Chapter 193.1: Irina (Part 1)

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Irina the slaughterer. In life, she was known by that title after being the second in command of a mercenary unit during a time of war in a distant past.

They were known as the Brigade of Black Lions, a group of around thirty cherry-picked and highly skilled warriors, led by Beowulf the Monster Killer. They had once been active all across the continent.

Beowulf had the strength to easily tear any monster apart, but he was also a dedicated team-player, and everyone in his unit had absolute trust in him, and even their employers never doubted him.

Irina also seemed to harbor certain feelings for him.

The jobs the Brigade of Black Lions carried out were mostly exterminating monsters, as was expected of someone with Beowulf's title.

Because of that everyone in the unit also specialized in fighting monsters, and before they realized they were more known for defeating monsters than as being mercenaries.

One day the Brigade of Black Lions received a request from the duke of a powerful country. He wanted them to defeat a specific monster, and offered an exceptional reward.

The monster in question was said to have appeared suddenly in the sacred gravesite of an ancient king, and if left alone would interfere with a local festival that happened once every four years.

Beowulf accepted that request. Once the rest of the unit heard the details, they all gathered their arms and headed to the gravesite, including Irina.

When they arrived, they saw a silver wolf so majestic that it almost felt like an insult to call it a monster. But it also proved to be the strongest foe the unit had encountered so far.

The Brigade of Black Lions did not retreat, however, and instead dragged the fight out until they figured a way to defeat the silver wolf. The monster had mainly focused on attacking Beowulf, so he decided to act as a decoy until Irina found a chance to swing her battleaxe onto the silver wolf's neck.

That was the strongest monster defeated in recorded history, and while many members were wounded, there were no casualties. The mercenaries-turned-monster-slayers rejoiced at their accomplishment, holding pride in their success.

But that did not last for long. A white mist billowed out from the fallen silver wolf's head, covering Irina completely. Moments later loud cries came from her.

Beowulf yelled and tried to rush to her aid, only to be stopped by his comrades. They did not know what the white mist was, so it was too dangerous to run there without caution.

He wrestled himself free from them though, turning a deaf ear to their warnings and dashing toward Irina's side. They did not know what was happening, so he believed it was better to save her as soon as possible before things got worse.

He had also fallen in love with Irina. That was the main reason why he could not bring himself to stop.

But a moment later Irina's battleaxe split his body in two.

Everyone was speechless as they watched Irina walk out of the white mist, which had already become thin and spread out. There was no emotion on her face, and her eyes were glassy as she surveyed her comrades.

Beowulf's body lay at her feet, cut in two at the waist.

Their first reaction was to be confused. Everyone in the unit knew about Irina's feelings for Beowulf, and his corresponding emotions.

Whenever someone brought the topic up, Irina would instantly turn beet red. Now her face had not a single hint of red, looking almost frozen blue.

Beowulf would sometimes ask for advice to confess properly, acting nervous about it, but now his body grew cold on the ground, his eyes stuck open.

Someone finally cried loudly, asking why she had done such a thing. As if in response, Irina swung her battleaxe again, and another comrade was turned to a corpse.

More cries and shouts were heard as Irina ran forward. Once all the chaos settled, the brigade was no more, and only Irina was left.

One person observed everything from afar, the duke who gave them the request. Irina the slaughterer was how he dubbed her when reporting the matter afterward.

After that tragic event, Irina encamped herself in that place, attacking anyone who dared get close. She stayed at the silver wolf's body as it rotted away, becoming its replacement as an even more dangerous foe. With time, that location was closed off and barred as a place to be shunned.

Many centuries later someone crossed into that closed-off location. That was Soul Howl, who heard an undead maiden could be found there.

The stories he heard were obviously of Irina, and they described her as someone befitting of the title of slaughterer.

The literature he found about the place described that location's past as such: A group of bandits entered the sacred gravesite to steal a treasure kept there, but once they found it, they got into an argument over it and ended up killing each other. Irina, who had killed the rest, was resented by her past comrades even after death, causing her to be cursed and turned into an undead monster.

