But suddenly, everyone stopped.
Neither Aris nor the group dared move an inch.
The world seemed frozen around them, as even the wind and the clouds appeared suspended in time.
Aris did not move, his gaze fixed on the group, whose expression conveyed the exact same thing as his own.
There, somewhere around them, something was watching.
Something far greater than anything any of them had ever seen in their miserable lives.
Because compared to that thing, they all seemed like nothing more than blades of grass patiently waiting to be trampled.
Once again, it was not Aris's rational side that made the decision. It was not the remaining human part of him. No, it had been far too long since he had abandoned that.
Truthfully, Aris no longer knew when he had stopped behaving like a king. So instead, the Mad Beast, whose instincts were screaming at him to run, fell silent. And in its place, it seemed to whisper into the former king's ear.
"Don't move anymore. You can only die now."
Aris felt death even though he could not see it. No internal wound. No external injury. No unavoidable catastrophe.
And yet Aris was certain that he was going to die.
But he was certain of something else as well.
The thing imposing this pressure on him was right behind him, where the group's eyes were fixed.
All he had to do was look. Turn around and confirm whether death was truly waiting for him.
Aris did not hesitate. To be honest, he was incapable of feeling anything other than death right now.
But for some reason, he wanted to see. He wanted to see what had awakened the instincts of a man as corrupted as himself. Of the beast that had slowly taken the place of the man.
So, in a moment so slow it felt like an eternity, he turned his head and body toward his predator.
"It's strange. It still hasn't killed me. The wind isn't blowing. The sky is frozen. Whatever this thing is, it's impossible for it to affect me like this when I can't even see it. I faced Genomia in the past. It's impossible for something to frighten me this much. Either this monster is beyond even that, or..."
And that was when he saw it...
It was a giant eye. An eye was observing him from extremely close.
Aris could see his own reflection in it so clearly that he wondered if he was already dead.
"How could something like this appear in front of me without me noticing?"
Indeed, it wasn't just an eye.
Aris had seen it for a brief moment while he was still turning around.
Since the beginning of his journey through the western lands, the beasts had all been fairly similar. They strongly resembled different kinds of foxes or wolves. Even the fennec shared the same general shape. If Aris had known more about beasts, he probably could have identified a unique species.
But those beasts were still unknown to the Kingdom of Arkis, because nobody dared wander through the western lands.
As a result, no one knew what dwelled in their depths.
Aris wasn't certain he had reached the end of them. In fact, he was almost certain he hadn't.
He was convinced that whatever the origin of this place was, it wasn't natural. And considering the way increasingly powerful beasts appeared the deeper one went, the heart of these lands probably housed a monster that not even his entire kingdom could defeat.
But Aris wasn't even sure he was heading in the right direction, so it wasn't something that troubled him for the moment.
His current problem was the beast standing before him.
Because yes, the eye in front of him belonged to a creature he had never imagined encountering in his entire life.
For all intents and purposes, it was a beast known from the kingdom's archives.
Countless books spoke of countless different beasts in the royal library. Aris rarely read them, but he was still interested in the kinds of creatures he might one day encounter through misfortune—or conspiracy.
Within those books, some legendary beasts were said to still be alive. Some were so legendary that they existed as a single distinct entity rather than an entire species.
Genomia, for example, was a species of aquatic beast that, for unknown reasons, had ended up on the border between Koran and Arkis.
But among all those creatures, there was one that had particularly marked Aris's mind when he was young.
It was a solitary species, though it occasionally traveled in groups. Extremely intelligent, it used that intelligence to dominate many other creatures.
However, its behavior was recorded as completely unpredictable. One day it might adopt a beast into its group, and another day it might drive that same beast to...
...suicide, before devouring it.
To be precise, the sages described it as sadistic, conducting experiments even on its own kind. Capable of the worst as well as the best.
It was classified as extremely dangerous...
"A… a Koekitsu…"
Long fox-like beasts possessing four tails, with a snout that could easily reach a meter in length and a height of at least three men, these creatures were anything but friendly.
And the last thing Aris knew about them was that they were capable of launching mental attacks.
The sages' final words about them were:
"No one survives a prolonged encounter with a Koekitsu."
And Aris was seeing one, right there, staring at him without moving.
The one who had just barely survived a rampaging wolf pack, the one who had spent the past days without eating, the one who didn't even know where he was going—was now standing before one of the most dangerous species mentioned in historical records.
"But… how?? I didn't cross any other wolves. I haven't seen a single fennec in so long. These lands have been empty for ages. I've been walking for hours and this is where I end up. A damn Koekitsu. There's a problem. Why did the rules change so suddenly??"
No. Aris now realized there had never been any rules in the western lands. There had only been his belief that he had understood them. The mechanism at work was still far beyond his comprehension. He didn't even know why he had started seeing himself as an important figure in these lands. He had never been the same king here as he was in his kingdom. There was no reason for it to follow his logic.
Until now, beasts had appeared progressively stronger. That was the logic Aris had imposed on them. But in truth, at the level he had reached, logic seemed to collapse. The enormous gap between a simple wolf and a Koekitsu was staggering. And the absence of beasts in the surrounding area might have been the reason.
Now, Aris was no longer certain of anything. Everything had already collapsed anyway. There was nothing he could do anymore. He was going to die in this gray desert without being able to do a single thing about it.
It was the end… He had come all this way for nothing… and he had reached the end of it.
A path of sorrow and rage, all for him to no longer even remember who he was.
The Mad Beast was dying…
It couldn't win…
So the only thing it could do…
Was to put the knife to its own throat…