The sounds of Weiss's battle with the Amalgamation was still going strong, rattling the whole building with every impact. Dust drifted down from the ceiling like gray snowfall, the chandelier in the dining hall swaying as though caught in an earthquake. Jaune figured it was bound to collapse soon—Rank 1's weren't called building-breakers for no reason.
Curiously, faint traces of frost crept from the edges of the massive hole in the kitchen ceiling where Weiss and the monster had vanished, spreading like veins across the plaster. Shards of ice fell like glass whenever the two combatants clashed. Jaune didn't need to guess whose work that was. Weiss's rune was holding, but the question was: for how long?
The kitchen offered no reprieve. The liquid pools that had dripped from the pulsating flesh walls now began to churn. Thick black ichor rippled like boiling tar, and as Jaune watched, pale monstrous lizard-like maws, twitching and sniffing, began to claw their way out.
He took a steadying breath, then forced himself to glance back through the swinging doors.
The dining area was a warzone. Beowolves prowled among overturned tables and shattered glass, snapping at screaming patrons. The two security guards had turned a thick oak table onto its side, using it as a makeshift bulwark. They were still alive, but barely, their movements sluggish under the constant battering of claws and teeth. Several other men pressed in beside them, heaving broken chairs and bottles, anything they could grab.
But desperation didn't change the truth. On the far side of the room, Jaune spotted one Beowolf crouched low over a woman. She was still alive, still screaming, but the Grimm's snout was buried in her stomach, dragging out ropes of her insides with greedy bites.
Jaune grimaced, throat tightening. He looked away before his hands could start shaking.
The ichor pools in front of him finished their hideous birthing. From the slick blackness, the first of the grimm rose with long reverse jointed hind legs tipped with sharp claws and a long heavy tail that twitched with an uncanny motion. Creeps.
Jaune felt something close to relief. Creeps. He could handle Creeps.
Beowolves were equivalent to an awakened with body level of four—feral, fast and with instincts tuned for killing. Creeps were technically the same tier, but they lacked the same agility and the cunning. They were duller predators, all jagged limbs and brute persistence. Creeps were slow enough that you could anticipate them—if you kept your nerve. Well, discounting their jaws of course. Their bite force was greater than almost all rank 0 grimm, able to easily snap metal and concrete to dust with ease.
However, Jaune would take Creeps over Beowolves any day.
"Listen up!" Jaune barked over the hiss of dripping ichor. He pointed his sword-arm at the chefs and the busboy still lingering near the pantry shelves. "Get out there. Take the knives, pans, anything sharp, and hand them to the men fighting. Especially those two security guys—I saw them earlier, they're still holding out. With better weapons, they'll last longer."
The three hesitated, fear pinning their feet to the tile floor. Jaune's glare sharpened. "Move!"
Something in his tone broke their paralysis. The head chef tightened his grip on the cleaver Jaune had given him and nodded once. Together, the trio shoved through the doors, vanishing into the chaos of the dining hall.
That left Jaune with the Creeps.
He cast a glance to the side. The sous-chef, the one who'd fainted earlier, still lay sprawled by the counter on the floor, unconscious and dead weight. Jaune's eyes slid instead to Jade. She was crouched low, trembling, trying to make herself small.
He bent quickly, grabbed a cast-iron pan—heavy, solid—and shoved it into her hands. The weight nearly made her stumble, but she clutched it with both fists.
"If any of those Creeps get past me, you hit them," Jaune told her, voice low but firm. "Don't wait or hesitate. Just swing."
Jade blinked, clearly overwhelmed. Her eyes flicked to the bony shapes crawling from the puddles. "Creeps?"
"Not important," Jaune cut her off. He didn't have time to explain naming conventions, or how giving the nightmare system classified names of these monsters. "Focus. If one reaches you, you don't think. You need to defend yourself."
Her lips trembled, but then she nodded, biting down on her fear. Determination flickered across her face, thin but real.
"Good," Jaune said.
The first Creep lurched fully free of the ichor. Its body unfolded like a grotesque insect, arms scraping against the tile with shrill screeches. Its eyeless face snapped toward Jaune as if sensing him by heat or heartbeat alone.
Jaune's muscles tensed. He adjusted his grip on the cleaver he'd scavenged earlier, holding it like a short sword. His body was primed. Strength coursing through his frame. He wasn't helpless and he certainly wasn't prey anymore.
He'd come a long way from being weak.
"You're mine," he muttered.
The Creep screeched and charged.
Jaune surged forward to meet it.
It lunged with its maw wide open, rows of teeth snapping like a bear trap.
Jaune didn't retreat. He stepped in and his wrist flicked upwards. The long chef's knife in his hand spun upward into the air, vanishing above him in a gleam of steel. Now free, his fingers wrapping around a cast-iron wok discarded on the tiles. He swung it up with every ounce of strength his body could muster.
The Creep's skull met iron with a ringing BONG that echoed across the ruined kitchen like a church bell. The impact reverberated through the wok and down into Jaune's arms, rattling his bones, but it was enough—the beast's head snapped sideways, its balance lost. Its claws scraped helplessly against the slick tile before the weight of its body pitched forward.
It slammed into the ground face-first, its limbs splaying out like broken marionette strings.
Jade yelped from behind him, scrambling backward as the monster's jaws clacked shut inches from where she'd been crouching. She nearly tripped over her own feet in her desperation, bumping into the swinging doors. Her pan clattered against the tile before she scooped it back up, pale-faced and trembling.
