Devour

Every time the flying calamities approached, Nathan began to have more doubts in his heart.

'Are you sure you want to stay? You have no obligation to be here' Amelia whispered inside his mind.

Amelia's words sounded slightly tempting, but even if he wanted to leave, it was too late.

The calamities reached them.

Like a wave, the calamities crashed against them without mercy. Nathan cut off several, but many others crashed into his arms, legs, and torso.

The calamities were not particularly powerful, so their blows did not harm him at all. The problem came when a calamity that had survived the crash into his body got up, approached his leg, and took a bite out of it.

Nathan noticed the bite and kicked the calamity before cutting another one off. Feeling the burning in his leg from the calamity's bite, Nathan frowned as he realized that the calamity's intention was not to hurt him, but to devour him.

The calamities that fell alive were trying to get close to him to bite him and no matter how much he killed, they kept coming.

Along with him, Jean and the other mercenaries were also killing as many calamities as they could, but little by little they were beginning to be overwhelmed by the stupid amount of them.

While Nathan was cutting down a calamity, one of the mercenaries near him cried out in pain and before anyone noticed, his leg was being devoured by the calamities.

The mercenary from before who had been the first to act approached the mercenary on the ground and tried to help him... but it was too late.

At some point the mercenary had stopped screaming, so Nathan looked at him for a second and when he saw the completely mangled and devoured body of the mercenary he realized that they were in worse trouble than he had thought before.

Nathan had no choice but to make the essence flow through his body to prevent the bites of the calamities from hurting him so much.

One bite might not be a problem, but a hundred would definitely kill him.

Slowly the rooftop floor was filling up with small pterodactyl corpses and unnoticed by anyone among them, the corpses were starting to move in one direction.

'There's just too damn many of them!' Nathan complained as he sliced through several calamities with a single cut.

It was impossible to see through a certain range where all he could see around him were calamities and more calamities, so he didn't know if they kept coming or not.

"They won't stop coming, we have to do something!" the man shouted, to which Jean smacked his lips grunted in annoyance.

"If you have any ideas I'm willing to listen to them!"

No one said anything else including Nathan.

He was trying to find a solution, but simply couldn't see how to put an end to the hundreds of calamities that kept trying to eat them alive.

The other mercenaries were barely holding out, but not by much. It was then that Nathan encountered one of the mercenaries, who had bites all over his body, some of them quite deep.

The mercenary gave him a glance before he continued to cut the calamities without having time to take his focus off the fight. Then, before Nathan could cut another calamity, he saw the upper half of the mercenary's body being devoured.

Nathan's eyes widened as he saw the large calamity that had appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the rooftop.

The large calamity split the mercenary's body in two parts and lifted its head so that the mercenary's upper body fell down its throat before swallowing him.

'What is that thing?!'

The calamity was about three meters tall, and very similar to small pterodactyls. In fact, it was basically an enlarged form of them.

The only difference between the two calamities was that the large pterodactyl had parts of its body missing, as if patches of flesh and skin were missing, leaving some of its bones exposed.

Nathan focused on the chest of the large calamity, where a black heart the size of a soccer ball was beating rhythmically, then the flesh around the calamity's chest began to regenerate rapidly, completely covering its heart seconds later.

Nathan didn't have to think twice, the calamity before him was a special category calamity of the first rank... about to rise to the second rank.

Nathan had faced worse, but seeing the calamity's regenerative power he wasn't sure how to deal with it.

If there was one good thing about the appearance of the big calamity, it was that the other small calamities had moved away from them, creating a space for Nathan and the special category alone.

Nathan frowned, trying to remember what kind of calamity was in front of him. But after a couple of seconds of thinking, he clicked his tongue as he realized that he was facing a calamity of which there was no record.

A nervous smile slowly formed on his face.

'Isn't it perfect? It's not every day I get to name a calamity'