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NEWS: For those of you who liked my other story, Keep it in the Family. I've got news. I just published the re-written first chapter of that fiction on my Patreon! (It's NOT paywalled.). I've made a few, umh, critical changes, especially the ending, but the first part is the same. It'll most likely be incest, though to what blood-related degree, well... I'm still thinking about it. Anyway, if you're interested, hop on the website and please do leave some feedback.
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On with the chapter!
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"So dramatic." Leandro muttered, his hood flapping behind him. He didn't even blink; he barely moved a muscle, in fact. Just a casual swing of his Moonlit Edge.
Moonblade Style — Enshroudment.
The rampaging Yeti never felt such an intense sense of crisis before. Its sharp instincts saved its life, but not its arm. It watched in amazement as its severed limb soared in the air, a trail of blood splattering all over the snow.
"Just an arm?" Leandro tilted his head. "Am I still that weak, or were you simply lucky?"
Its cries of shock resounded far and wide, to every single snowy corner of the 3rd floor.
Eileen snapped into action, releasing an arrow. It hit true, straight into the Yeti's bloody stump, replacing its missing arm with the wooden shaft of the arrow. Griffin didn't stay idle, it was not in his nature. Benjamin and Christopher were quick to adapt to the chaos and split into two different directions.
Griffin dashed for the Yeti's wide open flank. Benjamin was on its behind, and Christopher on the opposite flank.
With all the flailing and crying, it made it easy for the Challengers to surround it. However, a cornered creature, especially one as strong as the Yeti, could be extremely lethal even in its weakened state.
An arrow whizzed past the Yeti's head, narrowly avoiding its eye. Eileen clicked her tongue, immediately reloading.
The Yeti didn't wait, its remaining arm mindlessly sweeping around it, kicking up a huge cloud of snow—as if to clear a perimeter and give itself enough time to flee. Yes, flee. Because it knew. The moment Leandro's Enshroudment cleanly lobbed its arm off, the fight was as good as over.
Wei Chen waited until its arm sweep was beyond him before he dove right in and sunk his Jian into its hide. Surprise flickered in his eyes. He didn't hold back, yet his Jian barely made it an inch into the Yeti's flesh.
The Yeti roared. It moved its good arm in an attempt to swat Wei Chen off but had to abruptly pull back, and once again, it proved that a Yeti's sense for danger was close to unmatched in the animal kingdom.
A wide, melting trench on the snow denoted that, had the Yeti not pulled back when it did, it would have lost its remaining limb. It snapped its eyes towards Leandro, who met its look with an even one.
"You... who are you?"
"I wish I could formally introduce myself, but we both know that it's pointless." Leandro said with a polite smile.
Soren jumped out of nowhere, his daggers digging into the Yeti's back like ice axes. It violently tried to shake him off, its ape-like face pulled into a fearful frown. Wei Chen carefully sneaked towards its soft midsection, where the fur was less concentrated.
His Jian had more success this time, plunging deep into the monster's flesh.
An ear-splitting cry shook the ground.
Benjamin was thrown off, as was the always steadfast Griffin. He was sent tumbling on the snowy floor, almost about to crash into Eileen, who yelped and rolled out of the way. Soren and Wei Chen suffered a lesser reaction; both were clinging to the Yeti like limpets, their respective weapons buried into its body, steadily sucking away its health.
The Yeti, enraged, unleashed a flurry of frenzied sweeps with its arm.
A mini, snow tornado rampaged in all directions, obfuscating the view, yet it could not obfuscate Leandro's eyes.
He sighed.
Another swing. A straight jab with his blade—a simple flick of the wrist.
Moonblade Style — Crater Impact.
The Yeti watched the exchange in slow motion, not believing what its eyes could perceive. 'Why is someone like that on this floor—' A beam of bright, silvery light covered its entire field of vision.
A shower of gore rained on a dumb-looking Soren and Wei Chen, both of whom were forced to pull away, lest the falling Yeti crushed them. The corpse fell down with a heavy thump, displacing snow.
