–this chapter happen in the same day—

  —This chapter might be very jarring, since I switch between two pov in omniscient pov simultaneously—

  “Cinder…”

  In the afternoon, at the very edge of the northwestern forest, a towering figure stood amid the devastation with his men gathered behind him.

  He was tall, around 1.8 meters. His body was ripped and dense, muscle layered over muscle like forged iron, veins standing out beneath his skin. Old scars crisscrossed his brawny forearms like hardened ropes, pale against sun-darkened flesh.

  A poor white shirt clung tightly to his broad chest, stretched thin over bulging pectorals. Black trousers hung low on his hips, scorched and frayed at the hems.

  With a casual push, he shoved aside a half-burned tree trunk beside him, the wood still smoldering. Ash scattered across the ground as it toppled.

  “...”

  Boss Danz scanned the ruined surroundings, his expression darkening. A prominent diagonal scar bisected his left eye, leaving only the white visible beneath the ruined lid. His remaining right eye flared red for a moment before returning to its usual brown.

  Around him, the forest was wrecked. Burned timber lay scattered like broken bones. Fallen trees were snapped in half, their upper canopies missing, leaves charred into brittle black husks. The earth itself was scorched, cracked in places, still radiating warmth.

  Above, the sun blazed mercilessly in the sky, as if indifferent to the destruction below.

  Danz clenched his fist, his muscles hardening. His brown hair fluttered as heat shimmered around him, warping the air.

  “Tell me, what happened?” he asked with a low and heavy tone.

  The men behind him spoke one after another, unease clear in their voices.

  "We, we know not what truly happened, Boss."

  “…”

  Danz turned his head and fixed his gaze on a skinny, poorly dressed young man standing closest to him. The boy’s shoulders hunched instinctively under the pressure of that stare.

  “You served directly under her command. Have you anything to add, lad?"

  “I…” The young man hesitated, sweat beading on his brow. "We were patrolling the forest, watching for travellers and merchants, when we heard a terrible scream at a crossroads leading towards the village."

  He swallowed his saliva, feeling the immense pressure emanating from the huge figure before him.

  “We saw, we saw someone, someone turning into a monster!” The youth jumped as he spoke, raising his hands to his chest and miming the horror he had witnessed, as if tearing himself apart from the inside.

  “While we sought to guide the travellers to a place of safety, Cinder, she—” His shoulders slumped, his voice faltering.

  "What of her?" Danz looked down at the young man, his body emanating an intense heat, the air around his body visibly shimmering.

  "She... she bade us leave matters to her, and not to disturb her advancement ritual!"

  “...”

  Boss Danz turned away, scanning the forest once more. What remained here was clearly the aftermath of a battle, one between a Warrior and something unknown.

  A crater marred the ground. Leaves were burned, branches reduced to charcoal. Most trees had lost their upper halves, snapped off like twigs. The air still carried the acrid smell of burned foliage and cooked earth.

  He crouched down and pressed his hand on the earth, feeling the lingering warmth of the burned ground.

  “Lor’, Boss. I reckon, she was bested.” Loyal Joseph whispered beside him in an apprehensive voice. He had a broad-shouldered figure, black-haired, and dressed in filthy rags.

  “...”

  Danz remained silent, hand still resting on the earth.

  “Advancement ritual for a Gladiator of the Warrior path,” Loyal continued in a hushed tone. “Consume one hundred different predator animals. Defeat a leading bear in hand-to-hand combat without employing any Fighter abilities. Then drink five pure Yan essence bottles, before challenging one of equal or greater Stage and win."

  Loyal glanced around.

  “Miss Cinder… she fought alone here, and sent her henchmen away.”

  “Foolish choice,” Danz muttered. "What was it she sought?"

  He said nothing more, eyes closing as his palm remained placed on the scarred earth.

  “She must’ve been desperate to advance,” Loyal added cautiously, putting a hand to his nose to block the lingering smell. "Perhaps she wished to catch up to you, Boss."

  Danz frowned.

  "If that were so, she could simply have spoken to me."

  "For acknowledgement, perhaps? Though that seems a—"

  Danz opened his eyes, a wave of heat erupted outward from his body, cutting Loyal off mid-sentence.

  *Bang!*

  “Bos—!?”

  His figure blurred in a flash of crimson. A violent gust of hot wind exploded outward as he launched himself skyward, the ground cracking beneath his feet before he vanished entirely from where he stood.

  High in the air, Danz looked down over the vast expanse of forest, a sea of green stretching beneath the patch.

  “There you are.”

  Still airborne, he drove his fist forward into empty air.

