Bel stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard. His golden eyes glowed with sothing that hadn't been there before.
The goblins, who had monts ago reveled in their victory, stood frozen. Their wicked grins had lted into slack-jawed shock.
They weren't used to this. Their prey scread. Their prey ran. Their prey fought, lost, and begged.
But this?
This was sothing else.
Bel's fingers twitched, his breath coming out ragged. Then, without thought, without hesitation, he launched forward.
The first goblin barely had ti to blink before his skull caved under Bel's fist. The second was ripped from the ground, torn in two at the waist, its purple blood splattering across the cave walls.
Screeches erupted as the others finally snapped back into motion. They charged. Daggers, clubs, jagged blades, all ca at him in a desperate attempt to overwhelm.
But it didn't matter.
A goblin buried its dagger into his arm. The blade slid on his skin.
Another clubbed him in the ribs. The wood cracked, not his bones.
They tried to pull him down, to drown him under their sheer numbers, but it was like trying to drag a mountain. He grabbed one of the creatures clinging to his back, crushed its throat, and hurled its lifeless body into another.
A third latched onto his arm, screeching and biting. He flexed, feeling the snap of its brittle bones as it crumpled like dried leaves.
They weren't enemies; they were pests.
Bel's hand shot out, fingers curling like claws, and he raked through their ranks, flesh and bone shredding beneath his grip.
He wanted to punch, but his fingers spread, slashing instead. He wanted to break free, but his body moved differently, wider, stronger, deadlier. More efficient.
[level up!]
The sond rang in his mind, distant, yet clear. More goblins sward him. He pulled them in, letting them struggle before he crushed them in a deadly embrace, ribs snapping like dry twigs in his grip.
The cracks, the shrieks, it was like music.
[level up!] [level up!]
His breath hitched, his movents growing faster, more brutal. A goblin tried to scramble away. He caught it, twisted its limbs, and listened to the sharp pop of its joints giving way before throwing it aside like trash.
They deserved this.
They did what they wanted. Took what they wanted. Broke what they wanted.
They didn't just deserve death. They deserved fear. They deserved to feel what their victims felt.
[level up!]
His mouth was open. He could feel the air rushing over his teeth. He tried to close it...
No.
It wouldn't close.
Why?
A goblin lunged at him, and without thinking, he caught it, by the face. Its screams were muffled as his fingers pressed into its skull. The sound of its head bursting filled his ears. Warmth splattered across his face. His lips curled back into a snarl.
He tasted sothing tallic.
[level up!]
He was grinning. Why was he grinning?
Why did this feel so good?
[level up!]
He should be horrified. This was a nightmare. He was in a nightmare.
But the numbers kept climbing. The strength kept growing. The goblins kept dying.
The fear inside him twisted, morphed, lted into sothing else entirely.
Euphoria.
When was the last ti he had leveled this much? When was the last ti he had felt this rush, this thrill, this sheer unshackled joy?
So easy. So weak. So many.
[level up!]
Lena couldn't breathe.
Her fingers dug into the dirt, her body trembling as she watched the scene unfold before her.
The goblins, so many of them, had been reduced to nothing but piles of torn flesh and scattered limbs. The cave floor now ran slick with fresh, steaming purple blood.
Bel stood at the center of it.
He was no longer just a person. He was sothing else, sothing definitely not human. The way he moved, the way his golden eyes glead through the darkness, was unnatural.
Her tears started falling, but for the first ti in what felt like an eternity, they weren't tears of fear.
It was relief, her sobs silent as she pressed a trembling hand against her mouth.
They were dying. The goblins were actually dying. The monsters that had taken everything, devoured her friends, and turned this place into hell were finally being erased.
She shuddered, watching as Bel lood atop the mountain of corpses, standing as if he belonged there. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, thick steam escaping from between his slightly parted lips.
His entire body was drenched in blood, dark streaks running down his face, dripping from his fingertips. In his right hand, he clutched a severed arm, fingers still twitching.
The remaining goblins had stopped laughing.
They stared at him, frozen in place, their beady eyes wide with sothing Lena had never seen from them before.
Fear.
For the first ti, they knew what it felt like to be prey.
Bel exhaled sharply, his gaze shifting, scanning the trembling creatures before him. A slow, almost lazy tilt of his head. The golden light in his eyes flickered.
"Where's the free exp?"
The goblins shrieked in terror. Without hesitation, they turned and bolted, scrambling over each other, tripping, clawing desperately to flee toward the other end of the cavern.
Lena barely blinked before Bel was gone.
One second he was standing atop the corpses, the next, he had vanished into the darkness after them. Then ca the screams.
More wet, sickening crunches, more bodies hitting the ground. The frantic scurrying of creatures trying to escape, only to be dragged back into the shadows.
The cave was a pit of endless horrors, and in the middle of it, sothing worse than goblins was hunting.
Through the flickering light of the torch, Lena's gaze swept across the chaos, only to catch sight of movent on the ground.
A goblin had fallen.
It scrambled, desperately trying to regain its footing, but sothing held it back. Sothing weak, small, yet impossibly unrelenting.
Ilya's hand.
She barely looked like an elf anymore. Blood coated every inch of her battered body, her skin marred by bruises, cuts, and deep, raw wounds. Her erald hair, now matted and caked with gri, clung to her face, which was covered in dirt.
Even in this wretched state, stripped of everything, there was still sothing hauntingly elven about her: a deadly rage in her eyes.
She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow bursts.
The goblin kicked at her furiously, yelping as it struggled against the iron grip of fingers wrapped around its ankle. But she didn't let go. She pulled hard.
The goblin fell onto its back with a panicked screech, and Ilya was on top of it before it could react. And then she found a rock.
Lena barely had ti to process what was happening before Ilya brought the jagged stone down onto the goblin's face.
A sickening crack echoed through the cavern. The goblin wailed, its tiny hands flailing, trying to push her away.
She hit it again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike was harder than the last, the rock slick with purple as she bashed it into the goblin's skull over and over and over. The shrieks turned into gurgles, the gurgles into weak twitches. Still, she didn't stop.
Her screams filled the cavern, not of pain, not of fear, but of pure, unfiltered rage.
Lena could only watch, her lips slightly parted, her fingers curling into the dirt. The torchlight flickered, casting jagged shadows across the walls. The blood, the screams, the endless echoes of death... it was suffocating.
And yet, she did not look away.
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