Fresh Meat

The undergrowth shook as rapid movement and the pitter-patter of hurried feet rushed by, displacing leaves and knocking off ripe berries from the branches as the group of tiny bipedal creatures rushed out of the deepest neck of the woods and into more sunlit clearings. The thorns burst apart as the group of tiny humanoid creatures, green in colour with long pointy ears hurriedly ran away from what was pursuing them.

Occasionally they would look back to see how far away their predator was behind them, and more often than not they were disappointed at seeing that they they had not gained much ground on it. But now, having managed to clear the thickest parts of the forest where the large monster dwelt, the goblins paused to catch their breath for a moment, though they knew they could not do this for long. The particular monster that was after them was infamous for not stopping until it had caught the intruders that crossed into its home.

All they'd wanted was to hunt the larger rabbits their pack knew were living in that same area of the woods where the monster was. Usually, they'd keep to themselves but not too far from here was a man-made trail dug out by men that was used quite a lot at this time of the year. The goblins did not really understand why, but every year shortly after the winter time, humans and other mortals frequently migrated to some place west using the trail.

As such, it was customary for the humans to set up camp in the forest and they would help themselves to much of the quarry that lived around here. And it was usually then that their pack would go hungry as animals reacted very differently to humans than they did to monsters. As soon as mortals were seen in the forests, all the prey would move into deeper territory, seemingly more afraid of man than monster. And of course, as much as the goblins tried to chase away the humans when they did come this way, they could only do so much on an empty stomach.

It was not like their physical capabilities were on the level of their kin, those that still dwelt in the belly of the Mother, direct spawn of her glory instead of consequent breeding and gradual decay of abilities. The average human was stronger than they were. So more often than trying to chase humans away, they'd risk going into more dangerous territory to get at the nicer and bigger animals that lived there, with their mediocre wooden and stone tools.

They understood the risks that came with intruding on the territories of other monster species...but they were sure they'd be able to avoid the one currently on their heels. And the goblin leading the pack was not intent on coming back to these neck of the woods for a long time yet. Just as he was getting his troop to start running again, there was a burst of commotion in the trees ahead of them and they clutched their weapons tightly as they braced themselves to be cornered by something large and powerful enough to knock down the trees ahead of them.

The monster on their flank and now something about to bear down on them from the front...it really wasn't their day today was it?

...

The canopy was broken by the most bizarre creature to find in these parts...in any parts really. A large pink elephant, its large ears having a red trim and there being golden round markings on its face, knees and back rushed through the trees and came barrelling towards them...and with it a tsunami of water at its feet as it ran as fast as it could towards the goblins. They could do nothing but freeze at this raging behemoth running towards them unprovoked for no reason apparent.

One thing odd about this elephant though (if it wasn't odd enough already) was the condition it appeared to be in. There were what appeared to be several craters in the sides of its bodies, like some small object had collided with it's body with such force that the body was not able to return to its normal shape because of the internal damage dealt. There were also what appeared to be several bloody cuts and slashes across its body, as if a human had taken sword and cut out pounds of flesh all across its body.

Its eyes were wide and bloodshot with agony, rage and fear as it turned its head around momentarily like it had sensed something.

The goblins had no time to react as a dark something flew out of the treetops and into the air before changing direction and dive-bombing the elephant right in the head, forcing its head to smash into the ground and stumble off of its feet. Its momentum carried it forwards as its skull dug out a trench in the now soaked soil as the mysterious water that seemed to expel itself from the elephants feet flushed across the undergrowth and carried away the goblins in the direction they'd come like the tide of the sea had just come in.

The elephant's body soon came to a stop as its eyes rolled back and it stilled, going unconscious at having an object buried in its forehead. But not so much an object as it was now revealed to be a person in a cloak, very much human looking who had their feet on top of the elephant's cranium...while a very long trident in their hand was buried in the forehead of the elephant. This trident was far taller than the person was, and the person was as a matter of fact considerably tall themselves.

Perhaps standing at about 6'3, even with the blade of the trident stuck in the elephant's brain, the shaft towered over them still about two to three feet higher. The person grunted as they twisted the trident deeper into the elephant's skull before pulling it out and flicking the blood off.

"Another one subdued." They muttered before a strange phenomenon took place.

Because they were still beneath the treeline, the sun cast down many shadows of the leaves from above, providing nice and cool shade to relax in for those that wanted it. The darkness of those shadows however seemed to intensify and become darker, until those shadows themselves seemed to become more solidified, and then reality seemed to blink in confusion as those same shadows transformed into a black liquid.

