Hunting Time

The hallway was no longer a battlefield. It was a hunting ground.

Screams of fleeing students.

The wet sound of flesh being struck.

And the vulgar, mocking cries of goblins herding their prey.

"Haa, haa, haa…!"

Shinohara from Class 2-C ran down the hallway, not caring that her indoor shoes had slipped off.

Tears blurred her vision.

Behind her, she'd heard her friend's death throes.

She'd heard the sound of a boy who tried to help being grabbed by his limbs and dragged down.

Have to run. Have to run.

But where?

The stairs were blocked. Classrooms were locked.

The bathroom? The faculty room?

Panic was about to fry her thoughts.

"Eek…!"

Her feet tangled, and Shinohara tumbled pathetically.

Her chin struck the cold linoleum of the hallway.

She raised her face with a wince of pain, and there, right in front of her, were green feet.

"—Hih"

Looking up, a goblin stood there.

About elementary-school height, but its arms were thick as logs, and it gripped a blood-crusted iron pipe.

A weapon that had just bludgeoned someone to death.

Gii, gii.

The goblin made sounds in its throat, a twisted smile spreading.

It was enjoying itself.

Cornering weak prey, driving them to despair, using their terror as a spice before devouring them.

"N-no… don't come…"

Shinohara crawled backward, face a mess of tears and snot.

Her back hit a locker.

Dead end.

The goblin slowly raised its iron pipe.

(I'm going to die)

(Dad, Mom, help—)

The moment she squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the killing blow.

"—Keep your head down."

A voice like ice sounded right by her ear, cold and low.

Before Shinohara could react, a black shadow burst from beside her—from the shadow of the stairwell.

A man with his hoodie pulled low over his face.

In his hands was a long, black "mass of iron" unwrapped from rags.

The man stepped before the goblin, silent as a ghost.

"Gi…?"

The goblin reacted, trying to swing down its pipe.

Too slow.

Overwhelmingly, hopelessly too slow.

(Body Strengthening, 20% output.)

I silently fired the command in my mind.

The muscles in my feet contracted, generating a stomp that could crack the concrete floor.

Rotation from my hips, transmitted through my back to my arms. Then from my fingertips to the tip of the rebar.

The iron mass cloaked in mana screamed through the air.

"Burst."

FWOOSH!!

A horizontal slash.

The rebar's tip was drawn toward the goblin's temple as if magnetized.

—SPLATCH!!

What echoed through the hallway wasn't a hard impact.

It was the wet crushing sound of a ripe fruit being smashed with a full-swing metal bat.

Before Shinohara's eyes, the goblin's head had literally "vanished."

Eyeballs, filthy brain matter, hard skull and all.

Everything was pulverized by sheer physical force, reduced to a dark spray that painted a fan-shaped pattern across the hallway wall.

The green corpse, missing everything above its neck, stood frozen for an instant as if confused about what had happened. Then it collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

Silence returned.

The only sounds were Shinohara's hitched breathing and the drip, drip of blood falling from the rebar's tip.

"… …"

Shinohara watched the scene, mouth opening and closing.

She couldn't even scream.

Such overwhelming violence.

The monster that had been about to torture her to death had been reduced to a lump of meat in a single blow.

Rather than relief at being saved, what welled up first was a primal fear of the man in the black hoodie.

I gave the rebar a light swing, flicking off the brain matter and gore.

A red line streaked across the floor.

The feel was good. The magical coating was functioning properly.

No warping in the rebar.

"Whew…"

Under my hood, I let out a small breath.

Heart rate normal. No trembling hands.

This was my first living creature killed in this body, but no nausea, no guilt whatsoever.

All I felt was the satisfaction of a craftsman confirming his tools were in working order: "Finally getting my edge back."

This sensation. The feeling of severing flesh, crushing bone.

This had been my everyday.

"Hey."

I looked down at Shinohara, who had collapsed.

She was deathly pale, shaking violently.

She was trying to see my face, but the hood's shadow and the backlight made it impossible to make out.

"Th-thank you for saving… th-thank…"

"No thanks needed. Can you stand?"

"Y-yes…"

"Then get back to a classroom and make a barricade. This is still the middle of a 'hunting ground.' Stand around and more will come, drawn by the smell of blood."

I said it dismissively and turned my gaze to the corpse at my feet.

Shinohara let out a short "Hih" scream and looked away.

The green corpse was crumbling from its edges like burned paper, dissolving into black mist that melted into the air.

Dungeon monsters return to maso when they die.

Witnessing that supernatural phenomenon, Shinohara curled up smaller and trembled.

Leaving only the bloodstains clinging to the wall and a sludge-like puddle of fluids on the floor, the body itself was being ejected from the world.

Eventually the corpse vanished completely, leaving only a dark red blood pool and one crystal on the floor.

"… So there are drops."

I reached down without minding the blood and picked up the crystal.

A darkened crystal, about the size of a thumbnail.

A magic stone.

Shinohara was frozen, caught between the terror of watching a creature vanish before her eyes and distrust at seeing me casually loot it.

"Get moving. I've got harvesting to do."

I said coldly and tossed the magic stone into my jersey pocket.