Blood flew through the air, along with twitching muscles and severed heads that still held their living expressions.
Countless dismembered limbs and broken bodies performed their final dance—spinning, leaping, landing perfectly, then another wave followed, painting the sky with a watercolor scene dominated by red, accented by gray and black.
A graceful figure darted through the countless Mad Beasts, tearing the air with piercing sonic booms and flinging flesh and blood in all directions.
Then came a ground-shaking stomp, and the original figure split into four, racing in a perfect X pattern across the battlefield, skimming so low they practically flew along the ground.
***
At one point, a petite girl in an oversized black trench coat that hung far too loosely on her small frame wielded a chainsaw whose blade alone was nearly two meters long—large enough to make anyone’s jaw drop in shock.
A terrifying electric motor roared to life, and the teeth, caked with dried blood, began spinning at high speed.
They sliced through any Mad Beast they touched, cutting them apart at the neck, at the waist, or splitting them clean in half from head to crotch, sending geysers of blood spraying like fountains.
Blood splashed onto her face, her hands, her weapon, her clothes, but the girl paid it no mind.
She only cared about cutting down one Mad Beast and moving on to the next.
Gradually, her once expressionless, delicate features took on a hint of madness.
The eyes that had been vacant while staring at her prey grew increasingly fervent.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Her blood boiled.
The voice of her body grew louder.
The girl drowned herself in endless slaughter, her deathly steps transforming into a ballerina’s dance, each landing splashing the blood of countless Mad Beasts into the air, flesh flying everywhere.
***
At another point, a woman whose face always wore a faint, malicious smile was dressed in ornate attire fit for a noble’s ball.
Except the originally resplendent garments had been dyed jet-black and stained with the blood of countless Mad Beasts.
In her hands, she held a double-headed hammer studded with countless sharp spikes.
It dealt blunt trauma while treacherously adding piercing damage that could not be ignored.
And her weapon’s size dwarfed even the girl’s—far larger.
A massive spiked hammer nearly three meters in length, its head the size of a small nuclear warhead.
If it struck you, you’d be lucky if your original shape could even be recognized.
The woman wielding this weapon swayed her fluttering skirt, performing a bloody dance of music with the Mad Beasts who spat saliva at her—a performance that turned the stomachs of onlookers and spelled death for the dancers.
The hammerhead mercilessly slammed a Mad Beast’s head into the ground, instantly turning it to pulp.
Using the spikes, she hooked the beast’s remaining body and flung it at others charging at her.
The Mad Beast launched like a cannonball crashed into an oncoming wave of maddened beasts, sending up sprays of yellow, red, and black.
She let out a few delighted laughs, pulled the spiked hammer from the ground, spun around, and smashed another beast trying to sneak up from behind into the earth.
Without even checking if it was dead, she dragged the hammer and leaped directly into the middle of the horde.
The dangerous curve of her lips grew wider, her once restrained smile twisting into a horrifying grin.
She spun her body, sending each leaping Mad Beast flying back.
The corpses of those she struck became lethal projectiles against the survivors, each one exploding like a bomb over a crater’s radius.
At the center of the stage, the woman closed her eyes in ecstasy.
Left step, right step—she grabbed a Mad Beast by the head, spun, traced an elegant arc like a ribbon dancing in the wind, and slammed the beast into the ground.
This dance had no audience.
Only the dancer herself enjoyed it.
***
At another point, a serene woman dressed in a simple black-and-white nun’s habit stood quietly.
Beside her was planted her weapon—a double-headed scythe with a drill mounted at the joint of the handle.
Needless to say, this weapon was also absurdly oversized.
To call it a death scythe would be an understatement.
Three meters long in total, with blades nearly two meters wide, it radiated a bone-chilling cold light.
The drill stuck into the ground had a diameter of nearly half a meter, easily capable of pulverizing bedrock.
Against flesh, a single rotation would twist an entire Mad Beast’s body one hundred eighty degrees.
The woman stood still, hands clasped before her chest, chin slightly lowered, reciting scripture in a soft murmur.
“The kingdom of heaven is near. You should repent.”
With that, she seized the weapon’s shaft, and the nun’s habit fluttered in the wind.
Wind howled in her ears, mingling with the roars of Mad Beasts.
“Please, do not defile heaven.”
The scythe blade cleanly severed the head of an oblivious Mad Beast.
“But hell will not receive you, either.”
The drill shot into another beast’s skull, twisting its entire body into an indescribable lump of flesh.
“So please—just disappear.”