As the shade had covered much of the area where the elephant's still body had come to rest, it was soon consumed by this...shadow-sludge, sparing only the person now who didn't even seem to be bothered as the body of the elephant sank into the shadows like quicksand. The only recognition they gave it was that they stuck their trident into the same fluid and the trident was absorbed into the ground seemingly, or rather into the liquid shadows before all the dark matter receded and light returned to the forest floor.

The goblins groaned as they sat up and shook off water from themselves. Looking down at their tools, they found them completely soiled and broken in several places. Their instruments of hunting completely wrecked...and they had nobody to blame now that the elephant had disappeared. All they had to look to was the elephant's apparent pursuer whose face was hidden in the shadow of their cloak. They lifted their gloved hand out of the folds of their cloak as the fabric split apart revealing their body.

Their physique was somewhat slim and lean, yet by no means appeared skinny or scrawny. One would imagine that they did have quite a bit muscle underneath the tunic and the breastplate they were wearing, but not too much to stand out. A more intelligent being than the goblins would realize that this person's body was built to capitalize on speed, but in no means skimp on raw force and brute strength. No, this person did appear to pack a good punch, if the craters their fists left on the elephant was anything to go by.

The arm that pulled itself free from the cloak revealed itself to have vambraces strapped onto the long sleeve of an undershirt, and the long fingers that appeared to wrap around the person's chin were gloved in black leather. Whoever this person was did not even seem to notice or acknowledge the goblins being there. Instead he wrapped those long fingers around his chin and looked to the sky in thought.

"That makes about 6 shikigami now." They said to themselves. "Just four more to go...though, realistically I have all the puppets I really need. And then there is the concern about the last one..." They seemed to trail off in deep thought as the goblins shook themselves of their fear, only for them to be filled head to toe with it as crashing noises came from the deep woods again.

The monster that had been originally chasing them was now back on their heels again. Not wanting to spend any more time in its war path than necessary, the goblin leader clutched at the thick branch that doubled down for him as a club and leapt at the person, trying to swipe them out of their way so they could escape. But as he swung downwards with his club, it for some reason stopped dead a few inches away from the human, almost as if it had a hit an invisible wall of some sort. But if it had hit a wall, one would expect the club to bounce off and yet it only stopped straight in its track as the goblin to came to a halt. The little monster stayed there suspended for a few moments before it slid to the floor and stared between its club and the person in confusion.

"Hm?" The figure turned to the goblin and seemed to make eye contact for the first time. Red eyes glowed from the shadows of the hood as they pierced the goblins soul, making its blood freeze in horror as something about the stranger's demeanour completely paralysed him. They had an unnerving presence to them, something dark and horrible, cold and twisted, malicious and cursed even as the very air around the two seemed to become ice.

On instinct, the goblin knew for certain that he had tried to attack was what by no means a normal mortal. His foolish companions however decided to adopt a herd mentality as they too jumped towards the figure, only to hit the same mysterious and invisible barrier between them and person. Because the person kept his eye contact with the goblin leader, the other goblins continued to try and assault him as he stood in their way and because they believed that he had incapacitated their leader and the only way to save him was by taking the person down.

But no matter what they did, none of their feeble attacks passed through this invisible wall. Finally the stranger seemed have enough as he muttered one syllable.

"{Kai}"

All the goblins paused as each could have sworn that they'd heard a clang of metal, though the person did not seem to draw any weapon. That would matter little to them though as pain suddenly flared throughout their entire bodies as bloody grid lines covered them from head to toe before they all eventually exploded in splatters of blood and cubes of flesh...as if they'd been diced like a chef would dice onions.

The person stuck out their hand and caught one little dice of goblin flesh between their long fingers. They held it up to where their nose would be and sniffed for a moment, curious as to the aroma and the taste this meat could possibly have. They popped it into their mouth and chewed the little morsel for a moment, critiquing the burst of flavour before grunting and spitting it out.

"Repulsive." They commented. "Well, goblins definitely won't be on my menus, that's for sure. Even in this world they're nasty."

They looked up to a sudden crashing through the shrubbery as a large figure burst through with heaving pants and a guttural roar as it entered the clearing. The beast looked around the area it had found and saw only the person in the cloak standing there, making obvious eye contact with them while around them were splatters of blood. And if the beast's nose was accurate, then it knew that those splatters were goblins' blood. Perhaps the same goblins that had trespassed into its home.

