The Beast Of Carnage

After walking for a few more minutes, we found them as we walked a few streets across from the previous one we were in.

There are approximately fifteen beast creatures.

Is it two hordes mixed into one? or is it just one big horde of them. Up until now the most I’ve seen in a horde was seven. “So, that’s where you were… Eden, stay back this time, I’ll deal with them on my own. You’ve already killed three hordes so it’s best if you just sit this one out for now.” Lumi said.

“Ah sure…, I’ll leave it up to you then.” I responded.

She’s been doing this longer than I have been, I’m just an amateur when it comes to fighting so I’ll leave it to her since she’s more experienced.

She’s strong after all. “Great, thanks for trusting me.” She added as she walked forward.

“Main Armament.” She quietly muttered as she held her hand out to the side as if she was gripping something.

A few moments later, a beautiful crystal sword materializes in her hand as she grips it tight. After that she slashes the sword in a slant and then horizontally right after as if she did practice swings.

She looks cool. “You beasts, come right at me!” She shouts and points her sword at them and all the beasts turn their eyes to her.

A moment after that, they all charge in all at once.

Lumi smirks as she dashes forward with sword in hand.

The first one jumps at her, but before it could even reach her, she immediately decapitates it, then as she goes even further, she jumps over the second one and cuts its body in half.

She lands on the ground and slashes her sword horizontally, cutting the three beasts in front of her in half. She turns around and pierces another one through its skull.

It’s beautiful… the way she slices them cleanly, the way she cuts through their bodies like butter, everything about how she fights is beautiful.

But what was that? When she killed me, she was laughing maniacally back then, wasn’t she? It’s like the person I’m seeing now, and the one from back then are two different people.

At first, I thought she was one of those people who act hot and cold at certain times, but this is different.

It’s like her personality is constantly cycling through different ones.

A Lumi, who was playful and fought for pleasure.

A Lumi, who is graceful and fights for humanity.

After she killed me, there wasn’t much of a drastic change between her personalities, just slight differences.

I didn’t know her back when she killed me, so maybe I’m just overthinking things. I thought as five of them jumped at her all at once and the other half just ran towards her with their mouths ready to chomp.

Hey, they did this to me too, I wonder how she’ll counter that.

In the next moment she crouches and readies her sword to swing.

She waited a few seconds until finally just as their claws were about to reach her, she quickly sliced them from all directions at a frightening speed.

After that she runs again and goes after the remaining five beasts. “It’s time to end this…” She said as she crouched and was about to jump, but before her feet left the ground, her crystal sword faded away.

“Tertiary Armament. Equipment #2.” She muttered as her feet left the ground.

As she leaps through the air, a steel-bow materializes in the hand where her sword used to be and along with it, a quiver filled with arrows materializes on her back.

A few moments later, as she flies through the air over the beasts, her jump loses its power and she starts to fall.

As she falls down, she grabs five separate arrows from her quiver and faces downwards where the beasts were. With her bow and arrows, she starts to aim at them.

“It’s over!” She shouted as a split-second later, she launched all five arrows from her bow at lightning-fast speed.

In a flash, all her arrows pierce the wolf-like beasts through their backs and they all explode to oblivion.

The explosion was strong enough to turn the beasts into meat chunks but small enough for it to be contained and not damage the surrounding area…

Lumi lands on her feet, on the spot where the beasts once were as her bow and quiver fades away into nothingness. “Amazing…” I said as I clapped my hands.

“It’s nothing that special, even you could do something like that if you trained enough.” She replied as she smiled brightly and walked towards me.

“No no, I couldn’t possibly do that kind of thing.” I added.

“I also just wanted to show off to you.” She quietly muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing, now let’s keep going, there should only be a few left. So, let’s keep this up.” She responded as she lightly tapped my back.

“Uh… okay.” I uttered as we both started walking.

From what I’ve seen in that fight, she can use all sorts of things to fight. A sword, a bow, what else? She’s really strong.

There’s just one thing I don’t understand…

Why me? I know I’ve been mulling over this a lot but, I can’t comprehend why.

Even if she says that she’s been looking all over the world for me, not that I’ve heard the reason as why.

I shouldn’t be worth that much. My ability to control blood is cool and all but she couldn’t have known that when she was searching for me.

The only possible explanation is that we’ve met before and I just don’t remember it.

It could be, but then again… if I met her in the past, I definitely would remember her.

That’s just how much she stands out. My ability to remember things may not all be that good, but I’m sure I definitely would have been able to remember her.

But I’ll just wait, I’m sure she’ll tell me the reason soon enough. Although if she doesn’t that’s fine too.

