#104 Mountain Range Escape (2)
Muscles swollen to their limits and writhing veins.
Boom!
Thick, log-like legs stamped the ground with force, pushing their owner’s massive body into the air.
Along with the faint haze billowing from his entire body as it shot upward in an instant, the [Kalkos-style Combat Engravings] etched across him glowed mysteriously.
And.
Shhhhk!
—Thwack! The axe blade, enveloped in the red, flickering light of [Bio-Aura], drew a great arc and separated the four-meter-tall monster’s head from its body.
“Kahahahat—! Such a big frame sure makes for a satisfying cut!”
Drenched in spurting troll blood, Halli let out a maddened roar of laughter.
But his attacks didn’t end there.
Immediately after beheading it, he brought his axe down on the troll’s chest, shattering its ribs, and thrust a hand through the gap to yank out its magic stone.
Finishing up, he fell away from the creature’s massive torso and landed on the ground—
Crunch! ...and at the same time, split the large head rolling on the ground cleanly in two with his axe.
Boom—!
Even with its head and heart destroyed, the troll’s torso flailed about for quite some time before finally collapsing to the ground after a brief moment.
‘Trolls already have strong regeneration, but infected with madness on top of that, their vitality is monstrous.’
Halli frowned, crunching away at the troll’s magic stone held in his hand.
Only because he was accustomed to hunting massive monsters and possessed overwhelming physical prowess could he handle it so easily; anyone else would have struggled far more.
Like those who were now gasping for breath the moment the battle with the troll horde ended.
“Hoooo...”
“Hah, hah... damn. Trolls in a place like this. We’re in the middle of leaving the mountain range; how does it feel like we’ve ended up deeper than before?”
With the monsters having begun their full-scale southward migration, even those that had dwelt in the deep regions were gradually being pushed outward.
A full-scale war was already raging between humans and the monsters that had been on the outermost edges.
“...Let’s move immediately. The longer we wait, the worse the situation will get.”
Against the high-rank monsters that had begun appearing intermittently, the effect of the magic artifacts that suppressed their presence wasn’t very great.
The monsters hadn’t originally been at that level, but the instincts strengthened by madness had amplified their perception as well.
The party was by no means weak, but the current situation was not something a small group could do anything about.
The fighting that had continued for days had compounded their fatigue, and high-rank monsters that needed to be dealt with carefully were popping up left and right...
“Look at Halli, moving the most yet the only one still fresh. Is it thanks to that secret art? I’m jealous, so jealous...”
“Still, it’s thanks to that we made it this far. Plus, if we force march for just one more day, we can escape the mountain range. Let’s hang in there until then.”
The guide, Marcus, offered words of hope and once again led the exhausted party from the front.
But.
The situation was racing toward catastrophe far worse than they had anticipated.
***
Throughout this time, while wandering the northern mountain range, Halli had been able to grasp the behavioral patterns of the madness-tainted monsters in more detail.
Information obtained from outside through the other avatars said they didn’t fight among themselves and cooperated in their assaults, but that was only partially true.
They too were living creatures, so they absolutely needed prey to be active, and the food chain among monsters was also part of that ecosystem.
It wasn’t rare to see strong monsters hunting weak ones in this mountain range.
‘Though the weak ones might run amok and throw themselves at the strong regardless of consequences even more than before.’
As a result, there were cases where the strong were hunted in turn instead.
To the extent that even among the same pack, a fight to the death would break out immediately if something sparked conflict, they were showing extremely aggressive behavior toward one another.
‘When one devours another like that, the concentration of madness within the survivor grows denser by that much.’
The loser becomes food in death, and the winner grows stronger than before under the influence of accumulated madness.
This alone was endlessly threatening...
Yet even while fighting to devour one another, the moment they perceived other sentient beings, including humans,
they joined forces as if they had never fought and rushed madly to annihilate that existence.
Just like now.
***
The first casualty was one of the rangers who had been isolated with the dwarf Jaonik—Bordo.
