Many martial skills are derived from watching nature.

~Cernunnos, Lord of the Wild Things

Hundreds of kilometers from the shameless couple, Colossus stepped forward and swung its massive sword, slaying Scath by the hundreds. The people who escaped to Sanctuary watched from the gate platform above.

A blue glow suffused the stone statue, but it was so faint no one noticed it at first. The Shadowmen that climbed on the Colossus were melting, creating a similar effect to Hooligan’s glove. After a time, the glow was visible as it became brighter and brighter in the darkness below. However, the mist from the giant stone man soon filled the entire entrance.

“What is happening?” A person with poor eyesight couldn’t see the Shadowmen, but he could clearly see the Colossus fighting something.

“An army of vicious shadows are trying to swarm Sanctuary.”

“Not just Sanctuary, the entire realm is covered with those things. I was in the far south and was nearly overrun by those things. Two of my group didn’t survive.”

“Same with the north.”

More and more people were commenting on their experiences.

“They are called Scath, or you’d know them as Shadowmen,” a new arrival said. More than a few people wanted to refute the person, claiming they were just a myth, but looked below and shut their mouths.

“Looks like the statue has the means to destroy them. We should be fine.”

The Colossus moved further and further away from the entrance, spreading out the mist-like aura and melting as many of the Shadowmen as possible. At first, no one knew what it was doing, but after the Colossus’s sword cut through dozens of trees, it exposed the rift.

The massive stone sword was stabbed through the rift, and a blinding white light flashed from inside. Ghostly wails came from the other side, and the rift contracted erratically. The violent disruption caused the rift to fluctuate dangerously, and the Colossus withdrew his sword. Before it could pull it all the way out, the top of the stone blade was sheered off, and the resulting explosion even sent the giant stone statue back dozens of meters.

Afterward, the Scath screeched inconsolably before scattering. Some still tried to contend with the Colossus, but thousands escaped into the realm, leaving the others unsure what to do.

***

Crow was still naked when he stepped outside the tent. He almost stumbled over in shock. The formation he set was still in place, but Shadowmen completely surrounded it. Hell, there were even some standing on top of others. If this many had consistently attacked the barrier, it would have collapsed long ago. Instead, they just leaned against it.

“What the hell?”

“What are you shouting about?” Hooligan called out from inside the tent.

“Me? It was your screaming that brought this calamity on us. The shit that came out of your mouth must have attracted all of them.”

“You damned fool, what calamity?” Hooligan asked and pushed aside the tent flap and saw that not only was the barrier surrounded, but there were some even crawling on it. “You can’t blame that on me. If you were more man than beast, I wouldn’t be limping right now, and I definitely would not have spouted—”

Crow couldn’t stop laughing. “Relax. The barrier blocks sound from escaping.”

“What’s wrong? Other than you not wearing clothes again.” Hooligan could see Crow was on edge.

“How soon would you say it is before dawn?”

“Oh…” Hooligan figured it out. The Shadowmen weren’t leaving, sunrise wasn’t far off, and false dawn had come and gone. “What changed?”

“The only possibility is that their rift was destroyed,” Crow said, thinking about the time he destroyed one. It killed thousands of those things, but the rest had scattered, looking for shelter. “We just need to wait until sunlight.”

“That won’t kill them,” Hooligan said.

“I know, but it will greatly weaken them, which gives us a fighting chance. I can’t maintain this formation indefinitely.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Only option we have is to fight toward a Shrine. I’ll create a gap, and then we’ll run toward where you think you saw the next Shrine. If we are lucky, we can reach it before dark…”

They waited another two hours until they could see the sun in the sky before acting. Crow readied his bow and Star Arrow. “Which direction?”

Hooligan pointed roughly northwest, and before she could speak, he released the arrow.

Boom!

When his arrow exploded, dozens of the Scath disintegrated, and it blasted others back, creating a pocket free of the Shadowmen. The barrier came down, so those creatures that were crawling on it previously also fell at the same time.

