“H-help me! Cecil!”
Renea held out her arm, gazing imploringly at the blond-haired lad. However, their hands never met. The kobolds advanced like a wave, surrounding the three rookie adventurers.
“You’ll pay for this!”
Cecil swung his longsword, hoping to cut down a few of the deadly foes…but to no avail. Another of them took Alice and pinned her to the ground, leaving Renea without any hope of salvation.
“…Huh?”
It was then that Renea felt something hard pressing against her lower body. It was the kobold’s erect genital.
“No… No… Nooooooooooo!”
She struggled but was unable to fight back against the monstrous strength of the kobold. The beast took no heed and moved his claw down to Renea’s hips, tearing away her dark blue breeches and snow-white underwear.
“Gagh!”
The kobold spared no thought to Renea’s pain, the breaking of her mind, the tearing of her hymen. He mindlessly thrust, indulging his primal desires. His member ravaged her insides, hard as steel.
“Agh! Gagh! Ghh! Gah! Ggh! Agh!”
Renea emitted a series of tiny yelps, her eyes flayed wide in pain. Each thrust rocked her heaving breasts, which in turn aroused the kobold further, causing his thrusts to grow both in intensity and frequency.
Beside her, Alice looked on with pained sorrow, unable to do anything to help. The kobold atop her emitted a foul breath as his own girth began to swell.
“Ooh… Oohh… Oooohhhh.”
The kobold turned his claws to Alice’s lower half and, in one swift movement, tore the cloth apart before pressing his raging phallus against Alice’s exposed privates.
“H-help…”
Alice thought of her savior, begging him to appear. But as if mocking her ridiculous fantasies, the kobold prepared to violate her.
“Wa…want… Waaaaaaant!”
Just then…
A single gunshot rang out.
The explosion rattled the eardrums of all creatures present. And then the beastly head of the kobold that was crouched atop Alice and poised to rape her disappeared. The rest of his body turned to rotten liquid and doused her.
More shots rang out. Five in total. And with each one, another of the beasts’ heads burst like a ripe watermelon.
“It’s him!” Alice cried.
A man in a dark coat walked through the mist, his left leg dragging a bit with each step, a sword at his hip and black hair with streaks of gray atop his head. In his left hand, he held a pistol at eye level.
“…Come, my brethren.”
The kobolds all attacked at once. Claws, fangs, all pointed at the intruder’s flesh.
But the man did not stop. His gunshots rang out ceaselessly, each reducing another fiend to a fetid puddle on the ground. However, the monsters did not relent either. Undisturbed by the deaths of the others in their pack, the final three charged the man simultaneously, their teeth and claws directed unerringly at his flesh.
The man…did not move. He stood still, unflinching in the face of danger, as if welcoming his own end. The beasts’ claws pierced his heart and right lung. A fatal wound, to be certain. Yet even this did not end the creatures’ relentless assault, and the third kobold, a little behind the other two, opened his jaws wide.
“M…m-m-more. Moooore!”
The sharp teeth closed around the man’s neck, ready to rip off his head. But the fatally injured man was not put off in the slightest.
He raised his right arm and blocked the beast’s bite.
Then there was a shrill ring…and the kobold’s teeth shattered.
“Wing, unfurl, and take my prize.”
In response to the man’s short chant, his right arm began to change. It grew rapidly, tearing apart the coat sleeve and revealing its true form.
The man’s right arm was made of black steel.
In the blink of an eye, the prosthetic transformed from an everyday convenience to a brutal weapon. The rounded fingers became sharpened knives. Hooked blades swung out from inside, and the man turned his burning crimson eyes upon the beings whose claws were embedded in his torso.
“…Begone.”
He swung his weighty steel arm, effortlessly reducing the fiends to a puddle of meat gravy, and a pile of softly glowing Testament Stones.
“H-he tore through that fiend so easily!” said Cecil with wonder. A fiend’s skin was too tough to be severed by human hands, and even using Sacraments, it wasn’t an easy job. But the enigmatic figure didn’t stop to brag. He calmly picked up the Testament Stones and placed them in his pocket.
Then Cecil was struck with wonder for a second time.