Well, that was its job done then. But now the beast had to deal with this person standing there watching him with no apparent fear in their demeanour. They only seemed to observe it with intrigue and interest, not a modicum of terror in its mannerisms as the beast was usually accustomed to getting from humans and the like that crossed paths with him.

"A surface minotaur." The person said, though the monster could not understand him. "I see. So those insects were running away from you. I was wondering why they were all standing there like the dumb beasts they are...well to me at least, all of you are the same."

Tired of the strange sounds it was hearing coming from the person's mouth, the ten foot creature roared and swung a massive branch in its hand at the person. The cloaked figure merely sidestepped the blow as it glanced by the folds of their clothes and the weapon slammed into the ground beside them.

"To most people, you are an incredible threat, one that would take a team of big strong men to take down, preferably equipped with spears and bows so they could stay as far away from you as possible." The minotaur roared as it tried to punch the person but they dodged it nimbly and span on their heals as they danced away from the minotaur, prompting it to follow them as it began to swing wildly in desperate attempt to hit them. They continued speaking.

"To those that would actually hunt you down, I'd assume they'd be after something like your ivory horns, or perhaps your furry pelt. I would suppose just your skull would be prize enough, a pretty little decoration to mount on some prick's wall." The minotaur swung the branch upwards at an angle, hoping to catch them in the face but the person's hand came up and grabbed the branch. The minotaur felt like he'd just hit something as immovable as a mountain and its arm jarred most painfully at the elbow. Being the dumb beast it was however, it tried to wrestle its weapon from the person's grasp, although to little avail. "I however take other kinds of interests in your kind."

The person pulled on the branch so suddenly that the minotaur was pulled right off its feet and swung around as the person effortlessly hurled him headfirst into the trunk of a tree. 440 pounds of flesh and bone just casually tossed aside as if the person were merely casting a twig aside. More damage was done to the tree than the minotaur of course, but it was still left with an annoying buzzing inside its head as the tree fell down and it rubbed the sore spot between its horns.

It shook itself and leapt to its feet, grabbing the base of the fallen tree and swinging it around in a wide arc to catch the person off guard. But the person phased out of sight as the tree trunk simply passed through an apparition, or an afterimage. They reappeared, deftly balancing on the makeshift superweapon in the minotaur's hand as it growled at them.

"Plenty of muscle around those arms. Bound to have a lot of juice. I'd imagine those traps are good meat too." The person said as they studied the minotaur keenly. The beast had no idea what the person was saying.

Perhaps it was time to stop saying person, because it most definitely was a male. A monster had basic enough cognisance that it could tell between the two sexes amongst the mortal races.

But coming back to the subject, the minotaur had absolutely no idea of what the boy was saying...yet it instinctively knew that there was something wrong and unsettling about what the boy had just said. It began to shake the tree in its arms vigorously, trying to throw the boy off but it looked like the boys feet were stuck to the tree like glue. His feet remained in contact with the tree like he were standing on normal ground. 

The minotaur grit its teeth and pulled on the tree so it would move past him and bring the boy closer to him. It reached out to try and grab the boy's head with its bare hands hoping to perhaps crush his skull. But once again, the boy phased out of existence, moving with such speed that it looked like his body had just vibrated into thin air. The minotaur stared confusedly as the tree trunk fell to the ground and its fingers grasped at empty.

There was a sharp smacking sound as the minotaur was made to jump forwards in surprise, clutching its rear and as burning pain inflamed its butt. There stood the boy, flexing his hand right after quit literally smacking a minotaur's ass. The bovine monster blinked rapidly at the boy, trying to figure out what was going on here.

"Not much fat to really be found on you, at least from an outside perspective. All that fur could be hiding valleys of white gold in your flesh." The boy said, still continuing his weird assessment. "But you do have quite the firm rump. I should be able to get some nice topside steaks from you as well...maybe even some lean round steaks if you truly are anything like a cow. By the way, are you male or female? It's hard to tell. I know you monsters breed out here in the surface but I still have not come across any surface monster with the special package between your legs."

The minotaur blew steam from its nose and grunted before lowering itself to all fours and kicking its back legs, snorting to itself all the way as veins bulged out of its muscles in its apparent anger.

"You want to take me seriously now." The boy said. "That could be an honour, depending on who it is your trying to get that message across to." The minotaur charged with its horns put forward as the boy merely caught them in his hands and made the minotaur stop dead in its tracks. It tried pushing forwards more using its legs but it only served to dig deep ruts in the wet ground. It felt like it had just charged an immovable wall.

