The rabbits didn't scream when they changed. That was the first thing Veronica noticed, because the process was so brutal that there should have been sound, there should have been so sign of pain, but the twelve creatures rely convulsed in silence while their bodies remade themselves from the inside out.
The muscles tore first. Not all at once, but layer by layer, as if sothing inside each rabbit were pushing with a force the skin simply couldn't contain, and what ca out wasn't blood, but new tissue, denser, redder, throbbing with an energy that had nothing natural about it.
Their silhouettes stretched. Their hind legs lengthened and straightened, their arms thickened until they lost all resemblance to animal limbs, and in a matter of seconds, what stood before Veronica were no longer rabbits, but sothing that only retained the ears of a rabbit and the rage built up in their red eyes.
Twelve humanoid figures, each covered in raw red muscle, with exposed flesh vibrating from the expansion their bodies had forced beyond any reasonable limit. No visible tumors. None of the marks all the previous rabbits had carried, as if this form were sothing different, sothing deeper.
Veronica looked at them one by one and then looked at the space around her. The five spiritual copies she had left after the previous fight were gone. They had been consud in the last exchange before she could do anything about it, and now the periter she had once felt as an extension of her own body was nothing but empty air and rock.
Twelve D-rank monsters. Alone. With her transformation running toward its limit and her lungs still heavy from the infection that kept moving forward slowly, but never stopping. She tightened her grip on the daggers and breathed. "(Getting to that damn rabbit is impossible with this in front of … I guess I don't have any other choice but to use this.)"
She didn't wait for them to move first. She took a step forward, and all twelve lunged at the sa ti, with a coordination that had nothing instinctive about it, as if soone had given the exact signal at the exact mont, and the space between her and the creatures vanished in less than a second.
She dodged the first strike by twisting her body to the side, letting the creature's fist brush past her shoulder, and answered by slashing upward with the dagger in her right hand, carving a long line into the monster's forearm that stained the blade red before the motion was finished.
The blood on the blade shimred with the sa blood magic that emanated from everything the black-and-white rabbit touched. Veronica noticed it and filed it away without stopping, because the next strike was already coming from the left, and it was faster than the previous one, more precise, as if the creatures were learning the way she moved in real ti.
She took that hit in the side. She didn't dodge it completely, and the impact shoved her half a ter to the right with a force that imdiately told her the muscles on those things weren't for show. She answered by slicing the creature's leg and drawing another thread of blood, then shifted away before the other two coming from behind could close in.
The pattern established itself quickly, and it wasn't a pleasant one. She cut, got blood, and took one hit for every two slashes she landed. The wounds she made weren't large, weren't lethal, and didn't stop any of the twelve for even a second, but they drew blood. That was all that mattered for now.
She ran her tongue along the left blade in the middle of the motion, between one dodge and the next counterattack, without stopping for even an instant. The creature's blood tasted of magic so concentrated that it burned her throat on the way down, but her body processed it imdiately and she kept moving.
Two creatures flanked her. The one on the right threw a hook she couldn't fully dodge, and the fist slamd into her shoulder hard enough for sothing to crack. Not a broken bone, but it was on the way there if she kept taking hits like that. She answered by opening the creature's cheek with a quick slash and backed off.
The twelve gave her no space. That was the difference between these and every rabbit she had fought earlier that night. The others attacked with montum, with rage, with the disordered energy of animals that had lost their fear. These attacked with geotry, closing space systematically, forcing her toward the center of the cavern without giving her any way to stop it.
She took another hit, this one in the hip, and then another in the back before she could turn. Each impact was a clear warning that her body, even with the transformation active, had a limit to the punishnt it could take, and that limit was coming faster than the tir would allow her to ignore.
She ran her tongue across the right blade. Four rabbits. Eight left. She kept moving, cutting, taking hits, piling up wounds that weren't closing as fast as before because her regeneration was splitting its energy between fighting the infection and repairing external damage at the sa ti.