“Go,” Crow said, leading the way with his falcata already in hand. He didn’t care about obliterating them because he was more concerned about escaping their encirclement. His blade chopped while thorns grew out of the ground like ivy. Once it broke ground, it spread like wildfire. He didn’t spare his mana as he tried to raise a thorn wall behind him.

The basics of the spell were largely within his grasp, but between the artifact’s ability and the random spell theory he developed, the wall was grossly inefficient. The only reason he could cast it was because of his Druid’s cultivation method that used his mana and the ambient mana that could support it. Since he was inside a forest, there was plenty of Wood Mana nearby.

“You lead,” Crow ordered, grasping her shoulder and pushing Hooligan in front of him. “I’ll protect our rear, so focus on finding the Shrine.”

Hooligan didn’t object. She knew her artifact skill wasn’t all that helpful in combat in its current iteration. The only things she had were her fists and close combat.

Crow’s falcata was covered in dark fire, and he used it to cut through the eyes of the Shadowmen that got too close. He listened to Hooligan’s advice and found it highly effective at taking them out.

“Aim for areas where the trees are thinnest. They are using the thick overhead canopy to recover some of their strength,” Crow ordered while hacking more of them down, and his spells were weakening. Instead of creating walls, he settled on trip lines between trees.

On a whim, he did what that Hawthorn lady did and covered his back with woven, thorn-covered vines. It wasn’t the greatest armor, but it was effective.

“These damn things are everywhere,” Hooligan growled. “Be ready, there are some of them ahead of us, and the Shrine is on the other side of them.”

“Can you use a sword?” Crow asked.

“Yes.”

“Take this,” Crow said and handed over his falcata. “Cover our rear. I’m going to clear us a path. Straight ahead, yes?”

“Yes,” Hooligan nodded, taking the blade in hand, and Crow stumbled when he saw her swing it while slicing three of the Scath down in one swing. The blade moved so fast that even with Crow’s enhanced vision, he barely saw the silvery streak.

“What the hell?”

“Gravity manipulation,” Hooligan laughed. “It can make things heavier or lighter.”

Crow nodded, understanding the concept immediately. Still, she moved so agilely that she could have been a little bunny. “A hooligan rabbit…” Crow muttered to himself while chuckling.

“What did you say?” Hooligan asked, looking at Crow’s back suspiciously.

“No-nothing,” Crow shook his head.

“It sounded like you called me a rabbit…”

“Pfft, that’s silly,” Crow chuckled nervously.

“Where I come from, there is a type of hare with one of two types of personality. One is hyper-aggressive to the point of attacking everything recklessly, while the other is a runner who flees from danger. It is said that thirty percent of these hares are the aggressive type. These rabbits are the death warriors of their herds, so the runners can get away safely and keep propagating.”

Crow almost stopped running so he could stare at Hooligan but didn’t dare do so. What kind of nonsense was that? Was she saying she was a death warrior hare?

“The thing is, these warrior hares, you’d think they would die going against bigger predators, but you’d be wrong. Their feet pack enough power to send enemies flying. Even beasts bigger than them fear going against these little beasts.”

“Oh? I’ve never heard of any rabbits like that. What is the name of these beasts?”

Hooligan chuckled. “Why? Are you admitting you called me a rabbit?”

“That… hehe,” Crow didn’t deny it but wasn’t about to admit it. He felt something was off with her.

“They are called the Hooligan Hares.”

Crow stopped, and she ran into him. “Are you messing with me?”

Hooligan punched him hard in the chest, sending Crow staggering back a few steps. “That was the lowest form of the Hammer Fist, which a martial expert derived after observing those hares for most of his life. You tell me… am I messing with you? You can review the strike later, and when you do, you’ll see the similarities between it and a rabbit’s back foot slamming down on the ground—or its enemies. Now run!”

Stopping was foolish, so he listened and kept moving forward. They broke away from the line of trees into a clearing with the Shrine in the center. The problem was there were at least a hundred Scath between them and their destination.