The most vulnerable adventurer in the room was crouched under the table. He could hear Mel’s furious breathing ricocheting off the surrounding wood as if she were hyperventilating. Likely because she knew she was finished. Hirrus' earlier attacks on Mel had left her badly wounded, and even as he tried to circle around towards her, she scrambled out from under the table onto the far side. He activated Pumped Kicks, using the move speed to lunge over the table after her.

Helen lunged forward to intercept. Her sword crashed down, but it was too slow. The weapon dug a gouge into the table rather than Hirrus' back.

His greataxe arced towards Mel, even as green-gold energy swept across the room from Nate towards her. Mel managed to slip aside from the obvious attack, but Hirrus' attack speed meant the huge weapon came up again in a lightning-fast backhand.

Rather than trade blows, Mel dove backwards, seeking to evade him. But the move speed granted him by his Arcana let him leap up to meet her in turn.

As he stepped forward, however, her blade struck faster than his. It landed for three thousand four hundred and fourteen damage, but the strike had a component of Arcana, to it. Red mist emerged from the blade as soon as it struck him, swirling around Mel, visibly closing her wounds.

She wasn’t fast enough to avoid his next strike, though. The axe hacked across into her waist, biting into her white leather armor. His attack hit for three thousand nine hundred and eighty-one damage, though it didn’t include a double strike.

Mel grunted as the impact threw her sideways. She staggered away, clutching at her side with one hand. Hirrus' weapon whipped around at her, hoping to catch her off guard. But her curved blade rose to meet it, catching the edge of his axe and redirecting it upwards with a shriek of scraping metal.

“You dare!” Mel spat through gritted teeth. “You dare to come in here and act like we’re the monsters! Look at you! Butcher! Murderer! Beast!”

Hirrus tried to answer her accusation with his axe, bringing it down, but her saber caught under the head of the weapon, holding it back. Her arms trembled under his superior power, but she held, glaring at him with an indignant fire that seemed a match for the rage in his own heart.

“You don’t even know what you’re here for. Why you exist.” Mel grunted as she struggled to hold his weapon from sinking into her shoulder. She was looking pale already from blood loss, but from the way she spoke, her imminent death seemed the furthest thing from her mind. “Let me educate you, plague-ridden wretch! All of you NPCs only exist for us to kill you! To use you as we wish for whatever the game lets us do to you! Fodder! Punching bags! Conveniently arranged sacks of exp! Arcana piñatas! If you kill us, it’s only to heighten the drama for when Fidelis finishes the job!”

Her words fell on deaf ears, or, rather, ears that were deaf to her attempt to distract. She wanted to cause him pain, to confuse him.

Hirrus mentally praised her for the attempt, even as he marked her for dead.

He activated an Arcana. At point-blank range, she had no hope for escape. Yellow-white sparks flickering around his vision for a moment before a burst of energy blasted from his eyes.

Five thousand and seventy-eight damage ripped into Mel’s face. No hope for survival. She was dead in an instant.

The knockback effect of Mortal Eye sent her corpse careening backwards, hitting the wall with a dull thud. As it settled to the floor, the painting of the woman in red fell from its hook and landed hard on her head with a loud cracking noise.

Silence followed.

But it was short lived. Hirrus whirled to find Helen lunging at him, her golden armor glittering as she attacked. Her rapier caught him across the face, drawing a line of red barely an inch below his eye. It only did one thousand two hundred and sixty damage. He backhanded her with his icy greataxe, smashing into her for four thousand two hundred and ninety-three damage. Shavings of gold metal erupted from the strike, leaving behind a huge gouge in the metal where the steel showed through.

“Nate!” Helen shouted as she tried to fall back from Hirrus. “I’m going to need everything you’ve got on this!”

“I’ve got you!” Nate’s voice came from behind the wall of fire Helen had put up in front of him. Hirrus wondered at how long it would last to protect the man from Hirrus' attacks. “We’ll grind him out. Just like old times, eh?”

Hirrus didn’t like the sound of that. It would be a long while before he saw the end of his transformation, but he remembered very clearly the woman in red and the man in bone armor holding their ground against him for long enough that he made peace with his death. The huge grease fire meant that Helen could generate the chokepoint that could keep him from pushing past and getting to Nate.

Fortunately, he had a method of circumventing the obstacle.

Activating an Arcana, Hirrus created an orb of green energy in one hand. Ducking to the left, he hurled it past Helen and through the wall of flames. His awareness felt it land on Nate, and as soon as he did, he activated it again.

Seeker’s Spike teleported Hirrus to Nate’s side.

“Oh,” Nate said quietly, “fuckballs.”

He tried to run, but the move speed Seeker’s Spike gave Hirrus dwarfed any of his other potential bonuses. His axe caught the man in the back for four thousand eight hundred and thirty damage, spinning him around. Shortly after, the Seeker’s Spike exploded for another six thousand one hundred and eighteen.

