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“Amazing……”

Against Animaru’s strong movements akin to a gale, the Beast King responded with soft movements with a combination of defensive manoeuvre and feints. Changing places until it made those who saw them dizzy, exchanging blows with their hands and feet, then they distanced themselves once again.

Neither one of them was stopping. Toward those movements that looked like a dance on top of water, Joey involuntarily raised his voice in admiration.

Then, perhaps because of hearing that voice or perhaps because the abnormal status from Stun Blow that Animaru used had worn out, Hiyuki, who was unconscious in Joey’s protection, let out a little moan and slowly opened her eyes.

“Hiyuki! Are you awake!? Are you hurt somewhere? Do you feel any pain?”

Perhaps because she wasn’t fully conscious, Hiyuki gazed at Joey, who called her with a visibly joyful expression, with an absentminded look. However,

“—!?”

Suddenly her expression changed, and in the next moment as if she was experiencing a fit, she bent backwards once, and then curled up her body as if to endure something. In that instant, her black hair flowed about, and her now bare back trembled repeatedly.

“Wh-what happened Hiyuki?! Is it painful!?”

Despite being flustered and calling to Hiyuki in worry, Joey’s ears still heard Hiyuki’s small, broken, but urgent, impatient and desperate mutter.

“……ru…run……can’t…push it…down……Joey, get aw..ay……from me…quickly……”

Because of her hair and how she was facing down, Joey couldn’t see Hiyuki’s pupils becoming more and more fiery and reddish, and how two long canines peeked out from her lips.

Mustering the last of her willpower she opened her storage space, but at the time she successfully took out a potion bottle from her storage, Hiyuki’s consciousness was dyed with a deep crimson color.

◆◇◆◇

When he thought he finally grasped him with his right hand, the heaven and earth suddenly reversed, and even while rotating he was slapped to the ground. Although sparks were flying about deep in his eyes and his consciousness turned disorderly, he instinctively jumped back right before a thunderous foot stepped at the place where his head once was.

The ground was gouged out as if hit by a hammer and debris scattered around—and mixed among that was an assassination device in the shape of metal nail, which was thrown and stabbed Animaru’s defenceless left eye.

“Gaaaaaaaaahh!!!”

The Beast King only gazed with uninterested eyes at Animaru who pressed his left eye and screamed.

“—Oh. You seem fine. I thought it stabbed through your brain.”

The Beast King slowly advanced.

Even against Animaru’s fighter skill ‘Bash’, he dealt with it calmly.

Animaru, who took out the assassination device from his left eye with all his power, had blood flowing endlessly from it. Madness appeared in his remaining right eye, and he glared at the Beast King with a gruesome expression.

“Old man!! Die Die Die! I will kill you for SURE!!”

“If you still have a hand to play with, then you should use it right here right now.”

The Beast King answered him mockingly, Animaru’s eye turned round as he looked past the Beast King.

For a moment, Animaru was so surprised that he forgot the pain and anger he felt. In addition to the sinister viscous slurping sound coming from his back, the Beast King turned to look behind while keeping his vigilance.

Hiyuki was standing there.

Despite her tattered figure and wobbly state, she stood on her own feet steadily.

Because her long black hair was covering her face, her expression couldn’t be seen. However she held Joey by his neck with her mouth. Joey was now beyond pale-white as if he was paper.

Looking at Joey, whose status was uncertain, had limbs thrown down like a doll, unmoving—not even showing a twitch, the Beast King’s expression turned even more severe.

“Damn! I wasted too much time on this old man. Vampire Princess Maddening…no, even Swordsman’s Berserk. –damn, I can’t read through her status!”

Looking at Hiyuki’s figure who was clad in a red-black aura, Animaru understood the situation and spat curses.

Berserk was a swordsman skill which activated when your HP falls below 10%—in exchange for a tremendous increase in status, players lose the ability to differentiate between friend or foe, and become a mad fencer until they die or a certain amount of time has passed.

Vampire Princess Maddening—it’s a special trait of the vampire princess race which activates when they don’t consume blood for a certain amount of time or when they face life threatening conditions. It will erase one’s own conscience, release their power limiter, and make them become a lump of self defense instinct, and attack anyone around them indiscriminately.

“But I’ve never heard of the two being activated at the same time…”

In the first place, among the users with the rare race vampire (princess), somebody who took swordsman as their job would perhaps only be Hiyuki.

And as far as Animaru remembered, Hiyuki never experienced either maddening or berserk. (It’s either because her HP never reached that low or because of her paper armor, she usually met with instant death)

“Either way, I won’t be able to stop it.”

At that time, the Beast King stopped caring about Animaru and ran toward Hiyuki.

“Stop!”

Facing the Beast King that tried to stop her, Hiyuki casually threw Joey who was in her mouth with the power of her jaw and neck.

The body of that boy flew like a cannonball,

“—Kuh!”

The Beast King who caught him with his whole body was unable to stop its momentum, even with his large build. He was pushed back 1 meter, making a trench in his wake.

At the same time, bam!! Together with her step which shook the ground, Hiyuki flew forward. At the place where the land exploded, there appeared an earth pillar.

“Where is she?!”