“What? His wounds…!”
The man had sustained fatal injuries in the battle. Yet in the blink of an eye, they sealed themselves up as if by magic, and in a few moments not even a scar remained.
“…Must have heard the noise,” the man muttered as a second pack of kobolds appeared, twice the size of what he had just dispatched.
“…It’s over. We’re all dead,” lamented Cecil.
“No,” replied Alice. “We shall be all right. He will protect us.”
She had faith. This predicament was no predicament at all.
It wasn’t long before her faith was rewarded.
“H-hun…gryyyyyy!”
“D-doc…doctor…tor…tor…!”
“Pain…p…p-p-paaaaaain!”
The fiends all howled in chorus, and a massacre ensued. They vastly outnumbered the adventuring band…and yet…
The determination in the man’s crimson eyes was unwavering.
“Let sorrow be my guide. Blade of Azakiel. The moon’s tragedy. The white butterfly’s wing.”
Four clear verses fell from the man’s lips. And just as the pack was about to reach him…
“…Arts of Steel, Deploy. Abominable Armament Number Three: The Murderer’s Rushing Fang, Slasher Bite.”
The man’s mechanical arm transformed once again, this time into an enormous serpent of blades. Then, as if possessing a will of its own, it reared up, let out a howl, and swept its body horizontally. The monsters were sliced apart in the blink of an eye, becoming dirty puddles of rotten flesh. The mad band of beasts did not let up, however, and continued charging, like moths to a flame.
Each of them was liquefied before landing a single scratch on the man.
“…May your sleep be eternal salvation.”
Amid a pool of rotten flesh and a hoard of sparkling stones, the man spoke in solemn, merciful tones, like a priest. As he did, he gestured, making a four-pointed shape in the air.
Cecil could only bring himself to say one thing…
“…What the hell?”
His mind was awash with emotion, but before he could put any of it to words…
The man looked up to the heavens…and stepped forward. Dragging his leg behind him, he walked over to one kobold who still clung to life. He—or maybe she—seemed to have been left alive on purpose. They flailed helplessly on the ground, unable to right themselves, and as the man looked down at them, he slowly removed his mask. The iron plate covering his mouth came away to reveal a handsome yet deathly pale face. Around the right side of his mouth, the flesh had been stripped away.
He looked like a monster. No, he was one. A fiend with a human heart.
He lowered to his knees, opened his mouth…
…and sunk his teeth into the fallen beastfolk’s shoulder.
“Eep?!”
When at last Renea returned to her senses, she squealed at the sight.
The man was a predator, feasting on his prey. After tearing chunks off the kobold’s shoulder, he chewed, swallowed, and moved onto the fiend’s chest, then legs, and finally the flanks of the torso. He stripped the flesh and gobbled the organs, making unsettling noises all the while.
“Urgh…!”
Renea couldn’t cope with the sight and vomited all over the floor. Cecil looked on, horrified, as the sweat dripped down his brow, and the name of that monster-eating fiend came to his lips.
“It’s…Leon the Devourer!”
Cecil and Renea both wore undeniable looks of disgust. Alice alone smiled pleasantly.
“I’ve finally found you,” she said, and no sooner had her utterance faded into the mist than Leon finished his meal and picked up the Testament Stone before taking a look around—at the other stones, perhaps—and sighed.
Then he replaced his iron mask, once again concealing his inhuman face, and turned to the adventurers. “Take them or don’t,” he declared. “It makes no difference to me.”
With that, he turned and, dragging his left leg behind him, disappeared into the white darkness.
“Th-that was him! The Third Hero of Salvation, Leon Crossheart!” spoke Cecil, as if finally able to pronounce the words. His expression and his eyes were filled with fear and revulsion. “How can they call him a hero? He’s a monster!”
His teeth chattered. His whole body shook. Renea raised no objection to his claim. But Alice…
“No, he’s not,” she declared with conviction. There was no trace of the scared little girl anymore. Only a young woman delighted to find the object of her search at last. “He’s not a monster. He’s…”
Whatever she said next, she said only in her heart. She simply watched, silently, as the walking corpse disappeared into the mist.