Unlike his injured comrade Hans, he had been relatively unscathed and had taken on the role of drawing the monsters’ attention and keeping them in check while the others dealt with them, but...
“Kuk!”
A hobgoblin mixed in among the monsters sniped him with a poisoned dart shot from a blowgun.
“Bordo!”
“No!”
Supporting fire poured in too late. It was already too late to save Bordo, instantly paralyzed in the face of the monsters.
An orc, so consumed by madness that it couldn’t even feel pain, pounced on him despite having arrows lodged in its vitals.
Afterward, the creature fell dead on the spot, and a bolt was embedded between the eyes of the hobgoblin that had fired the poison dart, but...
Bordo had already died instantly on the spot.
‘Using weapons? Not just swinging them around, but something like a blowgun?’
Halli, tearing apart the surging monsters with his axe on the front line, glanced that way and furrowed his brow.
Under normal circumstances, the party would have been more careful, but perhaps because they had let their guard down having never seen mad monsters use such weapons before, their response was delayed.
‘Was it a specimen with particularly high intelligence? Or perhaps one less corroded by madness?’
Whatever the cause, it was undeniable that this would further increase the party’s burden.
Already in a difficult situation, they now also had to keep long-range attacks in check.
Indeed, because of that, the fire support from the rear diminished.
Mikel, who had been pulling bolts nonstop from the small quiver—a spatial magic artifact—and firing them with a crossbow, began taking on perimeter watch and shooting each bolt more carefully.
‘This is bad. At this rate, it’s a total wipeout. ...Except for me.’
No matter how strong he was, there was a limit to facing multiple enemies alone.
And these were monsters with disgustingly enhanced vitality.
‘I’ve built up quite a reputation, and I don’t want to break my hundred-percent mission success rate either... Can’t be helped.’
It was a situation where he had to use everything available.
‘Yeah, let’s take this chance to properly gauge Halli’s full power. See how far I can go.’
While still moving without rest and slaughtering enemies, he gathered his focus and began raising his power.
His already large frame grew little by little through [Physical Transformation], and the [Bio-Aura], igniting all the energy he had accumulated at once, blazed fiercely.
[Feral Instinct] was honed to a keen edge, allowing him to instinctively grasp the flow of his surroundings, and [Regeneration] brought his body’s condition to its absolute peak.
Following that, the [Kalkos-style Combat Engravings] etched across his body glowed even brighter.
The ‘Flame’ on his chest, the ‘Lightning Storm’ at his eyes, the ‘Fierce Beast’ and ‘Axe’ on both arms, and even the ‘Running Horse’ and ‘Bird’s Wing’ on his legs that had been covered by his pants.
“Hoooo—.”
White steam erupted from his lightly exhaled breath.
No, not only that—due to the energy being burned in an instant, heat and steam were spreading from the pores across his entire body.
His senses were razor-sharp, and the hand wielding the axe was incredibly light.
But it didn’t end there...
Halli slowly awakened the ‘madness’ he had kept suppressed until now.
Madness had been raising his physical abilities simply by existing within his body, but that alone could by no means be considered using it properly.
Thump.
—Through his wildly pounding heart, he felt something flowing through his blood vessels.
It burrowed into his muscles, of course, but also his bones, organs, and deep into his brain—.
—Yes, tear them all apart! Everything in the way! Kkakakat!
Together with the whispers of madness that began to flare up again.
Shhhiek.
—His further strengthened body burned red-hot like heated iron, radiating heat around him, and his right eye, which had been black, turned crimson as a fiery gaze blazed within.
In that moment, Halli fully awakened the madness, controlling it completely and bringing it under his dominion.
《The individual has met the conditions for growth. The skill [Feral Instinct] evolves into the special skill [Beast of Madness].》
He had obtained a means to handle madness more efficiently.
“Kheugh... kheuhahahakah—!”
