Chapter : 57 Monster

"I was a fool to think I could kill this monster," Axton muttered grimly. The words slipped from his lips, heavy with regret and despair. 

Around him lay the broken bodies of imperial soldiers, a testament to his miscalculation.

He had considered the assassin as a way to achieve higher ranks in the imperial military. 

But that was a huge mistake.

Instead of being a stepping stone, the assassin had become a death trap for him and the deployed soldiers, a nightmare incarnate.

After the assassin nearly wiped out the company he commanded, he had fled from the building and had sent a signal for reinforcements. 

After his call, almost three hundred troops, heavily armed and confident, were dispatched. Their mission was clear: kill the assassin at any cost.

Axton felt bitter as they arrived with their commanding officer. The commander mocked him and laughed at his expense. 

Now all his glory would belong to the bastard who commanded this vast company and reaped the benefits. 

But it was okay. As long as he killed the assassin who had decimated his soldiers, Axton would be satisfied, although the bitterness would remain in his heart.

With that thought, he had remained near the building entrance, listening to the voices coming from inside with his two men. 

He had thought the assassin should be dead with the force of more than three hundred soldiers. But horror had struck again when a fleeing soldier ran towards him, slamming into the wall in his hurry.

Axton had ordered his men to give the soldier water to wake him up and inquire what had happened. 

The soldier, covered in blood, screamed after waking up and tried to flee again, so he slapped him hard to calm him down.

After that, the soldier had regained some sanity. He explained what had happened inside while shivering.

He told Axton that after arriving inside the building, the assassin had struck with deadly precision. 

She had used their own weapons against them, sowing confusion and terror. Moving through the shadows with uncanny stealth, she turned soldier against soldier. 

Then the air was filled with the screams of men cut down by their comrades' fire, manipulated into shooting one another in the chaotic darkness. 

Traps detonated with lethal force, and poisoned blades claimed those who strayed too far from their squads.

As dawn neared, over three hundred soldiers lay dead, victims of her ruthless slaughter.

The few survivors, those who had watched their friends fall by their own hands, were left broken and shattered. 

But the assassin was relentless, a force of nature. Each shot from her gun tore through flesh and bone with mechanical precision. 

After she had killed almost a hundred men, she had taken out a large pair of scissors and killed each of them like butter with no resistance. 

Even the bullets were useless against her as she used her scissors to block their attacks. The corridor was now a macabre gallery of carnage, bodies strewn haphazardly, blood pooling in the flickering fluorescent light.

Even those with melee weapons were no match against that monster. 

Lastly, she had ripped their commander's head off his shoulders, which made the man run for his life.

After the soldier finished telling this eerie news, Axton immediately shouted for a retreat. His voice trembled with desperation and terror. 

His soldiers, once firm with their guns ready, were now a scattered, fleeing mess. The realisation hit him like a sledgehammer.

He had to escape from this monster.

But luck was not with him. Just as he shouted, footsteps along with a scraping sound echoed in his ears, and from deep within the building, a crimson-haired woman came into view. 

Dragging a pair of bloody scissors, she walked slowly, completely drenched in red and with torn clothing.

Axton began to tremble as he realized the red was not from her clothes or hair, but the blood of the dead soldiers. 

His legs grew weak, all the strength to run sapped away. He knew it was futile to run from this monster, but he still ran towards the entrance. 

As his vision went towards the entrance, he could see that the soldier he had slapped earlier had already fled and his soldiers were just a few inches away from the entrance.

"You bastards!!! Stop running and fire at this monster," he shouted in despair.

But he halted his run as he heard a guttural, beastly growl echo from outside, freezing his blood. 

"GRRRR!!"

At the entrance, even the two men came to a sudden halt, as if they were met with something horrifying outside. With trembling steps, they started to slowly retreat.

"GRRRR!!"

Then, from the dark entrance, it emerged—a monstrosity that defied nature.

Its nine eyes glowed with a malevolent light. Its tentacles, long and sinuous, writhed from its body, each tipped with razor-sharp barbs. 

The creature's enormous mouth oozed with foul saliva, containing a bloody hand and menacing rows of sharp teeth, foreshadowing a horrifying fate.

With a moment of stillness, the creature suddenly pounced, ensnaring a soldier's neck with its coiled tentacle and delivering a bone-crushing snap. 

It moved its head, and another tentacle emerged, piercing through the other soldier's chest, lifting him and tossing him aside like a broken toy.

Axton tried to raise his rifle, but the beast was too fast. A tentacle slammed into him, knocking the weapon from his hands. 

He looked up, paralyzed by fear, as the creature's maw descended upon him. 

CRUNCH!!

With that, Sergeant Axton died.

.

Sheele looked at the scene, sensing an imminent threat far beyond what she had just faced. 

Her hand moved instinctively, her oversized pair of scissors gleaming ominously in the dim light.

As the creature's tentacle moved towards her, she instantly used Extase to slice the ugly appendage from its body. 

SHIKK

But after she severed the tentacle, another one grew in its place.

"GRRRRR!!!!" the creature roared in annoyance.

The monstrosity swung its tentacles again with ferocious speed, each striking a blur in the dim light. 

Dodging with agility, Sheele danced around the strikes, her eyes fixed on the creature, tightly gripping Extase, poised for a counterattack.

The battle carried on, the hallway a frenzy of motion and brutality. Sheele could sense her strength diminishing, her movements slowing down, her breaths growing ragged. 

The creature was relentless, its attacks unending, each one more savage than the last.

She could see the madness in its eyes, a malevolent intelligence that seemed to revel in the chaos and bloodshed.

Her heart pounded in her chest, adrenaline surging through her veins. 

"Hurry up, Bane," she said with ragged breath as she lunged forward towards the creature, its deadly maw opening wide.