He sank his fangs into a green tail whipping past his face and tore through it in a frenzy.
Purple ichor sprayed everywhere, and an obscene amount of fresh blood drenched his face, but he didn't care. His left eye had already been sealed shut by venom long ago.
Masking the searing pain with a roar, he slammed his arm down and crushed the two-headed snake to death. Kicking the corpse aside and keeping the front guarded, he retreated a step—then reacted to the cold surge racing up his spine and threw himself backward instantly.
A blade of grotesque shape scythed past, grazing his chin.
Every beast along the blade's diagonal line became fodder for that fang-like edge. Flesh was rent, blood was splattered, and tearing through the curtain of scattered entrails, he drove both fists into the exposed torso of the woman beyond.
"——!"
He felt the right shield pierce her chest, the left shield pierce her flank—each accompanied by the crunch of bone and flesh.
At his ears, before his eyes, above, below, left, right—the chaos of beastly howls, screams, his own roars, the crash of impacts, the grinding of steel on steel all blended together so thickly that sound alone could no longer map the world.
It didn't matter. The world before him, the world in his right eye, was the only real one.
The woman's full chest twisted and caved in, the impact powerful enough to squeeze out her organs as she spat a grand spray of blood. Yet even as her life was threatened by the agony, the pleasure never left her expression—her blood-darkened lips now stained an even deeper, almost black crimson.
Perhaps it was not her combat power or her endurance, but that mentality that made her the most dangerous thing of all.
"——Shi!"
"Graaaaah!!"
A sharp exhale, and a answering roar.
The woman's left arm swung from behind to the front, and a high-pitched sound chained behind him—reflected off the walls, bouncing off the ceiling, striking the floor and coming for the back of his head. A crescent slash.
"——"
The thought of directing attention behind him to dodge was wiped from his mind.
Before his eyes, the woman who had swung her left arm was already drawing back her right, positioning herself to unleash the black blade with its beast-like fangs. If he dodged the blade behind him, the fatal wound on the right would come for his head—or slice his throat clean open.
He tilted his body, forcibly yanking his head off the trajectory of the blade aimed at his skull.
A dull impact echoed near his right shoulder blade, and he felt the blade's tip catch in the gap between bones—clicking his tongue. The blade had jammed into the joint, and his right arm froze for an instant.
"Ri—iiiiii—!"
"Shaaa—!"
With a violence that erased even sound, the drawn-back blade was unleashed.
This was no mere cutting strike—it was a terrifyingly sharp impact shaped like a blade, with no restraint whatsoever.
If it landed directly, his head would be blown clean off, not even a trace of its original shape remaining. He raised his left arm in desperation to intercept the trajectory, but his posture was poor and he hadn't shaken off the damage to his right shoulder.
The sound of metal being bitten by beast ground out for a single instant, and the raised arm was knocked aside as easily as a toy.
The black blade, barely slowed, surged toward his head again. Enough force to blow half his skull apart—arriving in the blink of an eye.
And what he used to stop it was— "——!?"
The corpse of a defeated beast, which he kicked up and wedged between his temple and the blade.
The alien sensation of tough-skinned flesh pressing against his cheek, the toxin from its body fluids causing a burn-like inflammation on contact with his skin. Even at the risk of bathing in that venom, the benefit of avoiding a fatal wound was worth seizing.
The blade bit into the beast's corpse, and the impact force punched through it sideways, straight into the side of his face.
The blow from left to right sent his body spinning. Spinning, one step, two steps—forcing his feet down with sheer willpower, he launched himself backward.
The Blessing of the Earth Spirits activated, and the floor he stepped on erupted according to his intent, blasting apart.
The explosion launched his body backward, and he crashed down onto the woman from behind—still in that prone position, the white blade she had swung still lodged in his right shoulder.
"——!"
The instant the blade made contact, the woman flinched slightly.
Even knowing it was the flat of the blade pressing against her, the suddenness of his movement had thrown off her judgment.
Keeping his right shoulder pressed against her body, he widened his stance and dropped his center of gravity.
The moment the woman took a step back, trying to create distance with that one backward foot, a left arm reaching from a low trajectory seized her face in a crushing grip.
"——Partial Beast Transformation!"
The instant he screamed, his left arm gripping the woman's face began to change.
Muscles swelled and the left arm developed explosively—golden fur sprouted in a rush, and the limb transformed into a beast's arm as thick as a log.