An energy like an active volcano exploded within his body, and a refreshingly savage laugh burst out of him without his realizing.
A laugh even madder than usual.
‘Ah... I thought it had died down a bit lately.’
But this time it couldn’t be helped.
Still, once he released this fully unleashed combat state of madness, this frenzy would return to its previous level.
...Probably.
‘Well then, shall we get started in earnest?’
Precisely because it was an urgent situation, even as he raised his power, Halli remained in the middle of the battlefield.
He stretched his right hand behind his back and drew the other axe he had kept sheathed until now.
With the situation growing dire, he had been keeping one hand free to extract magic stones immediately, but now that he was going all out, this too had a purpose.
Halli, axes in both hands, took one great breath—
“Hrah!”
Shhhhk—! Thwack!
One axe flew like a missile and lodged itself squarely in an orc’s head.
However, that wasn’t simply the end of it.
His left eye, which had remained calm unlike his blazing red right eye,
began to scatter a deep green light.
[Gem Eye: Telekinesis]
The axe embedded in the orc’s head rose into the air, enveloped in a faint green light.
And.
Shwick.
—Thud! Crack!
It freely glided through the air, cracking open the heads of enemies targeting the party one by one.
There was no need to watch and control it directly with his eyes.
His senses, strengthened further by [Beast of Madness], were already grasping the entire battlefield in real-time.
‘The telekinetic force imbued in the axe substitutes for the aura’s strength, so there’s no problem with offensive power itself. However, sending energy remotely makes the efficiency garbage...’
But even that didn’t matter much to him.
At least, not while fighting a horde of monsters like now.
Crunch.
—Gnash.
Halli still ripped out their hearts with his bare hands and, along with the magic stones, stuffed them into his mouth, relentlessly devouring them with [Devour].
The rate at which his body’s energy was burning up and vanishing in an instant gradually slowed.
‘And even doing this, I can’t fully recover.’
It was proof of how extreme the consumption of the abilities he was currently using in combination was.
Boom—!
“Kuhahahat! Die!”
Of course, the effects were overwhelming in equal measure.
His drastically strengthened body produced deafening booms every time he kicked off the ground, and the axe cloaked in red aura had already long since surpassed the speed of sound.
He had already reached a point where a simple body slam could smash a monster to pieces.
At this stage, his body weight was too light compared to the power he wielded, forcing him to take additional measures at the cost of increased energy consumption just to keep himself properly anchored.
He expanded the surface area of his soles, transformed his toes into hooks, and poured considerable aura into increasing his traction with the ground.
Even so, the ground failed to fully withstand his power, exploding with every step he took, but he could project his strength far more easily than before.
‘But the energy consumption is tremendous. Without [Devour], I wouldn’t be able to maintain this for long.’
With those explosive movements, he rampaged through the monsters; the gracefully moving axe hacked them apart, while his bare hands busily tore out their hearts and brought them to his mouth.
Even then, the axe enveloped in green light flew through the air on its own, smashing the monsters’ heads...
Rip—!
Thanks to his exploits, the battle soon reached a lull.
The stream of monster reinforcements had already been cut off, thanks in part to the makeshift barrier hastily erected by the dwarf Jaonik, which appropriately absorbed the combat noise so it wouldn’t spread too far.
‘It’s a magic artifact set up in a hurry, so I can’t help the nearby ones swarming in, but even this much is a solid enough line of defense.’
If not for that, they would have had no choice but to fight until they collapsed from exhaustion.
“Hoooo—.”
In that moment, as Halli let out a sigh along with white steam, trying to release his current full-power combat stance—
‘Hm?’
His senses, honed to the extreme, detected something charging toward their location violently.
Thud, thud, thud, thud... vibrations shaking the earth so intensely they could be felt despite the distance, a presence that stimulated the instincts of his [Beast of Madness], and the massive amount of ‘madness’ filling its body.
‘Ah, I’m screwed.’
It was charging straight toward this exact spot.