Chapter 26: 24 : The Drowned Hounds

Rouhong fought so many of those mutated invaders that he now felt sick smelling the burned and cooked meat of those creatures he so loved: a divine taste ruined forevermore. There were a few fools who tried to use the villagers as hostages, but he wasn’t someone to care about this. If he could save them, he would, but if it was too much of a bother, they would simply die along with their captor in a cruel display of violence. The only exception for this brutish man was when kids were involved. If one was to be put in danger of any kind, hell would be let loose.

But right now, he was in a tough spot. Three monsters, not individually strong, but working as a team, stood in his way. There was a walking mackerel with twenty or so arms growing from its gaping mouth that managed to somewhat stop him from killing more mutated fish. Another was a moray eel walking on four legs like a dog and had a strong arm as thick as a grown man’s waist at the end of its tail. It moved too fast for him and managed to kill many villagers while he was distracted. The last one was an unknown creature who hid in the dark and only struck when Rouhong wasn’t looking. This mysterious foe was the one he feared the most as the damage it could output was far greater than anything he could defend against.

Those three monsters working together made it hard for Rouhong to protect the villagers which made him extremely angry. His body lit in flame, and he lunged toward the mackerel. Catching one of its many arms, he smashed the creature into the paved street, creating a cavity it was stuck inside. Then Placing a foot on the fish’s side, he began to rip its arms as it screamed in pain. With lightning reflex, Rouhong jumped from his spot, barely dodging the moray eel’s sharp teeth. But not being used to fighting those abominations, his foot was caught by the fast eel’s arm, and he was in turn thrown into a building.

The wall and a few pieces of furniture were the ones to break and not this burning man’s body which only had a few scratches. Because of the flame surrounding him, the wooden interior burst in flame. He tried to leave as soon as possible, to avoid spreading the fire and return to the fight, but he felt a chill in his spine and created a shield of flame behind him just a moment before an explosion sent him flying into the house opposite to this one. All he saw in the flame was something like a small lobster claw.

This time he was truly wounded with a few ribs broken. The pain made it hard for him to get up instantly which led to the moray eel grabbing his head in its hand while biting his shoulder blade, trying to rip it off.

But suddenly, a strange one-eyed man with a foot-long nose (think Tengu) came to his rescue by attempting to cut the eel’s defenseless body with a blade curving like a snake. This eel was forced to let go of its prey and dodge as only the tip of the blade drew a thin line of blood not worth anything.

“Hubububu. To think that a day we fought side by side once more would come. This old Craock is delighted.” Said this newly arrived man who helped Rouhong back on his feet.

“Ah. Ya sly dog. Didn’t the captain cut your head before?” responded Rouhong who jumped outside to crush a giant frog infected by a protective skin of barnacles.

“Hubububu!” Quickly, this man followed by controlling the wind around him and flew above the tall buildings. “You should have seen his face when he realized it was his son he had killed!” He then took a bow which he used to eliminate a small platoon of bulky carp.

The two men worked quite well together and managed to make space for the villagers. Craock, the archer, tried to kill the mackerel with multiple arms but his arrows seemed ineffective as this fish simply healed from every wound and grew more arms like a hydra. Understanding that he couldn’t do much against this one and seeing the moray eel moving too fast for his passable archery skill, he decided to use his elevation to scout possible danger. Arrows and rocks came his way, but he reigned in the sky with his magic.

Up there, he managed to see the flow of the battlefield. The wealthy district had been mostly defeated with about 50 people starting to escape the village under the protection of a band of knights dressed in white. He saw three knights leave their squad in the hope to rescue more people.

“Rouhong!” screamed Craock in the sky. “I leave this place in your hands! Some reinforcement is coming but needs a guide to get here! Five minutes top. Can you do it?”

“Go! If you dare lie right now, I’ll be sure to drag you to hell with me!” Said Rouhong who took the mackerel in a bear hug and was trying to burn it down.

“Sure! Take care friend!” Said Craock as he left.

“Huh. Friend…” murmured Rouhong before letting a bestial howl and increasing the flames surrounding him to entrap the regenerating mackerel in a cocoon of fire.

The fire was so hot that the ground under Rouhong was melting. In the corner of his eye, he saw the shadowy monster following Craock, possibly hoping to intercept the reinforcement.

⧻

 

“Belmond!” Screamed one of the three knights in white while pointing his greatsword toward Craock flying in the sky. “Can we trust this flying demon?”

“We don’t have a better choice, do we?” Responded Belmond also dressed in white armor.

This man was Alphonse’s brother. Seeing the young boy able to survive on his own by working at Rouhong’s shop, accepted the invitation to join a renowned band of knights working as mercenaries and make use of his healing art to help others. He also wanted to distance himself from his brother as he felt their relationship was slowly crumbling which he wanted to at least end on good terms.

“Something’s watching us…” The last of the three knights said. A woman with braided hair and discrete features wielding a bow without a quiver. She whispered some prayers to a leaf-shaped talisman with trembling hands.