The largest of the twelve moved ahead of the group and hit her in the chest with both hands together. The blow was so direct and so concentrated that Veronica went flying backward without being able to do anything to control it, crossing the cavern until her back slamd into the rock wall with an impact that shook her lungs and left an uneven crater in the stone behind her.
The dust took a few seconds to settle. Veronica was standing in the middle of the crater with one knee almost buckling, her body absorbing the impact in that last fraction of a second, the broken rock behind her leaving a silhouette that matched her exact shape. She looked at her daggers. Both blades were covered in blood.
She ran her tongue along the left blade. Then the right. Slowly, precisely, cleaning every inch of steel with a calm that wasn't acted at all, because in that mont it wasn't performance, it was calculation. All twelve. She had the blood of all twelve.
She took a step forward, leaving the crater. Dust still floated around her, and the twelve monsters stared at her from the center of the cavern with their glowing red eyes, waiting to see whether she could still move with all that force behind them.
"Hunt the wounded prey, follow the blood, bite the flesh."
{{Beast Magic X Beast Art: Alpha Hunt}}
The energy didn't rise gradually. It burst out all at once, so dense and so concentrated that the air around Veronica stopped feeling like air and started feeling like sothing with weight, sothing pushing outward from the center of her body and expanding through the cavern in every direction without anything being able to stop it.
The silver fur vanished. What replaced the elegance of silver was a deep, dark red that covered every inch of her body from the tips of her ears to her feet, a red that didn't shine, but absorbed what little light the cavern had and gave it back as heat, as pressure, as sothing with no precise na, but that any creature with instincts would recognize imdiately.
Her hands were no longer entirely hands. Her fingers had lengthened and hardened, her nails turned into curved claws that glead with the sa dark red as the fur, and when she clenched her fist, the sound was that of sothing very sharp against sothing very dense, without drama, without ceremony, just the sound of a tool that was ready.
The twelve monsters did not retreat. They did not feel the fear that would have frozen any creature with instincts of its own, because their instincts were not their own, but borrowed, directed from outside by the black-and-white rabbit that was still sowhere in the cavern watching. They charged just as before, with the sa geotry, with the sa coordination that wasn't theirs.
Veronica went to them before they could close the distance. She didn't wait, didn't calculate the optimal angle or look for the weakest flank, she simply went forward with the speed the skill gave her and reached the first one's throat before it had even finished raising its arm to strike.
Her claws found the throat and separated it. It wasn't a clean cut, nor sothing easy to describe quickly, it was simply the result of a force surpassing the creature's tissue resistance by a margin wide enough that the difference was imdiate and final. The monster fell before it could process what had happened.
The second ca from the left with a blow that landed on her jaw. The impact spun her, and she let the rotation continue, adding speed to it until she completed the turn and reached the creature's head with her mouth open. When her teeth closed, the result was as imdiate as the first. The monster's head was no longer where it had been.
She took three hits in a row to the back while she still had the second one's head between her teeth. She didn't dodge them because she never tried to, she let them connect and used the montum of the last one to launch herself at the third, reaching its torso before it could reposition and opening a line from shoulder to hip with her claws in one continuous motion.
The cavern wasn't trembling yet, but the ground was vibrating. The magic pouring from the monsters' bodies, released through the wounds Veronica kept opening in them, was building in the air and the rock with the density of sothing not ant to stay contained in a closed space. Every death added more pressure to the atmosphere.
Four. Five. The hits she was taking no longer felt the sa, not because they didn't hurt, but because the skill had pushed her threshold far enough that pain had beco information instead of an obstacle. It told her where the next blow was coming from, how hard, from what angle, and she used that information to position herself for the next attack.
Six. The largest creature caught her by the arm before she could slip away and slamd her into the ground hard enough for the rock beneath her to give. Veronica got back up before the dust settled, spat sothing red onto the floor, locked onto the creature, and went for it.
Seven. Eight. The ground shook harder, a long, deep cracking sound traveling from the center of the cavern to the walls and back, as if the rock were evaluating how much more it could take before making a decision about it.
