Leonard rips a heavy, reinforced leather pouch from his belt and hurls it with a snapping motion directly into the cluster of goblins scaling the jagged cliffside.
The moment the pouch strikes the stone, it detonates in a blinding, violet-white flash. The thunderous shockwave rattles the walls, tearing the monsters into a horrific spray of black blood and pulverized rock.
Before the smoke can even clear, Leonard and Henry leap over the cliff edge, plunging boots-first straight into the screaming horde rushing from the depths.
"Be aware of your surroundings!" Leonard shouts, his voice slicing through the chaotic screeches of the monsters. "Don't just lock eyes on the enemy right in front of you!"
Henry nods tightly, his knuckles turning white around his hilt. They throw themselves into the green tide.
Leonard moves like a machine of war, operating with terrifying, cold efficiency. With a flick of his wrist, throwing knives pierce the throats of distant archers with wet, heavy thuds.
He draws his longsword, driving the steel straight through a goblin's skull, wrenches it free, and spins. In one continuous, blinding arc, the blade shears through flesh and bone, cleanly sending four more goblin heads flying into the sky.
He slaughters them left and right, his movements acting as a lethal textbook for Henry, who still lacks real battlefield experience.
Henry clears his mind, forcing his breathing to steady, and invokes the Falling Leaf Style.
Instantly, the frantic, bloody chaos alters. The world slows down. The screaming of the goblins drops into a low, drawn-out groan, and dust motes freeze mid-air.
Henry weaves through the slowed, clumsy movements of the common monsters, driving his blade into their throats one by one.
But the stillness shatters in a fraction of a second. From behind, a feral goblin lunges through the air, its yellow claws extended toward his neck.
"Watch your back!" Leonard's roar cuts through the slow-motion focus.
Henry twists his torso on pure, panicked instinct. He barely clears the arc, but the goblin's claws graze his shoulder, tearing through leather and parting his flesh.
A sharp, hot spike of pain triggers a violent rush of adrenaline. Reversing his grip, Henry drives his sword straight down into the creature's chest, his eyes burning with a sudden, unhinged fury as he shouts, "I will kill you all!"
A chest-rattling howl suddenly vibrates through the bedrock. The colossal Colony Leader steps out of the shadows, a towering nightmare of muscle and malice. Henry locks eyes with the beast, and in that instant, the horrific image of the captive woman torn in two flashes vividly through his mind.
Pure, blinding rage overwhelms his senses. Forgetting every single piece of advice Leonard just gave him, Henry lets out a feral cry and blindly charges the monster head-on.
The leader is massive, but his movements defy his giant build. Before Henry can even complete his swing, the leader's heavy, calloused green hand shoots forward like a striking serpent, clamping violently around Henry's throat.
The impact cuts off his breath instantly, lifting his entire body off the ground.
Damn it, Leonard thinks, his jaw clenching as he maneuvers through the fray. He forgot everything I just told him.
Without missing a beat, Leonard snaps his arm back and whips a poison-coated dagger from his belt. The blade flies true, burying itself with a sickening squelch squarely into the goblin leader's left eye.
The monster lets out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek, his massive grip loosening just enough for Henry to drive his own sword into the beast's forearm, breaking free and tumbling gasping onto the dirt.
Leonard blurs forward, stepping directly into the gap before the leader can recover. "You take care of the small ones, Henry!" he commands, his voice dropping into a deadly register.
The battlefield becomes absolute chaos. Blinded in one eye and leaking black fluid, the furious leader swings his jagged, oversized battle axe at Leonard.
Leonard raises his sword to parry, and the two weapons collide with a deafening screech of iron that sends bright sparks showering across battlefield. The sheer weight of the blow drives Leonard's boots inches deep into the dirt floor, the violent vibration rattling the bones in his arms.
Leonard's instincts flash a grim warning: One direct hit from this thing, and I'm a corpse.
Just then, the black venom from the throwing blade finally surges through the leader's veins, causing the muscles around his remaining eye to twitch and slow. Sensing the split-second dip in the monster's momentum, Leonard forcefully channels his weight and pushes the heavy axe away, sliding back to create distance.