After all, I’m just someone who’s helping her. Like a business partner for example in realistic terms. I don’t want to pry into her life too much. “Eden… don’t you think it’s a bit too quiet?” She asked as I pulled myself out from my thoughts.

“Y-yeah… now that you mention it, it kind of is.” I replied.

“Where do you think the people are now?” She added.

“I don’t know but considering they got attacked by wild animals I bet they evacuated to the basketball court somewhere here.”

“Then let’s go there.”

“Okay… but there’s something I want to ask first.”

“What is it?”

“Can’t you sense people or something like that?”

“Nope, I can’t. The main reason I’m here is to hunt down that killer who has access to the Garden.”

“Why is that though? Why are you hunting them?”

“This is complicated but in simpler terms it is something like a goal I set for myself. I don’t know the reason why but I want to cut down the number of people who have access to the Garden. It’s just an instinct that’s embedded into me for as long as I can remember.”

“So, you don’t save people?”

“I don’t, it’s just a coincidence that I happened to save some.”

“I see. That kind of makes sense I guess…”

“So, anyways I can only sort of guess when or where people use their access, It’s a vague gut feeling so, It can’t really be used for finding people to help them.”

“How vague are we talking about here?”

“Umm… around this entire city, once I figure out which city they're in, I just investigate on my own after that.”

“Okay…”

As we were talking, the basketball court came into view as we turned to another street.

“This is it, just a few more and we’re there.” I said as I immediately ran towards it.

This is weird, it’s quiet here too. I thought as I reached the court and looked inside it.

“There’s no one.” I quietly spoke.

“They’re not here?” Lumi uttered as she caught up to me.

“Yeah…” I responded.

Aside from those three corpses I saw earlier, there’s no sign of bloodshed anywhere.

Could they be inside the houses? Probably not, if they did attack the insides of the houses here then it should leave at least something broken on the outside but as we walked around it’s all perfectly normal. “What could their objective be? Did you figure out anything about them Lumi?” I asked as I turned around to face her.

“No…” She replied. When I saw those hordes of beasts earlier back in the apartment, I thought their main goal was to just massacre but could I be wrong?

I probably am wrong… So, I’ll try to add all this up together.

Let’s see, I know for certain that those beasts attacked the people like the first and third ones I killed, but the fourth horde that Lumi killed there was no people around them. The most realistic possibility here is that the people were kidnapped and brought somewhere else but how could that many people disappear without us noticing.

It’s like they just turned to dust or faded away into nothing. “Ugh… I can’t figure this out, there’s too many options here.” I grumbled as I scratched my head. “What’s your opinion on this Lumi? Could they have been kidnapped or killed using some means that wouldn’t even leave a trace of them behind?” I asked.

“Remember what we talked about this morning?”

“Yeah, we were compiling info about the killer and…” I recalled our conversation.

***

“Spatial storage are off the list.”

“Why?”

“Because spatial storage is something that’s unique to me, the closest anyone can get is something similar like spatial transportation.”

***

“Spatial transportation!” I exclaimed.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“So, you mean that they were transferred someplace else using that?”

“Yep, if there isn’t much trace of bloodshed then that’s the possibility with the highest realistic chance of happening. Even I can’t kill something without leaving any traces.”

“I see… then where would they have been taken then?”

“I assume the enemy base, otherwise I don’t know.”

“The enemy base huh…” Even if we knew that they were taken to the enemy base, we don’t exactly know how to get there, heck we don’t even know where it is…

“Our only chance of finding it is through Sameal, the beastman that attacked us earlier.” Lumi said.

“Yeah, that makes sense, though we don’t even know if we’re even going to encounter him again…” I responded but then a moment later, her expression turned from the normal poker face to shock as she started running towards me?

“Behind you!” She shouted as she pushed me away and in the next moment. Something was run through her stomach… I jumped back as far as I could, as blood gushed out from her wound.

A claw? It was a large hairy claw that would belong to a wild animal.

A moment later the claw pulled out from her stomach and threw her away. In the next moment, a large furry humanoid wolf came out from the shadows… “You’re… Samael!” I exclaimed as Lumi crashed her back onto a metal fence.

“Too bad, I was a moment too late.” It said.

“What’re you doing here! Where’d you take the people that were living here…” I shouted as I gripped the knife in my hand tight.

“You need not know, just die.” It spoke as it readied its claws and dashed towards me at an insane speed. As it dropped its claws on me from above, I parried it as I was pushed back.

“argh!” I grunted as we both exchanged blows. He brings down his claws on me, I parry them back as he pushes me back.

