[Chapter 163. Carnage]

Iris brought her blade down on one of the wolves, her muscles screaming with the effort of the prolonged engagement. She was about to reset her stance when she heard something so fundamentally out of place that a cold shiver raced down her spine, freezing the marrow in her bones. It wasn't just the sound of the sudden, manic laughter echoing through the gray plaza; it was the overwhelming, suffocating presence that arrived with it.

Before she could fully register the shift in the air, an earth-shattering explosion erupted a short distance away. Within the blink of an eye—faster than her silver eyes could track—Searanox stood before her. He was drenched in hot, coppery blood, his face twisted into a grin that held a primal ferocity she had never seen before. The aura of calm calculation he usually projected had been replaced by a raw, predatory dread that felt heavy enough to crush the lungs.

The eerie laughter bubbled up from his throat again, a jagged sound that cut through the boom of the drones fire. Simultaneously, the heavy butt of his rifle slammed into the skull of the wolf Iris had been fighting. The impact was so great that the bone seam to pulverize, his boot made contact with its ribcage the beast didn't just stumble; it was lifted off the ground with a truncated yelp, only to be slammed back down into the shattered pavement a heartbeat later.

Searanox stood hunched over the corpse, his movements jerky and frantic. His fist was already buried deep inside the creature's chest cavity, fingers clawing through muscle and bone. He tore the heart free, the organ still pumping its final, desperate beats against the red metal of his gauntlets. Without a second of hesitation, he sank his teeth into the cooling organ, sucking the life-force and blood from it with a ravenous hunger.

Another wolf leaped at his exposed back, its jaws wide. Before it could reach him, two violet beams from his drones slammed into its side, knocking it off course. Searanox didn't even look. He pivoted on his heel, his gauntleted fist connecting with the wolf’s snout in a strike that cracked the bone into fragments and catapulted the massive predator several meters away. Through it all, the laughter never stopped—a constant, rhythmic backdrop to the violence.

Iris took a step back, moved by a deep-seated survival instinct she couldn't suppress.

"I will kill every last one of you!" he screamed, the words raw and jagged, before the laughter settled back into its menacing, melodic place.

His form vanished. Iris had never seen him move like this—all that remained of him were flickering afterimages that seemed to populate multiple spots in the plaza at once. Everything happened with such blinding speed that she could barely register his movements. The grotesque, unrestrained violence he displayed was more than just out of character; it was a total regression into something monstrous. There was no sign of the grace or the surgical precision he usually favored. Now, there was only the sound of cracking bone, the wet sound of tearing flesh, and that incessant, terrifying laughter.

Iris had seen him return from the dungeons before, drenched in blood and exhausted after fighting on the verge of death. She had known he was becoming stronger with every passing day, but this was the first time she truly understood the magnitude of his evolution under the System. She had borne witness as he orchestrated the cold, calculated execution of millions in a city, before the system descended. But that had been a clean, mechanical process. This was different. This was a primal, visceral slaughter.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, her breath hitching in her throat as his eyes suddenly snapped to hers. For a fraction of a second, his gaze locked onto her, and the sheer intensity of the bloodlust in those red-rimmed pupils stole her breath away.

In less time than it would have taken her to dispatch a single Nightmare Wolf, he had slaughtered three and left a fourth mangled and dying, using nothing but his bare hands and the blunt end of his rifle. The difference in power between them was no longer a gap she could hope to bridge; it was a vast, terrifying chasm that made her feel like a child standing before a hurricane.

As if the remaining wolves finally recognized the apex threat he had become, they turned away from Iris, completely ignoring her presence. There were only three left after the initial carnage he had unleashed. As they turned to face him, their fur bristling and their low growls vibrating in the gray air, two of them launched a desperate, simultaneous charge.

"FOOD!" he screamed in a tone of pure, unadulterated glee.

He disappeared again. One of the charging wolves stopped dead in its tracks mid-run, its head vanishing in a sudden, crimson spray of brain matter and bone. A second later, a sickening crunch echoed through the plaza as Searanox’s gauntleted fist impaled itself through the chest of the last charging wolf, his arm buried up to the elbow in its ribcage.

The third and final wolf of the pack let out a high-pitched whine. It turned to flee, its tail tucked between its legs, but it didn't even manage a single step. It rose into the air as if grabbed by a massive, invisible force—the sheer kinetic output of Searanox’s speed—only to be slammed back down into the stone, again and again. Each impact made the ground spiderweb with deep cracks, and wet smacks echoed through the plaza with every rhythmic slam.

