A few days later.
Boom—
A torrential rain poured down. Nidhogg squeezed beneath a dilapidated house that barely offered shelter from the storm. He lit a campfire, then whistled—deliberately summoning his good brother Torrent to suffer alongside him.
Torrent was thoroughly displeased, snorting white vapor. It was cold here, damp everywhere. He didn't like it. He kept bumping Nidhogg's back with his forehead.
Nidhogg fed Torrent some fruit, stroked his neck, and coaxed him to lie down. He leaned against Torrent's warm belly.
With the crackling fire and Torrent's warmth, he could sleep soundly through the night.
Fwoosh—
A strange sound cut through the rain. Even Torrent noticed something amiss. He lifted his head and gently nipped at Nidhogg's hair.
"I know." Nidhogg scratched his head, sat up, and stared at the figure emerging from the rain. "Looks like we won't be sleeping peacefully."
A woman in a nun's habit entered.
She was soaked through. The sacred robes clung to her, outlining the contours of a seductively curved figure that would make nearly any man's breath catch.
The nun shivered visibly and spoke plaintively:
"I am a passing nun. The heavy rain has made it impossible for me to return to the convent tonight. I'm completely drenched. Might I warm myself by your fire and rest here for the night? I'm so cold... my whole body is so cold..."
As her soft words faded, she seemed to faint, collapsing delicately to the ground.
Her loose nun's habit shifted slightly, revealing snow-white shoulders and chest—flawless as jade in the firelight.
If a man had wicked thoughts he couldn't control, he would surely rush to help the nun rise, his hands and feet eagerly exploring. What followed would be easy to imagine...
Nidhogg chuckled softly.
This stunned the nun, who had deliberately fallen. She looked up at him in confusion.
Nidhogg stood and drew his Lordsworn's Greatsword. The blade gleamed coldly.
Leaving aside the question of why such a beautiful nun would be walking alone at night—her seductive manner was nothing like a pious sister's. It was more like...?
He blinked and activated his Spectral Sight. And indeed, he saw through her thin bag of flesh to her true essence.
A hideous demon. An Apostle!
Since you've delivered yourself to my door, I'm more than happy to oblige.
Nidhogg stepped over the fire and swung his greatsword at the nun without hesitation!
Facing the incoming blade, the nun's eyes flew wide. In desperate haste, she instantly displayed far greater agility than any human.
She braced one hand on the ground, vaulted backward, and launched herself away. But she couldn't dodge fast enough. Nidhogg's greatsword caught her contemptuously, severing one of her arms!
The severed limb hit the floor, twitching several times like an insect, then transformed into a strange, large hand with sharp claws on its fingers.
At the same time, the nun—now leaping through the rain curtain—looked at her ruined arm and stopped hiding. She snarled several times, and with a few convulsive movements, burst through her nun's habit, revealing her true form.
Her face was still human, but her entire head was like a horseshoe crab—or rather, like a beetle pressed against her face.
Thin limbs covered her head. Her tongue darted from a fanged mouth, long and sensitive as a snake.
Her voice became shrill, stripped of all former charm and tenderness.
"Boy, I could have let you taste heaven before falling into hell. I didn't expect you to be so... ungrateful. Hehehe..."
For an Apostle, using a Beherit meant abandoning humanity and unleashing the demonic nature within. That nature often manifested in their external form.
This Apostle before him—her demonic nature was clearly embodied in the form of a face-hugging worm.
All Apostles loved to eat human flesh, torture people, and revel in human screams, satisfying their twisted desires.
This face-hugging Apostle before him particularly enjoyed reaching the peak of sexual intimacy with a man—and at the moment of his greatest pleasure, when he was happiest, suddenly revealing her true form. It gave him the most horrifying experience imaginable.
The terror and despair of falling from paradise into hell—she had never been able to stop once she'd tasted it.
But tonight, she had miscalculated.
Instead of seducing this young man into dropping his guard and indulging in pleasure, he had instead seen through her and severed one of her arms with his sword.
The face-hugging Apostle licked the blood flowing from her stump with her long tongue, eyeing Nidhogg dangerously from beside the campfire.
"I don't know how you saw through my disguise. But from the moment you attacked me, it no longer matters."
"I only hunt humans this way because I enjoy the feeling of debauchery and pleasure. If you think I'm weak and that a sword can threaten me, you're gravely mistaken!"
With a shriek, the face-hugging Apostle leaped through the pouring rain!
The limbs on her head thrashed rapidly, hideous as a spider's legs.
Fwoosh—
The face-hugging Apostle saw Nidhogg seemingly frozen in place, as if terrified. She grinned and reached for his shoulder with her remaining large hand.
If nothing went wrong, the next moment should have seen his head separated from his body!
SCHLICK—!
A silver flash!
The face-hugging Apostle sensed danger acutely in that instant. But everything happened too fast.
The silver sword-light had already cleaved through her before she could react—easily cutting through her tough carapace!
Normally, how could ordinary human weapons be effective against her? It was unthinkable!
The face-hugging Apostle had no time to ponder this, because Nidhogg's Lordsworn's Greatsword swing was clearly incredibly fast. In the blink of an eye, it had severed her neck.
The claws on her large hand were mere inches from Nidhogg, but they were frozen there forever.
At the same time, the face-hugging Apostle's perspective shifted!
Then, with a thud, she hit the ground. Looking up, she realized she had been decapitated—her head had rolled away.
"How can this be... impossible..." The Apostle was still alive, shrieking in terror. "You're only human! How could you kill me? I don't want to—I—"
CRUNCH—!
At that moment, Nidhogg finished it with another strike, cleaving the beetle-like head on the ground in two. The enemy's life was utterly extinguished.
Whatever the face-hugging Apostle had wanted to say in the end—it was over.
Though unlikely, if a face-hugging Apostle currently had a Beherit in hand, she might be able to reactivate the sacrificial ritual in desperation and summon the God Hand.
Nidhogg didn't want to take that risk. He acted quickly.
Besides, this could be seen as avenging Corkus in another timeline.
Corkus had died at the hands of this very face-hugging Apostle during the Eclipse. Later, Guts had successfully avenged him in the early chapters of the Black Swordsman arc.
「Quest」 Eliminate Low-Rank Apostles and Low-Rank Invaders in the Kingdom of Midland (1/?)
「Sub-quest」 Defeat the Face-Hugging Apostle (Completed)
「Reward」 Level Up: LV 60 → LV 61
Fwoosh—
At that moment, the body of the hideous face-hugging Apostle emitted black smoke, as if burning. Her head and body continuously disintegrated!
"Waaaah—!"
Suddenly, threads of vengeful spirits burst from the dissolving corpse, startling Nidhogg.
They did nothing. They simply wailed and sank into the ground.
Nidhogg looked with his Spectral Sight and saw a crack in the underworld that ordinary people couldn't perceive. Within it, a vortex swirled, filled with vengeful, wailing spirits.
The face-hugging Apostle's chain of spirits joined them directly, seized by the other specters, and quickly became part of the vortex.
Soon, the vortex vanished.
Such was the fate of Apostles.
The spirits of the people they had killed—directly or indirectly—were absorbed by the Apostles, making them stronger and stronger.
At the same time, when an Apostle died, all the vengeful spirits they had absorbed burst forth at once—including their own spirit—and together they would fall into the vortex of thought in the abyss, becoming food for the darkness.
This was the true nature of the Apostle's reincarnation and the demon-subduing ritual.