His veins were bulging through his skin. His muscles grew beyond what any normal person could manage. His height soared to a degree that he now easily towered over the two individuals before him.

  “Erin… what do we do?” Aera asked after swallowing a lump in her throat. Her face paled against the grotesque giant of a man before her. Her shoulders were shivering. Apprehension wrought her eyes, but her clenched fists told a different story.

  “What we always do. We fight,” Erin said, brandishing her sword. A violet mist enveloped the area.

  “I know, but how? I-I’m not… angry, yet.”

  “You don’t need to be. Even if you’re not as strong as you could be in your rage, your strength still far exceeds the norm. Trust in yourself. Amyra had taught plenty, had she not?”

  “She has, but—”

  “Dodge!” Erin shouted and dove to the side.

  Aera was a tad slower. She saw the drastic shift in Erin’s expression. She felt the tremor underneath her feet. Their opponent had lunged at them. Still, she was slow to respond. Her body moved, but she wasn’t fast enough to evade the punch from a fist that was as rge as her torso. Her moves crossed in front of her face, a habit forged by Amyra. She was taken off her feet, and she went tumbling across the roofs.

  “She’ll learn,” Erin sighed. Though a punch of that magnitude would turn anyone into mush, Aera was different. Erin had strained her ears when the punch struck Aera. She heard nothing that might suggest Aera suffering any internal injuries. Therefore, her worried gaze did not linger on Aera for long.

  The hulking man howled as he threw another punch. Despite the mass of muscles packed into his bulging body, he moved faster than an arrow.

  Erin moved faster than the fist, but her body quivered from the sheer proximity of the punch’s accuracy. An inch difference would have led to a very different result.

  The hulking man growled and swung his fist again.

  Erin twirled and evaded a hook that would have taken her head off.\

  “Fox!!” the hulking man bellowed. He brought his fists together and swung down on Erin like a hammer.

  Erin leapt and flipped backwards, bringing her sword into a wide arc. There was a grating yet soothing noise that sted for a mere second, followed by the sound of flesh tearing and dropping to the ground. Erin had sliced off the hulking man’s hands.

  The hulking man cried out in agony.

  “Cease your wailing,” Erin scoffed and thrust at the man.

  The hulking man rolled out of the way at the st second.

  Erin tutted and followed. She wasn’t about to let the man slip away.

  “Fox!!” the hulking man roared and threw his arms again.

  Erin was confounded… for a moment. Then, she saw a fresh pair of hands growing out from the still-bleeding flesh stumps. “What in the abomination—?”

  The hulking man threw a wild swing, the air tearing and rippling in the face of this strength.

  Erin rolled her eyes. She took a step to the side and flicked her sword.

  The hulking man’s arm left his shoulder in a spectacur manner that left a clean trail of blood in its wake.

  Before the man could cry, Erin lunged at him with her sword thrusting towards his head.

  The hulking man screeched and tossed his entire weight on Erin.

  She blinked, stopped in her tracks, and twirled out of the way. Without waiting for the man to recover his lost bance due to this rage, Erin brought her sword down, decapitating the man. The head dropped from the neck and went rolling across the ground. Erin had seen this sight one too many times. She had been averse to taking lives, but now, it was almost an everyday occurrence. Such was the way of this cold and cruel world.

  “E-Erin…” Aera called out, meekly. “Is it over?”

  “Unless he could survive a decapitation, I would say so.”

  “...Sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “I was of no help.”

  “That’s undeniable but we all have to start somewhere. Nothing ever goes well the first time. I let swords slip from my grip dozens of times before I could wield it with basic proficiency."

  “Well, I—” Aera caught her words. Her train of thought was derailed. Her eyes widened.

  Erin also sensed the shift in the air and the slight tremor underneath her feet. She didn’t need to turn around. Along with Aera, they dropped to the ground as a fist swept with a force that could tear through steel. Erin bounced back to her feet and brandished her sword at the standing hulking man who was missing his head.

  “It’s headless…” Aera gasped. “And he’s walking!”

  “It’s always some sick and twisted surprise.”

  “You mock me, but I don’t expect the strong to understand the woes of the weak.”

  Erin frowned. The headless corpse was talking but she couldn’t tell from where it was talking.

  “Without surrendering ourselves to twisted and sickening endeavours, we, the weak, can never hope to survive for long in this world.”

  “You can burden yourself with these convenient excuses all you want, but it’s no excuse for your desire to commit atrocities.”

  “Atrocities… A funny way of describing survival. Oppressed by the strong for all time. However, the moment we retaliate, we are belled as vile beasts.”

  “Do you even know why your boss, or your leader, or your master, whatever you call them as such, wants me dead?”

  The hulking man snorted loudly. “It’s a jungle out here. There will always be a call for blood, be it yours or others. Harmony is an illusion. Peace is a facade. It is the truth. It is the flow of the river. I don’t try to fight the flow. I just swim along with it, while people like you are doing everything you can to drown us for swimming faster.”

  “You chose this river.”

