With a bang, something heavy hit Dante on the face, and he jolted back to reality. Waking up in the back of a flipped carriage, covered with bags, clothes, bloodied rags, and medical equipment like strange-looking and beeping machines, winding tubes, and blood bags. He immediately gasped for air, pushed everything away, and crawled out of the broken window, confused and disoriented.
^Damn it, not again.^ Till now, Dante only remembered waking up two times, and this was the third, and in all of them he always ended up in a situation worse than the one before. First injured and lost in the forest, then a prisoner locked in a cage, and now… what? Surrounded by death and fire?
"Can't I… at least wake up to a beautiful face or two?" He could only lament his poor luck.
All he could hear was the roaring gunfire, the medical machines wailing in his ear, the howls of beasts, and the screams of people getting torn and eaten alive. As he lifted his eyes, what he saw couldn't be described with mere words: the torn caravan, the blinding flames, the raging storm above, and the horrid abominations surrounding him.
This was a warzone, and not one fought against other humans. It was a war of survival against the abominations.
The merchants who were with him inside the cage, half of them were already dead, torn to pieces like pigs at a butcher shop. The old merchant was screaming as he ran toward the end of what looked like an armored carriage, and knights in heavy armor were running all around, trying to get the situation under control.
Pushing on the ground with both hands and staggering up to his feet, it was only now that he noticed that all of his pain had disappeared. His wounds had healed, and he was even wearing a fresh set of clothes.
"Dante!" A man in full armor rushed toward him and growled in a deep, hoarse voice, "If you're alive, then move it! To the back if you want to live!" He pushed him with a violent slap and barely managed to block the claws of what looked like a massive, formless mass of black fur and blood.
Dante rolled on the ground and glared up in rage. He had never been slapped before, as far as he remembers. But that rage quickly disappeared as that formless mass glared right back at him. He could see them, two black orbs burning with malevolent malice. Monsters were attacking them, and at least for now, Dante knew that his only allies were the humans. It didn't matter if those armored knights were bandits, his enemies, or friends.
"In the name!" The knight roared, and a flash of golden light flashed from beneath his armor. Sparks of pure divine power crackled from the armor's seams like lightning, and his vison burned with golden flames. "Of the LORD!" He brought his massive zweihander down and cleaved the monster in half with a single roaring flash of light and a thunderclap.
But it wasn't that easy, as the formless mass quickly merged back into one and swarmed him like bees. The knight jumped back and rolled away. "Foul Monster!"
Dante, who could see the two orbs inside the Monster, looked around, picked the largest object nearby, which was a long rod of steel that was torn from the carriage's door, and jumped into the fight. The Monster, which was distracted by the knight, immediately turned around and shifted its attention toward Dante, trying to swarm him before he could approach. "Horizontal, you missed earlier!" Dante shouted as he stabbed the formless mass of fur, and the knight immediately jumped forward, swinging his massive sword horizontally as Dante let go of the steel rod and ducked.
This time, there were no light or magnificent sparks, just a regular slash that cut right through the orbs that Dante could see, and the monster quickly fell, twitching before it died. "Deserved. Look at that tiny body inside the fur; it's barely anything."
"I'm impressed you noticed that." The knight looked, and it was indeed tiny, maybe the size of a water bottle inside a ball of fur that was almost two meters wide. Since that bottle-shaped core was standing upright, a horizontal cut was more likely to hit it than a vertical slash.
Dante could easily recognize that great sword, "Wait! You're the bastard I punched!"
The knight growled back. "Yeah, my chin still hurts! Now, take this." He waved his hand, and a long sword appeared out of nowhere. "We're both Mundane; I see you can handle yourself a bit."
Dante took the sword with a smile. "Even if I can't, I'd rather die fighting." He gave the sword a gentle swing, remembering how familiar he felt before swinging a stick, and quickly, muscle memory started kicking in as he took a casual stance and slashed the sword horizontally. "I like this."
"Good, then let's go!" The knight rushed forward, and Dante ran after him. "My name is Alexander, but people just call me Alex. I know you've lost your memories. What do you remember about abominations?"
"Not much, just that they'll kill us." Dante replied, and Alex growled. "So nothing? Mundane, Scarred, then Cursed; those are their ranks that we should care about now; anything above that and we're dead." He then looked back and pointed at the mass of fur and flesh he had cut earlier. "That thing was a Mundane Monster."
He then looked forward and kept running. "They also have classes that determine how detached from reality they are. Beasts are like us humans and all animals; then we have Monsters, and Aliens after that." He threw a glance at Dante. "We're dead if an Alien or a Cursed abomination shows up. Even a Scarred Beast would be our ending."
"I assume there are higher classes, right?" Dante looked back at the mass of fur and flesh as it disappeared into the dust behind them. ^A Beast has one orb, a Monster has two, and an Alien has three… that thing at the river was an Alien?^ Realizing how close he came to fighting an elder horror made the skin on his back crawl.
"There are, but we would have already been dead if anything of that caliber was anywhere close." Alexander was getting faster with each step, and he was already moving at horrifying speed.
"What is worse, a Mundane Monster or a Scarred Beast?" Dante could barely keep up with the heavily armored knight as they ran. Alexander was strangely fast and agile, moving like a beast himself.
"Depends, but I'd rather face a Mundane Monster than a Scarred Beast. It doesn't matter if a Monster can fly without wings if my sword can cut it in half before it takes flight. But if it was a Scarred Beast, then it'll be harder to cut and hurt." He suddenly stopped. "Damn it! Speaking of the monsters!"
