Al opened his eyes wide as a torrent of blood sprouted from the end of Khan-Wan's neck where her head used to be, and her limp, lifeless body fell to the ground. Yuly fell to her knees, crying and muttering incomprehensively "N-no... it can't... wake up...I-I can fix you...Look..." as she pushed healing mana through her hands, not even bothering to use the horn.

Jiao fell on his butt, and was pointing at the body with his whole body shaking.

Koro was puking, his hands against a tree. Misty had woken up, and she was looking at the scene with groggy eyes. She had always been an extremely deep sleeper, but if only she'd been awake... she could have heard the monster coming. Al was enraged. This wasn't the first time he lost a comerade, but it had never happened so...suddenly.

Al looked at the black spike lodged onto a tree several meters ahead, after having plowed through another two. He couldn't understand what was going on, but he had to do something now.

"Koro! Grab Yuly and Jiao, we're going back to the orphanage!"

Koro took a while to snap out of it, but he picked up the crying Yuly, who was protesting by saying "St-stop...I-I have to heal her...no..." and carried her under one arm, then picked Jiao up with the other as he ran with all he had. Meanwhile, Al reached the black Spinegolin, that emitted a powerful dark aura and seemed to have been transformed completely. 'Rank 4? No, it's something different. This doesn't seem... natural.'

He couldn't be bothered to figure it out though, and instead charged at the beast, pushing his Squirrelic through its eye, shattering the bone layer behind the eyeball, and piercing straight through its brain. When he killed it he didn't stop there, and instead kept poking holes in it to vent his anger. The scales seemed to have lost some of their hardness, but the flesh seemed almost rubbery and spread out the force of Al's attacks, making the beast tougher in general.

Suddenly Al heard a yell that could only come from Koro, and he ran to the source, reprimanding himself for letting them run around without Al's protection. When he reached the scene he saw Yuly sitting on the ground, sobbing and hugging her legs, with Jiao crying his lungs out while hugging her. Koro had his sword half-embedded in the shoulder of a black Tusk-Tank, while the beast stepped on his other sword.

The Tusk Tank pushed against Koro and tried to ram one of his tusks into his chest, but Al tackled Koro, bringing them both to the ground and narrowly escaping the clash. 'The bastards have gotten stronger now that they're black.' Al then struck his rapier into the beast's half-open mouth from below and left the rapier embedded, making blood cover the two of them and making Al stumble a bit from losing the weight reduction. He pulled Koro out from there, and Koro quickly got back into gear as he picked up both his swords, then struck one into the boar's neck and used the other one to hammer the first blade in, killing it.

Al pulled out the Squirrelic and then picked Yuly up in a princess carry while Koro carried Jiao, Misty following close behind. They ran back with all they had, but it would still take almost half an hour to get there. Misty used her mind spells to deal with any Rank 2 monsters, and Al took care of the few Rank 3s, which in turn forced Koro to carry both Jiao and Yuly once again. After the third Rank 3 Al became winded, and even though he had about half of his mana left, every muscle in his body ached. He thought of asking Yuly to heal him, but seeing the state she was in, he quickly discarded the option.

Without a second thought, he put a point into Toughness and immediately felt relief. 'Fuck stat efficiency' he thought as he began running again.

After killing dozens of Rank 2s, Misty ended up running out of mana, and her stamina was also waning just from running along Koro. Her physical stats were about average for a Rank 3, but that was because her focus was on magic.

But then they finally saw the orphanage gate peaking from n between the trees. They ran forward with renewed vigor, and Yuly even gained a moment of clarity, long enough for Al to ask her for healing. She managed to restore not only Al, but Koro and even Misty, and just as she finished they arrived in front of the gate.

It was broken, but that was to be expected. However, when they saw what lay behind, any hope they once held crumbled into smithereens.

It could only be described as a sea of monsters.

There was more black than there was ground. Where the orphanage once stood, only a wreck of splintered wood and scattered stones remained. They all fell to their knees. Even Al, who had seen countless horrors, could not bear to see the place he had lived in for several years destroyed to this extent.

But suddenly, something woke Al up from his stupor. [They've spotted us! Run! Take cove-] Misty's telepathy was cut off, probably because she ran out of mana.