Jaune didn't look back at her.
His arm snapped up again, this time, the wok was the one spinning free from his hand, and into the air. He caught the chef knife he had tossed earlier into the air, and the blade felt warm in his palm, like it had never left.
Sliding across the ichor-slicked tiles, he dropped low beneath the snapping arc of the Creep's jaws as it tried to twist back toward him. His body flowed on instinct—muscles honed and reflexes tuned for survival. Both knives flashed and steel carved into flesh.
The butcher knife plunged deep into the beast's hindleg while the chef's knife slashed across the tendon in a brutal follow-through. Black ichor sprayed across his shirt, hot and acrid. The Creep shrieked, collapsing sideways, its leg useless.
Jaune was already moving. His wrist flicked upwards, once again, tossing the chef's knife skyward. The butcher's knife, however remained in his other hand, heavy and steady. He spun on the ball of his foot, scooping the wok out of its arc as it descended from above. His momentum carried him into a full turn, and with a grunt of effort he hurled it across the kitchen.
The pan sang through the smoky air and smashed square into the skull of a second Creep that had just clambered free from the ichor pool and was running to them. The blow staggered it mid-lunge, its body jerking back as though stunned.
Jaune didn't waste the motion. He turned back in the same breath, brought the butcher's knife down in both hands, and drove it down with all his strength into the neck of the first crippled Creep. The blade cut through precisely between its cartilage and bone with a wet crack, severing its spine.
The beast went still instantly, its limbs twitching once before the entire body dissolved into drifting ash, vanishing like sand in a gale.
Jaune's free hand snapped up. The chef's knife, falling in its lazy spiral, slapped into his palm. He didn't even break stride.
Three left.
He leveled the knife at them. His chest heaved slightly from exertion, sweat stinging into his eyes. Behind him, Jade stared, wide-eyed, clutching her own cast-iron pan like it was the only thing anchoring her to reality.
She didn't recognize this Jaune. He clearly wasn't the brother who joked about video games, the awkward kid who once tripped over his own shoelaces in gym. No, the man in front of her was sharp, fast and efficient—a predator among predators.
Jaune ignored the look. There was no time.
The second Creep shook the wok off its head and locked its eyeless snout toward him. With a roar, it lunged forwards, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow his torso whole.
Jaune sprinted straight for it, then juked left at the last moment. His boots skidded against the slick tile as he planted his full hands on the prep counter, vaulted across its surface, and rolled over the gleaming steel.
The Creep's teeth clamped down where he'd been, its maw crunching the metal table like paper. The sound was deafening—steel shrieked, then crumpled into shards. Sparks spat from the pressure of its bite.
Jaune hit the ground in a roll on the far side, momentum carrying him underneath the twisted wreck of the counter. He immediately reversed his direction and slid forwards, underneath the table where the grimm was crunching onto the twisted metal. Mid-slide, he kicked out with both feet, and slammed his foot hard into the Creep's hindleg as it tried to drag itself forward.
The monster stumbled, forced to spit out the mangled slab of steel. Black ichor drooled from its jaws.
Jaune didn't give it a chance to recover. He flipped the chef's knife in his hand into a reverse grip and surged up from his crouch, stabbing upwards with brutal precision. The blade punched through the soft membrane of the beast's eye, sliding deep into its skull.
The Creep convulsed once, shrieking, before its body dissolved into drifting ash that scattered across the blood-stained tiles.
Two down.
Jaune wrenched the knife free, spinning on his heel just as the next two Creeps lunged together.
The one close to him—Its maw snapped forward with terrifying speed—far too close and too sudden for him to dodge. Instinct screamed louder than thought. His body moved before his mind even caught up.
He thrust the wide butcher's blade out before him, vertically, like a shield.
CRUNCH.
The monster's jaws slammed shut around the sharp half of the blade, its own momentum driving the cutting edge deep into the roof of its mouth. Black ichor spattered across Jaune's arm, hot and foul. The Creep recoiled, shrieking, but its teeth had locked itself onto the cleaver, pinning it in place.
Jaune's eyes widened, a spark of desperate clarity flashing through him.
'This might actually work.'
He didn't hesitate. He let go of the blade and snapped his leg forward in a brutal kick, hammering his shoe on the underside of the creature's jaw. The impact jarred his bones, but the result was immediate—the butcher's blade was rammed deeper, slicing through palate, through skull, and straight into the brain.
The monster convulsed, spasmed once, and then dissolved into drifting black ash.
For the first time, Jaune almost grinned. A ragged, disbelieving laugh threatened to escape his chest. He'd done it. Three Creeps, gone—
WHAM.
Something slammed into him from the side, hard enough to rip the air from his lungs. Jaune hit the tile floor on his back, the impact rattling his teeth. Before he could breathe, hind claws pinned his shoulders.
The last Creep.
It loomed above him, massive, its maw opening wide. Hot rancid breath blasted his face, filling his nose with rot.
Jaune barely managed to jam his other weapon—the long chef's knife—sideways between them. The beast's jaws clamped down with a sound like grinding stone, its teeth clashing against steel less than an inch from Jaune's throat. The force was crushing, the bones in his arms screamed and seemingly cracked under the pressure.
"—!" He gasped, but no words came out. His eyes stretched wide, vision tunneling.
The knife buckled. The jaws pressed closer. He could feel the heat of the monster's gullet, could see every jagged ridge of its maw.
He was going to die.
Jade screamed his name.
.
.
AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon