The snow had lessened.
But the slaughter had not yet ceased.
At the edge of the forest, the wind from a sword whipped up monster corpses. Paul's figure darted across the ground, moving like a meat grinder through the snowdrifts.
"The net is broken!!"
"Over here too!"
"The monsters are chewing on the tree trunks!!"
An hour ago, the monster horde had given up on charging the net. To avoid Paul's slaughter, they had started attacking and gnawing on the tree trunks holding the protective net. The net itself was fixed to the sturdy trees at the edge of the forest. When the trees fell, the net naturally collapsed.
Fortunately, many monsters were still attacking each other. This behavior was ultimately a choice made by a small group of monsters following their animal instincts.
Even so, Paul was exhausted from running around.
He was the only one on the other side of the net. Unlike his adventurer days, where he had Ghislaine for offense and Elinalise for defense, forming a tactical formation with flank support and his own wife's healing.
Now, holding the entire defensive line by himself was just too tiring.
Paul's sword tore through the snowdrift near the protective net. As the sounds of monsters screaming filled the air, a villager's scream came from behind him again!
Paul was about to turn and provide support, but he saw that in the burrows of the snowdrift he had just destroyed, countless crimson eyes had reappeared.
"Damn it..."
Paul stopped, raised his sword, and killed the monsters that were attacking again. He staggered, nearly falling to the ground.
His Touki was depleted!
Paul's face was grim as he assessed his condition. Wave after wave of monsters had come, and he had been fighting continuously for almost three hours. His body needed rest...
He truly began to miss Ghislaine and Zenith.
Suddenly, a long creaking sound and the panicked shouts of villagers came from his side. His pupils contracted as he looked towards the location of the call for help.
The scene was imprinted in his eyes.
The tree trunk, as thick as an adult's embrace, was covered with Great-Toothed Rats and Saw-Spiked Rabbits. It was breaking from the bottom, and the net on that side was slowly crashing southward. The monsters on the tree saw this and jumped down, creating a rain of monsters in the air.
Below the rain were the stunned faces of the villagers.
"Get out of the way!"
Paul roared, twisting his sword to charge with the Sword God Style. But in the next moment, he suddenly stopped, a look of relief on his face. He changed the direction of his sword and instead turned to cut down the monsters by the tree next to him.
As he turned, the tree trunk had not yet fallen, and the monsters were still in mid-air.
A figure emerged from the air in front of the villagers under the tree like a wisp of smoke.
Allen, hand on his sword, squinted at the monsters falling from the sky. The gnawing teeth of the rabbits and rats glinted menacingly in his sight. The wind blew from all directions, the stench of monster saliva filled the air, and the only sound was a ringing in his ears from the vibrating air ripples that had not yet reached his eardrums.
The snowflakes, in front of his pupils, spread their hexagonal wings, welcoming his arrival.
In the past year, although his participation score in the Mushoku Tensei major events had not increased, Allen's own strength had never stopped growing.
One of the five great secret arts of the Water God Style, the Flowing Sensation Secret Art.
In a state of extreme 'perception.'
Allen had already made the most appropriate choice.
A lazy voice sounded, very slow.
'Twenty Slashes.'
But as the voice fell, accompanied by a dense, fine buzzing sound, the dense swarm of falling monsters in the air seemed like a light mist of frost, 'swept' by the dim but rapidly flashing sunlight after the snowfall...
They melted in the air, splashing into puffs of 'water,' and the view, previously obscured by the monsters' bodies, suddenly opened up.
Allen saw the tree trunk above the drizzling rain of blood.
'Flowing Sensation' was still in effect. The surroundings were still like a slow-motion movie, and the tree trunk was still falling slowly. The monsters were tireless, swarming towards him along the trunk.
His eyes moved, looking at the slowly falling tree trunk above him.
His figure pierced through the rain of blood and 'climbed' up.
'Form of the Four-Legged Beast.'
The battle had been 'planned.' Allen broke free from the Flowing Sensation!
His hands moved in a blur, 'touching' the side of the falling tree trunk. In the next instant, like a squirrel, he was on all fours on the trunk.
