A Journey Unwanted-Chapter 404 - 394: The General Hunts VIII

[Realm: Álfheimr]

[Location: The Great Forest]

The surrounding Deseruit Beasts began to hesitate.

Not all of them, but it was enough. The ground was becoming a carpet of bodies after all. Limbs, tails, broken jaws, and severed claws. Blood soaked into the soil in spreading stains, and the fog carried a thick iron scent.

Some of the more intelligent Deseruit Beasts tried to shout, tried to rally.

"Our bravest lord will tear you apart!"

"Human! You don’t stand a chance!"

"Kill him! Kill him!"

Their voices were shrill and far too loud. They were trying to convince themselves as much as they were trying to convince the others.

Grimm didn’t respond to the threats.

A wolf-like Deseruit Beast with two scaly tails lunged, jaws snapping for Grimm’s throat. Grimm dipped his shoulder, letting the jaws pass over his helmet, then drove his elbow into the creature’s ribs. The crack was audible. The wolf staggered, and Grimm’s blade slid up under its jaw, through the skull, and out the top in one clean thrust.

He yanked the sword free, and the wolf collapsed.

A feline one with patterned fur and a sharp tail tried to flank him, tail stabbing like a spear. Grimm sidestepped, caught the tail with his gauntlet, and pulled. The beast stumbled forward, off balance.

Grimm kicked.

His sabaton slammed into its chest, launching it backward into two other beasts. They tangled, snarling, trying to regain footing.

Grimm walked into them.

His blade rose and fell twice, three bodies hit the ground. The Deseruit Beasts began to throw themselves at him in desperation now, no longer coordinated.

Chaos made them predictable.

A beast lunged—he sidestepped and cut.

Another snapped—he ducked and stabbed.

A third swung claws—he parried and severed the arm, then finished it with a second cut that took the head.

A grotesque one, monstrous and shapeless, surged forward with a mouth on its torso and arms that ended in sharp bone clubs. It swung both arms down, trying to smash him into the earth. Grimm stepped forward, under the blow. The clubs slammed into the ground behind him, cracking soil and stone. Grimm’s sword went up through the creature’s torso-mouth, splitting it from inside. The beast shuddered, its body spasming.

Grimm twisted the blade, and the creature tore in half. He pulled free and kept walking, the halves collapsing behind him like curtains falling.

The flying Deseruit Beast above screeched again, frantic now.

"HUMAN—! HUMAN—!"

Grimm’s helm tilted upward, finally acknowledging it.

He flicked his sword, a thin arc of black substance peeled from the blade’s edge.

It cut the air.

The flying beast’s cry stopped mid-syllable as its body separated, wings still flapping for half a second before the pieces dropped through the branches.

Grimm returned his gaze forward, more beasts were coming.

He merely kept walking.

Not because he needed to—at this point, he could have stopped and let the Deseruit Beasts break themselves against him—but stopping would imply they’d earned the right to slow him down. And they hadn’t. Not even close.

Still the Deseruit Beasts came.

They were countless, they were loud and they were so very desperate. And they were, in the most insulting way possible—

Simple.

Grimm’s blade rose and fell mechanically. A cut. A step. A dodge. A parry. A thrust. A short slice that ended a life. He didn’t breathe harder nor did he rush.

As another malformed creature—a boar-headed thing with a ribcage like a basket and a jaw that split into four—threw itself at him, Grimm’s sword moved and removed its head with the same ease as he showed when cleaving through it’s brethren.

The body collapsed, and Grimm didn’t bother to watch it hit the ground.

("They’re all the same. They bite, they claw, they scream and then they die.") It would have been one thing if they were purely animal. He could respect a beast that acted on hunger alone. Hunger was honest.

But these weren’t honest.

They were warped.

Twisted into mockeries of animals, stitched together by whatever birthed them, and yet even with that variety, their behavior never evolved beyond brute force. Grimm stepped past a corpse and watched another Deseruit Beast leap in—a lanky, deer-like creature with a mouth full of human teeth.

It moved fast.

Fast enough that lesser warriors would have panicked.

Grimm simply angled his shoulder, let it pass, and drove his blade through its spine as it went by. The creature’s body stiffened mid-leap, then collapsed in a heap. He withdrew the sword and let the body slide off the edge.

His thoughts continued.

("Some of them have mana.")

He’d felt it—faint in some, substantial in others.

It was a potent resource. One which held potential, despite that they did not do anything worthwhile with it.

A large Deseruit Beast—ape-like, with a plated skull and four arms—charged him. Its muscles bulged unnaturally, swollen with mana forced into tissue. Its movements were heavier than they should have been, each step cracking branches and sinking deep into the ground.

Grimm watched it for half a breath.

The mana was obvious, almost impressive in its quantity. Then the creature swung, there was no potent spell or ability. Not even an attempt at something creative. Just raw, reinforced strength.