  “There you go again with that luxury argument. Choice is for the privileged and the strong. We have none of that. We don’t get to choose the river. We are thrown into it. The only choice we have is to either to swim or sink.”

  “...You are a lost cause.”

  “Enough!” the hulking man snarled and pounced at Erin.

  She dodged the lunge and countered with a stab. However, to her surprise, her sword barely made it past the skin.

  “Hubris!” the hulking man sneered and swung its newly regenerated fist that was looking more grotesque than ever.

  Erin had difficulty pulling her sword out. Only the tip had gone into the flesh but there was something holding it firmly to the flesh. Erin could only dispel her sword and reconjure it. However, in doing so, she had left herself vulnerable for a split second and that was more than enough for her opponent to deal a significant strike. Her head would be split open and her brain would scatter everywhere. Fortunately, she was not alone.

  “Get away from her!” Aera screamed, throwing her fist into the hulking man’s torso. If he had a head, she would have gone for the face. Her fist was tremendously smaller than the hulking man’s own, but her strength was not inferior. In fact, her strength could even be superior. Her fist sank into the man’s torso. If he still had his face, it would be one that was contorting in agony.

  “My thanks,” Erin gasped for breath. Any second ter and her head would have been pulverised.

  “How do we kill him? His head is gone but he’s still moving!”

  “He’s not a demon. He’s just… deformed. I keep cutting and you keep punching. Eventually, his Mana would be depleted.”

  “I just keep punching?”

  “Yes, and don’t let up until he’s dead.”

  Aera nodded. “I-I can do that.”

  Erin smiled and turned towards the hulking man.

  He was rising to his feet with some difficulty. There was a rge dent in his chest. It was mending itself, bending the bones and twisting the flesh back into their pces. “I will see you dead!”

  “Ignore his words, Aera. Just pummel him,” Erin said and lunged with two swords, one in each hand.

  The hulking man screamed. There were no coherent words, just a cry of frustration. His actions were simplistic. There was no method behind every punch. There was only raw strength. He was a man born without talents for violence or anything for that matter. He was born amidst the poor and dying, elevated into the service of William Marsh by a stroke of fortune. He was ter given powers he could only dream of having. It came at a cost of deforming his physical appearance but what a man wouldn’t do just to survive and live just a little bit longer in this cold and cruel world.

  Erin’s bdes flourished in the face of the hulking man’s flurry of feral jabs. The jabs were fast but her bdes were faster and were her perception. The man’s flesh and skin were harder to cut but it was only a minor issue. If she couldn’t cut it, she would parry it and parry the punches she did with the ft parts of her bdes.

  Aera would be behind her. She would close in and throw a punch after a jab was parried. She hesitated at first due to the man’s grotesque appearance and his hulking physique but after a few punches, she understood her strength and limits, and also the opponent’s. Even without her rage, her strength was more than enough to dent steel.

  “Insolent!! I can’t lose!! Not here!! Not now!!”

  Erin slid under a hook and rose back up behind the hulking man. She cut at the man’s legs. It felt nothing like cutting through the flesh of men. It felt like her bde was cutting through dense water, but it wasn’t enough to deter her. Even if her bdes couldn’t hurt the man, the fist of her companion could. If she couldn’t parry a blow, she would let Aera’s fist take the punch. The results were always in Aera’s favour. The man had mass to his advantage, but Aera had raw strength. The hulking man would yowl whenever their fists collided. Erin could even hear the cracking of bones.

  The tide of the battle gradually shifted to Erin’s side. The man only had his size and brute strength. Erin had skills and experience. The man had an awful life and even worse luck in his talents, or ck thereof. The artificial abominable nature of the man was the only reason he could hold his own against Erin. The conclusion would have brought about a different result had Erin been alone. As, she wasn’t.

  The man suffered cuts and bruises, deep ones. He could regenerate his limbs and many of the deep wounds. He could persist despite the absence of his major body parts. However, the persistence was not permanent. He could live if he stopped the fight and retreated to heal. Unfortunately, that was not an option. He would be marked for death by his employer should he retreat. He had to fight a hopeless battle.

  “D-damn you…” the man groaned as he slumped to his knees. His head was still missing but the flesh stump had healed. He was told this power would grant him significant tenacity but he was not expecting this level of tenacity. Still, it was all in vain against the Fox-kin.

  “Why do you keep struggling?” Erin asked, sheathing her sword, even though such an act was needless.

  “What do you know about us?” the man spat. “Nothing. You know nothing. We have been struggling all our lives. We take every opportunity that comes our way, no matter how abominable it is.”

  “And now you’re paying the price.”

  “A fair price. We never expect to live this long anyway. If it wasn’t for him, I would have died many years back.”

  Erin narrowed her eyes. “Who’s ‘him’?”

  The man chuckled. “Fuck. You. That’s who.” And he fell silent, along with his body colpsing to the ground.

  “I-is he dead now?” Aera asked.

  “...He is,” Erin answered after a brief silence. “If he still comes back from this, the Ruvans will go on a rampage.”