  *Bang!*

  A massive shockwave detonated, the air itself collapsing under the blow! Using the explosion as propulsion, Danz redirected his descent toward the point where his gaze had settled.

  His body slammed into the dirt with terrifying force, the ground buckling and splitting outward from the impact.

  With a single wave of his hand, the dust, ash, and heated air around him were blown violently away, clearing the space in an instant.

  “Grrr.”

  “…”

  Before his gaze stood a deformed, monstrous figure.

  It had a blackened and warped body, short in stature. Its frame was skeletal, the skin clinging tightly to bone, its ribcage jutting outward. The limbs were thin, more bone than flesh, like dry sticks wrapped in parchment.

  Its face… it was a monstrosity, not entirely human, nor entirely animal.

  Coarse fur covered parts of its skull, patchy and burned in places. Two oversized ears jutted outward, twitching slightly. Nestled between them were small, glimmering violet eyes.

  The muzzle-like mouth was stretched wide, teeth jagged and uneven, slick with blood.

  The monster crouched over a body.

  A familiar body.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It was tearing into the meat and flesh beneath it. Its mouth was stuffed with gore, blood and viscera dripped freely, strands of half-chewed flesh dangling obscenely from its jaws. Wet, choking sounds echoed as it fed.

  The body lay there unmoving.

  Her eyes were empty sockets of lifeless glass, reflecting nothing. Blood streamed from her head, matting her familiar ginger hair before soaking into the dirt.

  A massive wound tore open her abdomen, organs pushed grotesquely outward, ribs shattered and bent. Bones protruded through torn skin, fractured and twisted, broken like dry twigs.

  “…”

  The monster paused. It turned its head, violet eyes locking onto Danz’s towering figure, standing there with a face darkened by shadow and fury.

  It stopped eating, a strip of flesh hanging from its maw.

  “SHHHHAAAAAAAA!”

  A shrill, furious scream tore from its throat.

  To dare to disrupt its meal. This human was courting death!

  The creature shrieked, its form blurring in a streak of violet.

  “YOU.”

  Emotion surged within Danz. An ugly mix of sadness, sorrow, rage, sardonic, hatred, anger, and hollow… He couldn’t name which feeling dominated.

  He clenched his fists. Extreme heat poured from his body as his gaze remained fixed on the broken figure lying on the ground.

  And yet—

  For once, he felt… extremely calm.

  The monster’s figure blurred in violet. Its form left various trails, as it frantically moved between trees.

  Wind gushed, and with each time the monster leaped, the wind roared fiercely.

  Yet, Danz only walked forward. He didn’t even look at the monster circling him like a buzzing fly.

  “SHHHHAAAAAAAA!”

  It was ignored.

  The monster’s fury spiked. Ignorant. This human was so arrogant.

  It smirked savagely, darting between trees, leaping from trunk to trunk with impossible speed. With each jump, it left behind a blurred violet afterimage, trying to build up its momentum for the kill.

  ‘Arrogant human!’

  ‘That other human had died because of this same arrogance. Foolish. Stupid. Insolent. Cocky!’

  ‘These Warrior Path fools were so arrogant, what an easy meal they were!’

  At one point, something surged beneath its feet. A dark violet liquid.

  The dark violet blob surged toward the arrogant human like a living wave. At the same time, the monster hurled itself a moment later.

  This was a feint! A perfect trap!

  “…”

  “!”

  Danz’s eyes flared crimson. With a single, casual sweep of his hand, the dark violet liquid evaporated instantly.

  Steam hissed violently as the substance vanished. His arm passed through the rising smoke, his hand clamped around the monster’s small head mid-lunge.

  “!”

  The creature struggled in his grip. Its head was grabbed, the grip slowly tightening like a vice.

  It was hot, sweaty, and hard as iron.

  “ShAAAWWW— SHHHAWWW—!”

  It scratched desperately at his scarred arm, trying to plunge its sharp fingernails into his flesh.

  But it was no use. Danz’s skin was impenetrable!

  “ShAAAWWW! SHAAAAW—”

  “BURN.”

  Crimson fire erupted.

  “!”

  All of a sudden, the monster was engulfed. Crimson fire flared in its form, violently consuming it.

  “SHAAAAA! SHAAAAA!”

  ‘Hot, so hot!’

  It thrashed wildly, kicking, punching, trying to wrench itself free, escaping from Danz’s crushing grip on its head.

  No use, it was no use.

  Its limbs slowly burned to ashes, disintegrating.

  “BURN. DIE.”

