Clint Newman, a knight of the Wilderness, was staring at the mass of dead hexapedes. In the midst of it all, a knight of the Raven Knight Order, the very one he had dismissed, was swinging his sword, spreading death like a plague.

The knight of the Raven Knight Order pulled his sword out from the skull of a hexapede. Blood trickled out, and the sound of the sword being withdrawn echoed through the air. The wind carried the metallic scent of blood, and the knight approached Clint, droplets of monster blood falling from the blade.

"Are you still planning to just talk?"

Was it sarcasm? No, Clint Newman thought as he looked at Maxim.

Before setting out on this investigation, he had been tipped off by the marquis: there was someone unworthy of the Raven Knight Order among them, someone he should keep an eye on. Clint had quickly figured out who that person was.

At first, Clint thought he could slowly provoke this person into self-destruction. Maybe they would lose their temper and charge at him. However, Maxim neither got angry nor showed any emotion. He only regarded Clint with indifferent eyes.

Clint's initial curiosity soon turned to irritation.

He wondered if this man had lost all his pride as a knight. While Clint had spent 15 years patrolling the frontier, battling countless monsters, the central order was producing knights like this?

Now, Clint had to question all his previous assumptions.

The aura that Maxim Apart exuded and the skill with which he wielded his sword... Clint, for the first time since serving in the Wilderness, doubted the marquis's judgment.

Maxim sheathed his sword and looked in the direction from which the hexapedes had swarmed. The excess emotion he had poured into his sword strikes left him feeling uneasy. Clint and his forces were rummaging through the pile of bodies, cross-referencing the path and characteristics of the hexapedes in their minds.

There was no trace of the previous mockery Clint had shown towards Maxim. Now, they were fully engrossed in their duties as knights of the Wilderness, searching for clues about the strange phenomena.

"Did you mention this kind of thing used to happen much more frequently?" Maxim asked Clint, who was calmly examining the dismembered body of a hexapede.

"At least ten times a day, sometimes as many as twenty, these creatures would reach the walls," Clint replied, dropping the lower half of a hexapede to the ground. He kicked aside the remains, narrowing his eyes.

"You made it much easier to check for clues by cutting them so cleanly. I should thank you for that."

Maxim ignored Clint's subtle praise.

"And what do you hope to gain by investigating them?" Maxim asked.

Clint jabbed at a corpse with the sheathed blade of his sword.

"Most monsters in the Wilderness, whether large or small, usually bear scars—bite marks from other monsters, scratches from claws, cuts from battles."

Clint pointed with his sword to a spot beyond the hill.

"Those monsters living at the bottom of the cliff over there, what do you think they survive on? In that barren wasteland where not even a single insect or patch of moss can grow?"

Maxim watched Clint, who furrowed his brow.

"The only way they survive is by cannibalizing each other, tearing flesh from other monsters, greedily drinking their blood. Even the strongest monsters aren’t exempt from this. These creatures have lost the instinct that nature usually imprints on them—the instinct not to fight the strong. Because if they don’t eat the flesh in front of them, they’ll die anyway."

However...

Clint continued as he flipped over the hexapede's body.

"These creatures are unusually clean. Even for young and healthy individuals, it’s rare to find monsters in the Wilderness with such unscathed bodies. And..."

Clint poked the hexapede's belly. Thick skin compressed under his pressure, and blood gushed out from the cut surface.

"These creatures are almost starved. There was a reason they attacked so fiercely and without regard for anything else. In short, there was no prey left for them. If we had waited a little longer, they would have started eating each other."

"So what's the conclusion?" Maxim asked.

Clint scratched his head awkwardly, then pointed again towards the cliff.

"Something is definitely happening at the bottom of that cliff. I don’t think the number of monsters has decreased, but... we'll have to get closer to find out more."

Maxim reconsidered the movements of the hexapedes in his mind.

"Do these creatures normally travel in groups? I've never encountered hexapedes before."

Clint opened his mouth in shock, almost as if he had lost the ability to speak.

"Why are you so surprised?" Maxim asked.

"Well... You've never encountered these monsters before, and yet you managed to slaughter them so easily? And without even using an aura blade?"

Maxim shrugged nonchalantly.

"So what?"

"...No, it’s nothing."

Clint shook his head. He realized once again how wrong his judgment of Maxim had been.

"Right, about the hexapedes... To be honest, discussing the ecology of monsters in the Wilderness is pointless. It's almost as if someone deliberately twisted their nature."

"And how about in other regions?"

Clint scratched his chin thoughtfully before answering.

"These creatures don’t usually live in groups. They’re most commonly found in the sea of trees area, where they hunt and live alone. The only time they gather with others of their kind is during the breeding season."

Maxim frowned.

"In that case, there’s no point in continuing to examine these bodies here."

"Agreed. It’s best we head to the cliff."

