Chapter 35: Vritra

He had just severed one Gnawer’s arm and kicked another away when he glanced toward Jet. His eyebrows drew together. Jet was moving differently from when the fight began, and the change was too noticeable to ignore.

Frey parried another claw, cut through the attacking wrist and shouted while continuing to fight, "Since when could you fight like that? Last time we messed around with practice swords, you held yours like a fucking baseball bat."

Jet stepped beneath a Gnawer’s outstretched arm and opened its stomach with one smooth upward cut. "Since yesterday."

Frey turned toward him.

"WHAT?"

That was a mistake.

A Grave Gnawer launched itself from behind an abandoned market stall and nearly landed on Frey’s back. Frey caught the movement at the last instant, cursed, dropped his shoulder and threw himself sideways.

The creature’s claws tore through the sleeve of his expensive jacket without reaching flesh.

He recovered with an angry twist and drove both curved blades through the monster from opposite directions. "Are you trying to tell me you learned how to fight yesterday?"

"I didn’t say I learned it."

"That answer is somehow worse!"

"You should pay attention."

"I was paying attention until you said something stupid!"

Jet laughed and drove the Vorpal Blade through another Gnawer’s mouth. By then, the first pack had been reduced to scattered survivors, and those remaining seemed to understand that the two humans weren’t easy prey.

Several backed toward the buildings while producing agitated clicking sounds.

Frey pulled one blade free from a corpse and looked at the torn sleeve of his jacket with genuine irritation. "This thing was expensive."

Jet stared at him. "A monster almost ripped your shoulder open."

Frey inspected the damage again. "My shoulder heals."

Before Jet could respond to that astonishing logic, a deep growl rolled through the street ahead of them.

Both immediately turned.

Something large emerged from the narrow alley beside the dried fountain. It resembled a hunting dog only in the broadest sense.

The creature stood nearly as tall as Frey’s chest at the shoulder, with a lean black body and ribs visibly outlined beneath tight hide.

Its neck was disturbingly long, supporting an elongated skull with six pale eyes arranged in three pairs along either side.

Saliva hung from a jaw packed with narrow fangs.

A second appeared behind it, followed by three more moving between the abandoned stalls.

The familiar System notification appeared before both Raiders at almost the same moment: [Dungeon Monster Encountered.] [Gallows Hound.]

[Classification: White-Class Dungeon Monster.]

[Traits: Burst Acceleration / Extended Bite Range / Mana Tracking.]

Frey read the information and raised his blades. "Extended bite range? What the hell is that supposed to..."

The nearest Gallows Hound moved.

Its body blurred across the street with enough acceleration to scatter dust behind it. Frey shifted to intercept, but the creature’s neck suddenly snapped forward, extending much farther than its anatomy should have allowed. Its jaws closed where Frey’s face had been an instant earlier.

He leaned backward, brought one curved blade beneath the extended neck and forced the creature sideways rather than trying to stop its entire charge.

"Okay," he muttered as the Hound landed.

"That’s fucking disgusting."

Two more attacked simultaneously. Jet intercepted the first, but the Gallows Hound changed direction with a violent push from its hind legs.

Frey reacted before Jet could pursue. He stepped into its new path and slammed the flat of his right blade against the creature’s jaw, using its own momentum to redirect it directly toward Jet.

No warning was necessary. Jet saw what Frey was doing and stepped forward. The Vorpal Blade flashed once, its wind-resistant edge accelerating through the final portion of the swing, and the Hound’s head separated cleanly from its extended neck.

"Nice," Frey called.

Another Hound came for Jet from the right. He avoided the first bite, planted his boot against its ribs and kicked with enough force to send the lean monster stumbling sideways toward Frey. His friend understood immediately. Both curved blades crossed in front of his chest before snapping outward in opposite directions.

SHHK!

The Gallows Hound’s head flew from its shoulders.

Frey’s grin appeared. "Very nice."

The remaining Hounds barely had time to regroup before Jet and Frey moved together. Something had already begun forming between them without either deliberately planning it.

Frey understood how to manipulate an enemy’s movement; Jet was becoming increasingly good at recognizing what Frey intended from body position alone.

One forced an opening and the other used it. A Hound attempted to circle Jet and found Frey’s blade waiting for it. Another tried to attack Frey’s blind side only for the Vorpal Blade to pierce through its chest.

Within minutes, the last Gallows Hound collapsed onto the cobblestones, leaving the street littered with black and grey bodies.

Then something heavy struck the ground inside one of the buildings.

The entire wall shook.

Jet and Frey turned just as the old stone façade burst outward.

A huge humanoid stepped through the falling rubble. It stood nearly two and a half meters tall, its thick body covered by overlapping plates of pale bone that had grown across its chest, shoulders, arms and thighs like natural armor. Its head was enclosed inside a skull-like shell with only two narrow openings revealing darkness beneath.

One hand ended in four thick claws. The opposite forearm had fused around an enormous bone cleaver almost as long as Jet’s body.

The System responded immediately.

[Dungeon Monster Encountered.] [Ironbone Sentinel.]

[Classification: White-Class Dungeon Monster.]

[Traits: Reinforced Bone Armor / High Physical Strength / Bone Weapon.]

Frey looked up at it and smiled. "Finally, something with some weight."

He attacked first.

The Sentinel swung its bone cleaver downward. Frey stepped outside the strike, rotated around its arm and brought both curved blades against the creature’s exposed side in rapid succession.

CLANG! CLANG!

Sparks jumped from the bone plating.

Barely a scratch remained.

Frey landed several meters away and looked at his blades, then at the Sentinel.

Jet knew that smile.

He had seen it outside the café when Frey realized people were photographing him.

Trouble.

A strange pressure suddenly spread through the street.

Beneath Frey’s torn jacket and black shirt, something began glowing across his skin. Lines of deep indigo light crawled upward from beneath his collar and along the side of his neck while Mana gathered around him in thick waves.

For the first time, Jet felt the presence of Frey’s Divine Rune directly rather than merely hearing about its rank.

The universal System responded to Frey’s activation.

[Divine Rune Activated.]

[Vritra, The World-Encircling Serpent.]

[Rank: A.]

The Ironbone Sentinel raised its cleaver.

Frey lifted one hand.

Several enormous spectral shapes materialized around the monster with a deep rush of Mana. They resembled sections of a colossal serpent’s body, dark indigo coils covered in luminous violet scales, each one forming independently around the Sentinel’s chest, arms and legs.

The Sentinel tried to move but the coils tightened further.

Frey’s gold tooth flashed.

"Vritra’s Coil."

CRRRRUUUNCH!

The sound that followed made even Jet’s expression change. The spectral coils contracted simultaneously, and the Sentinel’s reinforced bone armor didn’t merely crack beneath them, it collapsed inward.

Its chest compressed violently, shoulder plates shattered, and the massive bone cleaver dropped from fingers that had been crushed together.

The creature attempted to roar, but the coils tightened again and whatever sound it tried to make ended in a wet choke.

Bone fragments burst outward across the street as its entire body folded beneath pressure coming from every direction until the towering Ironbone Sentinel became an unrecognizable heap trapped within Vritra’s coils.

The spectral serpent faded.

What remained hit the cobblestones with a heavy, wet thud.

Jet stared at the corpse, then slowly looked toward Frey.

Frey calmly adjusted the torn sleeve of his expensive jacket, turned toward Jet and spread both arms as though he’d just completed a stage performance.

"You may applaud."

Jet stared at him for another second before shaking his head.

"I’m starting to regret telling you I’m S-Rank."