  The grip on its head was tight, but it was not tight enough to kill it outright. This human… was trying to kill it slowly. To make it suffer.

  The monster’s eyes flared violet.

  Simultaneously, around it, small violet droplets slowly rose up from the damp earth, shooting toward Danz at high speed!

  “SHAAAWWW!”

  Yet, before they could reach him, they evaporated into thin smoke.

  Danz gazed at the head he held in his grip.

  “…”

  Only the head.

  The body was gone.

  A violet droplet had severed its own neck. It had decapitated itself to escape.

  *rustle rustle crunch crunch—*

  Danz furrowed his brows. A weird, crunchy noise reverberated, breaking the forest silence.

  He turned his head. In the distance, the monster’s body, without a head, crawled on four legs, scrambling through underbrush, frantically getting away from the human.

  “DARE TO RUN AWAY?”

  “!”

  Danz’s figure appeared on top of it in a blink, one foot stomping down on its regenerating body with a heavy thud.

  “SHAAAAAA! GRAAAAAAAA!”

  Five spheres of blazing fire materialized behind him. The moment they formed, they slammed downward beneath his foot.

  *BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.*

  A series of explosions shot downward, breaking the calm forest.

  “SHA—SH…”

  More fireballs formed, again and again, hammering the ground relentlessly.

  The air ignited. The earth burned. Heat warped the surroundings, soil cracking and liquefying under the assault.

  Until there was nothing left beneath his foot, but a charred corpse.

  Under a massive, dark spiderweb-like fissure in scorched earth.

  —

  “Matey, still alive, aren’t ye?”

  Danz stood before the figure sprawled in the ruined earth…or what remained of her. Half of her body was gone, her midsection had been hollowed and torn away, until bone and muscle were exposed to the air.

  Her short, manly ginger hair, usually so defiant and coarse, was matted and stiff, heavy with crimson blood that dripped slowly down her temple and pooled beneath her head. The smell of iron hung thick around them.

  He withdrew a small hip flask from his side. The metal was scratched and dented from years of use. He tilted it back and took a long drink, the scent of strong spirits briefly cutting through the stench of death.

  “…”

  He lowered the flask and looked down at her half-lidded eyes.

  The dark pupils were fixed upon the middle distance, glazed and distant, seemingly oblivious to the acrid smoke still curling from the charred remains of the beast nearby.

  “...”

  However, slowly, the pupils shifted.

  They lifted, trembling and dilating, until they were gazing directly into his own single eye.

  Danz allowed a smirk to touch his lips.

  ‘Bossa, that is a most cruel jest.’ In his mind, he could still hear her voice. A low, masculine rasp that nonetheless carried a hidden warmth.

  She was the only woman in the band, his only remaining companion from the outside world, the one who stayed.

  “You have lost the wager, matey.”

  “...”

  One of her fingers twitched weakly against the dirt. Her pupil drifted downward again, dimming.

  “You know what that must mean.”

  “…”

  Danz crouched down, his massive shadow falling long over her ruined frame.

  He tipped the flask carefully, pressing its mouth to her lips. A faint yellow liquid trickled out, seeping past her lips and bloodstained teeth.

  “…”

  Cinder swallowed each gulp slowly.

  “…”

  Danz straightened, pulling the flask away. He capped it and stood, his expression turning solemn.

  “S…”

  Her pale, blood-flecked lips moved.

  He couldn’t hear the word, but he could read it. The familiar crooked smirk tugged at her lips, the same sarcastic curve she wore when things were bad, and she was always the first to complain.

  ‘Sorry, Bossa.’

  “Do not fret over it, matey. I am still right as rain, as ever I was.”

  He let his own smirk return.

  ‘Gives me the creeps.’ Danz received her insult, his smirk widened.

  “Same goes for you, matey.”

  He tipped the flask again, this time pouring the remaining wine over her ruined body.

  Cinder’s brow twitched. Her face tightened in a brief wince. Her pupil lowered further, and her lips moved once more.

  “K—”

  ‘Kill me.’

  “…”

  Five spheres of flickering crimson flame materialized in the air before Danz. Their light bathed the ruined clearing in orange and gold.

  The flames drifted closer to one another, merging, fusing into one great, roiling mass of concentrated fire that hovered in the air, pulsing with restrained violence.

  “Rest you well, Cinder.”

  The flame slowly descended.

  The corners of Cinder’s lips quirked upward. Her eyelids drifted shut, the tension leaving her battered face.

  ‘May the Monarch forgive our sin.’

  “May the Monarch forgive you.”

  And now, she was gone.

  Peacefully.