I pressed a trembling hand to my chest. My ribs… shattered—two, maybe three of them. Every breath was a serrated knife dragging itself through my lungs, rust grinding against bone from the inside out.
The monster, the village chief, no longer darted like lightning. Now it walked. Slow. Deliberate. Each step a grinding threat, as if savoring the scent of fear peeling from my skin.
"Why don't you get back up?" Its voice was slick, almost liquid, curling out of a mouth stretched into an unnatural grin across that rotting face. Those eyes speared through me, down to the last drop of strength I had left.
I cleared my throat, trying to sound casual, though my knees were shaking like twigs in a storm. "What… a guy can't… take a break? Been jumping around all day, you kno—" The sentence broke in half. My chest seized, bowing me forward as a cough tore loose, blood spraying warm and metallic from my mouth, pattering onto the dirt.
Above, Gelemia flitted from rooftop to rooftop—a shadow that refused to fall. She stopped, took aim, and raised two fingers.
Two minutes.
Without hesitation, she drew her bow. The string sang, and a rain of death streaked down from the sky. But, as before, the chief spewed a gush of thick slime, slick and translucent, drifting in the air like an oily curtain. Every arrow that touched it died in silence.
"Pitiful little insect!" he roared, teeth grinding like millstones.
"Get back, Gelemia!" I shouted, voice cracking, too late. The monster surged forward, faster than an unshackled arrow, jaws yawned wide, every tooth glistening wet in the dusky light. Between those gleaming spikes, Gelemia's face flashed for just a heartbeat.
Then—
From the side, Crokard exploded into the fray, vaulting roof to roof like a ragged bolt of lightning. His spear whipped through the air and sank clean into the monster's eye.
The chief jaws snapped shut in shock, the pain so sharp I could hear it in the cut of his voice. Startled, Gelemia hurled herself backward, rolling away from the edge of death.
"Crokard! You're… alive!" she gasped.
He didn't answer. His thick fingers locked around the shaft buried in the beast's eye socket. With a snarl, he wrenched downward, trying to tear that tough flesh wide open. But piercing it was like trying to split an iron belt with a rat's teeth, immovable. The spear wouldn't budge, only sinking deeper.
The chief arm whipped out. One clean blow, and Crokard's body spun through the air like a sack of flour. He tumbled mid-flight, bleeding the force into the ground on landing, before springing back up without missing a beat. Small mercy, the spear came free with him, once again in his grip.
Its iron head dragged a jagged trail in the dirt as he moved, each broken mark pointing back to the spot where he'd skidded to a halt.
"Crokard!" the chief spat, saliva and thin tongues of flame spilling through his words. "Is this how you repay me… after I raised you all these years?"
Crokard snorted, his tone like a blade scraping bone. "Raised me? The hell you talking about? I was hounded every damn day in that village, and you…? You never gave a damn."
"Raise me, my ass," he spat.
Without hesitation, he charged. The chief, still slick as an eel, slid across the residue of his own slime, the momentum from knocking Crokard away a heartbeat ago carrying him into another deadly glide.
The gap between them vanished in a heartbeat, breath chasing breath. But Crokard had a dirty trick tucked behind his teeth. He drove the spear into the ground and used it as a springboard, launching himself high, clean over the monster's skull. In that blink-long, kill-short arc, he chopped down again and again, the spearhead hammering the creature's temple, only to bounce off uselessly, iron kissing hide as tough as kiln-fired steel.
The monster writhed, raking its own back at the ragged puncture Crokard had left, then twisted and charged. This time its claws were drawn, scythe-long and hungry, sweeping down to peel flesh from bone. Crokard took the blow head-on, catching it on the spear shaft.
Metal on metal, that was the sound of their clash. Left, right, strike for strike, neither giving an inch. Then the chief dragged in a long breath, as if sucking every ounce of spite into his lungs, raised both arms high, and brought them down to pound Crokard into the earth, pin him there, make him part of the dirt.
But the spear held. Crokard planted both feet like pillars, bracing beneath the crush. His arms and shoulders throbbed, tendons strung like cables about to snap.
Meanwhile, I clawed my way upright and the pain wasn't just pain. It detonated through me like hot glass shattering, every breath a blade twisted slow inside my chest. A rusted knife, turned and turned in the lungs.
I could feel my ribs, one, maybe two, truly broken. Worse, the sharp edge pressed in, nudging, stabbing whenever my chest tried to rise.
Desperate measures, there was no other name for it. It was a gamble, but between dying slow and forcing a miracle, I'd take the latter. One hand clamped my chest, my fingers trembling, while my mind began threading the black sphere.
I pictured it forming, slow at first, growing around the broken bones. A smudge, then a shape. I forced the details to harden: the dense sheen, the weight, the cold that spread from inside the bone outward.
When the image felt solid, I let the mana flow. Carefully. Drop by drop. It crept like ice splinters into the wound, knitting to the darkness I'd called. I wrapped it, shadow as bandage, spiraling it tight around the fractured ribs, holding the shards so they'd stop sawing at my lungs.
The hurt stayed, barbed and stubborn, but now something held the pieces together, a brace under every movement. My breathing was still heavy, but it no longer blew sparks across my vision each time I dragged in air.
I forced my eyes open.
The world still reeled from the collision between Crokard and the beast, tremors rippling through the ground like an endless aftershock. But I was on my feet now, barely balanced on what felt like borrowed time, a debt that could be called in at any moment.
I drew a breath, lifted my hand, and let a black sphere take shape in my palm, slow and deliberate. It spun lazily above my skin, kept alive by the hum of mana threading through it.
