Chapter 32 Fourth Rank

*Clack Clack Clack*

*SREEEEEEE*

In a dark tunnel with no apparent light source, a large bird-like beast was fighting with 2 skeletons armed with rusty swords.

Nord stabbed his sword at the large bird-like creature's left eye, while Sepis used him as a distraction to jump onto the beast's back.

The bird-like beast like the skeletons didn't seem to be disoriented despite being in pitch-black darkness.

It swerved its head to the right narrowly dodging Nord's thrust, while raising its leg to kick at Sepis.

Sepis who was mid-air had no way to dodge, taking the full brunt of the kick.

He went flying backwards toward the adjacent wall, colliding straight into it with a resounding boom.

Nord didn't let this moment of distraction pass, as it slid under the bird and slashed at its wing.

The bird was caught momentarily off-guard and only moved its wing away at the last moment.

Regrettably, this wasn't enough.

A deep red wound appeared on its wing as the beast cried out in pain.

It didn't have enough space to properly fly in the narrow tunnel, so it had to make use of its legs to travel.

Even so, cutting its wing was able to give Sepis enough time to slowly recover and come charging back at the beast.

Sepis was riddled with cracks, and some of its bones were completely smashed.

Even so, it ignored the heavy injuries and charged at the beast with its smile.

Well, the two were always smiling…

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Sepis stabbed at the beast's leg, managing to cut through its defences and leave a sizable gash.

Blood oozed out and splattered Sepis, dying him and his sword blood red.

Its ominous smile coupled with the fresh blood and damaged bones made Sepis look like the grim reaper itself.

*SCREEEEE*

The bird screamed in pain once again as its leg buckled and it collapsed to the ground.

Wasting no time, Nord jumped onto its head and directly cut it off.

The two skeletons looked down at their prey and knelt.

Taking their damaged swords, they prodded it a couple of times to make sure it was properly dead.

They were like a couple of little kids poking a dead bird with sticks out of curiosity.

After confirming their kill the two jumped up in elation and high-fived each other enthusiastically.

Sadly Nord put a little too much force in its high-five, directly separating Sepis's entire arm from its shoulder.

Sepis's shoulder was already damaged from its injury, and Nord's unrestrained high-five was the final nail in the coffin.

Sepis looked at his shoulder which no longer had his arm attached, to the severed limb on the floor.

He looked at Nord with a blank expression.

Due to not having muscles the two of them couldn't have facial expressions.

Even so, Nord could tell Sepis was irritated.

Forming a fist with his other hand, Sepis bonked Nord on the head.

Nord put his head down in shame.

Sepis looked away as if he couldn't be bothered to keep being angry at his partner.

Walking over to his separated arm, he tried to put it back on, but the bones wouldn't stay connected.

Only Arvell could directly fix this.

Knowing that his arm was pretty much useless now, Sepis unceremoniously dropped it back on the ground.

It was as if he lost all interest in it.

If it was useless might as well throw it away.

*ROAR*

A loud roaring noise reverberated through the tunnel.

Sepis and Nord turned around to face a bright yellow lion-like beast.

The lion observed the two of them with a curious gaze.

It flashed the two a predatory smile.

The beast's aura poured down on Sepis and Nord.

It was like the two were underwater.

Even moving they felt immense resistance.

While the earlier beast was in the middle of the first rank, this lion was a bonafide middle fourth rank.

The beast suddenly ran at them and pounced.

Immediately closing on Nord, it swallowed him in one bite.

Neither Sepis nor Nord had any time to react.

Sepis looked over its shoulder to find that the lion was already behind him, snacking on his partner.

Running at the lion-like beast with his sword, Sepis tried to cleanly cut its head off with the one remaining arm he had.

The lion didn't even make any moves to interfere.

The sword struck the lion-like beast's neck without any resistance.

However, instead of the beast's neck being cleanly bisected a dull thud rang out.

Sepis froze in shock.

Its sword didn't even damage its skin.

It was as if an ant was trying to hurt an elephant.

There was simply no comparison between the two.

The lion turned its head over to Sepis with an amused glint.

It was deriving amusement from this!

Without waiting for Sepis to attack again, the beast pounced on it and ripped its body apart.