Animaru looked around restlessly. Even though he surveyed his surroundings he couldn’t find Hiyuki’s figure. Where is—at that moment, he felt the violent thirst of blood from above and looked up.

—there!

She dug all of her fingers into a crumbling house’s wall, and stopped there like a spider.

As Animaru gasped at that scene, the wall exploded and Hiyuki’s figure disappeared once again.

No— when he noticed she was already right above his head. Her tattered skirt fluttered and her right heel approached him.

Animaru parried it right away by crossing both his hands. As expected of a top ranker in Eternal Horizon Online, despite her unbelievable speed Animaru was still capable of responding.

Hiyuki was barefooted, on the other side Animaru was equipped with Lvl 99 Fighter exclusive equipment, a hang guard and wrist cover “Kanshou” which has been reinforced 9 times. With those absurd differences, there’s no way his defense would be breached. At the same time that he stopped her kick, Animaru will force her back using the Fighter skill “Knockback”.

That was what he believed, however in the next second, at the same time the violent impact stopped, his face was already struck into the ground.

…Wha…what?!……What is the meaning of this……?

He spit out earth and mud in his mouth together with his broken tooth and fang.

Using his one eye, Animaru looked at his own two hands. The hand guard “Kanshou” were deforme—not. Then how was he thrown to the ground?

When he wanted to get up, he noticed he couldn’t move his hand. Then at that time he noticed the reason he was defeated. Both of his hands’ muscles were entirely ruptured, moreover peeking out through his skin from the inside were his broken bones.

Certainly “Kanshou” successfully defended against Hiyuki’s attack. However, his own two hands themselves failed to stop the impact and his two hands’ bones, flesh, and joints all were smashed apart.

In short, he simply lost in terms of strength.

In Animaru’s mind which was filled with shock, his conversation with the man who named himself the Beast King resurfaced.

“Your fighting style is just pushing down your opponent through overwhelming power. Because you never experienced a fight against someone stronger or a fight where you risked your life, when you confront someone stronger than you, you don’t know how you should fight. In short, you have no creativity in fighting.”

Yes, that’s right. He always fights that way. No, to be precise he has no other means to fight. That’s the way of life he was forced into. And this was the result. However, there’s no other way, since he was…

Animaru’s hair was caught casually, and lifted up like a balloon.

In front of him right now were Hiyuki’s eyes that had a flaming scarlet radiance, and pure white fangs.

Though he came up with the plan to eat her, he became the one who was eaten. How ironic.

Well that’s fine too, as long as it’s not in the hand of ‘that guy’, you may as well end this s̲h̲i̲t̲t̲y life of mine— while feeling strangely relieved and fulfilled in the depth of his quickly disappearing consciousness, he closed his remaining eye.

◆◇◆◇

“Ugh….”

Though the young boy (Joey) who he caught was still barely alive, he had lost too much blood.

The Beast King tried to apply his ki to heal Joey—whose body was so cold it would make anyone shudder— but since Joey’s basic life force itself was not enough, it was futile.

That would also mean the pill and medical plants he possessed right now wouldn’t do anything. Was there anything he could do?

While desperately hoping for some sort of miracle the Beast King looked around him, and there in the place where the young girl stood before he saw a glass-like bottle lying around.

Perhaps it’s medicine?

He moved to it while holding Joey, and quickly picked it up, opened the lid of the bottle, and smelled the scent.

Odorless.

And there’s nothing written on the bottle. A light yellow liquid that could either be poison or medicine, but he felt it was similar to a potion made by an alchemist.

“……either way he’ll certainly die at this rate. Then, I can only bet on this.”

Resolving himself, the Beast King gulped the liquid inside the bottle at once and fed it mouth to mouth to the unconscious Joey.

The effect was—dramatically effective. Joey’s skin which was pale until now turned healthy red, his body temperature, pulse rate, and breath all returned to normal and even his face which showed the shadow of death turned calm as if he was just taking a nap.

“Sluurp—!” The Beast King who just let out a sigh of relief, suddenly heard that disgusting slurping sound once again.

As he raised his head to look at the source in surprise, Animaru who was fighting until a while ago was completely defeated. Hiyuki’s fangs were digging into his throat and she was sucking his blood to the very last drop.

As if throwing away an empty can of juice, Hiyuki threw Animaru, whose life has already died out. Then with her unfocused pupils she looked at the Beast King.

—she’s coming!?

The Beast King quickly put Joey down and readied himself, yet Hiyuki’s mood suddenly turned calm as if the madness condition she had before was a lie. She stopped motionless at that place for a while—but in the next moment, as if she was a puppet with her strings cut, she lost consciousness and tumbled down where she was standing.

It seems he successfully avoided battle. As he judged the situation that way, his shoulders relaxed.

At the same time, he could feel the presence of guards who ran towards them in haste, he let out a tired sigh.

◆◇◆◇

Holy Kingdom of Aeon, Holy City Faximile.

At the uppermost floor of the “Blue Divine Tower,” the man with blue hair and bronze scaled skin who read the report, took a glance toward one of the many crystal balls. Inside those crystal balls were specks of black and gold—which lined up near the wall and produced a ‘clink’ sound as it broke. At that, he snorted in disdain.

“So he died. Since the olden days he was a man who was only good at talking.”

Then he continued to look over the report.