Chapter 85

He slumped against the cleaver, breathing ragged, blood flowing from his mouth without end. He raised a shaking paw to his neck, that hadn’t come without a cost, it felt like someone had taken razor blades to his throat, slashing up his insides. He felt he wouldn’t be opening the gates again anytime soon. As his paw fell away from his neck several shrouds of shadow seeped from the gore surrounding him and steadily made their way up to his mane, rejoining the darkness there, the remains of his floating wolf teeth returned. He pulled the spear that had been pinning his arm free and tossed it aside.

Turning, he found the giant still standing, looking down in dismay at its shins which were currently bubbling and disintegrating.

Rain stepped away from the cleaver and rolled his claws, scythes following along smoothly. He strode up the dune of gore that had piled up around him. He raised his claws as the giant fell, its head aligned with the peak of dune.

The giant screamed and its face fell atop him, Rain’s paws moved in a blur, cutting and dicing and digging. The Demon’s head liquified around him, sloughing away into grains of butchery and adding to the dune, building it higher.

Then it was done. The giant was dead, and Rain remained, a blood soaked thing atop a mound of gore in a lake of blood that flooded the square and the many ruined streets around.

He stood and stared at his conquest.

Blood, so much blood. Rivers of blood, lakes of blood. Yes, this felt right, this was how things were supposed to be, how they had been in ages past. The Apex predator hunted the world, for all were equal in that they were all equally below him, the wolf saw no difference between the rabbit and the fawn, they were all the same, all prey, all food.

Something shifted in his paw and he looked down to find a piece of the giant’s flesh wiggling and quivering between his paw pads, trying to get away.

He put it in his mouth and chewed, then he swallowed.

“ ... Wow that tastes awful.”

Rain blinked. Wait, what had he just been thinking about? Apex predator? How things had been in ages past? He furrowed his brow in confusion. Those thoughts weren’t something that were naturally his, he was sure.

He was disturbed from his pondering by a noise behind him, a flash of motion out of the corner of his eye. He jerked aside. Too late. A slab of rough iron took him across the back and he was smashed down the dune, sent rolling, his shoulder blade splitting under the impact. He crashed to the ground below in a great splash of blood, rolling until he came to a stop.

With a groan he flopped onto his back and then after a moment of struggling lifted his head.

“I’m not even sure you are a monster anymore, you’re not a mutant, or a multi-evolver, I know. You’re something else entirely. Perhaps that is why I sense that killing you will break my level cap. You are outside the system’s rules, unaccounted for.”

The Ranker stood at the top of the red dune. He looked ... different. His once Fel Fire filled eye socket was now a black void, empty. More disturbing though were the pair of cut off horns that had part grown from his forehead, two fat curving tubes that ended in flat cut discs, green, the same color of the fire. The cost apparent of what he had done.

His left arm hung limp at his side, blood seeping from the gaps in the plate. Rain had little doubt the inside was a blended mess, the bones and flesh shredding themselves as they had tried to flee but being kept inside by the armour. The Ranker had his giant sword resting on his shoulder, his right arm raised holding it up. He shrugged his shoulders and then spat to the side. Then he stepped forward and casually slid down the side of the dune, sabatons creating long furrows in the gore. As he did so Fel Fire washed up from his neck, a great helm forming over his face, fitting over his horns and adding a crown of spikes to each, entirely covering him from head to toe in green metal armour. A green knight.

Rain climbed to his feet, cracking his neck. Then he held his scythe claws out and charged, bounding then leaping through the air, darkness pouring from his mane, forming sets of rabid snapping wolf teeth flying in a pack around him as he moved, hungry to hunt.