It’s hard to do this with a knife! I’m going to lose if I keep this up. Suddenly as we were exchanging blows with one another, he used his hairy right leg to kick me back.

“Guhu…!” I uttered as I crashed into a wall and coughed up blood.

A moment later, I stood up. “Heyaaaa!” I shouted as I ran towards the beastman known as Sameal and swung my knife.

“It’s useless.” It said as it once again brought its claws down on me before I could even reach its body with my knife.

Just before its claws reached me, I quickly changed the direction of where the knife was going and swung it upwards making contact with its claw.

This is heavy! I thought as I noticed that he wasn’t using his other claw. Is he holding back? I don’t understand this guy! “What is your objective here!?” I shouted as I held back his claw.

He stayed silent. I can’t hold this for much longer, this body nor my old one had any strength to begin with! Right now, I’m just relying on the knife.

If only I could use it again like earlier then I could win. But there’s barely any blood I can use.

Wait… this guy runs its claws through Lumi’s stomach, is she okay? I thought as I looked at her from the corner of my eye. The wound in her stomach slowly but surely regenerating by itself.

Good, she’s okay. I’m an idiot, I should’ve checked on her first before going at it with Sameal. Now that I’ve confirmed that she’s fine and just knocked out, I need to figure this out on my own.

How to beat this guy… There’s only one way. I need to use it again but where will I get the blood for it? Think! Is there any blood around here I can use?

That’s right, there is one, I coughed up some earlier, didn’t I?

Calm down… Relax and imagine pulling that single thread again.

A few seconds later, nothing happened. I can’t concentrate! Any moment now I’ll die. My arm is slowly losing strength. To get out of this, I need to gamble.

I can only think of one other way right now… and that is too. In the next second, whilst still holding its claw back, I once again jumped back and pulled out from that spot.

As I was jumping back, his falling claw only managed to damage my left hand. Ouch! It hurts! I thought as I breathed heavily. Blood dripped from my left hand.

“Answer me! What is your objective here!” I shouted with all of my strength at the beastman.

“You are only the second objective as we already have achieved the first. That is all I can say to you.” It smirked as it responded to my question. “Clearly, we have failed today, so I shall come again.” It continued, and then the next moment, a dark puddle of goo suddenly appeared beneath its feet and Sameal slowly sank.

“Oi!” I shouted again as I tried to attack him again but it was no use as I fell down on the ground. Not now! I need to get to him! I thought as fatigue, drowsiness, and tiredness creped up all over my body.

A few seconds later, Sameal had completely disappeared from the area.

I didn’t get him… Any time now Lumi should regain consciousness, but why do I feel so tired? I-I need to get back up and carry her to a safe place.

I’m just tired and not that injured so I can do it. But why can’t I move? I moved earlier even when my leg was injured so why!

I can’t afford to pass out now. I’m tired…

I thought as my consciousness faded to darkness.

***

I woke up and opened my eyes as I was greeted by the darkness of the empty street.

A moment later, I recalled the events before I passed out.

Oh yeah… wait, where’s Eden? I looked at my surroundings and saw Eden on the ground, her left hand bleeding while he had the knife within the grasp of her right hand.

Did she beat Sameal? I don’t see any signs of it. No matter, I’ll just go carry Eden back. I thought as I stood up. Even though the wound regenerated it’s no use if I lose consciousness.

Either way the attack is over, so maybe I can at least give her some time to relax. She looks tired. I thought as I picked her up and carried her on my back.

For now… I’ll carry him to a nearby park. My apartment’s been destroyed but our stuff might still be there, so I’m going to bandage his wound first in the park, then quickly go check out the apartment.

She has her clothes there, so it’d be better if I changed her out of that hoodie. She’s been in that outfit ever since he started living with me which was yesterday, so I think it’d be healthy for him to be in a fresh set of clothes.

After all that’s said and done, I better deactivate the seal soon otherwise people would get suspicious….

Not that they won’t get suspicious of this nearly empty subdivision.

By the time she wakes up, we need to move somewhere fast. The last thing we need right now is to get questioned by the local authorities.

“Fo-r-give m-e.” Eden murmured unconsciously and moved his hand for a moment.

I wonder what she’s dreaming about. I thought as I was walking towards the park. It could be about anything.

The human mind has no limits after all.

When she wakes up, I think I’m going to give her a reward. She’s earned it after all. She did fight more of those things than me.

Although what kind of reward should I give her? I don’t really know what rewards people give to each other nowadays.

When it comes to human relationships, I have absolutely no idea.