On the morning of the twenty-eighth day, the continuous silhouette of buildings appeared on the horizon.
They had arrived at the main city of the Leo Ducal Domain.
Colin poked his head out of the carriage window. Seeing the massive castle constructed of gray stone walls in the distance, he let out a sigh of relief. “We’re finally here. This is actually my first time visiting the territory since I officially joined the family.”
As the caravan rolled over the stone-paved streets of the main city, the crowd of residents lining both sides was even denser than in the market town.
Some stood by the roadside waving, others leaned out of second-story windows, and a few even ran alongside the carriages for a stretch, continuing to jump and wave even after being stopped by the Guard Knights.
The carriage caravan slowly came to a halt in front of the main castle.
Colin pushed the carriage door open and leaped down.
He bounced on the stone pavement twice, stretched his limbs, and yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Ah, the air of freedom!”
Ethan shook his head and followed him out of the carriage.
The carriages formed a long line across the plaza in front of the main castle. Servants began unloading luggage from the rear carriages while the Guard Knights dismounted. Blake was busy directing the guards to drag the wooden barricades away from the entrance.
The surrounding plaza was packed with the territory's residents. Some held freshly picked fruit, others raised loaves of home-baked dark bread, and children sat perched on their fathers' shoulders, waving at the caravan. The noisy chatter of the crowd blended with the snorting of horses, making the entire plaza feel as festive as a holiday.
Just as Ethan was about to take a step forward, his feet suddenly froze.
He whipped his head around, his gaze piercing toward the crowd on the right.
Malice.
It was an incredibly faint malice, blended so deeply into the cheers of thousands of residents that it was like a single drop of ink dissolved in muddy water.
But his Combat Instinct would not lie to him.
The prickling sensation of being watched from the shadows came precisely from the crowd about a dozen meters to his right.
Ethan raised his right hand and made a grasping motion in the air.
A sharp gasp erupted from the crowd.
A tall man was yanked out of the crowd by an invisible force. His feet left the ground, and he flew uncontrollably over the heads of the onlookers.
The surrounding residents shrank back in terror, their cries of alarm rising one after another.
The man was nearly two meters tall with extremely broad shoulders, dressed in a coarse cloth shirt that made him look no different from an ordinary farmer.
Choked by the Wizard's Hand, he hovered in the air two meters in front of Ethan. His face had swollen to a bruised purplish-blue, his mouth was wide open, and muffled, incoherent sounds wheezed from his throat.
Blake was the quickest to react.
He yanked Colin behind him with one hand while his right hand gripped the hilt of his sword.
The surrounding Guard Knights drew their weapons in unison, the sharp ring of unsheathed steel echoing across the plaza.
“Protect the Duke and Duchess!” Blake’s roar cut through the commotion of the crowd.
Duke Leo stood by his carriage, one hand already resting on the hilt of the sword at his waist.
The Duchess was shielded behind him, her expression as calm as ever.
Ethan stared at the large man suspended in the air. “Your scent is off. Who do you work for?”
The man's face had already turned a suffocating purplish-black. He clawed at his own neck with both hands, digging his nails deep into his skin as if trying to pry open the invisible grip.
His lips quivered, squeezing out a few syllables from his throat, but he could not form a coherent sentence.
Ethan waited for three seconds.
Then—
Rip.
The man’s right arm was torn clean off at the shoulder.
The thick arm spun twice in the air before thudding onto the stone pavement.
The blood spurting from the wound was not red, but a dark, viscous green, like rotting seaweed juice. It splattered onto the stone tiles, releasing a pungent, nauseating stench.
The man's mouth flew open.
His jaw sagged as if dislocated, the corners of his mouth tearing all the way back to his ears. A series of gurgling, muffled sounds bubbled from the depths of his throat.
The skin beneath his coarse cloth shirt began to peel away, shedding onto the ground piece by piece to reveal dark green scales underneath.
The hexagonal scales gleamed with a dark blue luster at their edges. Each scale was about the size of a fingernail, tightly embedded in the grayish-white flesh.
His body began to swell.
His spine popped like crackling beans as his height shot up from one point nine meters to two and a half meters. The muscles on his back tore through his clothes, exposing two rows of bone spikes.
The bone spikes erupted from both sides of his spine, curving outward in sharp arcs.
His face no longer held any resemblance to a human. His eye sockets elongated, and his eyes turned into slit pupils of a dark yellow hue.
His nose collapsed, leaving only two tiny nostril holes.
His mouth, split to his ears, revealed three rows of triangular fangs lining his upper and lower jaws, with dark green saliva dripping from between them.
The creature suspended in the air was no longer a human.
It was a Red-Scaled Sea Snake.
“Oh? The Sea Race? You took your sweet time getting here.”
Before his voice could even fade, the crowd in the plaza erupted.
An old woman standing in the very front row suddenly straightened her hunched back.
She grabbed her own face with both hands, dug her fingernails into her eye sockets, and ripped outward.
The entire human skin split down the middle, revealing dark green scales and slit pupils underneath.
Behind her, a young woman carrying a baby slammed the “infant” in her arms onto the ground. The swaddled bundle shattered upon impact, turning into a puddle of dark green slime.
The woman grabbed her own hair and tore her scalp and facial skin off in one motion, exposing the flat skull and protruding bone spikes of a Sea Snake.
The sounds of tearing flesh and skin echoed from all directions.
From the edges of the plaza, from the side alleys, from the rooftops surrounding the main castle, and even from the fountain pool in the center of the square.
The farmers dressed in coarse cloth shirts ripped off their disguises, revealing their true Sea Snake bodies.
The young maidens carrying fruit threw their bamboo baskets aside, dug their hands into their necks, and tore their human skin open from the collarbones.
The old men holding dark bread, the children sitting on their fathers' shoulders, the women standing on their tiptoes to catch a glimpse—
Every single one of them was a Sea Snake.
The sound of human skins slumping to the ground joined in a dense, horrifying chorus.
Thousands of Sea Snakes shed their disguises, surrounding Ethan, his family, and all the guards in the center of the plaza.
Their slit pupils flickered under the sunlight like a dense swarm of dark yellow pinpricks. Their dark green scales reflected a greasy sheen, and their bone spikes vibrated slightly in the air, producing a faint, low hum.
A middle-aged woman's human skin split down the center.
Ethan recognized that face.
When he had left the territory ten years ago, this woman had been a helper in the castle kitchens. Every time she saw him, she would slip him a freshly baked honey cookie.
Now, that face lay discarded on the ground, its hollow eye sockets staring blankly at the sky, with the terror of her final moments still frozen on her lips.
Blake’s face turned ashen. “Young Master, these people...”
“Shut up.”
Blake closed his mouth.
Ethan stood in place, his gaze sweeping over the human skins piled on the ground.
There were skins of the elderly, of children, of young girls, of people he recognized, and of those he did not.
Every single human skin was perfectly intact from head to toe, complete with hair and nails. It was clear they had been peeled off whole while the victims were still alive.
“My people,” Ethan said softly. “You skinned them alive.”
“Wizard.”
The Red-Scaled Sea Snake held by Ethan's invisible grip stared deathly at him. Its mouth split to its ears, its three rows of interlocking triangular fangs grinding together as dark green saliva dripped from the gaps.
Within those slit pupils on its barely recognizable face burned a look of near-madness.
“When the lord is disgraced, his servants must die.”
Its voice wheezed from its torn throat. “You plotted against our Lord. Naturally, we will fight you to the death!”
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