The silence of the dead blade sealed his fate. The leader, stripped of his aura of invincibility, retreated with animalistic clumsiness. His boots slipped on the blood of his own summoned worms; the shadow of [LVL 25] swallowed him whole.
The Shadow Error offered no mercy. An obsidian leg pierced the blond man's shoulder, pinning him to the ground. The force pulverized his collarbone. A high-pitched, inhuman shriek drilled into my ears like searing iron.
"No! Please, not yet!" he screamed, his face bathed in cold sweat.
The vertical jaw dilated. Needle-like teeth pierced his abdomen, shredding through premium gear and flesh alike. The man tried to push the monster's head away, but the bony hooks severed his fingers with a sharp snap.
The aberration clamped its maws over his torso. The crunch of ribs dominated the hollow. A violent jerk of the fibrous neck tore the leader in two. Viscera spilled onto the barren earth—an obscene reminder of our fragility.
"Leader!" the alchemist's cry tore through the air.
The girl fell to her knees; the Reactor Hammer lay forgotten in the dust. Terror distorted her beauty as tears flooded her emerald eyes. Beside her, the Zoarca recoiled in spasms, unable to process that his guide had just been reduced to fodder.
The world faded. Shock blocked my lungs, and my hands gripped my sword with useless force. Every past death rushed back to my mind, but this one was different: it was the total destruction of hope.
Beside me, Zero's indifference bordered on the inhuman. Not a single change in his pulse, not a flicker of pity. To him, the death of the "top player" was just another statistic.
"Predictable," he swallowed as he adjusted his glasses. His calmness made me feel nauseous.
Ha-jin, on the other hand, was transformed. Anguish gave way to a lethal coldness. His posture tensed, and his finger found the Apex's trigger with murderous intent. He was no longer looking at the dead; he was analyzing the beast's patterns.
Horror hadn't broken him; it had turned him into a weapon.
"Takamori-san, get ready," he declared, his voice like metal against ice. "If we don't move, that Error will wipe out the pit."
"Full retreat. Abandon the zone," Zero ordered."
His voice didn't tremble. There was no heroic urgency—only the coldness of someone discarding a lost position. The hum of battle seemed to fade before his mechanical authority.
Indignation finally broke my paralysis. I turned toward him, my knuckles white against the hilt of my sword.
"We can't leave them!" I shouted, my voice cracking. "They're still down there! The girl is alive!"
Zero didn't even look at me. His attention remained fixed on the energy flows in his visor, calculating the trajectory of the massacre.
"They're lost, Takamori," he stated with maddening calmness. "A level 15 against a level 25 anomaly isn't a battle; it's a processing error. I won't waste resources on breathing corpses. Move, if you value your life bar."
"They're people, not data!"
"Here, they are the same."
A blood-curdling shriek cut the discussion short. In the hollow, the horror reached its climax. The Shadow Error finished devouring the leader; its jaw crushed metal and bone alike. With its neck drenched in blood, the beast fixed its glowing gaze on the Zoarca.
The young man tried to flee, but his legs wouldn't respond. The bony hooks shot out like whips and sank into his back, puncturing his lungs with a dull thud.
He was dragged backward. His body left a trail of blood on the barren earth as his fingers clawed at the sand in a futile attempt to cling to life. The aberration lifted him with an obsidian leg. With surgical precision, it bit off his head and dismembered the rest of his body.
The stench of viscera and corrosive fluid became unbearable. I searched for the alchemist. She was less than ten meters away, paralyzed in a trance of absolute terror. Her emerald eyes remained fixed on the carnage that had consumed her friends. She was the closest. If I didn't act, she would be the dessert for that nightmare.
Fear gripped me, but the instinct of the real Ichika overruled the game's logic.
"Ha-jin!" I shouted as I began a desperate sprint toward her.
No more words were needed. Behind me, the Apex's railgun hissed as it charged. Ha-jin knelt on the rock, pressed the stock into his shoulder, and merged his gaze with the HUD. His breathing stopped; he became the professional anchor we needed to survive.
"Go, Takamori-san," his voice sounded cold over the comms. "I'll keep it at bay."
I leaped into the hollow. My sword vibrated at an emergency frequency as the Shadow Error dropped the Zoarca's remains to focus on its new prey.
The air reeked of iron and bile. I took advantage of the beast devouring the leader to descend in absolute silence. My boots—Voss's tactical gear—didn't make a single crunch on the barren earth. I moved like a shadow until I reached the alchemist.
She didn't notice my arrival; shock had fractured her mind. I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her away firmly. We gained distance with desperate speed until the sound of the feasting stopped.
The monster snapped its neck around with a dry crunch. Its glowing gaze locked onto us. In a blur that defied physics, it lunged with a secondary arm. The air whistled like a projectile.
There was no time to dodge.
[Skill Activated: First Blood] Effect: Opening Pulse. Full bio-rhythmic synchronization. Hit probability: 100%.
The HUD turned electric blue. The world slowed into static frames.
I won't make their mistake, I thought as the sonic vibration traveled up my arms. The leader's sword had shattered from material fatigue; he had pushed his gear until it broke against the armor. Mine still held its integrity. I aimed for the soft joint, not the plating.
The blade shone with a blinding cyan light. It wasn't a defensive move, but a technical execution. The sword sliced through the air in a perfect arc, cutting through the exposed tendons with surgical ease. The beast's arm fell, severed.
A red alert flickered in my peripheral vision:
[System Warning: Weapon Integrity Compromised. Durability -10%]
The Shadow Error let out an ultra-high-pitched shriek, but a sonic thunderclap interrupted it from above.
The Apex projectile crossed the hollow. It was an impossible shot, calculated to intercept the creature's erratic movement. The impact was devastating: the upper half of the skull exploded in a cloud of black fluids and bone. The kinetic force brought down the four meters of muscle and kicked up a curtain of dust.
"Now, Takamori-san!" Ha-jin's shout signaled our exit.
I hauled the girl toward the tactical transport. Zero's foresight had been absolute—by ordering the retreat, the fallen team's vehicle was already waiting for us at the border with its engine running.
Behind me, a sound made my blood run cold: a wet gurgle and the hiss of searing flesh. I looked over my shoulder.
The monster was moving.
Crimson muscle fibers sprouted from the cranial wound, weaving themselves together at an unnatural speed. The creature stood up with a guttural growl that made the car's chassis vibrate. Sprouts of new tissue were already emerging from its severed limbs.
We threw the girl inside. Ha-jin leaped into the passenger seat, never ceasing his rear-guard cover. The engine roared, and the tires gripped the cracked ground with power.
As we pulled away, the Shadow Error rose once more. Whole. Hungry. It watched us from a distance like a smear of impossible horror, etching our faces into its memory for the next hunt.