Rakahn pushed forward, his swords slicing through the neck of a monster with fluid ease, decapitating the creature in one swift motion.
[You killed a Variant: Red Titrius monster.]
[You received…]
As the notification whispered in his ear, the monster's head rolled violently on the ground. Rakahn paid it no mind—he had more pressing concerns.
To an outsider, it might have seemed like he had felled the creature effortlessly, but minutes earlier, he had struggled to land a single blow. This beast was a grotesque hybrid of a monkey, a lizard, and an ant, wielding long claws that had already left deep gashes across his body.
Without pausing, Rakahn lunged at another nearby creature. This time, the beast barely resisted, letting out a painful cry as his sword pierced its chest with a dull thud.
Quickly withdrawing his blade, he tumbled backward, narrowly dodging the stone club that a lizardman swung at his head.
"Damn, that was close!"
Rakahn met the reptilian gaze of the creature, its eyes burning with fury and hatred. He returned the glare, struggling to contain his own rising anger.
Taking a step, then another, he augmented his entire body with his skill "Mass Control," each footfall making the ground tremble beneath him. His twin swords collided with the creature's stone club, producing a sharp, ear-piercing clang. The sheer weight of his enhanced body forced the creature to its knees.
The lizardman had made a critical error—it focused solely on Rakahn and Dahlia, recognizing them as the strongest threats. Both were newly born variants, powerful but inexperienced. In its arrogance, the creature ignored the rest of their team, dismissing them as beneath its notice.
Was it pride? Or just sheer stupidity? These creatures feared the strong and despised the weak. To them, anything not on their level was mere prey.
But this arrogance would be its undoing. The "prey" had long sworn to become predators themselves.
With a sharp crack, the creature's leg shattered under the force of Yadha's club. It stumbled, and before it could regain balance, Sokar's saber found its mark, slashing savagely across its back.
For a moment, the lizardman limped, but then it stiffened and collapsed, lifeless.
Rakahn glanced around. The soldiers had already evacuated, leaving only his group within the walls alongside the remaining creatures. He signaled his comrades, and they swiftly retreated.
The monsters, blinded by rage, charged after them without hesitation. They were so consumed by bloodlust that they failed to notice the trap closing in around them.
Once all the creatures were inside the walls, the air around them suddenly heated up, becoming unbearably hot. The warriors they had been pursuing vanished from sight.
Panic spread through the monsters' ranks as they looked up to see a massive fireball, several meters wide, blazing in the sky above them.
They attempted to break through the walls, but the once fragile barriers had become impenetrably strong. Some tried to leap over the walls, only to be picked off by the elite archers of the Ibara clan.
Even the monster mages, desperate to conjure defensive spells, found themselves powerless. An unseen force, far more attuned to mana than they, had seized control of the energy in the air, preventing them from casting anything. They were left helpless, awaiting their fiery demise.
The fireball descended, engulfing them with a deafening explosion that shook the very earth. It consumed the lives of the hideous creatures in an instant, leaving nothing but scorched remnants in its wake.