All that was left of that incessant roaring and fighting was now the howling of the blizzard. It barely took a minute before the Yeti's bleeding cadaver was covered in a thick layer of snow.
"Did we just kill the bigfoot?"
Soren was awed now that he could take a much better, and safer, look at the creature. Honestly, he was still trembling. That beast was humongous!
"That wasn't the boss, was it?"
Benjamin asked, and Wei Chen shook his head.
"If it was, there'd be a notice from the system."
"Which means..."
"That the boss might be bigger, stronger, and a lot meaner than this." Eileen finished, counting how many arrows she had left. From the relieved look on her face, it seemed to be enough. "It was really hard to damage it with normal means."
Griffin nodded with a grunt, no doubt vexed by his less than stellar performance. "I could barely scratch that bastard."
"That's why I must stress the importance of Aura." Leandro walked around the Yeti, and, much to the surprise of his party members, began to dice it up in small, portable chunks of bloody flesh. "If you have enough of it; if you can harness it decently enough. I would hardly need to lift a finger while on this floor."
"Leandro, why are you—" Eileen was momentarily frozen as she watched him cut the Yeti apart and store the sliced meat in his inventory.
His hand sunk deep within the bleeding carcass, rummaging through the entrails and organs, until he found a hard piece of crystal. He secretly stored it away.
"We don't know how long we'll be here for, and with this heavy blizzard it'll be hard to find food. Instead of gawking like a fish, come take a piece."
Leandro's voice quickly kickstarted her heart.
Blushing from embarrassment, Eileen stepped forward, hesitating for a moment, but ultimately reaching down and touching the Yeti meat, storing it in her own inventory.
She frowned a bit at the blood; Leandro knew she'd get used to it soon.
Benjamin followed after Eileen and so did the others. It was as if Leandro was a soup kitchen distributing food to destitutes.
Before Griffin could help himself, Leandro handed him the heart of the Yeti; the core.
The metallic tang of blood wafted.
"I've heard somewhere that if you eat the heart of a Yeti, it can heal arthritis. Could be worth giving a shot, what do you think?"
Griffin's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "How did you..."
Leandro smiled politely.
"..."
He glanced at Leandro before nodding his head. Christopher and Wei Chen almost gagged at the gnarly-looking, black heart in Griffin's hands. The burly man merely scoffed in their direction. "I got the good stuff, you blockheads."
Now, all that was left of the Yeti were inedible parts. Leandro got up, sheathed his sword and looked around.
'The worst part of the 3rd floor is the visibility. Even with my Aura, finding the correct path is arduous. Not to mention...'
The Yeti's blood was strong-smelling, and because they had sensitive noses...
Yes. They would know soon.
Then again, wouldn't killing them all off solve the issue?
'No... this is not the 5th floor. Killing everything in sight won't cut if the main objective dies before we reach them.'
Well, doesn't really matter. They had to go deep into the heart of the 3rd floor.
Confrontation was inevitable.
"Let's move on." Leandro said, pulling his hood up, and this time strapping it for good measure. Right on cue, roars erupted all across the 3rd floor. The hornet nest was stirred. "Or we'll be surrounded soon."
…
Eileen was panting. Her feet sunk into the snow. She had to trudge forward, and even that was nowhere enough to escape the pursuing Yetis; she could feel them approaching.
The roars and cries were getting closer and closer. Earlier, they had met a couple of Yetis, but she and the others made short work of them, in no small part thanks to the timely aid of Leandro.
While the steady increase in stat points was very nice, the risk was still substantial.
At least, Eileen couldn't take care of a Yeti all by herself.
'If this is what the 3rd floor offers, what… what could possibly be at the top?'
She began to question whether venturing into the 3rd floor was the right decision—and not due to a lack of trust, but she didn't see how they might get out of a literal horde of Yetis advancing towards them.
