Chapter 156: Monsters
The venom fangs brushed past his ear. He could even feel the hot, rancid breath washing across his face.
At the sa mont, his right hand ca up. His short sword thrust upward from below, sliding through the giant python’s lower jaw and punching out through the top of its skull.
The python’s body froze in midair for an instant, then went limp and sagged.
Gray flicked his arm and hurled it away. It crashed into the reeds.
The second and third pythons lunged at the sa ti.
They did not attack in a straight line. They flanked him from both sides. The one on the left opened its jaws for his leg, while the one on the right swept its tail toward him, trying to coil him up.
Gray took one step back.
Just one.
The one on the left missed. The tail from the right swept past in front of him. His left-hand blade stabbed into the left python’s eye, while his right-hand blade chopped into the right python’s tail, biting halfway through before catching in the bone.
The python writhed in agony, thrashing its tail so violently that it flung Gray into the air.
Gray twisted once in midair. When he landed, he rolled with the montum, narrowly avoiding the pounce of the fourth python. He ca up beside a clump of reeds and yanked hard with his right arm—
The python pinned on his blade was dragged over and smashed into the fourth one. The two snakes tangled together, writhing madly.
Gray lunged forward.
Both short swords drove down at once, piercing through both serpents’ skulls.
The fourth and fifth were dead.
The sixth hesitated for the briefest instant.
That instant was enough.
Gray was already in front of it. He moved so fast he was nothing but a gray blur. One short sword thrust straight into its open mouth and punched out through the back of its head. The python died before it could even close its jaws.
Six giant pythons.
Not even ten breaths.
At last, the four Ironclad Crocodiles moved.
They burst from the mud with a speed utterly at odds with their bulky bodies. The one in front opened its mouth wide, those serrated teeth capable of crushing stone. At the sa ti, it raised its claws, each toe tipped with a black talon half a foot long, like five daggers.
Gray did not retreat.
He charged straight at it.
At the very instant it snapped down, he dropped low and slid beneath its jaw. His short sword thrust upward, plunging into the soft flesh of its throat, the tip bursting out through the back of its neck.
The Ironclad Crocodile crashed to the ground, convulsed twice, and lay still.
The second one’s tail swept at him.
That tail was thicker than an adult man’s arm, and the bony spikes upon it were like a row of nails. Gray had no ti to dodge. He could only raise his left arm and take the blow head-on—
A heavy thud.
Gray was sent flying, crashing into the mud. He rolled twice, sprang back up, and now several deep gashes had opened across his left arm. Blood stread down it and dripped into the mire.
But he did not stop.
He rose and charged the second crocodile.
It had been preparing to lunge again, but his speed caught it off guard. It opened its jaws to bite—
Gray’s right-hand sword plunged into its eye.
The blade drove through the socket and into its brain.
The second one died.
The third and fourth ca at him together.
Gray drew a deep breath and spun like a top. The two short swords carved silver arcs through the air. Those arcs grew faster, denser, until they rged into a single sheet of silver light.
The third crocodile’s head flew off.
The fourth had its neck cut halfway through, black blood spraying wildly.
Both Ironclad Crocodiles fell almost at the sa ti.
The two Rotmarsh Giant Lizards tried to flee.
They had already realized that this human was no prey. He was a butcher.
Their bloated bodies writhed as they scrambled toward the mud, trying to disappear into the deeper reeds.
Gray chased them down.
He caught the first one and stamped on its tail as it dragged behind it. The giant lizard struggled frantically, and the lumps along its tail burst, splattering black-brown liquid across Gray’s leg. At once, his trouser leg was eaten through in several places, exposing the reddened skin beneath.
Gray ignored it.
He drove his short sword down through the back of its skull and into its brain.
The second one had already fled more than ten ters and vanished into the reeds.
Gray stopped.
With a flick of his right hand, he sent the short sword flying.
The blade traced a silver arc and disappeared into the reeds.
A scream rang out.
Gray walked over, parted the reeds, and pulled the sword back out of the giant lizard’s skull. He shook the blood from it and slid it back into place at his waist.
Twelve.
Not even twenty breaths.
Vincent jumped down from the tree and landed beside him, smiling as he applauded.
“Fifty-three,” he said. “You broke the record. Add in the few I killed on the side just now, and between the two of us, that makes eighty-four.”
Gray said nothing.
He lowered his gaze to his left arm. The cuts were still leaking blood. From his waist, he drew out a small vial of potion, bit out the stopper, and poured it over the wounds.
White smoke rose from the injury, and he did not so much as frown.
Vincent stretched lazily.
“How many of these things are there in this marsh?” he said. “You kill them and kill them, and they just keep coming.”
Gray glanced at him.
“Why are you even counting them?”
Vincent blinked.
“Because it’s fun.”
Gray did not respond.
The two of them continued forward and vanished into the reeds.
Three miles away, in another patch of marsh, Parker was fighting.
His style of battle was completely different from Gray’s.
Gray was technique. Speed. Dancing on a blade’s edge.
Parker was power. Domination. The kind of force that killed before his enemies even had ti to understand what was happening.
An Abyssal Giant Python shot out of the mud and lunged at him.
Parker did not dodge.
He did not even move.
At the exact instant the snake was about to bite him, his left hand shot out and seized it by the neck. His five fingers tightened—
Crack.
The python’s neck was crushed in his grip.
He casually flung the carcass aside, and at the sa ti his sword swept out in his right hand, cutting another lunging serpent clean in half at the waist.
The two halves of its body still writhed. He stepped forward and crushed the head beneath his boot.
“How many now?” he asked.
Hayden stood a few paces behind him, holding a notebook and a charcoal pencil. As he wrote, he answered, “Pythons, thirty-seven. Ironclad Crocodiles, twenty-one. Rotmarsh Giant Lizards, fifteen. Seventy-three in total.”
Parker nodded.
His eyes swept over the area.
In the reeds, more than a dozen pairs of dark yellow eyes were watching them.
Those monsters no longer dared to rush them, but neither were they willing to leave. They simply watched from a distance, waiting for an opening.
Parker was growing impatient.
He raised his left hand and looked at his palm.
It was sared with black blood, so of it already dried into hardened crusts. He rubbed at it with his thumb, but the blood would not co off.
“How much longer?” he asked.
Hayden lifted his head and tried to judge the sky—if it could even be called that. Above them there was only a dim, grayish light filtering down through the leaves, making it impossible to tell whether it was morning or afternoon.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the monsters are getting more nurous.”
Parker said nothing.
He tightened his grip on his sword and walked toward the next monster.
It was an Ironclad Crocodile, larger than any of the previous ones, five or six ters long, crouched in a patch of mire with only its dark yellow eyes showing above the surface.
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