That was when Veronica saw the black-and-white rabbit move. Not toward her, not toward the fight, but toward the ceiling, leaping with a precision that had nothing to do with panic, with magic concentrated in its legs to reach the hole they had co through at the start, the vertical shaft of dirt that connected the cavern to the surface.
Its claws caught the entrance to the tunnel, and it started climbing. Leap after leap, fast, without looking down, with the certainty of sothing that had already decided this battle was no longer its problem to finish.
Veronica saw it and stopped dodging. The four remaining monsters landed three hits on her in the ti it took her to process what the black-and-white rabbit was doing, but she was already calculating sothing else, ignoring the damage because she needed to finish this before that rabbit disappeared into the tunnel.
She went for the closest of the four and, instead of aiming for the throat, drove her claws directly into the sides of its head, one into each temple, and closed her grip. The creature fell, and Veronica was already turning toward the next one before she had even finished letting go of the first.
Another hit to the ribs. Another to the back. She absorbed them and answered with a sweep of her arm that split the tenth one from top to bottom, then turned to the eleventh and reached its neck before it could raise its guard.
Eleven. One left. The largest one, the one that had slamd her into the ground earlier. It placed itself between her and the tunnel with its arms spread wide and its red eyes locked on her, blocking the angle completely as if the black-and-white rabbit had poured all the attention it had left into that one body.
The ground shook again, harder. From above, from the tunnel, ca a small wet sound, the sound of sothing being expelled. Then silence for one second.
Then the explosion.
{{Blood Magic: Blood Parasite: Chain Detonation}}
The first explosion ca from the ceiling, directly over the entrance tunnel, and the rock burst downward in fragnts the size of her head that rained onto the cavern floor. Before the first fragnt even hit the ground, the second explosion ca, then the third, then the fourth, each at a different point in the ceiling as if sothing had been planted there the entire ti they had been fighting, waiting for that exact mont.
The twelfth monster disappeared beneath the first fragnts before it could move. Veronica leaped toward the tunnel before the fourth explosion was finished, calculating the path with her eyes on the opening and her feet searching for the wall to push off from.
The mutant rabbits still alive on the cavern floor, stunned by the explosions and without clear direction because the black-and-white rabbit was already climbing, caught her. Two of them grabbed her ankles while she was already in the air, their combined weight more than enough to drag her trajectory down and away from the tunnel.
She landed badly. One knee against the rock, her hands absorbing part of the impact, and the creatures didn't let go but pulled downward with all the strength they had left while the ceiling kept collapsing in larger and larger fragnts.
"COWARD!" The scream ca from the full force of her lungs, aid upward, toward the hole the black-and-white rabbit was still climbing through. "Don't think this ends here, I'll find you, I'll hunt you! You'll die by my hands, you stupid piece-of-shit rabbit!"
The stones were falling more often now. A large fragnt struck the floor just ters from her, and the rock beneath her knees trembled with the force of the impact. The creatures holding her kept pulling down, and she kept fighting that grip, slashing with her claws, searching for the angle to break free, but there were too many of them and the ceiling had too much left to give.
Above, in the tunnel, the black-and-white rabbit climbed in silence. Its paws found purchase in the dirt with the sa precision it had for everything else, and the laugh that ca from its mouth once Veronica's enraged screams faded was short, almost thoughtful, the laugh of soone confirming an expectation.
It kept climbing. The screams below were swallowed by the explosions and the weight of the falling rock, and the black-and-white rabbit did not focus on them because the battle in the cavern was no longer its problem. Its pawns had fulfilled their purpose.
It erged at the surface. The outside air was different, colder, more open, without the density of blood magic that had filled the cavern since the beginning of the night. It shook the dust from its fur, its red eyes fixed on the dark horizon with the sa calm as before, and it stopped feeling its pawns at the exact mont the final connection was severed.
It didn't look back. It started walking.
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