Naturally, the tips bore the beast's signature blade-like claws— "Ki—aaaaah—!!"
The thick claw tips raked across the woman's face, spraying blood and forcing her to throw her head back.
From the outside of her skull to within—it was the same as being carved by five bladed fingers. Even Elsa clutched her face and stumbled backward, screaming at the ceiling.
"Ruah!!"
A front kick drove straight into her torso, launching her flying backward.
The force, squarely on her midsection, was enough to further rupture her already shattered breastbone and the internal organs behind it, churning them together.
The falling woman dropped her weapon, and through the continuous stream of bright-red blood, she let out intermittent laughter.
It was grating to the ear, and he lunged forward to silence it— "Chii! One after another, will you!?"
Just as Garfiel moved to press the attack, beasts surged through the gap between offense and defense.
Black-winged rats, pouch rats that swelled proportionally to their fury, spotted hounds gathered from across the estate, and the resurrected giant—the Rock Pig—came flooding in.
He shredded the swarming black-winged rats with his claws, stomped the swelling pouch rats into oblivion in a single blow, kicked the neck of a hound that tried to lunge at him until it snapped, and then faced the charging Rock Pig head-on.
"I'll flatten you flat as a pancake!"
"Like hell you will, you stupid bastard!"
Several tons of mass, hurtling forward with explosive charging force.
It was less a beast's strike than a building falling from the sky—a projectile of sheer mass.
Even Garfiel could not take that head-on and walk away unscathed. He wouldn't even be able to endure a single instant before being blown away and crushed.
However— "That's exactly why—this is fun—!!"
He planted both feet and released the Blessing of the Earth Spirits to its maximum.
The blessing of the earth surging up through his soles, the exhilaration of every muscle in his body swelling with power.
His golden eyes glistening with belligerence, Garfiel bared his fangs in a savage grin and detonated the blood that had always lurked within him.
"——Ooohhhhh!!"
The roaring cry was not a call outward—it was a call to what lay inside himself.
The bloodline that coursed through his entire being—something he had always found difficult to accept, something he had never wanted. The blood he normally kept hidden, he now called upon, savoring the sensation of his skin prickling as his very soul trembled.
Just as his left arm had erupted before, his right arm now swelled explosively.
Starting from both arms—his shoulders, torso, neck, and skull cracked and transformed with audible force. Garfiel's face shifted from human to that of a feline predator—a great tiger.
As his torso, hips, and legs swelled, his clothes could not withstand the internal pressure and burst apart. Barely draped in scraps of cloth, the shields on both arms clinging to his expanded wrists like armbands—his body alone was now a savage beast that could rival the charging Rock Pig itself.
"——!!"
The floor groaned, and his planted feet sank deep into it.
Facing the two colossal beasts, the estate—sturdy as it was—could not hold. The massive bodies that no longer fit in the corridor shattered the walls, and the ceiling decorations scraped against their backs and clattered to the ground.
"Wag-Pig!!"
The girl riding atop the beast screamed in a piercing voice at Garfiel's transformation.
Was she calling the beast's name? Responding to her master's cry, the Rock Pig let out a grinding roar that sounded like rocks being pulverized, opened its maw lined with millstone-like teeth, and lunged.
It shifted its weight to its hind legs, raised its forelegs, and tried to crush him underfoot.
The great tiger with its blazing golden eyes exploded backward from its hind legs at that very moment, sliding beneath the beast's descending stomp, and sank its claws deep into skin as thick as rock.
The sound of a blade being driven into bedrock rang out, and the tiger's claws were torn out at the root. The stone-like hide wouldn't yield, and with all its charging force now spent on the missed preemptive strike, the Rock Pig's forelegs crashed into the tiger.
From directly above—a stomping blow that would crush both of the tiger's shoulders flat. His upper body was driven into the floor, and the merciless shock of that mass made the tiger scream in his throat.
"Wag-Pig, don't you stop now!!"
Even hearing the sound of bones shattering and flesh being ground apart, the beast's master did not let her guard down.
Hearing her master's tearful voice, the Rock Pig roared and lifted both forelegs again, the second stomp aiming to crush the great tiger's head.
But— "——!!"
If claws couldn't reach it, and blocking was out of the question, the tiger had only one weapon left.