Blood pooled around his feet, staining the gray stones a deep, dark red. He stood over the remains, drinking greedily from a still-beating heart as if it were the finest wine.

His laughter grew even more eerie, more menacing, yet his drones continued their work with mechanical indifference. They fired steadily at the Gaia Turtle, their crimson and violet beams no longer frantic. Without the wolves harrying them, the drones were free to focus entirely on the turtle's vulnerabilities. The beams cut deep, chipping away at the armored scales of the colossal reptile. The turtle, sensing the shift in the battle, turned its massive, ancient eyes toward the slaughter happening at its feet.

Searanox began to walk slowly toward the behemoth. He laughed as he reached down, picking up the last remaining intact wolf corpse by the scruff of its neck. With a surge of unnatural strength, he hurled it at the turtle. The corpse didn't even make it halfway before a violent beam from the turtle’s maw vaporized it in mid-flight. Searanox didn't care; he used that brief moment of distraction to fire a thick, overcharged violet beam from his own rifle as he bridged the distance between them.

The impact burned away a significant portion of the scales on the turtle's massive head. It wasn't the focused, pinpoint fire of their earlier attempts, but it was bolstered by the raw, chaotic energy of his bloodlust—strong enough to shatter the turtle's natural defenses.

Another system announcement chimed, proclaiming the arrival of a new wave of wolves. Searanox didn't even flinch. He began hurling jagged chunks of shattered pavement at the turtle, timing them between charged beams from his rifle. His aim was impeccable; each stone flew true, striking the already damaged sections of the turtle’s head and further compromising its armor.

When the next pack of wolves burst into the plaza, the drones pivoted to meet them. Their beams focused on the lead wolf, which was incinerated a fraction of a second later, leaving a blackened, smoking hole where its heart had been.

The rest of the pack swarmed Searanox, but he was no longer merely fighting them; he was playing. He weaved through the shadows of their lunges as if performing a deadly, frantic ballet. With each fluid move, another wolf met a gruesome end. A precise punch to a joint was followed by the sound of snapping bone; a grab and a savage pull resulted in the tearing of flesh and muscle.

Whenever the wolves managed to catch him, their teeth and claws sinking into his flesh, Searanox didn't flinch. He'd reach back with his gauntleted hand, grip their snouts in a crushing hold, and tear them from his body with a savage tug. The action always came at a cost—his own skin splitting, his blood mingling with theirs—but the pain only fueled the frenzy. The laughter never ceased. If anything, it intensified, a wild, unhinged sound that rose above the shrieks of dying wolves and the crack of shattering bone.

The howls of pain and the scent of death were a sweet melody to his heightened senses. The coppery taste of blood on his tongue was more intoxicating than any stimulant he had ever used. He wasn't just a monster anymore; he was the apex predator of this gray world. He had reached a state of pure euphoria, a surge of new power washing over him with every kill. He could see the fear in the wolves eyes, he could smell the salt of their terror, and he could feel their hearts fluttering like trapped birds just before he ended them.

The Gaia Turtle was not idle during the massacre. It tried repeatedly to stomp him, to crush the life out of him with its tree-trunk-sized feet, but Searanox was too fast, too agile. He moved like a ghost, a blur of motion that defied the turtle's ancient logic. Every time the massive foot came down, he was already elsewhere, moving with a speed that made the air whistle.

Iris stood forgotten on the sidelines, her Zweihänder dipping until the tip of the blade touched the ground. She watched in paralyzed silence as one wolf after another met a grotesque death. Every time Searanox lunged, she saw a reflection of her own in the wolves he tore apart. The cold dread running down her spine was so overwhelming it was almost physical.

It took every ounce of her willpower not to turn and flee into the ruins—not to turn her back on the man who had become a monster. She had never felt a fear this profound, a terror so absolute it threatened to shatter her mind. He was her master, but in this moment, he was a stranger—a force of nature fueled by blood and madness.

As the last wolf of the third pack died, the laughter hadn't died down. It overshadowed the constant crackle of the energy beams from the drones that were still methodically chipping away at the turtle. The Gaia Turtle let out a roar of pure frustration, its massive head swinging wildly from side to side as it tried to track its tormentor. It was so focused on the laughing shadow dancing at its feet that it completely ignored the drones that were slowly, inevitably, dismantling its defenses.