In front of them, a rabid-looking wolf crawled out of the flames. Half of its fur was burned, and it was already munching on human flesh. The monster glared at them for a second with its twitching, bloodied eyes, and Dante could feel the blood draining from his veins. There was only one glowing orb inside the monster's chest, but it burned darkly like a torch.
The Scarred Beast stood still for a second, studying them… but then it disappeared from Dante's vision, and the only thing he could see was the ground cracking where it once stood. Beside him, Alexander got pushed back toward a tree and pinned down by the wolf, struggling as it bit his zweihander in a mad frenzy.
Raising in class increased an abomination's mana quantity and the extent of its nature-bending powers, while raising its rank increased the abomination's overall quality and potency. So, a monster of a higher class would have stranger abilities and could use them for longer, while an abomination of a higher rank would have stronger and more accurate powers.
This was what Alexander was worried about. When an abomination's Rank increases, its speed, strength, and durability increase dramatically with it, making it hard for humans to keep up. When its Class increases, its abilities grow and change, which humans can still find ways around.
"Run! I'll handle this thing and follow you right after!" Alexander shouted at Dante, trying to get him to escape. This Scarred Beast wasn't something that even someone trained could deal with, so Dante would just die in a single charge. He couldn't even see the creature's movements after all.
Instead of running away, Dante dashed toward Alexander and the Scarred Beast. If the knight dies here, then he won't survive any longer surrounded by all of this chaos, so he had to save him no matter what. With both hands, he lifted the sword above his head and swung it down at the Beast's open neck, channeling his singular droplet of mana into his arms for a harder swing.
Dante looked weak; he was slow and so unthreatening that the Scarred Beast ignored him completely, trying to deal with the armored Alexander first. Like a jaguar biting down on a deer's neck, it wasn't going to let go of Alexander's blade. It let Dante hit its neck, thinking the blade would just bounce off or barely scratch it.
The sword Alexander gave Dante wasn't just any regular old blade; it was his spare weapon, a longsword enchanted with enough mana to be classified as a Mundane enchanted weapon. The enchantment itself was pretty useless compared to Alexander's zweihander, which was his main weapon, but it was still decent.
The enchantment simply made the blade a bit harder while maintaining its regular flexibility, allowing it to retain its edge for longer. Alexander, of course, had it sharpened enough to split a hair in half.
The deadly sharp blade cut right through the Scarred Beast's hide and dense muscles, finally bouncing back on its horrid bones. That was the moment the entire battle shifted. The Scarred Beast felt the pain; it whelped and let go of Alexander's zweihander.
The Scarred Beast's claws dug into the ground; its head jolted back, and its entire body moved like a rippling shockwave, exploding right in Dante's face. Its massive maw was wide open, reaching toward Dante's exposed neck as its front claws shot forward to grab him by the chest, and all of that happened in a fraction of a second.
Dante's sword, which was positioned just about the Beast's neck, shifted slightly in a fraction of a second, and he managed to get into the Beast's jaw and block the bite, but the force of the feral creature was enough to carry him back like a blur and hit the nearest tree. Dante could feel his forearms cracking, his grin on the sword growing weaker, and the pain of running out of mana burning his head, yet he was still calm.
"You… cannot kill me." He kicked the Scarred Beast in the guts with a smile, and that kick did no damage at all. But it was all a distraction, as Alexander came in with a wide swing of his zweihander, hitting the Scarred Beast right in the back, sending it flying.
"That was dangerous!" Alexander shouted at Dante, but sadly they couldn't talk for a single second, as the moment the Scarred Beast hit the ground, it lunged right back at Dante at horrifying speed. Alexander couldn't even reach in time, and when he swung his sword, he missed the charging abomination and the Scarred Beast hit Dante like a racing car, flying away with him into the darkness.
Dante could feel the extreme pain as the Scarred Beast's fangs bit into his shoulder and collarbone, cracking them. He couldn't even see it charge at him, but… such a simple creature. "I told you… you cannot kill me, pup."
The sharp longsword had already pierced the Scarred Beast's chest, slipping between its ribs and coming out of the back, stabbing the heart. "Going for the same spot twice, you don't think, do you?"
After struggling for a second, the Beast fell limp, and Dante fell to his knees, shivering. His wounds weren't the problem, but the sudden acceleration. His internal organs were a mess from getting rammed by this thing twice in a row.
Dante closed one eye as he felt his head almost splitting open from the pain. He growled as Alexander rushed in to check on him and pushed the dead Beast aside. "In the name of God! You killed it!" He gasped for air. "Even with my sword, that was impressive."
This guy clearly wasn't some random nobody who got lost in the forest and captured by outlaws. At first, Alexander thought that Dante got lucky and managed to get the drop on the outlaws, but seeing this… he became convinced that Dante was an actual decent fighter.
Alexander approached, gave the twitching Beast a look, and then turned toward Dante again. Dante was indeed injured, but sadly, Alexander couldn't do anything about it. Those wounds would have to wait until they reached the other knights. "It is about to die; listen to the back of your head if you hear anything. Something like [Cleansed in the Name of God] or [Seared by the Divine Flames]."
Dante was more worried about his own wounds, but he wasn't going to complain now. No matter how he looked at Alexander, it was clear that this man couldn't bandage his own finger, let alone another person. Man up, swallow the pain, and focus on reaching help first. So, at this moment, Dante couldn't understand what Alexander was talking about.
As the Beast stopped moving and the glowing orb in its chest faded, a voice rang in the back of Dante's head just as Alexander told him.
[Soul Harvested and Cleansed]