“Mercy!” Nate yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. “Please! I didn’t mean it!”

Hirrus gave him the only mercy the man deserved. A double-strike attack did over eight thousand damage between the two hits, and literally bisected him at the hips.

Despite being the only adventurer still standing in the room, Helen stared him down through the flames that now separated them. She was obviously weighing her options. He wondered if she’d try to run. How far could she could hope to get? He had a few more seconds with the immense speed boost afforded by Seeker’s Spike, and shortly after that was over, Split Second would be ready again.

“Face me,” Hirrus demanded, his transformed voice unnaturally low and gravelly. “Face the fruits of your labors. The inevitable conclusion to your actions. Face me, and face justice itself come calling.”

The wall of flames guttered and died.

Hirrus wasn’t sure if Helen had dropped them, or if they’d simply run their course. Just the same, he couldn’t risk her having some ability that would let her escape him. He lunged.

Helen’s rapier whipped up, catching the side of his icy greataxe, trying to deflect it away, but Hirrus' raw strength forced it out of the way, driving the head of his weapon into her shoulder. Four thousand and eighty-five damage sent her staggering. The double-strike that followed added another two thousand eight hundred and sixty damage on top of that.

She rolled with the blow admirably, growling as she pressed forward despite her wounds, driving her rapier into Hirrus' forearm and raking the weapon down, clearly trying to cut his hand to loosen his grip on his axe. She dealt one thousand five hundred and fifty-one damage, but it wasn’t near enough to even make him worried. He accepted the blow and whirled his axe into the side of her neck.

The critical hit only did a little over six thousand damage, but it was enough. The weapon sank in straight to her clavicle on the other side. She slumped to the ground and a red stain engulfed the carpet around her.

For a moment, Hirrus let out a few ragged breaths, reveling in the intense satisfaction that roared up and down his every limb. Last of the Strong’s back was broken. All that remained was the head of the snake.

As he sucked in a breath, finding a nauseating joy in the smell of blood in the air, he heard something else in the room. Someone else was breathing. Hyperventilating, even.

He whirled, trying to find the source.

Maggie, the woman in the sweater vest, was crouched beneath the meeting table, holding the legs of her chair to try and hide behind them. She had been spattered with a fine mist of Nate’s blood, and it seemed to visibly upset her.

“Is this your final strategy?” Hirrus snarled, storming over to her. He grabbed the chair and hurled it away. The action tore it from her grip, dragging her halfway out from under the table. She scrambled back, as if terrified. “Hide down here to save your hide? Try and steal from me the deal I refused?”

She made a choked squeaking noise and tried to scramble back under the table to escape him, but his red-scaled hand clamped down on her ankle.

Dragging her out from under the table earned him the shriek of pure terror - undisguised by overconfidence or hate - that every other adventurer denied him. He released her leg long enough to grab the collar of her shirt and lift her off the floor to drag her to her feet to meet her fate.

He snarled at her, long fangs dripping with a drool he could feel sliming from his gums. The scent and sound of her fear enraged the beast within and Hirrus struggled to control himself before he tore into her with his ferocious bite.

In that moment of struggle was where she struck.

BONG.

Maggie smacked him in the face with a frying pan.

It felt like a bad punchline. It barely did a thousand damage, surprising him more than it actually hurt. But more than that, it enraged him. The beast beneath the surface cried out for justice. Hirrus barely reigned it in. His free hand whipped his axe up into her hip, dealing out almost four thousand five hundred damage in return. It wasn’t enough.

“Please,” she gasped, hurling the pan aside, sending it clattering across the mahogany table. Maggie raised her hands in surrender. “Don’t hurt me! I-I-I’m just a crafter! A noncombatant!”

“You were there,” Hirrus growled, shoving her back against the table. “You were there when my wife was taken from me. She was no combatant. You’re as responsible as any of them for what happened to her. What did you do? What did you do when my wife was cut down? What did you do to deserve me sparing you now? Say to me now every word you said to them that day, and I will judge from those words, not this groveling, if you deserve to leave this room alive.”

She blinked, tears streaming down her cheeks as she swallowed hard. He let the silence stretch out between them as he felt the rumble of a growl growing in his chest.

“None of them were given a chance,” Hirrus snarled quietly, stepping towards her, making her flinch back. “Death came for them, and no pleading was answered. No begging spared them. Why do you think you deserve better? Why do you think your words should hold more weight than theirs?”

“I tried,” she said, a sob hitching in her throat. “Not then, but now. Wh-Wh-When Fidelis set this up, I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. I-I-I knew what we’d done was wrong. I made him demote Rumi and Laileb when they didn’t answer in guild chat so that all the living officers would be here, in case you could tell if someone was missing.” She sniffled. “I was- I was willing to die for this. I was willing to pay for what we did.”

“Then pay,” Hirrus said, raising his axe.

Despite the tears pouring from her eyes, Maggie took a deep breath, and tipped her head back to expose her throat.