Heroes to Hunted

Chapter 58 Natural Selection, Part Two

?"Ready?" the cloaked woman asked, angling her swords at the charging beast.

The man with the hammer responded with yet another shrug showing his agreement.

Meanwhile, the grizzly was fast approaching its two challengers with a body enshrouded by a vibrant green light. The beast bellowed a roar as it dumped as much power as it could into a desperate next attack.

However, something was different. Rather than being tamed and orderly, the energy danced in chaotic strands. Likewise, by its pained face and shaky steps, I could tell the bear's body was being strained to its very limits.

'It's like the bear is overloading itself.' I guess the beast wanted to end the fight once and for all.

Though it was hard to tell from where I was, I could see an enormous torrent of purple-green orbs flowing into the cloaked woman's body as she prepared a thrust.

The bear accelerated again and leaped forward, aiming for the woman first.

"WATCH OUT!"

"Get out of the way!"

"What are you doing, idiot?!"

Those were the words my companions spoke in tandem, waiting for the moment of the woman's evisceration.

Seeing how petite the woman's frame was, I thought her resisting the beast was unthinkable. 'She should've dodged...' I cursed and wore a pained expression. 'There's no way she could defeat that thing.'

Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the bear, I was wrong.

The beast entered within a meter when a brief flash of light filled the forest, followed by the crack of thunder. After my vision finally returned from momentary blindness, the scene before me seemed to freeze in time.

Though they were now back-to-back, it was like the beast and the woman had traded places.

Luckily, the woman dodged the bear's blow. In her place, the beast's paw was smashed into the earth, forming a crater surrounding the pawprint. If she was...if anyone was hit directly by that strike, there was no doubt they would have been flattened.

On the other hand, it took a moment for my mind to process what the woman did. The beast's flesh along its shoulder and side was just as surprised, considering a few moments passed before it split apart from the slice.

The beast bellowed a guttural cry and thrashed about as a layer of the flesh on its side came undone, revealing the bloodied pink muscle underneath.

Although the woman landed a critical blow, it looked like the two weren't ones to take chances. Rather than letting up their attack as we'd foolishly done, the two started an unrelenting synchronized assault.

The man followed up his ally's first strike with gusto.

He spun his hammer vertically, gaining momentum with every second of rotation until the head uppercut the bear's underjaw, shattering the bones and teeth within to fragments. The force of the attack transferred into the beast, lifting its upper body from the ground and forcing the beast to its hind legs.

The woman seized the opening her ally created. She ran alongside the beast, twirling her blades to make perfect "X" slashes across its flesh. Her cuts were so precise that the blood sprays that followed jetted out in flawlessly thin, straight lines.

Beyond the physical damage, the magic she'd infused into her swords must've electrically charged them. It was an assumption I made since arcs of purple-blue electricity now burst forth from each blade, sizzling the grizzly's hide to a crisp.

With spots of blackened burnt fur, smashed indents on its body, and sliced-off skin, the beast was on its last legs. Despite how much the creature could heal, the two's successive strikes overwhelmed its regeneration to the point of exhaustion.

"Yeah! Fuck it up!" Takagi cheered ecstatically with a sparkling smile. Though he was pale as a ghost, his happiness brought a degree of color back to his skin.

I mean, Takagi's excitement made sense. When he and Agawa fought it, they barely managed to wound the beast enough to force it into recovery. Meanwhile, the two before us weren't fighting with the grizzly. No. What we were held witness to was something much more one-sided.

"It's like an execution..." Ayame held a hand to her mouth in shock.

Blow after blow, the beast fell lower and lower to the ground while trying to recover some semblance of the initiative.

However, regaining momentum just wasn't possible for the grizzly. Its body was already working overtime, trying to mend the wounds as new ones were created to replace them.

"A-Amazing, " Agawa muttered, her eyes gaping in awe. Though the gore made her wince occasionally, she'd still remained transfixed on the scene ahead of us.

The beast's legs finally gave out, and it crashed to the ground on its belly.

Seeing the opening, Takagi screamed out again. "Hell yeah! Finish it!" he raised a fist and thrust it as high as he could into the air, shouting various praises and profanities the whole time.

We were all euphoric. Though I did find it unpleasant to watch a creature's death, a brutal one at that, I was overjoyed that our ordeal was nearly over.

Finally...finally, victory was within our sight!

Oddly, the two fighting clearly hadn't felt the same way. Instead of finishing the job as we'd expected, they nodded to each other and disengaged.

The hammer wielder swung his weapon onto his shoulder and rushed toward us. On the way, he generated more magic, this time a vibrant yellow.

The other combatant, the cloaked woman, stood alone a few meters from the critically injured grizzly, stockpiling more orbs of energy.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Takagi despaired. "Finish the damn thing!"

"Shut up, wouldja?! That's 'xactly what they're doin'! It's too dangerous right now!" the archer sneered back in irritation, trying to focus on Nakamura's wounds. "Geez," she hissed, "no patience with some people."

'Too dangerous? Patience?' I was utterly confused by what she said. I mean, they had it! They could've slain the beast then and there!

Though I soon realized what she meant about "danger."

"It's doing something!" Agawa pointed out. "What's it doing?!"

"Just get down! Stay low to the floor!" the archer shouted.

Following her command, my allies made themselves as small of targets as possible. However, out of sheer curiosity, I kept my head up to watch the spectacle before me.

Like earlier, the blinding green aura around the beast became turbulent, forming a miniature maelstrom of energy. Then, the beast staggered to its feet and launched what would be its final attempt at victory.

It charged up the energy, centering all of it on its back until the quills vibrated violently from the magic pressure. Then, the beast raised its head, bellowed, and released everything at once. It ejected every quill from its back to form an explosion of spears that flew in every direction.

The man slid to us, dropping his hammer, and turned toward the beast. He then threw both hands up with flat palms and ejected all the magic he'd accumulated outward to create a shifting wind wall.

It wasn't like the turquoise variant we'd seen before. While that was silent and boasted a more refined look, the wind wall before us was tumultuous and chaotic, like a flattened tornado.

Then, within a second, I heard the repeated thumps created by dozens of skewers sticking into wherever they could alongside the wind wall's howl. A symphony of sounds ranging between splitting wood and pierced dirt played out instantly.

Several quills were on a direct collision course with us, gliding through the air. They were thick enough to pin a man to the wall and long enough to be used as a makeshift pike.

I'll admit that I was worried. Worried that this man's wall of condensed air couldn't stop the barrage of spikes fast approaching us. So much so that I broke out into a profuse cold sweat.

After a fleeting few seconds, it was the moment of truth. The moment we'd discover which was stronger. Would it be the man's barrier? Or the impacts created by multiple piercing quills?