Raising his neck, the tiger—shoulders crushed flat—used his spine to haul himself upright. Against the Rock Pig with its exposed belly as it raised its forelegs, he bared his fangs.
A beast covered head to toe in rock-like skin could not possibly be uniformly hard everywhere. Compared to its arms and back, the area called its weak point was undoubtedly less protected.
And so the tiger drove his sharp fangs into the Rock Pig's completely open belly.
"Wag-Pig!?"
"——Grrruuuuu!!"
The great tiger's jaws were large enough to swallow a human whole, and even the Rock Pig's broad belly was nearly half engulfed in his maw.
For one instant, the Rock Pig's skin resisted the tiger's fangs, but the instant the blade-like tips pierced the thin membrane the way a point breaks through fruit, it penetrated with ease.
The Rock Pig's death scream was tangled with the momentum of the tiger, fangs locked in, kicking off the floor and spinning laterally.
With fangs sunk deep, he rotated his body to tear the prey's flesh apart—a predatory technique employed by creatures called water dragons, a subspecies of dragon that lived by rivers.
If
He drove his hind legs into the floor, generating momentum for both the rotation and forward movement, while ripping the Rock Pig's torso apart.
Beneath the thick hide, the beast's massive body was packed with an enormous volume of organs and blood proportional to its mass, and from the wounds in its flesh, all of it was mercilessly spilled into the estate's corridor.
"——Oo."
Eyes rolled back, the Rock Pig's body let out a feeble death rattle and collapsed.
The tiger spat out the flesh and blood he had torn free, then kicked the massive corpse with his hind legs, knocking it sideways. The girl who had dismounted from the beast's back at the moment of impact stood speechless, watching the gruesome death of her controlled beast with her own eyes.
"I-I can't… believe it…"
Backing away, the girl turned to look behind her at the rest of her forces.
Responding to her whistle, more and more beasts had been gathering at the scene. But they were small and medium packs—the Rock Pig had been the last of the large ones.
"Geez! What am I supposed to do! Elsa! Elsa! Do something!"
"…How demanding you are."
Realizing her disadvantage, the girl cursed the unfairness and called out her companion's name. In answer, slowly emerging from the shadows was the raven-haired woman.
Her gouged face had already regenerated, and she was irritably fiddling with her blood-soaked braid.
"You don't hesitate to carve up a woman's face—you really are wonderful, aren't you?"
"——Gaah! Gaah! Gaah!"
At the woman laughing with a blood-smeared, savage expression, the great tiger—shoulders shattered—growled with a feverish intensity.
His massive body shuddered. He slammed his head into the fallen Rock Pig's body and vomited.
The beast continued to groan in agony, but gradually his colossal frame diminished, his swollen flesh returning to a humanoid shape. After a few seconds, shaking off the golden fur that fell away, a half-naked young man stood in its place.
"Ah… damn, I'm back. My head… kills me…"
"I see… so you're a half-beast. I always thought your eyes were rather unsettling for a human."
"If that logic holds, then I guess my big boss isn't human either."
Shaking his head, Garfiel tested the feel of his returned body.
As his skeleton shifted back to humanoid form, both shattered shoulders had reconnected enough to move—though every movement sent grinding pain lancing through him, and he could feel his thoughts burning white-hot.
He wouldn't last long at full capacity.
But his opponent should be in the same state.
"I splashed your trusted beast's guts all over the place for you. Go ahead—swim in that sea of blood if you want, I don't mind!"
"I'll pass, thanks. Beast intestines aren't much of a substitute unless you're truly starving. Intestines are only beautiful when they come from cutting open a human belly."
"Can't make head or tails of that aesthetic of yours."
He stuck his little finger in his ear and scratched roughly, letting out a sigh of exasperation.
Before Garfiel's eyes, Elsa showed no sign of yielding despite being at an overwhelmingly disadvantageous position.
—Elsa's immortal body, and the limit of its regeneration: five times, at most.
That was the estimate he had made, and he had already inflicted four fatal wounds. Including the one that had raked her face, that made five. Her regenerative power should be nearing its end.
In other words, Elsa's stock of lives was effectively exhausted. Garfiel was wounded too, but he had no intention of falling behind in combat.
With no hope of beast reinforcements from Meili either, they were essentially at each other's throats—so what was with that composed bearing?
"There's no special reason. You don't need to look so wary."
At Garfiel's furrowed brow, Elsa spoke in a tone one might use to soothe a child.