Leonard changes tactics instantly. He hurls his short sword directly at the leader's face as a spinning, flashing distraction, sprinting forward right behind the flying weapon with his longsword drawn.
The leader fiercely swats the short sword away with his forearm, but Leonard is already gone.
Dropping low, Leonard slides cleanly through the dirt between the giant's tree-trunk legs, pivots on his knee, and delivers a brutal, upward fluid strike that completely severs the giant hand holding the battle axe.
The leader bellows in agony as his severed hand and weapon hit the ground. Yet, driven by raw monster adrenaline, the beast spins around and drives his remaining massive fist straight into Leonard's chest like a battering ram. The impact launches Leonard entirely across the rocky plateau, sending him crashing violently into the solid mountain wall.
The stone shatters upon impact, and Leonard hits the ground, coughing up a thick spray of crimson blood.
Pulling himself up, his expression goes completely wild with rare, unadulterated anger. "You bastard," Leonard growls, his vision narrowing.
The goblin leader uses his single remaining hand to snatch the massive axe from his severed hand. With a ferocious, desperate grunt, he hurls the heavy iron weapon directly at Leonard while lunging forward at the exact same time.
The force behind the throw is catastrophic the flying axe tears the air apart with a terrifying, deep *whoosh*, creating a vacuum of wind that blows Leonard's hair back. Leonard drops his shoulder, dodging by mere millimeters.
The giant axe embeds itself halfway up the shaft into the solid stone wall behind him, spiderwebbing the rock with a deafening, echoing crack.
Tapping into his absolute maximum threshold of physical speed, Leonard moves faster than he ever has. He blurs forward under the monster's outstretched reach, his blade flashing in a clean, horizontal arc that slices the leader's remaining hand completely off at the wrist.
In one seamless, high-risk motion, Leonard tosses his longsword high into the sky and sprints straight toward the vertical rock face, plants his boots against the stone, and runs directly up the wall. Launching himself off the rock into mid-air, he catches the hilt of his falling sword perfectly at the apex of his jump and descends with the full kinetic weight of his gravity-assisted fall, driving the steel straight through the top of the leader's skull.
Nearby, Henry kills three of the common goblins. His chest is heaving violently, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, and his clothes are completely drenched in foul monster blood.
Leonard wrenches his steel free, cleanly beheads the dead goblin leader, and lifts the dripping head high into the air with a commanding, echoing roar. Seeing their champion utterly butchered, the few remaining goblin stragglers cower in primal terror.
Taking immediate advantage of their paralysis, Henry moves like a gale, ruthlessly cutting down the rest.
Leonard lowers the head, tossing it aside as he wipes blood from his brow. "You did good."
Henry blinks, wiping sweat and black grime from his eyes. "Really?"
"You still rushed in like an idiot," Leonard grunts, his tone deadpan.
Henry's proud smile instantly vanishes. Leonard snorts, stepping forward to pat the boy's bleeding shoulder. "But you started looking beyond the enemy right in front of you. That's progress."
They both turn to help the captive women. The victims are deeply traumatized, staring blankly ahead, unable to comprehend whether the hell they endured is finally over or if this is just a cruel dream.
One woman suddenly reaches out with trembling, filthy hands and tightly grabs Leonard's sleeve.
Her voice shakes violently, barely a whisper. "Is... is it really over?"
Leonard looks down at her, his rugged, battle-hardened expression softening with gravity. "Yeah."
The woman completely breaks down, bursting into heavy, sobbing tears of pure relief. Henry and Leonard gently comfort them, taking off their cloaks and shirts, and even salvaging clean goblin rags to ensure the women can cover themselves.
Just as they are about to lead the group out, the air instantly turns ice-cold. A heavy, suffocating presence of pure, unadulterated hostility floods the space. Sensing the lethal danger, Leonard's instincts scream, and he violently shoves Henry out of the way.
Thwack.
