back then...”

  “Rumi... what are you talking about?”

  Rumi stared at Niel’s glowing red eyes.

  "Your eyes have been blood-red this whole time. Just like right before Bertin got caught..."

  Rumi's eyes had turned ice-cold as she looked at Niel.

  “...”

  Niel had no response to Rumi’s words.

  Rumi continued her investigation alone, moving through the dark space.

  Then she stepped on something dry and crumbly, unlike the squishy ground she’d been walking on.

  “What’s this...? It’s dry here...”

  “...”

  Rumi crouched down and started feeling around the ground.

  Her hands brushed against something coarse, like animal fur.

  “Ugh... it feels like hair...”

  “Does that mean... we’re standing on a corpse? And one that hasn’t been dead for long?”

  “...!

  At that moment, a chilling silence fell over them, and both Rumi and Niel felt a cold shiver run down their spines.

  “Aaah!”

  Rumi and Niel screamed and scrambled back to the firmer ground.

  "Damn it... can't tell what anything is in this darkness!"

  “Rumi, look up there.”

  Just then, moonlight streamed through a narrow crack in the wooden wall above.

  "Oh, looks like there's a window up there. Hey, I'll try throwing this sickle at it."

  “Be... be careful.”

  Rumi threw the sickle with all her might toward the crack where the light was coming from.

  Whoosh! Thud!

  But the damn sickle just got stuck in the wall.

  “Ugh! Damn it...”

  Then, with a ctter, a wooden pnk blocking the window fell to the ground.

  The small window in the wall was now exposed, and moonlight began to faintly illuminate the mysterious space.

  As the light spread, the shape of something indescribable became visible on the ground.

  A massive mound covered in bck fur rose from the floor like a small hill, and where the bck fur was missing, grotesque purple flesh was visible, covered in yellow pustules.

  It looked like... the body of a giant beast was buried in the ground.

  Rumi and Niel were struck speechless by the bizarre sight.

  “Wh-what is that?”

  “...”

  In the midst of this, Rumi felt compelled to cut off some of that fur-like material.

  It seemed like the only way to get any clues about this unidentifiable mass.

  “Niel, lend me your sickle. Mine’s stuck in the wall.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to cut off some of that fur. We need something to take back for investigation.”

  “Is... is that a good idea...?”

  "Good idea or not, It’s the only thing we can do right now.”

  Rumi snatched the sickle from Niel and, breathing only through her mouth, approached the bck mass.

  She grabbed a handful of the disgusting fur and started cutting it with the sickle.

  Huuuuuuuum!!!

  The moment she cut the fur, a loud noise and intense vibrations shook the entire barn.

  The sound was so loud it hurt their ears.

  But Rumi persisted, stuffing the cut fur into her pocket.

  That's when Niel shouted from the corner.

  "Aah, Rumi! I can't stay here anymore!"

  Niel had her hands cmped over her ears, her face contorted in agony.

  Rumi hadn't seen Niel look this disturbed since Bertin's death.

  She began to worry that Niel might lose control.

  “Let’s... get out of here!”

  Rumi quickly grabbed Niel and rushed out of the room.

  Even after leaving that strange space, the building continued to shake as if it might colpse, and Rumi and Niel ran all the way out of the barn.

  They kept running until they reached air that was somewhat breathable through their noses, then stopped to catch their breath.

  “Huff... huff...”

  “Sigh... damn Medina... what is she hiding?”

  Rumi muttered.

  “...”

  Niel crouched down in front of the flower field, her head lowered.

  “Niel... are you okay?”

  Rumi, still a bit scared, approached Niel to comfort her.

  "sob sob"

  But Niel was crying, still crouched on the ground.

  “Wh-what’s wrong? Were you that scared?”

  Though Rumi's own heart hadn't calmed down either, nothing truly terrible had happened.

  Still, Niel crying was a thousand times better than losing control, so she gently rubbed Niel's back.

  Then she pulled out the bck fur she’d cut and examined it.

  In the brighter light, the fur looked like animal hair, but it was as thick and tough as wire.

  She sniffed it one st time... and immediately regretted it.

  Rumi stuffed the fur back into her pocket and helped Niel to her feet.

  It was time to head back to the mansion.

  “Hop on, Niel.”

  Rumi crouched down, still keeping an eye on Niel’s reddish eyes.

  Niel sniffled and silently climbed onto Rumi’s back.

  Rumi trudged through the swampy flower field, her legs shaking and her breath growing heavier.

  Despite the exhaustion, her mind was completely occupied with other thoughts.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Bertin just before she died.

  Rumi had tried to forget, but it wasn’t something she could easily let go of.

  “Niel... why did you have to do that back then?”

  Without realizing it, Rumi tightened her grip on Niel’s legs until it hurt.

  “...”

  Niel didn’t say anything, but Rumi could feel her body growing warmer.

  Before she knew it, Rumi had made it out of the muddy area and it was time to let Niel down.

  In that moment, Rumi thought she glimpsed a shadow of Niel raising a scythe high in the air right behind her.