Before the trunk hit the ground, he shot out like a ferocious leopard-like monster along the uprooted tree! As he passed, the monsters around him exploded into a bloody mist of flesh.
With a thud, the broken tree trunk finally hit the ground, but there were no more monsters on it.
Allen did not fall with the trunk. His 'limbs' sprang up like a leopard, leaping high into the air.
Like a cannonball, he smashed straight into the monster tide near the tree's roots!
'Dragon Saint Touki Amplification—Avalanche Crash!'
The wind pressure from his Touki spread out from him as the center! The snowdrifts where the wind pressure reached were thrown up and then fell, rippling outwards like wind blowing through wheat.
And Allen's landing point was like dropping a drop of crimson ink into a lake of white water. With him as the center, the wind pressure carried a wave of blood, instantly dyeing a twenty-meter radius of pristine snow into a silent lake of blood!
In the center of the lake, Allen reached down and plunged his hand into the 'lake surface.' As he moved, the monsters' blood flowed down his arm and shoulder like water.
He looked up and around, then kicked a snowdrift at his feet.
A few limp sacks of rabbit and rat skins were hooked out by his foot. Blood gushed from the openings of the sacks, splattering onto the bloody snow beside them.
The Touki from the Avalanche Crash had completely shattered the monsters' bones.
And at this moment, from Allen's appearance to the completion of the monster slaughter, less than ten seconds had passed.
This was the Saint-rank.
As if announcing Allen's arrival, the smell of blood, as tangible as a physical object, spread through the porous snow, and the monster burrows served as perfect vents, carrying the scent far into the forest.
If a small amount of blood could excite the monsters' bloodlust and make them frantic, then a massive amount of blood from their own kind appearing in an instant could only fill them with fear.
This was a biological instinct; it would make them think of a natural disaster.
How can one resist a natural disaster?
In the span of a breath, the monsters made their decision. In the horrified eyes of the humans, the snowdrifts in the distance rose and fell, retreating deep into the forest.
A natural disaster cannot be resisted.
The monsters fled in panic.
In the distance, Paul saw the monsters he was clearing out suddenly run away. He was stunned for a moment, then smelled the thick scent of blood in the air and instantly understood what had happened.
He let out a long sigh of relief and leaned wearily against a nearby tree.
He turned to look at the center of the "blood lake."
In the center of the lake, Allen's gaze met his from afar.
The two looked at each other and smiled.
The crowd cheered.
Amidst the cheers of the crowd 'wading' through the blood, Allen was pulled out of the 'blood lake,' thrown into the air, and then caught.
He didn't refuse. As he floated in the air, he glanced sideways at where he had come from.
'Outside the blood lake,' the other three members of his party had finally arrived, panting.
Roles had a look of helplessness on his face.
Sylphie's cheeks were puffed out.
And Rudeus looked resentful.
"Allen!!"
The one being called was thrown up again. The blood lake stirred up snow and blood, and crimson flew everywhere.
This bloody picture actually looked like a cultist sacrificing to a demon lord.
The demon lord's clothes fluttered in the air. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with a lingering fear, hastily averting his gaze from Sylphie's stare, looking rather flustered.
"...Why did I run just now? My body just moved on its own, driven by instinct... Strange, I admit I miss Roxy, I think about her every time I write a letter, so it's understandable for Rudeus to have that expression. Uh... Sylphie's reaction also makes sense, maybe she's jealous that I correspond with her teacher more frequently? But what's with Roles's expression? Why the hell did I feel a murderous aura from him? What did I do to this guy??"
"Inexplicable."
"Good thing I ran fast."
Regarding the distinction between demonic beasts/monsters, the original work stated that demonic beasts are those with spirituality, like the sacred beast Samoyed in the Great Forest.
Monsters are just wild creatures.
Recommending a book, this is one of my personal favorites.
The author's writing style is not very web-novel-like, but the prose is mature, with the feel of traditional Japanese literature.
I even feel like he posted in the wrong genre (it's in sci-fi).
You can give it a try.
Join my patreon For Early access to Chapter : patreon.com/TheWorldGod
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