Grimm’s blade met it once, cleanly severing two of the arms at the shoulder. The beast screamed, staggered, and tried to continue anyway, muscles surging and mana flaring like an animal’s panic. Grimm stepped in and cut its throat and the beast fell, gurgling, still trying to move, still trying to fight even as its life drained out into the mud.

Grimm’s grip tightened around the hilt with irritation.

("So this is it. This is what you are.")

He could almost hear Puck’s dry voice in his head.

"You’re the problem, you know. Not everything needs to entertain you."

And perhaps she was right. But that didn’t change the fact that Grimm had seen what mana could do in capable hands. He’d seen refined techniques. He’d seen spells that rewrote terrain. He’d seen abilities that bent physics into something that was negligible.

These Deseruit Beasts had mana and used it like a blunt instrument. Like children smashing stones together and calling it craft.

Grimm exhaled slowly.

His sword dripped blood.

Another wave of beasts surged.

A dozen at once—wolf-things, boar-things, insectoid things with too many joints and hulking malformed bodies that didn’t resemble anything natural.

They rushed him as a mass.

And for the first time since this began, Grimm stopped walking. He planted his feet as he raised his gaze.

"...Boring."

The word didn’t carry rage, it merely held disappointment.

Grimm lifted his left hand. The motion was slow enough that, for a fraction of a second, the Deseruit Beasts thought it was hesitation. Thought it was weakness. Thought they’d finally pressured him into something. They surged harder, mouths open, claws out, bodies colliding with each other in their hunger to be the one that tore him down.

Grimm’s gauntlet opened as his fingers spread. And in the next instance the air changed. The temperature dropped so sharply that the Deseruit Beasts stiffened. Moisture in the air crystallized in an instant, turning from drifting mist into a glittering haze of ice. The dead trees creaked as frost raced across their bark, thin white lines spiderwebbing over pale wood.

Ice erupted.

A dozen massive columns formed in rapid succession above Grimm, violently bursting upward from the ground as if the earth had suddenly been impaled by winter. They were thick constructs, their surfaces layered with sharp ridges and fractures. Some leaned slightly as they rose, forcing nearby trees to crack and splinter. Others speared straight up, towering above the area.

The air became painfully cold.

Breath—where any creature still had it—turned instantly to white smoke.

The Deseruit Beasts recoiled, though not all of them. Some were too frenzied and other too stupid. But enough of them hesitated that the wave faltered, bodies bumping into each other as instinct finally screamed that something had gone wrong.

Grimm’s gaze remained steady.

His hand stayed raised and the columns shuddered. A deep, grinding sound filled the forest as a result. He gestured downward, merely a small motion—two fingers curling and the ice columns moved. In a sudden, violent burst, the dozen ice monoliths raced downward with terrifying speed, slamming toward the ground like meteors.

The Deseruit Beasts didn’t have time.

Some tried to leap away, others tried to scramble backward. But most simply stared, their beastial minds unable to comprehend something so unnatural.

The first column hit.

The impact shook the forest.

The ground buckled beneath it, dirt and shattered roots exploding outward. The Deseruit Beasts beneath it were flattened so completely that their bodies burst outward from under the ice like paste. Bones snapped as skulls collapsed. Blood sprayed in wide bursts, instantly freezing into dark red flecks across the surrounding earth.

The second column struck a half-second later, catching a cluster of wolf-like beasts mid-charge. Their bodies were pinned and obliterated, ribs and spines bursting apart as the ice drove them into the ground. One of them tried to scream, but the sound became a wet, choking noise as its lungs ruptured.

The third column slammed into a towering insectoid creature with jointed legs. The legs shattered like brittle sticks as the body split. A thick, blackish ichor sprayed and froze on contact.

The fourth and fifth hit almost together, flattening a mass of beasts so densely packed that Grimm could hear the crunch of dozens of bodies compressing at once.

The columns didn’t stop at the first impact.

They drove deeper, the force dug them into the earth, cracking stone beneath the soil, carving shallow craters as the weight and speed pulverized everything in their path. Trees near the impacts snapped and toppled. Brittle trunks collapsed, branches raining down.

The fog was blasted outward in a large wave, and for a moment the forest was clear enough to see the aftermath.

It was obscene.

Where there had been a sea of snarling bodies, there were now stretches of flattened carcases. Deseruit Beasts reduced to torn meat and crushed bone, pressed into the mud beneath slabs of ice. Some were split in half, the impact shearing them apart as they tried to flee. Some were pinned with limbs sticking out at unnatural angles, claws twitching weakly before going still.

A few—somehow—had survived the initial crush.

They crawled.

They dragged themselves with broken arms. They tried to pull their crushed bodies free, leaving streaks of blood that froze behind them. One creature—a boar-like beast with a cracked skull—managed to lift its head.

Its eyes met Grimm.

There was no intelligence there.

Only fear.

Grimm lowered his hand as he watched it turn and flee, squealing.

("Tsk, they had mana, they had numbers, and they had a forest. And they still couldn’t give me anything worth remembering.")

His gaze lifted.

"Let us hope your lord shall suffice."