"Heelp!"

A very distant, whisper-like scream made Yoichi open his eyes wide. He sat on the sand, trying to distinguish the dream from reality. ​​

In the darkness, Ichiro's yellowish eyes shone like two small headlights. The Inoshuma had heard something too, being its mind connected to that of its tamer.

Yoichi gradually abandoned the dream world, and his hearing returned to its standard effectiveness. Rubbing his eyes, he looked at a hole on the wall that overlooked the outside, turning to his right.

"Aaah!" – when the second distant scream reached his ears, the young tamer jumped on his feet. He realized that those sounds were not part of a dream but were real and came from the village.

Without saying anything, he quickly ran to that destroyed window, clinging to an edge with his hand and leaning forward, trying to get a load of the outside.

The distant village of Blackborough was framed in that ruined wall full of moss. The distant screams came right from there.

The sound of Ichiro's hooves sinking into the ground awakened Shioko. The red-haired tamer quickly turned her gaze, realizing that Yoichi and his demon were awake in the middle of the night.

"Did you hear that too?" Yoichi whispered without looking away from the hole in the wall. "Something's going on in the village. I can feel it," he repeated, clenching his fists.

Shioko raised from the ground, shaking the sand from her clothes. Yoichi moved sideways, allowing her to look out of the tower.

"Aaaagh!" – yet another scream echoed along the beach, coming from hundreds of meters away. Shioko narrowed her eyes, "what the hell is..."

*boom*

Her words were interrupted by a loud rumble: in an explosion of pieces of wood and sand, one of the village huts was reduced to shreds, blowing up into the air.

"Oh shit! Fuck!" Yoichi gasped, no longer managing to stand with his arms crossed. Something unusual was happening in the quiet village of Blackborough and, since the young tamer saw it for the first time, he strange, bad feeling ran through his bones.

"Yoichi, where the hell are you going?!" Shioko boomed, grabbing her companion's shoulder. Yoichi took a step forward, evading the grip, "Are you really going to stay here and do nothing? A house just exploded before our eyes!" he complained, yelling.

"What... a house... what is it... what are you talking about?" Enatsu murmured yawning. The merchant awoke from his deep sleep, turning to one side.

Without wasting any more time, Yoichi jumped on Ichiro's back and walked out of the tower regardless of his colleague's words. After grabbing his backpack under the eyes of his companions, the young tamer had again made a risky move.

Shioko stood still for an instant, her eyes closed and her face pointed down. "Hey, what happened? Where is he going? Why don't we go with him?" Enatsu inquired in confusion. Getting up in a hurry, he gathered his stuff and seized the reins of his horse.

"Grrr... goddamn!" she yelled, banging her feet to the ground. When Taya ran to the exit, Shioko clung to the saddle, using it to jump nimbly on horseback.

When the fire flame went out in the middle of the night, all three adventurers left the control tower without knowing what they were going through.

*tabdak*tabdak* - the sound of Ichiro's hooves rumbled strongly. Hot steam came out of its boar nostrils as all the mighty muscles in its body reached maximum tension during the charge.

The screams that until a few minutes earlier had caught Yoichi's attention had now vanished. As the wooden huts got closer in front of him, Yoichi began to fear that whatever attacked the village had succeeded in its intent, presumably exterminating its population.

Behind him, far from his gaze, Enatsu and Shioko were following him on horseback. Although their horses were running at top speed, their power was lower than his Inoshuma. Sora and Nobu flew in their wake.

Finally, Ichiro's hooves began to dodge the debris from the blown-up hut after more than five minutes. Among the wooden rubble, in addition to an upside-down table, fishing objects and furniture of all kinds, something caught the young tamer's eye.

Between the greyish sand of the beach, the moonlight was illuminating two corpses. Although only in passing, Yoichi distinguished the mauled body of a woman clutching a child in her arms.

With his heart in his throat, he turned his gaze forward. What happened in this village? Which kind of beast was able to blow up an entire house? That woman and that baby... they were brutally killed! He thought quickly. No, it can't be the work of a human being… it was definitely a demon!

Just as he was trying to get to the centre of the village, something was thrown into the air, several meters high. Two distinct objects entered Yoichi's field of view: the two halves of a human body fell like two boulders on his trajectory, forcing Ichiro to dodge them by dashing sideways.

The bones of the victim's legs broke in contact with the ground, and his torso swirled on the sand, spraying blood spatter.

"Fuck this! What's that? That's a man!" Enatsu screamed frightened, holding on tight to the reins of his horse. Beside him, Shioko gasped.

"Yoichi, wait! Don't go into that narrow village, it's danger..."

When the red-haired woman's scream reached Yoichi, it was too late. From behind the same house from which the body had flown away, a giant demon soared upwards sinuously.

Wrapped in a dark aura, a huge black-scaled snake rose menacingly. Its purple eyes were pointed at Yoichi and Ichiro, small as flies compared to it.

Gripped by fear, Yoichi pulled the mane of his Inoshuma towards him, making it brake sharply, sinking his hooves into the grey sand.

Blackborough hid the greatest demon he had ever seen, capable of shredding a hut like a piece of driftwood. His scaled body and size made him an unbelievably hard enemy to take down.