Chapter 104: Round 2
Nathan lunged with Pale Rider activated.
He closed the twenty-meter distance in less than a second. The alpha creature turned to meet him with its right arm still functional, extended in a horizontal arc that would have hit him squarely if he’d maintained a direct trajectory.
Nathan ducked under the arc.
The claws passed over his head with enough force to produce an air current that lifted his hair. Nathan took advantage of the moment when the creature’s arm was extended and its torso was exposed. He extended his left hand toward the creature’s chest. He activated Tactile Entropy.
The skill touched the pulsing red skin.
The tissues around the contact point began to age.
But this time, the skin resisted more than the left arm had minutes before.
Nathan processed it with Soul Sense in real time.
*The torso’s signature is denser than the limbs’. The main consciousness is here. The natural resistance is greater.*
*Good.*
*Change.*
The creature reacted to the touch. It brought its right arm down in a vertical hammer blow directly toward Nathan’s back.
Nathan withdrew his hand from the skin.
He rolled forward between the creature’s legs.
He stood up on the other side.
And with his right arm extended upward, he applied Soul Reap to the back of the creature’s neck, where the skin was thinner than on the torso but thicker than on the limbs.
Soul Reap activated.
It began consuming parasite signature.
But this time, the creature moved with the efficiency of one that had learned over the last few minutes how Nathan operated. It turned its neck with speed. The missing left hand from the destroyed arm created an angle Nathan could exploit for positioning, but the creature compensated by rotating its entire torso backward.
Nathan had to release Soul Reap to avoid being hit by the right elbow coming at high speed.
He retreated three meters with Pale Rider.
The creature followed him.
With its right arm ready for another attack.
And with all five jaws open, emitting a continuous sound Nathan now recognized as active communication with the distributed consciousness. It was coordinating something. It was calling more elements of the colony.
Nathan felt Soul Sense react with new signatures approaching.
But they weren’t forest creatures.
They were humans.
Approximately twenty human signatures.
Approaching from the south.
From the settlement’s direction.
*Ah.*
*No.*
*No, no, no.*
*The residents.*
*It’s going to bring them here.*
Nathan processed the implications in less than a second while dodging another claw attack.
*The residents with killing intent toward me are going to activate permanent lethal mode. If they’re near the fight when they attack, they’ll fall with full lethality. The children included.*
*I need to finish the alpha before the residents arrive.*
*Four kilometers of travel at normal human walking pace.*
*Approximately forty minutes.*
*I have forty minutes.*
Nathan lunged again.
With Death Pulse at maximum intensity directly on the creature.
The circular detonation hit the alpha at close range.
The creature froze for a full second.
Nathan took advantage of the second.
He ran to the creature’s right side. He applied Tactile Entropy to the right arm’s joint, at the exact point where the shoulder connected to the torso. The tissues began to age. The joint began to weaken.
The creature emerged from paralysis.
It roared with all five jaws at once.
And with its right arm still functional, it grabbed Nathan by the neck.
Nathan felt the claws close around his throat with enough force to crush his trachea if the creature decided to squeeze fully.
*Shit.*
Nathan activated Death’s Domain at maximum intensity directly on the hand holding him.
The dark wave enveloped the hand. The arm’s tissues, already weakened by Tactile Entropy, couldn’t withstand the simultaneous impact. The fingers loosened. Nathan fell to the ground from approximately one meter’s height where the creature had lifted him.
He rolled sideways. He stood up with Pale Rider. He positioned himself ten meters away.
He checked the System mentally.
```
Nathan Voss.
HP: 2,100/2,400.
Mana: 800/3,500.
Status: Neck with superficial damage.
Trachea compressed but functional.
Cervical circulation partially
interrupted for 2 seconds.
Recovery: 30 seconds estimated.
```
*I’m spending mana very fast.*
*At this rate, I have approximately five more minutes before I’m out of fuel.*
*I can’t hold out for forty minutes like this.*
*Good.*
*Strategy change.*
Nathan checked Soul Sense.