That story concluded by saying that Irina stayed at that tomb, waiting for more victims to kill.

Following that and various other old scriptures, Soul Howl tracked down the old sacred gravesite, and venturing inside he found Irina undead, just like he wanted.

She was a mighty foe, easily swinging her enormous battleaxe however she pleased. But Soul Howl was already one of the Nine Wisemen by then, and he restrained her without holding back.

He wanted to make her one of his pawns, so he used a spell to cleanse the undead, but there were no results.

Powerful undead enemies needed to be weakened first before that spell worked, so seeing it fail, Soul Howl determined he needed to weaken her further.

But no matter how many times he tried, over and over, the spell would always fail.

His next conclusion was that specific conditions needed to be met before he could do that, so he left the sacred gravesite and researched Irina further.

All he could find was that Irina had not been a bandit, but part of a mercenary unit known as the Brigade of Black Lions.

He understood that all other reports of the event were fabrications, so he returned to the site to investigate it personally. There he found many old and whitened bones scattered all around the place. Those were the remains of the Brigade of Black Lions.

Their weapons were also there, or at least the remains of them. They had all been smashed to the point of being unusable.

There was one exception however, a single sword that was not bent out of shape and had a faint glow.

The upper half of a skeleton was firmly holding onto that sword, which seemed to be imbued by some ephemeral desire. Soul Howl picked up the sword and used his Necromancy skills to decipher that desire.

It was so weak and faded that only small bits could be understood, but it was enough to tell Soul Howl what to do next.

He went back to confront Irina the slaughterer again, and at the height of their fight he drove the sword through her heart.

What happened later seemed almost like a miracle. A bright light emanated from the sword and gently wrapped around Irina, expelling something like a white smoke from her body.

Then two figures like apparitions showed up, one of them was Irina, the other introduced himself as Beowulf.

The two told Soul Howl what the true history of the sacred gravesite was.

The Brigade of Black Lions had been tasked to kill a monster that appeared in the sacred gravesite, but that silver wolf had been no monster, it was a sacred beast tasked with protecting that location.

Once they defeated that guardian, the entity closest to the slain body was selected as the next guardian, which happened to be Irina, and so she was cursed to be an undead.

As the next guardian, Irina lost her own will, seeing all her comrades from the Brigade of Black Lions as intruders. Since then, she had hunted down anyone who got close to the sacred gravesite.

After their story concluded, they pleaded Soul Howl to defend their honor, and vanished together with the light after thanking him.

That concluded the duty of the sword thrust into Irina's body, so it began to crumble and turn to dust.

The desire imbuing the sword had been love for Irina. Having waited many centuries, Beowulf's love had finally reached her heart and become released.

Soul Howl did not really care much about those details though, he was simply in a good mood for having finally obtained Irina's body.

But before he could do anything the silver wolf appeared. Unlike the silver wolf the two had mentioned in the story, this one was only slightly bigger than a dog, probably the offspring of the old sacred beast. Even being small it had a regal appearance.

The silver wolf asked: Are you also here to desecrate this holy tomb?

Soul Howl replied he was not.

The silver wolf followed up by asking why he was there then.

He replied saying that he wanted Irina the slaughterer's body, a high quality body that had been seen in the sacred gravesite.

Whether the silver wolf understood the true meaning of those words or not, it relaxed the aggressive gaze it held on Soul Howl, and just told him to leave promptly if that was the case.

But Soul Howl stayed, asking what he had been wondering the entire time. What was being guarded in the gravesite? And who were the insolent trespassers?

The silver wolf said it could not answer the first question.

But it did speak about the trespassers, saying they were the private militia of some noble.

Saying that, the silver wolf went to pick up a piece of ancient armor, which displayed an elaborate emblem that did look like it belonged to a noble.

Then the wolf repeated: leave.

Soul Howl picked up Irina's body and departed the sacred gravesite.

As soon as he was out, multiple ghosts appeared in front of him. but they held no enmity against him. They were the members of the Brigade of Black Lions, Irina's comrades.

They all thanked Soul Howl for releasing the souls of Irina and Beowulf before returning to the afterlife, all except one.