They've been fighting for hours. After the sickly lanky man told the old man to sacrifice himself for us, it's been non-stop. Of course, they had enough common sense not to be loud, they were just quietly berating each other.
"If anything… you should! You look like you'll die from a gust of wind!"
"You'll die from a punch in that fat old gut of yours!"
"Is that a threat…"
Sunny turned his attention to the youngest and seemingly most mature out of all of them. He could still see the imprints left from the shackles on his wrist… slavery truly was a horrific thing.
"Are you just going to stare?"
He wasn't sweating, but he felt as if he was—his face heating up a little from embarrassment.
"Oh… no, uh, I'm just still… you know."
He shot him an icy cold glance. The heat in his face went away instantly, replaced with shame for a reason he didn't know.
"The fire is growing weak because of the winds… night's approaching, so soon it will be pitch black. I suggest we head out soon, or rather even now."
He was kind of like those protagonists who regress in the manhwa he saw on the billboards from outside the outskirt, but that thought was instantly wiped away when they heard a growl. It wasn't from a wolf or anything of the such, rather it was something much worse. Due to the snow, they could only see the silhouette, but they all recognized it. It was one of the Mountain King's Larva.
Sunny reached for his blade. Despite not having a clue on how to use it, he would rather flail it around and wish for the best than give up like before. That was before the Larva fell over in a pile of snow. The growls seemed to turn into whimpers and then stop entirely.
It was dead.
And while the Larva weren't as big of a threat, they were still life-threatening. With that said, it's obvious they wouldn't attack each other and the Tyrant wouldn't attack them. That could only leave two options: another human or another threat. Both could result in death. Sunny knew how evil humans could be—the slaves sharing the cave with him were perfect examples of human cruelty. But he also knew how vicious even one Nightmare creature could be, no matter how weak. He had that engraved in him since his very birth.
"We need to get that Larva… if we can investigate its wounds, we can know what killed it."
The boy looked at him, and then he looked back at the old and the lanky man. Ah, so that's how it is. He was going to be the one to retrieve it.
---
Slowly creeping out of the cave, his grip on the sword was as tight as it could be. He looked around him, but the snow covered pretty much everything. Finally arriving at the Larva, he didn't hesitate to run back into the cave. He didn't bother to look around, he didn't bother to watch his step.
"WE NEED TO LEAVE NOW! HURRY, PUT OUT THE FIRE!"
The boy didn't hesitate, instantly waving out the flame with a cloth. The two other men stood up and rushed toward him.
"Well, what was it! We need to know what's going on!"
The words were stuck in his throat. They didn't have time for this. Looking outside the cave, he clenched his teeth.
"Its whole body… that… it wasn't a Larva."
He looked around once more in a panic, trying to scan for anything.
"It was the Tyrant's head, which seemed to be bitten off and spit out."
Their faces turned cold, and the boy's grew tense.
"Then why should we leave? If we leave, we'll just get hunted down in the dead of night."
"It won't matter… we have a better chance at running, because the head was fresh."
---
"Huff… huff… god damn it…"
The fat old man was just barely able to keep pace with them, the lanky man was close to being tied with him in terms of fatigue. The boy was on his back, after all this body was extremely strong, enough to run full speed with him on his back. And that's when they heard it—a guttural roar that shook the very ground, causing some of the bare trees to uproot.
"Fuck this!"
The lanky man stopped for a second before pushing the old man and starting to run again. Sunny looked at him struggling to get up, debating if he should go help him or not, but at the end of the day… helping him wouldn't help himself to survive. So he continued to run.
Maybe that was a mistake though, because shortly after that…
A beast leapt through the air, appearing right in front of them.
Even worse than that was the fact that a smile split its head in half. With seemingly a human-like head and the eyes that showed intelligence, a body like that of a yeti only with patches of fur and the rest was frostbitten skin. Its body tangled up in different places, its arms wrapping around the back to be vice versa. The spine protruding, almost ready to break free from the blistering skin. Even hunched as it was, it was as tall as the trees next to them. It was a horrific beast, a beast they now had no choice but to fight.