"Seriously though, if you're a dude, where are your testicles?" The boy wondered to himself, not even slightly winded while holding off this force of nature. The minotaur had charged hard enough to put a hole through a bank vault door and yet the boy simply seemed to stare off to the side, not at all bothered by how much push force the minotaur was generating. "Animal testicles are good for hair-growth. This new body of mine doesn't have all that much to be honest, so I would suppose testosterone rich foods would be in good order...then again, those rules would apply if I were still human. Who knows now?"

The minotaur bellowed and grabbed at the boy's sleeve. It managed to pull the boy off his feet and just as it was about to try and volley the boy's body through the canopy, it screamed as that very arm holding the boy was suddenly severed with the sensation of a sharp sword slicing right through the limb, bone flesh and all. At the same moment, the boy disappeared yet again. With its other hand, it gripped the stump and shrieked as the exposed pink flesh eventually began to fill with blood. The arm had been sliced off so fast that blood had not even been given enough time to flow to the site of the wound.

But soon enough, the grass was being stained red with a river of blood cascading from the stump as the minotaur fell to its knees in pain. It looked around for where the boy might have disappeared to before it found him, sitting on a branch with a leg hanging off.

"I'd imagine even a brainless brute like you...would miss his arm."

The boy held the bleeding limb out from behind his back and the minotaur's bloodshot eyes grew wider in its outrage. The boy then turned it over and stared at the stump, flicking out the blood and examining the meat.

"Huh? Well what do you know...that is some really good marbling. Guess you aren't lean all over after all." The boy put a finger to his chin in thought. "Do you guys conserve fat during winter? Or do you just binge eat all the time? But then again, wagyu cows have such great meat because of all the physical endurance. You must endure quite a lot being in the wild and all...you've got some A3 quality going on here."

The minotaur grimaced as it bellowed, using its roar attack. This attack was dangerous to most people as it had the ability to freeze those who heard it in place. Even adventurers of level 1 and level 2 calibre could be rendered motionless from the blast of a minotaur's roar. The trees swayed and the leaves tumbled to the ground under the minotaur's loud bellow. The beast hoped to hear the thud of the boy's body as it fell out of the tree paralysed, like it did with much of the prey it hunted. But no sound came after its roar, and it found that the boy was still where he was in the same place.

"I suppose I should put you out of your misery." The boy said. "After all, it'll be time for me to camp soon and I'm hungry. You clearly have good marbling, so I'm going to have to harvest whatever juicy cuts I can get from you." The boy dropped out of tree and began calmly walking over to the minotaur and it charged again hoping to impale the boy in one last attempt to finish this confrontation in his favour.

The boy simply smiled and sped up his own processing speed as the minotaur started to move in slow motion for him. As the beast caught up to him, he stepped to the side and placed a finger on the side of its neck.

"{Hachi}"

The minotaurs throat suddenly burst opened, as if someone had taken a knife and just slashed across its neck. It fell to the ground as blood spurted out like a geyser, its muscles spasming and its legs kicking as its eyes rolled around in its head, the life slowly but sure being drained out as a still beating heart continued to pump more blood outside of the body through the wound.

"Bleed out the meat, and it will be clean." The boy said to himself. "I don't imagine I can get sick now...but if you do happen to have any illnesses in you, I'd rather that no blood remains in your flesh when I cut it up to save as my meals later on." The boy then kneeled down and the minotaur saw the glowing red eyes, and shining white teeth appeared as a demented smile appeared from within the shadows of the hood. "Also, watching you squirm so helplessly as death clutches you by the throat, your life fading away as you know you have no hope of survival, destined to just become a slab of meat on my cutting board..." The smile became smaller but somehow even more sadistic. "...it really gives me a kick."

The boy stood up and looked around.

"This clearing is a good place for me to make camp. You just lie down there and die, nice and slowly while I go and find something to make a fire with. Don't worry, I'll be back in time to cook you up into something delicious. I'll be sure to use up every edible part of you...that is how we chefs respect the dead. Ciao." The boy gave the minotaur a peace sign before walking off.

It could only stare at the boy's back as he walked further and further away. Its jugular had been slit and so therefore, dying was not as painful as it usually would be. But that only added to the fear of its death as it felt the warmth of its blood pool around its body, leaving nothing but a cold empty shell behind. Before long, the minotaur's eyes stopped spinning around, and came to a halt as the monster breathed its last and finally succumbed to the darkness.

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