Chapter 241 – The One Who Slays Monsters

No one knew what to expect. The celebration had already begun. Nearly everyone had been rescued. Yes, a few people died, and their passing was already causing grief for those who survived, but at least everyone else was okay. 

Then that thing started pulling itself out of the hole. 

Fear itself came alive as the fight and flight response somehow self-destructed. The few people who could process what was happening couldn’t understand how such a creature existed. There was no structure, no anything that would make any sense. 

But somehow there was one person standing in front of the monster with seemingly no fear, with a bright blade in her hand.

Syrus swung her blade down, and the scorching wave of fire flew down, erupting into a large billowing flame onto the monster. 

The monster's bones rattled as it was swallowed in the great flame that burned high into the sky, as it kept crawling forward up the hole. 

The crowd jumped back, brought alive due to the sheer heat of the fire.

Syrus stood back and allowed the fire to burn some of the tar away. The tar-like substance itself was difficult to burn, but it was shrinking. 

Anlesa’s muscles tightened as she amplified her strength with her Blood attribute. With a massive swing, her blade smashed into the monster’s arm, shattering the body. She followed up the swing with three more, targeting the other arm and the bones in the chest. Each bone that shattered released a loud, deafening crack. 

The monster continued to burn as the shattered creature continued to try and climb up, and Syrus jumped out of the hole as the monster slowly fell apart. The remaining reddish-black tar pooled on the ground. 

No one here had seen a monster before. Cancole was a lucky place. Surrounded by countries and natural formations that kept it mostly safe from the most dangerous of things that existed in the depths of the world. Only a few areas of Cancole ever had monsters reach their borders. A kind fate, but it also meant many did not understand the absolute dread and danger that monster possessed. 

Syrus ordered, “Get me acids, explosives, or whatever extremely flammable items you can. We need to scorch the area before it gets polluted due to the monster’s corpse!” She looked at the crowd where many people were still waddling stiffly. “Get back if you are here to watch!” 

Her words finally brought some life back to the people, and they quickly followed the scary woman’s words. A few did listen to her first order and started looking to grab some explosive powder. It had been locked away due to the recent accident, but people knew where the key was located. 

One of the few people who ran towards the hole was the doctor, who heard the screams of terror, followed by seeing the flame rise up from the pit. He feared another accident had occurred. 

“Hello, Nicole, everything is under control. I had everyone evacuate the area and told a few to grab supplies to deal with the mess.” Her words were blunt and controlled. 

“Mess…” He slowly stumbled towards the top of the hole, where Syrus raised her arm, stopping him from going any further. What he saw made him want to vomit due to the smell, which he thought he had grown an immunity to fowl smells, but this proved him very wrong. 

“A monster—!” Nicole's eyes widened at the pool of foul liquid. His mind had been trying to figure what possibility could’ve caused the sudden evacuation, and the brief thought of the aftereffects of monster corpses came to his mind.

“You dealt with it–?!”  That realisation was almost more surprising than the fact that a monster had somehow found its way into the mine. “That requires—” 

“Skill and preparations,” Syrus replied with certainty. “Or at least enough of one to make up for the lack of the other.”

Nicole still couldn’t get over that shock. From what he knew from his time in the capital. People who were trained to deal with monsters had to be specially trained, and they were considered an elite force. A group of people that could be detached anywhere in the country in the case of a monster was reported. It was either them or a certain monster counter force of the Aurora Church. The latter, while powerful, tended to not be near the places in Cancole that needed their help. 

He knew that the country preferred using the church's forces when a report was made. His previous teacher while in school had made the complaints many times during class. Stories of needing to be detached to places that had suffered from monster attacks. Horrid corpses—that Nicole couldn’t imagine until seeing the remains of what was within the hole today—and dealing with physically and mentally scarred wounds of the survivors. His teacher hated the fact that the country would sometimes wait on dealing with monsters just so the church could use their forces instead.

It didn’t matter to the country if it cost money, because it meant they were losing the elite force that had poured time and money to. Because  while this force was designed to deal with monsters, nothing stopped them from dealing with people, and people who were trained to deal with monsters usually had powerful mastery of their attributes and weapons. 