The nun grabbed the upper end of the shaft, thrust her hand into a Mad Beast’s head, and drove the drill straight through its body.
Shaking off the rotting flesh blurring her vision, she gripped the lower end and swept the weapon horizontally in an arc.
A line of Mad Beasts lost their heads and bodies in an instant.
Dragging the double-headed scythe, the spot where she had stood was left with only a fading sonic boom.
In the blink of an eye, not a single Mad Beast survived along her path.
As if receiving some signal, the Mad Beasts that had been blindly charging gathered together.
Then they began tearing into each other, devouring their comrades’ flesh and blood to evolve.
To the woman, this absurd evolution method was meaningless.
She raised her double-headed scythe.
Her once peaceful eyes sharpened as she fixed her gaze on the single giant creature that had formed from the swarm.
Beast Aggregate.
This was the lowest form of evolution among Mad Beasts—merely stitching countless flesh together without any synergy between evolved organs, often hindering their own functions.
It was a desperate last resort, and utterly pointless.
They couldn’t even preserve their own lives.
A Beast Aggregate was even weaker than the original number of ordinary Mad Beasts.
But the fact that this evolution seemed to have been initiated spontaneously by the Mad Beasts themselves was surprising enough.
Normally, evolved forms were born mutated from the start.
Seeing them evolve by devouring each other was a first.
Though mildly surprised, it didn’t change the Beast Aggregate’s fate of being eliminated.
She spun the drill, and the woman shot toward the Beast Aggregate like a fireball, a continuous series of sonic booms roaring through the sky.
Zzzzzzt.
The high-speed drill struck the Beast Aggregate’s core with perfect accuracy.
The fragile, sand-like being instantly dissolved into a muddy sludge, forming a viscous pool resembling excrement on the ground.
The woman tried to straighten her clothes, but they were already soaked with the blood and gore of countless Mad Beasts, so it was futile.
She stood alone, like the final moment of a ballet.
***
At another point, on the highest vantage of the battlefield, overlooking the entire scene.
One look revealed an indescribable picture.
Either the ground was littered with corpses, or Mad Beasts that had just become corpses.
Blood sprayed into the sky so densely it seemed to fall like a scarlet rain.
A woman in a bodysuit stood there.
Around her lay her weapons—about thirty javelins, each three meters long, covered with sharp bone spikes.
She stretched her body, warming up properly.
With a few twists of her shoulders, she picked up a javelin at her feet, made an exaggerated aiming motion—though she didn’t really aim at all—and just threw it wherever the beasts were clustered.
The javelin tore through the air, impaling a Mad Beast charging toward her, then slammed into the ground, flinging up a huge clod of dirt that buried a group of beasts behind the impaled one along with it.
Without resting, she grabbed another javelin and threw again.
This time, the force was even greater than before—the previous throw had already been like a missile.
The javelin, wreathed in flames, crashed into the ground, exploding the fire upon impact.
The raging blaze turned into a devouring serpent, swallowing all the unfortunate Mad Beasts caught in its maw.
One javelin after another became short-range missiles.
Each strike swept through countless Mad Beasts.
Then a change occurred.
From the distant horizon emerged an evolved beast only slightly larger than a normal Mad Beast, but three to four times faster.
“Oh, here it comes.”
The woman picked up the last javelin, leaped down from the height, and landed steadily on the ground.
Lafur.
That was the name of this evolved form.
This level of evolution was incomparable to the previous Beast Aggregate.
Not only was its evolution highly specialized, but it also lacked fatal flaws—it was a creature fully worth treating as a threat.
But this woman didn’t seem to care much.
She twirled her hair idly, waiting for the Lafur to approach.
Two hundred meters.
One hundred meters.
The distance closed as if space itself was vanishing under the Lafur’s full-speed sprint.
“Alright, just about right.”
She readied the javelin, lifting it above her head, taking the stance of a javelin thrower.
Fifty meters.
The javelin flew.
Its own supersonic speed, combined with the Lafur’s full-speed charge, made piercing the Lafur as easy as drinking water.
Although the Lafur had no fatal flaws, it did have one: it couldn’t change direction or brake instantly.
So facing such a fast javelin, the Lafur had no time to react.
Its fate was to be impaled from head to tail.
“Alright, done!”
The woman turned around with relief, walking back the way she came.
But she had intended to make a cool turn.
However, as she turned, her foot slipped on the ground littered with rotting flesh, and she nearly fell flat on her face.
Just like a ballet’s final act—a stumble at the last step that made a fool of the dancer.