He wrinkled his snout and let out a beastly growl.
To mask the faint confusion that had risen in his heart—the fact that she had seen through him.
"Don't… screw with me. Don't talk like you've seen right through me."
"You'd understand if you watched. Cutting open someone's belly means facing that someone before you cut it open. Your face—I've seen it many times."
"——"
"The face of someone who can't quite understand an abnormality."
Garfiel felt as though his throat had been clamped shut—he lost his words. Elsa brought a hand to her lips and smiled. A faint, almost gentle smile as she tilted her head.
"It's fine, really. I'm not looking to be understood by anyone. My happiness is mine—I take it by trampling over someone else's life. To live is to trample over death."
"…If I actually listened to that stuff, I'd go crazy, I got it."
He raised both arms and clapped his shields together, abandoning comprehension.
He had no luxury to spare for the other's circumstances. And with her words just now, the reason to divert his attention was gone.
"I'll ask one thing—if you swear never to do anything bad again for the rest of your life and run, I might just let you go."
"You really are a cute boy."
The last mercy he had shown was laughed away—and that was the signal to clash.
His footwork exploded, and Garfiel's body shot straight forward. The white blade that came to meet him swung vertically—striking ceiling, striking floor, its rotating edge reflecting light as it closed in.
The wide white blade Elsa wielded was composed of multiple blades linked together, each edge connecting to the next in alternating fashion like the bones of a snake, its undulating form bouncing through the corridor in every direction.
From above? From below? Blades flying as streaks of white light at speeds far beyond visual tracking—Garfiel raised both shields to cover his head and abandoned evasion entirely. A ricocheting blade bit into his left upper arm, and gritting through the pain of bone being cracked, he continued his advance.
"The northern country of Gustecco, where I was born, was a very, very cold place."
On a battlefield where split-second exchanges of attack and defense were unfolding, the woman's voice—almost like singing—somehow slipped smoothly into Garfiel's eardrums.
It couldn't be reaching him. His consciousness was blazing, locked in a death-exchanging instant with no gap for such a voice to intrude.
And yet, the woman's voice slipped nimbly past his awareness and seeped in.
"In a country of extreme poverty and wealth, abandoned children were common among the destitute. I was one of those children—when I first became aware of the world, I had no parents and survived by drinking muddy water."
"——Raah!!"
"I stole things, I threatened people, scraping by day to day while the faces around me changed constantly. What am I living for? What does happiness even mean… There was no time to think about things like that."
He threw a fist aimed at blowing the woman's face apart.
But the wide swing was dodged by a simple tilt of her body, and the black blade rising from below sliced a shallow diagonal gash across Garfiel's torso.
Meat was torn away by beast's fangs, and Elsa—drenched in the fresh blood spraying from him—licked her lips.
"That day was particularly cold."
"Shut—up! I'm not—listening!!"
"The wind blowing down from the high mountains was strong and frigid, the whole town frozen solid. In that bitter cold where even your breath might freeze, I was caught by a shopkeeper while committing a theft."
Letting out a heated breath, Elsa spoke with an entranced expression.
The deadly blades she swung grew faster and more relentless, and new cuts began appearing one after another on Garfiel's body where his left-side defenses couldn't keep up.
"It was an environment where being killed would have been no one's fault—but I was a woman. I can still remember the face of the man who laughed crudely and tried to tear my clothes off."
"Gah… nn…"
"Standing there stripped of my coat in the freezing wind, my undergarments torn away too… Rather than wondering what he would do to me, I was thinking I'd freeze to death first—and that's when I happened to pick up a shard of glass."
A long leg rose to strike at his temple, and Garfiel deliberately headbutted it down. The shock reverberated through his brain and he staggered backward, but Elsa's instep should have been shattered too.
Elsa withdrew her leg and stumbled back. But her expression hadn't changed from that ecstasy.
"I wasn't thinking anything. I just took the glass shard, stabbed it into the stomach pressing down on me, moved it, and cut him open."
"——"
"I didn't feel the man's scream. I didn't feel anything about having taken someone's life. I just stood there in the cold wind, and I thought—"
In front of Garfiel, who had stopped breathing, Elsa smiled dreamily.
"How warm blood and viscera are—"
The blade rose, about to split Garfiel's skull. He slid sideways, kicked off the wall to get behind Elsa, and launched a kick aimed at shattering her spine—but Elsa spun, and the flat of her blade struck his shin, deflecting the trajectory.
