Two more heads flew free of their owners—a pair of adventurers who lost their patience and charged her ahead of their comrades. They were likely the pair that planned to claim their reward in her body, and as such, they were the first to die.
“Wha?!”
Finally, the men realized the horror of the woman standing before them. They stepped back, trying to distance themselves from her, but it was far too late.
“Gyahh!”
As fast as thought, she appeared before one other man, and in the blink of an eye she slashed his throat open with a hidden knife.
“Wargh?!”
She spun about to slip through a blade aimed at her head, lashing out and slicing off one attacker’s arm in the process while delivering a sharp kick to another’s neck, snapping it at an inconceivable angle.
“Hyaaaaah!”
A man rushed at her with a desperate scream, grasping at her. She had failed to account for such a sudden grab, and he succeeded in pinning her arms behind her back.
“Hmph.”
“Haha, gotcha! Now get ready for a beating!”
“Yeah!”
Several more men lunged forward to attack her, desperate to render her powerless. They’d scar her arms and legs alike and render her powerless against their next onslaught—but before any of their blades could reach, a blast of mana caught them from the side and vaporized them.
“The fuck?!”
The survivors of the attack spun about to find the pretty boy she’d been with standing there with a smile, hand outstretched. Before, they had read that look on his face as weakness, but there was a chilling strength behind his expression now. A ripple of fear tore through the crowd.
“Th-The fuck are you doing?!” the man holding Soulgros spat, eyes wild. It was bad enough that the first few men were decapitated, but the newly deceased were missing over half their bodies with no trace of where they went.
“I hath troubled Master with my inadequacy once again,” Soulgros muttered darkly. “I had best end this quickly.”
Her captor began to quiver. If anyone was to die now, it would surely be him first. He tightened his grip desperately. “Y-Yeah, right! You can’t do a gods-damn thing, long as I’ve got hold of you!”
Not even Liel could shake his hold quickly, but it made no difference.
“Ah, I need but do this.”
With those words, Soulgros’s head spun about a full 180 degrees to face him.
“Guh?!”
Their eyes met, and the man couldn’t so much as scream. His grip slackened in horror, and she was released. A split-second later, her arm blossomed through his back, slaying him almost instantly.
“Gwugh!”
Soulgros spun her head about to its proper orientation, rolling her shoulders as she did so. The action barely seemed to make her uncomfortable. “Serveth me right, for such a miserable display of concentration.”
Intent on avoiding any further inconvenience to her Master, she lunged at the surviving gray guild’s members with renewed hunger. The battle ended soon afterward—the braver of the men who still held their ground were met with swift decapitation, and those that tried to run were struck in the back with swathes of thrown kunai. The indecisive fools who could do naught but stand and stare in horror were stabbed clean through the heart. Each and every one of them was slain with the same brutal accuracy.
With her bloody work done, she turned to meet Liel’s eyes. “Thou art the only man standing, now.”
It took him a long moment to process the deaths of so many men before his very eyes. “You’re fucking kidding me… They all…?”
“I suppose no lowly human could manage such a feat,” she continued. “Gray guilds such as thyself are rather more talented at slaying humans than monsters.”
That was precisely why Liel had chosen to fight her, even in the face of two of his comrades’ deaths. Surely they were careless, and if the rest were careful, they had the sheer numbers needed to best her. It was finally clear just how naïve he was.
“Why’re you talkin’ like you’re no ordinary human?”
“Because, quite frankly, I am not.”
With that, she slipped off the right side of her robes to reveal a symbol emblazoned on her right shoulder.
“The hell? What guild is that?”
She froze, having not expected such a blank response. Master’s smile quivered as though he were suppressing a laugh.
“We are of the dark guild, Yerkchira,” she intoned gravely.
“The fuck? Dark guild? Like those Aichnen freaks?!”
The name of the guild itself was lost on him, but he knew that dark guilds were far more troublesome than anything his gray guild could muster. It would explain the horror of his companions’ deaths if nothing else.
“At ease, Master. One cannot expect such an uncultured swine to know of us.” Soulgros had stopped to stroke her male companion’s hair. There was an awkward grimace frozen on his face. Finally, she snapped back up to peer darkly into his eyes. “How darest thou upset Master?!”
“H-Huh?!”
He blinked, and she was gone. He noticed only at the last second that she was above him, swooping down upon him as a bird of prey might.
“Hahh!”
It was the same blazing-fast attack that slew his allies, but Liel wasn’t a Rank B adventurer for nothing. He swung his blade at her instead of dodging, banking his odds on a counterattack while she was unable to dodge in the air.
“Huh?!”
His blade met only air, however—she had somehow dropped to the ground with unnatural speed. Her arm was unnaturally extended, almost serpentine, with no regard for bone or sinew.
“Thou hast lost.”
“G-Gehh…”
Her arm warped and shifted, and whatever her arm was composed of hardened into a new form altogether. Countless needles tore through Liel’s chest and gut, shredding his organs into worthless scraps of flesh. The titan of a man spewed blood desperately from his mouth, slumping weakly to the ground.
Soulgros sighed, shaking her “arm” free of the man’s gore and returning it to a more human shape. “’Tis thy just desserts for subjecting Master to such sorrow.”
With the last man dead, she looked across the sea of blood and smiled at her handiwork. Her dark work was finally done.