The woman was called Guinevere while the man was Alexander. They were tasked with protecting the children of a few nobles on an excursion with their school. Five of the twenty they had to protect died while the remaining were currently escaping the village. As for Alexander, the captain of those knights, his intention of saving as many people as possible wasn’t pure. He knew the road they had to traverse was perilous without a guide, and the one they used to get to this village was eaten by a fusion between a calamari and a sea bass that was larger than a horse. With more people, with more meat shields, the chance to survive would increase.

“We follow him!” Said this calculating man. “I’ll take care of the front. Guinevere, you deal with everything else. Belmond, support us and find whatever is watching us before we fall into a trap.”

““Yes captain!”” said Belmond and Guinevere in unison.

The trio began their advance with the help of Craock shooting straddlers from the sky. Alexander’s sword easily cleaved whatever stood in its way and he made full use of its destructive capability by simply allowing it to cut into stone walls or paved ground without losing momentum. He had created his own swordsmanship that allowed him to be king in tight spaces or usually disadvantageous terrain which mixed well with his reckless nature.

Still, his knowledge of battlefields and combat was lacking, and his strange swordsmanship only existed because of his inability to safely fight. Parrying, feinting, blocking, dodging, binding, countering, reading, predicting, and keeping his distance weren’t things he was good at. And this came back biting him in the ass, almost literally, when a spear-wielding shrimp managed to dodge his wide lateral cut and grappled him with its short limbs. Before the spear could pierce his head and paint red the man’s twirling lock of dark hair, an arrow of light landed on the assailant’s head and exploded, killing it on the spot.

“Steady yourself! You’re nothing more than a monkey with a stick…” said Guinevere, disappointed in this man’s recklessness.

“Shut up vagrant! You’re tasked with shooting and nothing more!” responded the swordsman with his pride wounded.

““…”” Both Belmond and Guinevere kept silent while looking at one another and giving a nod which meant they were only following this man to save people but would never follow him if things became too dangerous.

Alexander seeing this didn’t say a word and got back up to continue moving forward.

“Wait!” screamed Belmond which froze the knight “Something is moving in the canals underneath!”

As if the thing had heard them, an explosion shocked the ground followed by a blinding light. The trio was knocked down and blinded as a clickety of something moving towards them brought fear into their confused mind.

Whatever it was was just a few meters from them but no matter how hard they tried to get up, their body simply didn’t want to respond correctly. They heard it move, ‘surely about to kill them’ they thought correctly in unison.

“Found ya, sneaky creep!” Shouted Rouhong as a wave of heat followed him.

He jumped on the large mantis shrimp’s back and grabbed the base of its claws in a strong vise and simply melted them, disarming it. He then jumped in front of it and kicked its abdomen to push it back from the disoriented trio.

As the large crustacean stumbled backward, a black glaive opened its head in twain. Black and white flowers quickly grew from this split open head until the mantis shrimp collapsed on the ground lifeless.

❀

 

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Just a moment after Craok left Rouhong, Tsuki showed up on the scene. The blood and gore spread on a display in front of her was scary, but it was something she needed to face.

What she saw was a man draped in flame ordering a few hundred people to ensure their safety. Three spearmen and two chair-wielding people managed to keep the weaker monsters at bay while a handful of archers with a mage mixed in were killing anything that tried to show themselves. The real bout was fought by Rouhong who used his flame to his disadvantage. If only he could calm and control the fire, he would be able to receive help from other people and easily get rid of the mackerel and moray eel.

Oddly, Rouhong took a defensive stance, waiting for his foes to get closer. ‘Moray’ and ‘Macky’ didn’t want to move closer but the issue that they were literal fish out of the water was slowly showing up. If they dared to tarry, they would basically ‘drown’ in oxygen. This fact was something Rouhong noticed when his two fishy friends were starting to move slower.

In the end, Moray was the first to attack Rouhong by jumping on his right side to then cut at him with a random sword with its large hand. Striking the flat of the blade away from him, Rouhong whipped a powerful kick on the eel’s side sending it flying into a dark alleyway. The man then lunged at Macky who in turn managed to grapple him with its many arms. It tried to rip the flaming man’s limbs as revenge but quickly lost its grip with its muscle burning and breaking. Instead, it began to pummel Rouhong with all its might. It was to the point that some of its arms exploded from the power exerted only to then regrow anew and return to its pummeling.

*SCREeeeEEEeee*

A loud and disturbing sound came from the dark alleyway Moray was sent into as the creature ran back to the street screaming in pain as strange flowers grew on its large hand. It even ran after its own tail like a dog only to completely chomp it off, severing the hand.

Macky seeing its friend hurt, tried to throw Rouhong into the spiked shell of a corpse but this man held on to its crispy limbs and turned the two arms holding him into dark crumbling chunks of meat. Free, he then pushed an arm inside the fish’s mouth to try and find the root of those disturbing appendages. Moray looked helplessly as something like a spider was removed from its comrade who fell limp to the ground as if what was removed was its brain.

The spider-like crab tried to fight as best as it could with its twenty or so arms, but Rouhong simply caved its shell on his knee. Vile blood escaped from the crack to then only evaporate from the fire which produced a disgusting smell.

