Jugram watched as his grandfather's breathing stopped. Complicated emotions began to surface as he looked at the old man's corpse, but he pushed them down for the time being. Instead, he set his jaw and began to Blood Manipulation internally to pull his bones back into his leg and lock them in place with a layer of hardened blood.
Usually, trying to fix a bone on your own would have been a terrible idea in case it was set in the wrong position, but with the internal sense granted by Blood Manipulation, he could line up the break perfectly and seal it back in its proper place. With the bone back in place, he forced himself to his feet, trying to avoid placing too much pressure on his damaged leg.
Outside, there was another tremor, quickly followed by an explosion. The screams continued, but now there was the sound of other quirks being used to combat the deer. He had little hope that the townsfolk would be able to do much since none of them, as far as he knew, had combat-oriented quirks.
With Grit teeth, Jugram forced himself into a hobble, then looked away from the corpse and commanded all the blood in the area to flow to him. A moment later, all of his grandfather's blood surrounded him in a loose ring as he moved to a break in the house, where he could see the rampaging deer.
Now that it was under direct attack, the animal bucked its head wildly in jerky movements that were hard to predict. He watched as a wild shake of its head ended with a woman being gored on its antler as she transformed her fingers into scissors and began furiously trying to poke out the deer's eyes, but it tossed its head one more and tossed her free.
While she was in midair, the deer gathered a smaller energy blast and flung the entire sphere at the woman, who could not dodge. The night was briefly illuminated in a flash as the sphere detonated, tearing the woman's body in two and flinging it in opposite directions.
One of the charred and smoking ends ended up by Jugram, who gathered the dead woman's blood into the ring of blood surrounding him while the chaos continued. Running away proved to be useless since the deer's offensive flame/explosion quirk could be used accurately at long range. It actively targeted people running away from the massacre, even as those who stayed tried to distract it.
The problem was that the entire town was visible from this location, and the deer's rolling eyes seemed to spot anyone running easily. Its massive body also allowed it to shrug off much of the damage the townsfolk could inflict. If things continued at this rate, everyone would die.
Jugram observed this and crawled forward, feeling hatred blooming in his heart as he looked at the deer. With every moment, it got stronger. As the slaughter continued, he condensed the blood around him down into an orb between his hands. The orb flickered and pulsed unstably as he tried to line up a shot while the deer was distracted.
He didn't need to wait long before the opportunity he was waiting for arose. A man whose hands transformed into jumper cables managed to grasp the deer with both clips, sending a concentrated shock into the deer that made all its hair stand up and its wild thrashing to freeze briefly. In that moment of stillness, he acted.
Jugram clasped his hands over the orb, then forced it out in a piercing crimson arrow that ripped toward the deer's head. It was a perfect shot that soared straight toward the beast's eye. With any luck, it would punch through into the deer's brain and cause its rampage to end permanently. However, Jugram wasn't lucky.
The arrow of blood did impact the creature's eye, resulting in a spray of gore, but the arrow lacked the power to continue into its brain. Honestly, with his control, it was a miracle that he had even hit the creature on the first attempt. The lack of power turned a fatal strike into a strike that blinded the beast in one eye, causing the deer to bellow an eerie stream into the night air before it turned toward Jugram, fixing its remaining eye on him.
All the warning he got of the incoming attack was a quick flash of light. He used the remaining blood around him as a shield. Hardening it in the air before him as the unformed concussive energy reached him, easily breaking the shield apart and tossing him back. 'It seems that the longer the attack is charged, the more damage it does,' He thought as he was sent into a roll.
His leg ached as it pounded against the ground, but he quickly got back to his feet and ran back to the blown-open wall as fast as he could. The other townsfolk had capitalized on his attack, but the jumper-cable man had been smashed into the dirt under powerful hooves, crushing his body.
With a grasping motion, Jugram manipulated the dead man's blood to rip out of his body and upward, forming grasping crimson tendrils. These tendrils flared out and covered the deer's stomach and hooves before hardening, causing the deer to trip and fall. In response, it roared and charged up a detonation before lashing out at the closest people, reducing them to charred ash and scattered bits.
From the new corpses, more small rivers of blood snaked toward Jugram, who remained low and out of sight from the deer. He gathered all the blood he could as the last of the fighters fell. The rest of the townsfolk had given up, choosing to run and hide instead of dying to the deer's explosions.
Despite the lack of active attackers, the deer continued to hunt down the humans vindictively. Instead of causing explosions or wide-scale destruction anymore, it charged up its attacks until the orbs of energy were small glowing stars above the deer's head. From these, entire houses were set ablaze in one go without blowing them apart.
Suddenly, the danger now became staying inside. There were more than a few screams of people who cooked alive inside their houses before they could escape the conflagration. Those who ran before their houses burned died all the same.
'How is an animal's quirk this good?' Jugram couldn't help but complain as he wriggled forward on his stomach to get a better angle. Animals getting quirks was extremely rare, with only three that he knew of. To be fair, Nezu's quirk was pretty good as well, so maybe animals have a much lower chance to awaken quirks, but they are much better than usual. Nevertheless, it didn't matter how good the deer's quick was. He needed to end it.
He gathered every drop of blood around him into an orb, then decided to do something before more people died. Using internal and external blood manipulation simultaneously, he boosted his physical abilities while condensing the blood orb. While his boosted senses and physicality weren't too great, any little bit still counted toward tracking the deer successfully.
He followed the animal's erratic movement until it was about the release a new wave of flame onto a house, then struck. The blood orb before Jugram exploded into two long tendrils of blood. The first struck at the deer's legs, forming a pressurized bloodstream that could cut through a tree trunk, but once more, his practice and control were insufficient to deal any real damage with the attack.
However, the second stream flew toward the blazing orb atop the deer's head. This attack smashed into the orb, destabilizing it. There was a brief moment of calm before everything erupted all at once. A wave of heat washed over him, but he was ready for this and ducked back behind solid rubble. Still, he would have some nasty injuries when this was over.
Unfortunately, it wasn't. He waited for a few moments, but the deer was waiting for him when he rose. Its entire body was smoking, its fur had fallen off in massive patches, and its antlers had been reduced to nothing, but it still had a ball of energy pointed at Jugram from point-blank range that meant certain death if it hit.
Before the deer could finish him, an enraged scream caused both human and deer to glace to the side as something streaked from the darkness and impaled the deer. The beast stumbled back as blood spilled from what looked to be a shovel embedded in its side. Then the darkness parted, and a small figure leaped through the air toward the deer.
Yuto, his entire chest and back covered in gashes, swung hard for the beast's head. Seeing a human child attacking it, the deer didn't dodge—a mistake. Yuto's tiny fist hit like a speeding bus. The deer's head was driven into the dirt, then through the topsoil from the blow. Then his follow-up sent it flying into an ablaze nearby house.
The deer screamed as it bounced off the burning home before it turned to Yuto and released a quick blast that barely caused the boy to flinch. He rushed forward as the deer charged another attack but slid under and grabbed its neck, slamming its head into the ground again. Once Yuto was on top, he laid into the beast with his fists, slowly digging a deeper and deeper trench with every blow.
Finally, he stood in a pit of gore with no sign that there had ever been a deer there in the first place. Only blood, viscera, and shattered fragments of bone remained.