While Sepis was 'dying' it saw the beast go over the corpse of the bird and started greedily devouring it.

The light soon faded from Sepis's eyes.

***

Arvell's eyes opened wide in shock.

The skeleton's memories were transmitted to him after they died, so he was able to see the might of the lion-like beast.

'If it manages to find us, we won't have any chance to escape with our lives intact.'

He felt a strong desire to fight the beast, but thinking about this realistically it was far too dangerous to let the beast get anywhere near them.

They wouldn't even be able to react fast enough to run away or dodge.

The beast was far too fast.

If the beast wasn't too far behind him earlier, it might have already caught up to them and killed them before they could even enter the tunnel.

'Summoning the two again as bait wouldn't be useful either. They would just get killed immediately again.' Arvell sighed.

'You should save your Nether reserves to heal yourself,' Lykos agreed, ''However… there is one saving grace'

'Yeah. The beast seemed to want to eat the bird-like beast. It might be able to keep it busy for a bit. If it's full it might just give up chasing us altogether.'

Arvell paused and continued after thinking for a moment.

'Wait… What if the beast is treating this whole thing as a game? This beast could just hunt other beasts, but it's still coming after the two of us. It could have killed Sepis before it even struck its neck, but the beast wanted its prey to know of their helplessness.'

Lykos had a rueful smile.

'That is one sadistic son of a bitch.'

Arvell sighed in annoyance.

'Just our luck.'

Couldn't things ever just go smoothly?

Did everything need to get so complicated?

'We still need another hour and a half to get through the tunnel. Even then we may have to deal with other beasts.'

Arvell felt a headache coming.

He massaged his forehead with a tired expression.

Zen noticed this odd behaviour and looked at him curiously.

"Are you good Arvell? Something wrong?"

Arvell decided to be upfront about their situation.

He would find out about the beast if it caught up with them.

The fear of death might even give Zen increased motivation to travel faster.

Humans did pull off miraculous feats when pushed into a corner after all.

He looked at Zen.

"We have to deal with a particularly bored beast."

"What?"

Zen looked at Arvell with confusion.

"It seems that one of our pursuers is a middle fourth rank beast."

Zen froze on the spot.

"Y-you have got to be kidding me! H-how do you even know this?"

"I saw it before when I sealed off the cave," Arvell lied.

It wasn't important to Zen how he found out.

It didn't change the fact that the beast was still chasing them.

"We are so dead…"

Zen fell into a slump.

He was finally getting his hopes up of returning to his family.

Now they had to deal with a fourth rank beast?

What kind of cruel twist of fate was this?

Was someone from above intentionally screwing with him?

Zen looked up with a nervous expression.

'Does the almighty creator hate me?'

He had tears in his eyes.

Seeing Zen's pitiful state, Arvell started regretting telling Zen this.

He seemed to have overestimated Zen's mental fortitude.

He walked up to Zen and slapped his back, waking Zen from his daze.

"Pull yourself together. We can't let ourselves be killed no matter what. Don't you want to return home?"

Zen looked up at him with a distraught expression.

"But it's a fourth rank beast! We don't stand a chance!"

"Then let's not let it reach us. Who said we need to fight it? If we travel fast enough we can still escape. After all, it still hasn't caught us yet right?"

Realizing the truth in Arvell's words, Zen wiped the tears from his eyes and nodded resolutely.

"We need to pick up the pace."

If the two were jogging before, now they were full-on running as fast as they could.

[Temporal Manipulation]

Using temporal manipulation, he sped up the two of them even faster.

Zen being distracted by the looming threat didn't seem to notice he was passing the ground a little bit faster.

With their current speed, it wouldn't take more than 40 minutes to reach the exit.

Pushing through their exhaustion from their arduous journey the two continued onwards towards the other end of the tunnel.

***

Back at the place where Sepis and Nord perished, A large lion-like beast was cleaning the meat of a large bird-like beast.

The lion licked its lips in satisfaction.

However, the hunt was not yet over.

It slowly rose and followed the scent of the two humans that had invaded its territory earlier with a predatory glint.

The beast looked eagerly towards how its prey would struggle, before falling into despair after realizing the difference between their strengths.

It's smiled hungrily while thinking about it.

***

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