The wall he had kicked exploded in a cloud of dust, and Garfiel clicked his tongue as he vaulted backward.
"If happiness exists in this world, it's the warmth and beauty that make you forget the cold. That was the first true form of happiness I ever obtained—born into nothing, I finally found something. You can't understand that, can you?"
"Don't want to."
"That's fine. I'm not hoping you understand."
"Then why'd you tell me that story? Creeps me the hell out."
"Why indeed?"
Garfiel glowered with hostility, and Elsa tilted her head as if genuinely puzzled.
Then, narrowing her eyes with a lewd gleam, she traced her red lips with her tongue.
"It must be because I truly find you adorable."
"…Sorry, but I've got a woman I'm in love with. No time to waste on a crazy, messed-up bitch like you."
"How cold. But that's alright. All I need is what's inside you."
The conversation seemed to connect, but on a fundamental level it didn't.
Through his exchange with the woman up to this point, Garfiel finally understood.
He had no interest or sympathy for Elsa's backstory.
She was simply someone who, having been born into circumstances that produced such a person, had experienced what she experienced and become the monster she was now.
Garfiel's shield had long since chosen what it protected.
"—I'll kill you,
"You can only love me after you've killed me, Garfiel Tinsel."
Calling each other by name, the half-beast and the killer raised their instruments of violence.
The white blade sliced through the corridor's darkness in a flash of white light, and the drawn-back black blade was launched to cleave Garfiel's body vertically.
Blades bounced everywhere in his field of vision—above, below, left, right. Against attacks with no means of blocking, Garfiel again threw away the option of evasion. But if he let this strike kill his momentum, he'd only be repeating his earlier mistake.
"——"
The blade tore through sound and bounced through the corridor.
If he couldn't see its endpoint, there was only one choice—aim for where it was launched from.
He thrust out his left arm, and Garfiel hurled a shield whose straps he had already loosened.
The shield, loosened during their clashes, flew straight at Elsa's left hand—her eyes went wide as it struck squarely, and he heard the sound of it shattering as her fingers crumpled and the white blade fell from her grip.
The bouncing blades lost their controller, and one embedded itself in the ceiling, going still.
Deepening black grin and a surging roar. The death-bearing blades swept down, killing the air, and crashed into Garfiel's charging body.
He placed his right arm directly above his head and received the black blade's overhead strike—like a cleaving chop.
The impact wave punched through the shield and rattled his head violently. His vision swirled and he nearly fell forward, barely staying upright with the momentum of his advance.
He endured it—and in the very next instant, the woman's rising knee smashed into the nose of Garfiel as he dipped low.
"Don't get careless just because you think you've blocked it."
He heard her laughing voice, and as Garfiel reeled, Elsa swung her foot upward.
The knee that had crushed his snout rose high, and descending from her boot heel was the dull gleam of a hidden blade—its tip driving toward Garfiel's throat— "You're the one who'd better not overlook my weapon—"
His opened mouth caught the descending heel and the blade together, and he crunched down, shattering the slender leg.
From the blade down through the ankle bones—torn and ground apart. Elsa's eyes went wide.
"Oh my."
She let out a surprised gasp, and swaying, lost her balance and sat down hard on the ground.
Her right leg was destroyed from the ankle down and nonfunctional; both arms, battered by the recoil of her own attacks, were mangled and useless. Propping herself on her left leg, Elsa looked up at Garfiel from the neck up—the only part of her still intact.
"—Ah."
She drew in a breath, and Elsa blushed like a girl in love.
Her breath grew heated enough to color the air, and her moist eyes were filled with an unstoppable passion.
—Before Elsa's eyes, Garfiel hoisted the Rock Pig's massive corpse onto his shoulders and hurled it.
She knew the future that awaited her—crushed flat by the arcing mass projectile—but Elsa never once looked away from Garfiel until the moment the shadow swallowed her.
Breathing hard, she gazed at the golden-haired boy baring his fangs with love— "It makes me tingle all over."
The staggering weight obliterated the killer, the vampire, the Bowel Hunter—utterly and completely.
The sound of flesh being crushed, blood flowing out mixed with the beast's ichor.
Sensing the smell of death, Garfiel roared.
The battle cry rang high, high, echoing through the burning estate.
—The fight between Garfiel Tinsel, Shield of the