A costly victory

Liu Qian had no time to spare for the nobleman's scrutiny.

All his attention was focused on the monsters lunging at him.

After several futile slashes, he abandoned the idea of killing them with a single blow and began looking for openings and weaknesses instead.

Gerion had drawn on his fighting experience to order the guards to attack the monsters' joints, and everyone had done their best to strike those spots. Yet even with injured joints, the monsters remained vicious and just as fast.

An idea struck Liu Qian. Instead of targeting their joints again, he set his sights on their relatively vulnerable heads.

Another monster lunged, its foul breath almost washing over his face.

Liu Qian roared. Rather than slash, he poured all his strength into his arms and drove the steel sword straight between those green, slit-pupiled eyes.

Squelch!

The dull sound of steel piercing flesh came with a shrill screech. The sword's tip punched clean through the monster's eyeball and sank deep into its skull. Thick, black blood sprayed from the socket, splattering Liu Qian's face with nauseating filth.

The monster writhed and convulsed wildly, its hooked claws flailing.

Liu Qian clung to the hilt, staggering as it dragged him along.

But he gritted his teeth and bore down with all his strength, cutting sideways at the same time.

The sharp steel blade sheared through most of the monster's neck. Its hideous head lolled to one side, attached by only a scrap of flesh, before its own weight tore it free and sent it rolling into the ashes.

The headless body twitched a few times, then crashed to the ground.

The bloody, shocking sight brought the entire battle to a momentary halt.

Everyone had seen a slave kill a monster.

"Attack their eyes! That's their weak spot!"

Gerion Lannister's roar snapped the beleaguered guards to attention.

He led by example. Spotting an opening, he used the steel bracer on his left arm to deflect a lethal claw strike.

Ignoring the jarring impact in his arm, he surged forward with the motion and drove his longsword precisely into the monster's eye with both hands. Fluid burst from its skull, and it fell dead.

The sight lifted the guards' spirits.

They began deliberately working together, creating openings for their companions to stab at the monsters' eyes.

Soon, several more monsters fell dead under their coordinated strikes.

Yet the scales had not tipped entirely in their favor.

The monsters still held an overwhelming advantage in numbers. Worse, the slaves and sailors had been all but wiped out. Without weapons or armor, they were lambs before the slaughter.

Piercing screams and the sound of tearing flesh rang out incessantly, while the heavy stench of blood was almost suffocating.

"My lord!"

A guard whose face was spattered with black blood shouted urgently to Gerion between blocks:

"Give the spare swords to the slaves! Let them help, or we'll all be worn down and killed here!"

He meant the weapons left behind by the fallen guards.

Gerion never paused. He swung his sword to drive back a monster, but his green-tinged blue eyes once again found the black-haired slave, Liu Qian, who was struggling to wrench his blade from another monster's corpse.

The unnatural composure in Liu Qian's eyes sent a chill through Gerion.

An eastern slave with such strength, armed with a sharp blade, who had witnessed everything he had done to the sick sailors and Lennard's men-what would he do to Gerion next?

Several unpleasant possibilities flashed through his mind.

"No!"

Gerion's voice brooked no argument. "These maggots are nothing but dead weight. They'll only get in the way. We have enough men to kill all these beasts ourselves!"

Before he had finished speaking, he threw himself at the monsters again, making his resolve clear through his actions.

The guards exchanged glances, a flicker of conflict crossing their faces.

But years of training and the harsh weight of hierarchy made them obey.

Not all of them, however, could entirely suppress that faint spark of compassion.

Amid the chaotic fighting, while two monsters occupied Gerion and blocked his view, several guards swiftly drew the spare short swords at their waists or snatched up abandoned longswords, then hurled them at the feet of the nearest slaves or sailors.

"Pick them up! Fight these monsters with us!"

The instinct to survive overwhelmed their fear.

Several dying slaves and sailors summoned the last of their strength and scrambled toward the weapons on the ground.

As their hands closed around cold steel, a faint glimmer of hope kindled in their despairing eyes.

Roaring, they swung their unfamiliar weapons and hurled themselves at the monsters around them like cornered beasts, spending their lives to ease the pressure on the guards by the slightest fraction.

Liu Qian, meanwhile, had slipped into a strange state of concentration.

Killing three monsters himself had not only given him a more practical understanding of the strength granted by dragon blood, but had also brought a peculiar kind of "feedback."

Every time a monster fell dead, dragon spirit slipped silently into his body.

Like a trickling stream, it flowed into the "lake" deep within his consciousness that represented his maximum magic power.

...%80.0

The number in his consciousness changed clearly.

He had killed three, while Gerion and the others had killed five.

Eight monsters had increased his bloodline purity by 0.08% and his maximum magic power by 800 points.

A monster that yielded dragon spirit contained ten times the energy of those disgusting Red Maggots from the night before.

The discovery delighted Liu Qian.

If he could keep hunting these monsters, his bloodline purity would rise rapidly.

Just as he was weighing the possibilities, something changed!

"Screee-!!!"

A piercing shriek suddenly rose from deep within the forest.

Unlike the monsters' earlier chaotic cries, this sounded like a horn.

Every monster in the midst of its frenzied attack froze at once.

A trace of confusion flashed through their green eyes. Then, without hesitation, they turned and fled into the dead forest even faster than they had come. In the blink of an eye, they vanished without a trace, leaving only corpses strewn across the ground.

Leaning on his sword, Liu Qian panted heavily and watched the direction they had disappeared in, his heart jolting.

That sound had definitely been some kind of command.

Was something directing these monsters?

A stronger monster?

Or some unknown being?

An absurd thought arose, chilling his spine.

Could it be a human?

But he had no time to investigate the monsters' secrets.

Almost the instant the last monster's tail vanished among the trees, Gerion Lannister's icy voice rang out.

"Surround these bastards!"

Clatter!

Metal scraped in perfect unison.

Although every one of the twelve remaining guards was wounded, they displayed astonishing discipline the instant the order came.

They moved swiftly, forming a tight ring. Their sharp sword points gleamed coldly as they aimed at the few survivors in the middle of the battlefield.

Including Liu Qian, only five remained.

Three slaves who could barely stand, and two sailors drenched in blood.

They all held weapons they had just picked up, their hands trembling violently beyond their control.

They stood back-to-back, staring in despair at the Lannister guards who had fought beside them moments before, but now radiated murderous intent.

Gerion stood outside the ring, his gaze cold.

His green eyes slowly swept over his guards.

"Which of you disobeyed my orders and threw swords to that scum? Step forward."

The four guards who had secretly tossed out weapons turned deathly pale.

They glanced at one another, their eyes full of fear and conflict.

Under Gerion's ruthless stare, which seemed capable of piercing their souls, they finally lowered their heads and stepped haltingly out of formation, coming to stand inside the ring.

"Take up your weapons and kill those who accepted your mercy!"