The residents were approaching. Still approximately three kilometers away. Approximately thirty more minutes.
And the twelve minor creatures the alpha had summoned earlier were already in the clearing. Eight of them surrounding Liaraen, who had started fighting with the sword at the opposite end of the clearing. Four converging on Nathan from the flanks.
Nathan looked at Liaraen in the distance.
She moved with a fluidity he hadn’t seen in her during the previous months. Her father’s green sword tracing precise arcs. Her movements coordinated with an efficiency suggesting the sword itself was guiding the choreography. Liaraen dodging. Attacking. Retreating. With the sword, she was making tactical decisions she herself hadn’t planned.
*The sword is helping her.*
*The lineage enchantment.*
*Good.*
*I have to trust that Liaraen can hold that flank.*
Nathan turned back to the alpha creature.
Which was rising again. With its right arm now also damaged by Death’s Domain, though less than the left. With its neck showing marks from the partial Soul Reap. And with all five jaws emitting the continuous sound calling the residents.
Nathan made the decision.
*Pale Rider at maximum. Full mobility. Apply Tactile Entropy to weak points with rapid rotation. Don’t stay still. Don’t allow it to grab me again. Objective: destroy the right arm like the left. Then attack the torso from multiple angles with Soul Reap to consume the main signature.*
*Five minutes.*
*If I don’t kill it in five minutes, I have to retreat before the residents arrive.*
Nathan lunged.
---
The next three minutes were the most brutal Nathan had lived through as a Hunter.
He moved constantly with Pale Rider. Each landing was a different attack. Each attack was a different skill applied to a different vulnerable point. Tactile Entropy on the right elbow joint. Soul Reap on the throat when the creature turned. Death Pulse when it tried to summon more reinforcements. Death’s Domain on the most pulsing red lines on the torso.
The creature responded with the brutality of a high A-Rank.
Every hit Nathan didn’t dodge cost him blood. A claw scratch on his left arm that opened the skin to the muscle. An elbow impact on his ribs that fractured at least two. A glancing kick that opened his right thigh in a twenty-centimeter line.
Nathan absorbed them all.
Without stopping moving.
Without stopping attacking.
With Soul Sense constantly monitoring how much time remained before the residents arrived.
And at minute four of the sustained attack, the alpha creature did something Nathan hadn’t anticipated.
It stopped completely.
In the clearing’s center.
With both arms now practically useless.
With its torso showing visible marks of accumulated damage.
And with all five jaws closed.
And its signature changed.
Nathan felt it with Soul Sense. The killing intent the creature had been emitting toward him throughout the fight switched off abruptly. Completely. It didn’t reduce. It switched off.
And at that same moment, the killing intent signature of the residents approaching from the south intensified exponentially.
Nathan processed what was happening in approximately half a second.
*It’s redirecting the intent.*
*It’s taking it out of itself and putting it into the residents.*
*It’s using them to force my lethal mode to target innocents instead of itself.*
*Shit.*
*Shit, shit, shit.*
Nathan felt the effect on his own Class.
The lethal mode, activated by the creature’s killing intent, began to attenuate. The creature no longer had killing intent toward him. The techniques began to return to suppression mode by default.
But the approaching residents, now loaded with the redistributed killing intent, were going to activate lethal mode when they came within range.
And Nathan was going to kill them automatically.
Without being able to control it.
The children included.
*No.*
*No, no, no.*
Nathan stopped too.
Ten meters from the alpha creature.
With heavy breathing.
With blood dripping from the cuts on his arm, ribs, and thigh.
With Soul Sense confirming the residents were approximately a kilometer and a half away.
Approximately fifteen minutes.
The creature spoke then.
With all five jaws opening slowly.
With the voice of the twenty superimposed throats but now with a tone Nathan recognized as calibrated satisfaction.
"Hunter Voss."
"Yes."
"I surprised you."
Nathan looked at it.
Without responding.
"I know how your Class works."
Nathan processed that.