Only the moray eel was left, other than some weak stragglers not worth mentioning. This lone creature tried to get up many times but the large arm at the end of its tail used to help with balance. Too much of its weight was in the front and the two pairs of legs it was gifted with weren’t flexible enough to fix this issue. So, it tried to run away while pushing its face on the ground, but its back was cleaved in half by Tsuki’s dark glaive. Flowers spread over the body like spores infecting rotting food until Moray wasn’t even trembling anymore.

Tsuki looked around with tired and empty eyes. Her body became more sluggish every time she used her new shiny weapon. Maybe it was the flowers created that were consuming her energy, but she had no way or desire to stop using them. She liked them as they felt nostalgic.

She saw the hundreds of people, bloodied and wounded looking at her with a mix of fear and hope. Those looks weren’t something she liked, and she even felt sick from them.

“Don’t look at me!” screamed the girl for unknown reasons while looking at the fish she had killed with shaking hands.

“Well done, little one—” said Rouhong devoid of flame as he tried to pat the girl’s head to calm her…

“—NO!!!” but she defended herself with the shaft of her weapon before creating distance from him.

The girl looked terrified at the villager whispering about her, pointing, snickering, mocking…As if listening to some unknown voices, the girl looked down at the corpse and screamed.

*slap*

She was slapped across the face by Rouhong. The burning sensation, both from the man’s burning palm and the pain, woke the girl from her trance.

“Huh?”

“What’s-that? A little baby throwing a tantrum or someone fighting to survive? Cry and join the others. Fight and get up. Choose!” solemnly said Rouhong with a hint of sadness in his voice.

He used to have a family: a wonderful wife and two children. Seeing a kid having to fight pained him immensely but he understood it was something that could happen in this cursed world.

“Will you fight, or will you waste yourself crying?!”

Tsuki was confused. It wasn’t that she was crying because she killed something but because she believed at that moment, she had killed someone she should have never hurt, someone she cared too much for.

She tried to remember what Yuu said to her before. Calm down, she needed to calm down and control herself.

“Fight…” she responded with a tired whisper.

❀

 

This is what led to Tsuki following Rouhong and killing the giant mantis shrimp.

The trio was looked after and with some help, Belmond was able to heal his eyes as well as the other two’s. With the village entrance just in front of them, some people were making a run for it while others helped those in need. It looked to be the end as the sky was painted red from the sun rising and most sea creatures escaped back to the sea.

“So-Something! SOMETHING’S COMING!” Screamed Belmond at the top of his lungs and his shout also mixed with the panicked cries of his unconscious brother.

The ground trembled before anyone could react and a gigantic snake-like body came out from the paved street of the village entrance. A wolf-like head the size of a house consumed many people escaping by themselves as screams rang among the desperation-filled survivors. The head looked ravenously at the largest clump of people with its long forked tongue lapping like a happy dog.

The only safe escape was now completely blocked by this behemoth able to crush people by accident. The hound looked at its prey, still savoring the body dangling between its teeth and imagining what the small insects in front of him would taste like.

Alexander was the first to react as he foolishly charged toward the long body made from a mix of fur and scale and slashed at it with all his might. Surprisingly, the sword managed to cut but the snake-like body was so large that it barely reached a layer of muscle, doing relatively no damage.

The hound looked at this man amused as caustic blood forced him to retreat. It understood the danger of the man’s sword as it could simply cut anything with too much ease. As such, its head sprung toward the man to crush him, not wanting to risk swallowing something that dangerous. The swordsman trying to act brave stood his ground while simply putting his blade in front of him hoping the hound would split its head on it. It was foolish even if it worked as there would be nothing pushing the two cut parts apart. He was bound to be crushed either way.

But seconds before he was crushed, Craok came flying by Alexander and took him away from the impact. Alas, the swordsman wore heavy armor and slowed down his savior considerably, causing them to be hit by the exploding impact that had always been aimed at the ground next to Alexander, which sent them tumbling in the air. Craok crashed into a wall that broke his back while Alexander was lucky since his armor absorbed the shock. Yet, his left arm was bent in many wrong directions.

[Poor little lambs], said an unknown woman’s voice which resounded in people’s minds. [So close, yet so far. It saddens me to see you go to waste. My little boy is bound to mince you. What a bad boy he is.]

“What the hell do you want!” Screamed Rouhong who was already covered in a burning heat.

The large hound simply looked at everyone and did nothing. Its tongue flopped out of its closed mouth as red acidic saliva dropped to the ground.

[I want to make a deal with my cute lambs. For every person that willingly stays, I’ll allow someone to leave! Isn’t it a fair deal? Don’t think too hard and just stay. I’ll make those who stay my children and take care of them. So? Who is staying?] Said Scylla, forcing a cruel deal because she wasn’t willing to allow that many people to leave her grasp. This witch laughed far in her empire at the bottom of the sea while finishing a spell that would devour everything idling too long in the village. “Dance a while like headless chicks. I’ll treat you all well as my new army.” She whispered to herself as an orb filled with an impossible quantity of water shined in her hands.

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