"Hey… bastard," I rasped, loud enough to cut through the quake of their clash.
The monster didn't even glance at me. Its gaze stayed locked on Crokard, who was straining beneath that massive palm. Even from here, I could see the violent tremor in his fingers. I didn't know how many more seconds he had left before he crumpled.
I readied to fire the sphere, but—
BANG.
It wasn't mine that flew. Instead, dozens—no, hundreds of spears and arrows rained down from all directions, hammering into the monster's hide. The downpour of metal drove it back, just half a step, but enough to break the rhythm of its assault.
"Attack!" a voice bellowed, shattering the air. A heartbeat later, the ground shook beneath a stampede of feet.
I turned and almost didn't believe what I was seeing. Dozens… no, hundreds of men, pouring forward like a storm surge that nothing could hold back. Weapons in hand, fury blazing in their eyes, the heat of their will almost tangible in the air.
They streamed past me, a living tide surging toward the chief. For the first time since this battle began, the monster's expression… shifted. Its eyes darted, unfocused, the first spark of panic.
Strangers rushed around me, every one of them male and each carried whatever could cut, stab, or crush: river stones honed to a cruel edge, iron blades clearly forged by their own calloused hands. Sharp, yes… but against hide like that? I had my doubts they'd even pierce the outer layer.
Their skin glistened with sweat and dust under the dim light, broad chests bare to the open air, each man wearing nothing but a ragged strip of cloth knotted at the waist. Before my mind could fully process the sudden arrival of this warband, a heavy slap landed on my shoulder.
"You alright?" The voice boomed from a man taller than me, his age maybe around Paris's. Brown hair, tied back in a rough knot, a thin moustache shadowing a face carved by both hardship and a rare warmth. He wore the same stripped-down garb as the rest of them.
"Humans?" I said between ragged breaths.
He gave a short chuckle, his tone light yet firm. "Hah! Yeah, strange sight, isn't it? I'm guessing you've dealt with more goblins than men."
I almost fired back, but my gaze slid elsewhere, to the monster. That towering mass was now swarmed by hundreds of men, every second drenched in a flurry of blades and spears. But the ugly truth? It didn't matter.
Nothing was getting through.
"No matter how much we hit it, it's useless," the man said, eyes locked on the clash. "That slime shell, it soaks up everything. But if we stripped it off, then hit it with something big enough… we could hurt it. Maybe even kill it."
And I'm supposed to be the one with a plan? I groused inwardly, lips curling into a scowl. Out loud, he barked, "You got a plan?"
My eyes found Gelemia. She stood far off atop the rooftops, meeting my stare. One sharp nod, that was enough.
I broke into a sprint.
The black sphere spun viciously in my palm, mana trickling into it in steady drips until it swirled like a miniature black hole, devouring light around the edges. Across the chaos, Gelemia nocked an arrow but not an ordinary one. Near its tip floated a dark bubble, now grown to the size of her own body.
"Clear a path!" the man shouted, his voice cutting through the roar of battle like an axe through rope.
The fighters obeyed, peeling back to form a gap, while I tore forward, each second bought by the warriors locking the beast in place.
The monster tried to slide toward me on its slick rails, but the tide of men blocked and clung to him, even as they were flung aside one by one.
The distance shrank.
The chief raised one gigantic palm, dark and heavy enough to smash me flat in a single swing. But before it could fall—
Crokard hit him.
Full force, both hands braced against that palm, halting it mid-arc. The stumble bought me my moment.
I darted in along the flank, straight for its belly, slick with that gleaming slime and drove the spinning black sphere in hard. The detonation cracked the air, spraying the slime upward in wet, glistening bursts.
The flesh beneath didn't split, but the slime casing, its entire front layer, was ripped away.
At that exact heartbeat, Gelemia's bubble and arrow streaked down, cutting through the air above the battlefield. It whistled past the gap in the lines of men, over my head—
TRAAK!
The arrow slammed home into the monster's exposed hide.
A roar ripped up from its throat, shaking the air to its bones. For a heartbeat, I swore victory was just within reach—
"We di—!" We did it… The word never made it past my lips.
Pop.
The bubble, Gelemia's painstaking creation, the one I'd bought precious seconds for burst without warning. The arrow still jutted from its mark, but the wound was shallow, weeping only a thin trickle of blood.
The monster grinned. It had dodged death by a step.
But that grin didn't last.
Its eyes blew wide, pupils snapping to hard, narrow slits.
"Down!" someone barked from behind me.
Instinct, nothing else, jerked me around and dropped me low.
Wind howled over my head, riding on the back of a man unlike anyone here. His clothes were foreign, wrong for this place; his cloak whipped like a torn banner behind him. He balanced atop something massive, an axe? No… a colossal battle-axe, its edge carving through the air as though it were his own steel surfboard.
He shot past me like a comet, the axe-point stabbing straight into the monster's gut. The giant mass reeled backward under the force, and a geyser of blood erupted.
The man leapt down, both hands locked around the haft. With a single savage swing—
KRAAAK!
The monster split in two, its bones snapping like brittle branches. Blood and slime poured together, flooding the ground in steaming crimson waves.
And now his face was clear, military garb, deep moss-green, hugging his frame as if tailored by war itself. Silver lines traced the length of his arms and legs, thick fabric wrapped at the wrists, a broad belt circling his waist. A pistol rode on his left hip. His hair, the color of sunburnt brick, was tousled wild by the wind of battle.
"Ca—Captain Hach?" Gelemia's voice cracked the air.