“...Is there anything I can do?” 

“Pass me some acids, but besides that, keep doing your job. People still need healing.” Her words stayed simple, which helped Nicole calm down. He hadn’t noticed that his heart had been beating wildly. 

“Let me grab my strongest ones…” 

“Thank you.” 

Syrus stayed on guard duty until all the supplies arrived. To her, it didn’t matter that they had planned to leave a moment to go. Everything she had learned in her first life refused to let this contamination go unattended.

[A… living… well, formerly living monster…] Eva’s heart calmed down after Syrus’s execution of the monster. Her mind jumped back to the monster corpse she saw before. At the time, due to her own problems, she didn’t ask too many questions in her mind, and the fact that Syrus was always around it felt like it was a conversation that continued when needed. 

She felt the absurd power in those swings. Perhaps the people in the crowd above the hole couldn’t tell, but Eva knew Syrus used a large amount of power to shatter the creature’s bones. 

[Syrus… how does a monster die?] Eva asked the expert on the matter. 

[Two ways. Destroying all their bones. That will collapse their form, and they reach a state that can be considered dead.] (Syrus)

[Considered?] Luna had read about monsters many times, but those stories always said the only ways to ‘kill’ monsters were in wars of attrition or complete destruction. You fought them for so long that their bodies stopped functioning. The second method was similar to what Syrus stated: destruction. While Syrus explained only the bones were necessary, Luna had been told everything had to be destroyed in a single destructive effort. 

[Some say the monster is still alive as long as the pool exists. I don’t exactly believe that. The tar always felt like the symptom rather than the cause. Though, you should destroy everything.] (Syrus)

A box of acids was placed next to her, and those who dropped them off immediately ran away. Syrus poured a single drop on the ground to judge the effectiveness. She nodded and planned for the extermination of the remnants.

Someone carrying a small box of what Syrus assumed was explosives ran and dropped the box next to her, before booking it as fast as he could in the opposite direction. All the while, during his run towards Syrus, another older man had been chasing after him. Wearing layered clothes that were meant to present a type of important class only made Syrus roll her eyes. 

“Who told my employees they could grab the explosives!” He was utterly fuming. 

Stumbling next to Syrus, who was the obvious target since the bombs had been placed next to the culprit. 

“Was it you—Eww!” The man froze upon seeing the fifty tar substance in the mine. He swallowed the disgust and pulled on every semblance of authority he could afford.

“Someone grab the buckets! And get down there and clean up that mess!” He yelled to the crowd that was standing far away. He pointed to a few individuals, chosen ones for this simple task. “Get over here now with the equipment.” 

People hesitantly moved towards the equipment. They weren’t able to ignore their boss's order. 

However, there was another party at the scene. “No one will be going down there. That is toxic on a hazardous level. No one here has the proper safety equipment to stay anywhere near that safety.” Syrus refused to let someone die an easily preventable death. 

“Who are you to tell me what to do—!” His words were cancelled by a punch in the face. 

“First person not knocked out today, truly hard-headed."

“You–!” His nose was bloody, and he held it as he rolled in pain. 

Syrus crouched down, her eyes burning a fiery red. “If you really want to clean it up. I will throw you down there myself. You can experience the brutal agony of that poisonous tar seeping into your skin, stealing years of your life in moments. Perhaps you will be lucky.” Her words dropped to a depth that felt like everyone was being dragged down to the gates of death. “And you will die quickly before the pain becomes so great that you finish the job off yourself.”

The man’s mask cracked, and he crawled away. 

Syrus grabbed the mix of acids and explosives. She dosed the whole pool with the powerful acids, which began to eat away at the tar. After a few minutes, she threw the explosives into the hole. She had someone confirm with her that everyone had been pulled out of the tunnels.

She tossed a ball of flames into the melting pot. 

BOOM!!!

The ground shook as an ear-breaking sound emerged from the depths of hell. Syrus stood there, angled away from the explosion, only to stand once it was done to scorch the area with her flames to ensure nothing remained.