System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 2025 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 9
In the black of night the torchlight picked out graves ripped open by violence. Oddly, most pits still held scattered white bones; only a handful of fresh graves were utterly empty.
“The bodies gone are all new graves!” someone hissed.
Roy’s first thought was of a ravenous, bloodthirsty Monster, a ghoul. If ghouls prowled the cemetery, even a Witcher would face a difficult fight; for ordinary villagers, the danger was terrifying.
“This is dangerous, everyone back away!” Roy’s voice was urgent. No sooner had he spoken than a strange whipping sound cut the air, like a lash cracking through nothing.
One second, two.
Grok the butcher gave a muffled groan, as if hooked like a fish; his limbs snapped back, convulsed, then he staggered forward two paces, graceless and helpless.
The torches then revealed a fleshy, ribbonlike thing hurtling through the night, a strip of pale, writhing tissue that struck the butcher’s shoulder like a spear and tore a ragged hole.
Pussig’s sword rose in a flash, but the thing slipped free and slithered back into the dark beyond the torchlight.
“What in God’s name?” The men scrambled, closing around Grok.
The butcher’s sweat poured down his face; he bit until his teeth ached. He clamped both hands over the gaping wound, but blood still spouted like a spring. His knees weakened and life bled out of him; he knew he would not last long.
“I’m done for, you must run! Leave me!” With those words he shoved them away and plunged alone into the night.
Old Jack scanned the area, one eye hard as flint.
“Run! Anyone who can, run! Save yourselves; if you live you might hunt this thing down later!” he barked.
They sprinted.
Pussig dragged Roy along until the boy could breathe and steady himself, though he still shook. “That wasn’t a ghoul, not at all. What the hell is that?” he stammered, then glanced back and caught sight of a hunched, humanoid shape. It lacked a cheetah’s sleek lines; it was grotesquely bloated, a belly like a woman three months gone, yet it ran faster than any big cat.
It circled them, trailing afterimages across the moonlit graves like wind, crying out with a sharp, screeching call like an owl. It mocked them and reveled in the hunt.
“Collects corpses, hunched like an old crone, spits a long tongue, lives in the tombs,” Roy murmured as the clues linked in his head. Old Jack slapped him hard.
“Stop daydreaming, Roy, run! Think of nothing, just run!” With every last ounce of strength, Roy lunged for the cemetery gate.
So near to safety, he almost tore free of that nightmarish place.
A shadow dropped out of the air with a tearing gust and blocked their path. Its face was pocked and rotting, bristling with tumors, hideous beyond description.
Blue-black skin reeked with the stench of death; mottled scales covered it, claws curved like sickles and caked in a thick paste of blood and flesh.
Not even the wicked witch of a fairy tale, the burn-scarred crone, nor the monsters of nightmares could capture the thing’s horror.
It spread malformed arms and grinned with a mouthful of broken black teeth. Its bulk was a mound of meat, impassable.
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