Slipping effortlessly beneath the flying beast, her small hand snatched a heavy, rusted shard of metal straight from the wet dirt. She dragged the jagged edge perfectly across the monster's exposed belly as it sailed past her face.
Dark blood sprayed across the freezing wind. She was already sprinting toward her next target before the ruined corpse even hit the ground.
"Witness my absolute power! Secret Heavenly Dragon Severing Void Strike!" Ruke screamed at the top of his lungs.
He swung his legendary sword like a complete maniac.
Relying entirely on raw, absurd brute strength, his crude club connected violently with a charging hound's snout. The beast's skull caved inward with a dull, wet thud. It dropped dead into the muck instantly.
"And now! Supreme Demon Annihilation... Uh... Double Crush!" Ruke yelled, completely running out of cool vocabulary.
He brought the legendary sword straight down onto another hound's head, flattening its snout against the mud.
"Take that! That's how amazing my legendary sword is." Ruke yelled.
Standing by the shattered door, Lushi rolled her eyes. "You literally just hit it with a stick, Ruke. Shut up."
"It's a secret technique!" he argued back, pointing his bloody firewood at the dark sky. "It requires immense spiritual focus!"
Anz crossed his huge arms and nodded slowly. "Umu."
---
Inside the mansion, the defensive line was holding. Anz stood like a stone wall in the doorway, using his massive arms to physically grab any hound that tried to squeeze past him, throwing them brutally back out into the yard. Sometimes, he used barrier magic.
Siti stood slightly behind him, tossing handfuls of strange, foul-smelling powder into the eyes of the beasts, causing them to thrash blindly and attack each other.
Overwhelmed by the sheer number of targets, Anz missed a single block.
A smaller, incredibly fast hound slipped right between the large boy's legs. It scrambled wildly across the rotted floor, its red eyes locking onto a crying little girl huddled near the back wall. The beast coiled its muscular hind legs and launched itself through the air, aiming straight for her throat.
Siti and Anz were completely overloaded holding the door. They could not turn around in time. The children screamed.
Standing by the pillar, Krai realized the monster was charging right past him. Complete panic seized his brain. To be a hero is not what he wanted. He just wanted to get away from the teeth.
Scrambling backward as fast as his tiny legs could carry him, Krai threw his weight toward the wall. His heel caught hard against the upturned edge of a severely rotted, loose floor.
He lost his balance entirely. Throwing his hands forward, Krai fell flat onto his face with a pathetic yelp, his nose slamming hard into the dirt.
The sudden, violent shift in weight pressed down on the back end of the loose plank. The front half of the heavy floor popped up from the ground like a catapult. The thick wood swung upward in a perfect, aggressive arc.
CRACK.
The leaping hound collided face-first with the rising floorboard mid-air. The brutal impact shattered the beast's nose and completely killed its momentum. Stunned and disoriented, the hound crashed heavily onto the floor, tumbling wildly across the dirt until it slid right into the back of Anz's heavy boots.
Without looking down, Anz raised his heel and stomped violently, crushing the beast's skull against the floor.
Pulling her hands away from her pouch, Siti turned around. Her eyes widened as she looked at the dead hound, then at the popped floor, and finally at Krai, who was currently groaning in pain on the ground.
"That's amazing, Krai-san," Siti gasped.