Absolute Loser Becomes The Pleasure King Using Satan System

Chapter 58: 58.Forest of No shade -8

They didn’t have to wait long to find out what the fleeing Tkerns’ scream had summoned.

​The ground trembled first. It was just a faint shiver traveling up through the soles of his boots, so slight Mylo almost convinced himself he’d imagined it.

​A second later it came again, stronger, and this time Tritia felt it too. Her body went still beside him, head tilting as she listened to something the earth itself seemed to be saying.

​Then the smell hit.

​It was nothing like the rotten-egg stink of the Tkerns. This was thicker, sourer, like something left to rot in standing water for a season. It curled up out of the dark in slow, deliberate waves, as if whatever was producing it wasn’t in any hurry at all.

​"That’s new," Mylo muttered.

​"Hmm. Not good." Tritia’s nostrils flared. "Whatever it is, it’s big."

​Somewhere ahead, brush snapped. It wasn’t the frantic crashing of a startled animal, but a slow, rhythmic breaking. Branch after branch gave way in a steady beat as something enormous pushed through the undergrowth, uncaring who heard it coming.

​Mylo’s grip tightened on the machete. "Tritia. What is that."

​"I don’t know." For the first time since he’d met her, real uncertainty crossed her face. "I’ve heard the sound before. Never this close."

​The snapping grew louder, and the shape finally broke into the dim red light of the clearing.

​It walked on six legs, each thick as a young tree trunk, moving in a lurching gait that should have looked clumsy but didn’t. For all its bulk, it covered ground fast.

​Its hide was hard, cracked leather, dark against the black backdrop of the forest, with long ropes of matted hair hanging from its shoulders and flanks. Its blunt, armored skull was built for battering down doors, crowned by a single curved horn, pale against its dark body.

​Where its eyes should have been, there was nothing. Just two hollow black sockets, empty all the way through, as if the thing had never needed to see what it was killing.

​"Nothrought," Tritia said, fear clear underneath the word. "Don’t let it hit you. Not once."

​It didn’t charge so much as arrive, closing the distance faster than either of them had braced for. There was no time left for a plan.

​Mylo threw himself sideways, feeling the wind of its shoulder passing close enough to stagger him. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up moving.

​Opposite him, Tritia dived, her claws raking down its flank as it passed. The strike should have opened it up, but her nails skidded across the hide with a sound like metal on stone, leaving only a shallow white scrape.

​"It’s too thick!" she shouted, retreating from the follow-up swing of its head. "Claws aren’t enough!"

​"Then go for something that isn’t armored!"

​Easier said than tried. The Nothrought spun on them faster than something its size had any right to, and Mylo barely got his machete up in time to deflect the horn.

​The impact rattled through his arm into his shoulder, numbing his fingers. He staggered back three full steps before finding his purchase again.

​It came again immediately, giving him no room to recover.

​Dropping low instead of retreating, Mylo slid under the horn’s arc and drove the machete up into the soft hinge where its front leg met its shoulder.

​This time the blade bit. Deep enough that the Nothrought let out a sound between a bellow and a groan, stumbling half a step before catching itself.

​"There! The joints!" he shouted.

​Tritia darted in low, raking her claws across the same point on the opposite leg while it recovered. It reared in a full-bodied, furious motion that sent both of them scrambling back out of range.

​For a long, ugly stretch, neither managed anything cleaner than that. They opened wound after shallow wound at the joints where the hide was thinner, but pain and rage kept it moving.

​Mylo’s arms had gone leaden by the time it finally staggered, black blood running down all six legs as its breathing turned into a wet, rattling wheeze. It took one more clumsy step forward, horn dipping toward him one final time, and collapsed, driving a small crater into the dirt.

​Silence rushed back into the clearing.

​For a moment, neither moved. Mylo’s chest heaved, his shirt soaked through, his arms trembling from holding the blade steady. Tritia stood a few feet away, chest rising and falling just as hard, blood dripping steadily from her fingertips.

​...

[NOTIFICATION]

Minimal Pran was absorbed.

...

​"That’s it?" Mylo stared at the notification like it had personally insulted him. "After all that?"

​"Hmm. Told you." Tritia wiped her hands against her wrap, leaving dark streaks across the red cloth. "They’re strong. This is why nobody hunts them for the Pran."

​"Good to know. Preferably before I nearly lost an arm."

​"You didn’t lose it." She glanced at him, something almost approving in her look. "We got lucky. There was only one."

​They walked in silence after that, both too winded to talk, until Mylo’s pulse finally settled back into something manageable.

​It was Tritia who broke the silence. She stopped several steps ahead of him, not turning around right away.

​"Why did you get in front of me twice tonight."

​"...I don’t know. I just did."

​"That’s not how I do things."

​"I noticed."

​She was quiet for a moment, still facing away. "It should be the other way around."

​"Says who."

​"Says everyone I’ve ever known."

​She started walking again before he could answer, and he let her, lacking an answer ready anyway.

​It wouldn’t stay quiet for long. The forest had other plans, and so did she.

​The attack came without warning, the way every attack in this forest seemed to. There was no time left to finish anything they’d been circling around saying to each other.

​Vexfangs came first, boiling up out of the brush from three directions at once, more than either could count in that frantic first second.

​Behind them, cutting through the chaos, came the unmistakable scream of a Tkern. It was the same rising, tearing cry that had haunted them since the trench.

​Tritia moved before he did. "Get behind me!"

​"What? No, we should split their attention, if we both—"

​"I said get behind me, Mylo!"

​She stepped forward, putting her body between him and the thickest part of the swarm with her claws out. It was the exact shape of the argument she’d been making just minutes earlier.

​"This is what I’m for. Let me do this properly, just once."

​He understood in a single heartbeat exactly what she meant to do. Not fight beside him, but draw every monster onto herself and run into the dark with the swarm in pursuit.

​It was the same sacrifice he’d been ready to make for her days ago in his old life, except now her voice was screaming it back at him.

​"No. Absolutely not."

​"You don’t get to decide that for me!"

​"Tritia, don’t you dare—"

​She was already breaking into a dead sprint away from him. Every monster in the clearing turned as one to follow the motion, exactly as she’d wanted.

​He didn’t think. There wasn’t time.

​"HEY! OVER HERE! I’m right here, come and get me!"

​His voice tore out louder than hers had, raw and furious. He watched with near horror as the swarm’s attention split, hesitated, and then swung fully back toward him, drawn by the nearer, louder target.

​Tritia stopped running.

​She turned back just far enough to see it happen, watching every monster abandon her trail to converge on him instead. Across the distance, he saw her expression change, confusion curdling fast into something sharper and colder.

​"What are you doing?" Her voice cracked across the clearing. "I finally had them! I finally had a way to actually protect you, and you just took it away from me!"

​"I’m not letting you die for me, Tritia!"

​"That was never your choice to make!" Something raw broke loose in her voice, rawer than anything he’d heard from her yet.

​"You don’t understand what you just did. I was supposed to be the one who bled first. That’s the only thing I know how to give you, and you just told me it isn’t good enough!"

​"That’s not what I—"

​"Then what was it?"

​He didn’t have an answer ready, and there was no time to find one. The swarm was already on him. Whatever she said next was lost beneath the sound of his machete meeting the first claw.

​He didn’t see her leave. He only understood, sometime later in the middle of everything, that she wasn’t fighting beside him anymore.

​The empty space where she should have been felt like its own separate wound.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!