Al got to his feet as countless black spines rained down from the sky. Al grabbed Yuly, who was closest to him, and dived into the nearest tree, encasing her in his body to protect her. He felt the impacts, but surprisingly none hit him. 'Ah, the backpack.'

He looked at where the spines had landed, and saw Koro huddled into a ball, with five spines embedded in his backpack and one in his left calf. Misty was nowhere to be seen.

Then his eyes landed on Jiao. He was collapsed face down on the floor and had several spikes protruding out of his back and legs, it was unclear wether he was alive or not. Al ran up to him, but he sensed no movement of his chest, and no mana flow inside him. A spike was piercing the place where Al guessed his heart was at, and another one he hadn't seen at first went through his neck.

He was dead.

Just then Yuly seemed to come back to her senses, and ran up to Jiao. Al went to Koro, and pulled out the spines on his backpack along with the one on his calf. He managed not to shout from the pain, reducing it to a grunt. Al was preparing to bandage thee wound, but it started to slowly heal on its own. Checking the flow of mana, he realised it came from Yuly, who was pushing mana onto Jiao's corpse, but the mana simply flowed to the surroundings, curing Koro in the process.

But the tide of black beasts was coming, and there was no time to waste. Al once again picked Yuly by the waist and shouted for Koro to run. His injury wasn't fully healed, but that was the least of their worries.

Yuly was crying, saying things like "No... Jiao... We-we can't leave him... hic... go back... sob...please...the orphanage...everyone...Sob... Sorry..." but Al ignored her, despite how it pained him to do so, and ran forward. Misty had at some point gone out from where she was hiding, and now followed along too.

At the beginning they followed the path, but when the Tusk Tanks started to catch up with their charges they switched to weaving through the trees. Al could go extremely fast without baggage, but with a backpack and Yuly his maximum speed was reduced to just a bit higher than Koro and Misty.

His endurance was far lower however, and he was forced to put another point into Toughness after a short time. He put a point into Strength too, and he deemed it worth it.

They got showered with spines two times during the first 30 minutes of their escape. The first time they managed to crouch down in time and let the trees, their backpacks and Koro's swords act as shields, but the second time they were more winded. Al managed to barely hide behind a tree, but Koro got hit with a spine in the arm.

Al hastily bandaged it up, but it had made a deep wound, and they would need Yuly to heal him. Unfortunately, she had completely shut down, not speaking a word and just staying in fetal position with her eyes shut tight. Al had been patting her head and coaxing her to wake up, but if she'd heard him she hadn't reacted.

So they kept running. When they stopped hearing the sounds of trees being toppled from behind them they slowed down their pace, but they kept pushing forward. When the sun was settings and they had been escaping for several hours, they found the path to the village.

Al looked at Koro, who had been silent for a while, and told him "Let's go to the village. We'll think about what we should do from there."

They followed the path, and Koro mercilessly destroyed any Rank 2 beasts in their way. A couple of badger-pines managed to shoot spines at them, but the few that hit Al just caused light wounds, and he evaded most of them, Koro just took them straight, since they could barely get through his skin.

A Supra Bunny causes the earth beneath Al and Koro to collapse, but Al used two airborne Quicksteps in succession to get out. He was forced to use two due to the extra weight that was Yuly, and it took quite a bit out of his dwindling mana reserves. He had obviously been using Physical Enhancement and [Sense Enrichment] throughout the whole ordeal, and despite the heavy cost reduction it had slowly been sapping away at his mana. He decided to stop using [Sense Enrichment], since he had to economise.

When they reached the village, the sight that awaited them was something that Al had expected, but he still dreaded the sight of it. The ground was riddled with holes, many of which had bloodstains at the bottom. Black spines of different sizes were embedded on walls and floors alike, and some of the them were lying around coated in blood. Some walls even had perfectly circular holes poked into them, and gigantic black spikes lied near them.

But there was not a single corpse. 'They didn't even leave the bones... they were eaten whole.'

Al looked at Koro, then put a hand on his shoulder and said in a soft tone "Let's go to that two story house over there to spent the night, let's forget about all this until tomorrow."

They gloomily walked up to the building and walked up the stairs to the second floor, and found several blood pools. Al ignored them and walked to a double bed, then put Yuly down and lied down himself. He knew the most sensible thing was for one person to stand guard, but he just wanted to close his eyes and let sleep wash away all his sorrows.

That night, the trio's sleep was plagued with nightmares.