A heavy, black-iron throwing dagger buries itself deep into Leonard's shoulder, the force spinning him around.
"Run, Henr-!!" Leonard shouts, his voice cracking with pain.
Before the warning can even finish leaving his lips, a dark, robed figure appears instantly right in front of him. The movement is an impossible blur, and a cold, razor-sharp edge is already pressed firmly against Leonard's throat, drawing a single bead of crimson blood.
The figure's voice is smooth, low, and dripping with a venomous mockery that cuts through the silence like a razor: "You have found yet another little wolf..."
Leonard's eyes widen in absolute, paralyzed shock as he recognizes the voice. "Sylvie...?!"
The robed woman reacts with immediate, unhinged rage. She drives a vicious kick straight into his ribs, the force breaking bone, followed by a heavy, brutal punch that shatters his nose.
"Don't you dare call me by my name, you bastard!"
Henry desperately tries to step forward to draw his weapon, but his body completely refuses to obey. His limbs feel entirely locked, and his sword suddenly feels heavier than a mountain. Every primal, evolutionary instinct screams the exact same warning: *Move a single inch, and you die.*
The sheer, suffocating weight of the woman's pure bloodlust is so intensely heavy that the traumatized women around them instantly pass out, collapsing unconscious to the dirt.
Leonard offers absolutely no resistance, letting himself fall heavily to the ground. Sylvie drops down, sitting violently on his chest, and ruthlessly begins to rain heavy, rhythmic punches onto his face. She beats him mercilessly, her fists cracking against his jaw and eyes until Leonard's face is a swollen, bloody mess.
She delivers one final, devastating blow, and the sheer force of the impact knocks her face mask loose. It clatters away onto the stone floor.
Underneath the mask is a strikingly beautiful elf. But her expression is completely broken—her eyes are bloodshot, and hot tears stream uncontrollably down her cheeks.
She aggressively grabs Leonard by his matted hair, pulling his bloody face up to force him to look at her.
"You weren't the only one who lost Rose!" she screams, her voice cracking and tearing with pure, agonizing grief. "We all lost her, but because of you, everything fell apart!"
Tears stream down her face as she violently shakes his head against the dirt. "Are you gonna abandon these people too and run away just like you did before?!"
Leonard can barely open his swelling, bloodied eyes. "Sylvie..."
"Don't say a word!" she shrieks.
She slams his head violently back into the ground, leaving him dazed and breathless.
Slowly pulling herself off his chest, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and pulls her face mask back on, her voice tightening into a cold, sharp hiss. "I just can't bring myself to kill you. Rose will be disheartened... tsk."
She turns smoothly, stopping right in front of the trembling, paralyzed Henry. She casts a single, piercing glance through the narrow slits of her mask that freezes the boy's soul, and then vanishes into thin air without leaving a single trace.
The suffocating pressure finally lifts. Henry breaks from his paralysis and collapses to his knees beside Leonard, who is lying flat on his back in the dirt. Tears mix with the fresh blood pooling on Leonard's cheeks as he stares blankly at the sky.
"I'm such a loser... god damn it..." Leonard whispers.
Meanwhile, somewhere existing entirely between the world of the living and the dead, there stretches a dark, infinite ocean.
Luan sits perfectly still in the dead center of the vast, black void. The invisible bells sewn to his soul chime silently, sending motionless ripples across the dark reflection beneath his knees.
Sensing a heavy, ancient shift in the absolute emptiness, Luan slowly looks behind him.
Standing tall in the gloom is the Reaper—the Angel of Death. He is draped in sweeping, tattered black robes that seem to actively consume the surrounding light, his skeletal hands gripping a massive, primordial scythe that gleams with a dull, cosmic edge.
Within the pitch-black depths of his hollow hood, no face exists; only two cold, blue flaming eyes flicker like dying stars.
The Reaper speaks, his voice scraping through the silence like tectonic plates grinding together—an ancient, heavily creepy, and deeply exhausted sound that echoes from the very dawn of creation:
"Well? Aren't you going to beg me to take you this time?"