A mischievous God must've heard her inner plight, because the snow in front of them was displaced. Three, massive hills of snow and ice cracked and fell down as the Yetis rose from their curled, camouflaged positions.
She immediately pulled back her bowstring, but Leandro beat her to it. Whenever he moved, it was in a leisurely manner.
It was as if he were taking a stroll, or simply cutting weed. Even the way he drew his sword was unhurried, fluid, and elegant.
And even to Eileen's untrained eyes it was obvious that the young man in front of her had been harshly trained to reach that level of proficiency. With a one-handed, lazy grip of his sword, Leandro flicked it horizontally.
Moonblade Style — Horizon.
Eileen had to shield her face with her hands as a surge of Aura uprooted the snow at her feet. It happened so fast.
A thin, sweeping arc of misty light cleaved through the freezing winds, creating a brief vacuum. The Yetis didn't even register it; they were in the midst of roaring when silence suddenly descended.
Their heads disappeared within the icy, howling gales.
She stared at Leandro as he calmly sheathed his sword and continued walking.
He was an incomprehensible monster. A monster in a very attractive human skin, but a monster nonetheless.
How could a person like that live normally in a society? Wasn't he a ticking bomb?
Eileen approached him all the same, and he waited for her, offering a slight nod and a smile. No amount of snow could possibly hide that charming face. "Can you still go?"
She nodded, brushing the snow off of her lashes. "Yes, but… where are we even going?"
"I believe that we're bound to find something the deeper we go into the mountains. Haven't you noticed?"
Eileen frowned. "Noticed what?"
"The Yetis." He said, plodding through the thick snow. "The frequency in which they appear has drastically increased. We're facing a headwind. It's normal for those behind us to track our scent, but not from the ones coming from the opposite direction."
"Then, won't we...?"
"Yes." Leandro read her thoughts, smiling slightly. "We're going to meet a lot more as we go. So? Isn't it exciting?"
"E-Exciting? Leandro...!"
Eileen glared at him.
He merely walked ahead, seemingly unbothered by the snow, the distance, or the Yetis. She didn't think any of the party members were the definition of normal; you had to be wired a little differently to willingly enter the Monolith.
But Leandro was a special breed even among them.
She was good at reading people.
The shift in their faces. The minute twitch of their muscles, the brief sparkle in their eyes, the clenching or unclenching of their jaws, the minuscule tilting of their heads. All those gave so much away even if people didn't want it to happen.
Eileen wasn't a brain surgeon like her father, but reading people was not brain surgery; it was a surgery of the mind.
But she made a mistake somewhere down the line in trying to read Leandro.
"You seem to be more scared of me than the monsters on this floor."
Came his rumbling, comforting laugh.
Comforting?
Hah...
It really didn't make sense.
He didn't make sense.
Eileen looked up, and it was hard to do so due to the wind and snow, but Leandro's gaze easily found hers. "What makes you say that?"
He continued staring at her, unnervingly so.
She looked away.
"It's in the way you move around me." He said quietly. "You hesitate, just a fraction of a second longer than you should. Your eyes flicker, looking for an escape route, even when there isn't any danger."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand to stop her.
"It's not a bad thing." He continued. "Caution is smart. But you're cautious in a way that goes beyond the usual fear of monsters. It's like you're waiting for me to do something... unpredictable."
Eileen frowned, considering his words. "I'm not... scared of you. It's just that you're so different from us. It's as if... as if..."
'As if you're not human.'
If it weren't for the apocalypse, she would have never had that thought. But now?
Monsters are real. She saw them. She fought them.
Was she walking beside one as well?
"You're undoubtedly smart, Eileen. I like that about you. Sharp with an arrow, and with your head. But take a better look around you. The true monsters are those we least expect them to be. They're good at being weak, but not at being human. Keep looking, Eileen. Monsters always reveal themselves."
Eileen didn't have time to ponder over Leandro's words.
A horde of Yetis was literally causing an avalanche as they advanced towards them.