Following Clint's lead, Maxim and the others set off towards the cliff.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Cliff of the End,” said a knight following behind Theodora. She was gazing down at the corpse of the basilisk she had just slain. The monsters had ambushed them during their investigation, almost as if they were welcoming them. Theodora had taken the lead, cutting down the sporadically appearing monsters. They felt distinctly different from the monsters she had faced in the North.

The monsters in the northern mountains of Kips were ferocious. Having adapted to the harsh and cold northern environment, even seasoned knights had to put in serious effort to defeat them.

The monsters of the Wilderness weren’t as individually powerful as those from Kips. But the Wilderness monsters were mad. Their eyes lacked even a fragment of rationality or consciousness. That’s what made fighting them so difficult.

There was no aversion to pain, no fear of physical loss—instincts that any living creature should have. Even though their limbs wouldn’t grow back like a lizard's tail, they would sacrifice them without hesitation if it meant survival.

"The monsters here are quite different from those in the North, aren’t they?" Theodora said as she casually shook the blood off her sword.

"...Indeed, they are different. It's as if they lack any sense," replied the knight.

"They’re fearless," Theodora agreed.

As the knight said, some of the monsters in Kips would flee if they sensed Theodora's aura. But here, no such creature could be found. Yet there was something unsettling about simply attributing their behavior to a lack of fear. Theodora frowned as she looked at the basilisk's severed head rolling on the ground.

"Fearlessness... seems a bit off."

"Pardon?" The knight asked.

"They seemed almost too desperate, as if they didn’t have the luxury to worry about anything else..."

Theodora turned her gaze toward the direction of the cliff. A trail of gouged earth marked the basilisk’s path.

"Almost like they were running away from something."

The knight chuckled dismissively.

"Oh, come on, Sir Theodora, that can’t be. Do you know how starved these monsters are, how they’ve lost all sense of fear? In this Wilderness, where even a lowly devil bat dares to bite at Fenrir’s flesh, such a thing is impossible."

There was a confidence in the knight's tone that only someone who had served in this barren land for a long time could have. But Theodora didn’t take his reassurances at face value.

"We’ll decide after we finish investigating the Cliff of the End. Isn’t the current strange phenomenon already something unprecedented?"

The knight sighed, nodded in agreement, and replied, "Alright, then. Let's hurry to the Cliff of the End."

It wasn’t until Theodora reached the Cliff of the End that she understood why it was called so.

"This place..."

Theodora stared at the broken ground. The gray earth ended abruptly, disappearing into a false horizon. Ahead, where the land was no longer visible, there was only the sky. It was as if a painter had mistakenly splashed blue paint on a canvas depicting the end of the world. The scenery, with sky and earth seemingly separated, elicited both awe and dismay from the members of the Raven Knight Order who were seeing the edge of the world for the first time.

"This is the Cliff of the End," the knight beside Theodora said, his voice tense. Theodora’s expression hardened as she sensed the chilling miasma in the air.

"Monsters constantly appear and disappear beyond that edge," the knight said.

Theodora walked to the edge of the cliff.

"Be careful not to get too close," the knight warned, following closely behind.

The ground ended abruptly. Theodora leaned over, following the howls of the monsters still echoing from below.

There were a lot of monsters.

Below the cliff, monster corpses were piled up like a dam. Some monsters were tearing at the corpses to eat, others were hunting those monsters, and still others were desperately trying to climb the cliff.

"There used to be even more of them. Fifteen years ago, new monsters would climb up the slope formed by the piled-up bodies of their own kind," the knight beside her remarked.

"But looking at this cliff now, I can see what you meant, Sir Theodora."

The cliff was being eroded. The monsters were clawing and biting at the rock face, trying to climb up. Their desperation was palpable.

"We could have been in serious trouble if we hadn’t checked the Cliff of the End."

The monsters they could see seemed to possess fear.

But fear of what?

What could possibly instill such fear in these monsters? The knight clenched his fist as the unsettling silence of the Wilderness bore down on them.

"Damn it."

The curse came from Maxim. Clint, who was beside him, frowned.

"Such coarse language," Clint commented.

"Just this once, let me speak coarsely," Maxim replied.

Maxim, Clint, and the rest of their group investigating the Cliff of the End were now surrounded by countless monsters. Behind them, new monsters were crawling up from below the cliff. In front of them were the ones who had already succeeded in scaling it, now threatening Maxim and his group.

Maxim drew his sword and sighed.

"You said they don’t usually cross the fortress walls that much."

"True, but that doesn’t mean it never happens," Clint replied, drawing his own sword. His doubts about Maxim's skills had vanished. But now, Clint wondered whether Maxim could maintain his composure even in this situation. As the contempt faded, new doubts arose.

"Take the front," Clint ordered, facing the monsters crawling up the cliff. Maxim adjusted his grip on his sword and let out a deep sigh.

If I get injured noticeably, I'll hear about it again, he thought.