The air itself seemed to hold still as Blood Harvest exploded into motion. it caromed, using its powerful hind legs to launch itself in a series of bounding, zig-zagging arcs that blurred its form.

  “Wind Wall, left flank!” Gryla barked.

  A trio of avian beasts from the ranged squads beat their wings as one, conjuring a shimmering barrier of compressed air. The Titled Beast veered, its trajectory deflected as if it had struck rubber. It landed, skidding on the red soil, and let out a guttural chitter of annoyance.

  Gryla didn't wait for its next move. She charged it instead.

  "Pin it! Now!"

  Immediately, seven Catalysers, including Gryla, launched forward with their beasts. The attack group consisted of three bulky, armored creatures for defense, with the rest being agile fighters. Gryla's strategy was simple: have the tanks absorb and guard against Blood Harvest's most devastating attacks, while the faster units exploited the openings to strike.

  A furious scuffle erupted as the beasts clashed. Blood Harvest was surrounded by a tight circle of shields and armored hides. From the gaps in this living barricade, the other beasts darted in—slashing with claws, snapping with fangs, attacking with whatever natural weapons they possessed.

  The Catalysers supplemented their assault. Some, mounted on their beasts, struck with spears and swords. Others attacked in eerie unison with their partners, hurling knives or firing darts from different angles.

  Yet, despite the ring of steel, tooth, and claw, Blood Harvest held its own. The agile beast was a whirlwind of crimson and shadow, ducking and weaving through most attacks, or parrying and redirecting blows with a chilling clang of its sickle-feet. For every second it spent defending, it spent another counterattacking.

  It would leap and hop, spinning its body to build momentum before lashing out with a stomp or a kick. Its sickles flew in deadly, precise arcs. Multiple times, the crimson blades whistled past throats and skulls, missing a beheading or a maiming by a hair's breadth.

  The humans and their beasts avoided the worst of it, but only barely. The most lethal strikes—the wide, reaping slashes meant to cleave through multiple targets—had to be intercepted by the tanks. The impacts rang out like hammer strikes on anvil, staggering the armored beasts and sending shivers through their Catalysers.

  The fight was a stalemate of contained, brutal chaos. Gryla's elite team was holding it, but they weren't winning. And everyone knew a Titled Beast had more to give.

  After several minutes of brutal back-and-forth, Gryla and her team were slowing, their movements growing a fraction heavier with fatigue. Blood Harvest, by contrast, seemed to be feeding on the violence, its attacks growing more aggressive, its parries more precise. It was learning their rhythm.

  " Now. "

  At Gryla’s sharp, pre-arranged signal, the elite team exploded outward, scattering in different directions to break the encirclement.

  Blood Harvest, ecstatic at the sudden opening, coiled to launch itself after the nearest target. However It wouldn't get it's chance.

  A thunderous hail of ranged attacks—searing firebolts, jagged ice shards, and whirring wind blades—came raining down from a distance, cratering the earth where the beast had been a moment before and forcing it into a frantic, zig-zagging dance. Gryla’s had preemptively ordered the support squads , the moment the circle around the beast broke, they were to lay down a suppressing barrage.

  While the beast was too fast for most projectiles to connect, the storm of elemental force served as perfect cover. disrupting the Titled Beast’s momentum, forcing sharp turns and defensive hops, preventing it from locking onto any single retreating elite member.

  The elite squad didn’t waste a second of this borrowed time. Once at a safe distance, each Catalyser worked with frenetic speed and efficiency. They applied pungent healing salves to their beasts , mostly to help recover Thier stamina , or focused their will to activate innate recovery or buff abilities. A rihno’s stony hide glowed as it knit back together; a panther’s muscles coiled with renewed energy.

  The respite was measured in heartbeats. Before Gryla’s silver fox gave a sharp bark.

  “Re-form!” she roared.

  As one, the refreshed elite squad surged forward again. Seeing their advance, the long-range squads instantly ceased fire, conserving their energy and beginning to prepare their next coordinated volley.

  The cage of claws, steel, and armored hide snapped shut around Blood Harvest once more. The beast shrieked, not in pain, but in what sounded like furious cursing.

  The intense front ignited into violence once more—however, the rear of the group was in a battle of its own.

  Currently, the shield wall directed at the back of the formation was tangled in a desperate defense, holding back massive waves of attacking Vorpal Rabbits.

  Gryla had predicted this. She knew the rabbit beasts infesting the area wouldn't simply stop swarming to let them duel the Titled Beast on clean terms. She also knew the ruckus of the fight against Blood Harvest would certainly attract swarms of the aggressive creatures.

  To ensure her elite squad and the ranged support could work undisturbed, she had positioned the latter half of her group as a dedicated defensive wall at the rear. Their sole task was to hold the line so the others wouldn't have to worry about guarding their backs.

  The wall, under immense strain, was managing to keep the tide at bay. Shields banged and groaned under relentless impacts; beasts roared and screeched in a cacophony of violence. The defenders did their best to dispatch the incoming rabbits as fast and efficiently as possible, but the waves seemed endless. Slowly but surely, the sheer weight of numbers began to pile up, pressing against their defense and threatening to buckle it.

  Luckily, one equilibrium existed in this dire situation , Rosafey.

  Still having summoned no beast to her side, Rosafey was, against all expectation, one of the highest-performing members on the field. Many cracks in the wall were sealed by her swift interference, and countless beasts lost their lives to her flickering blade.

  She fought not from behind the safety of shields, but just outside the defensive wall, facing the beasts head-on—a task all other Catalysers delegated to their tamed beasts. Wherever Rosafey moved, pressure would be elevated, and soon after, the strain on that section of the wall would lift.

  The speed and efficiency with which she dispatched the Vorpal Rabbits was enough to put many of the fighting beasts to shame.

  Watching her merciless, fluid performance, if Rosafey didn't have two arms, two legs, and a single head, no one would have told you she was human.

  Back at the front, the elite squad continued their cycle of encirclement and dispersal. During one of their clashes, a member of the team finally managed to land a solid hit upon the beast.

  The Catalyser’s brief flash of triumph was instantly snuffed out. As Instead of retreating from the blow, Blood Harvest tanked it, using the opening to deliver a vicious counterattack. The move caught the man completely off-guard.

  “Watch out!” Gryla yelled, shooting forward to assist. Her interference helped her teammate avoid a fatal strike—but at the cost of her own beast taking the hit instead.

  Her silver fox was left with a long, weeping gash across its shoulder. “Th-thank you, Leader,” the man stammered, shaken by the close call. Gryla wasn’t listening however. Her focus only fixed on the wound of her beast, specifically on the fresh blood now dripping from it .

  Seeing it, she couldn’t help but curse aloud. “Shit!”

  The injury itself wasn’t severe. In any regular fight, it would only be a minor concern. But sadly not here. Not in this battle.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Gryla, daring to face a Titled Beast, had naturally done her research. Through which She knew a lot about it .

  Blood Harvest had first appeared in the realm around two years ago, quickly establishing dominance over this territory and the Vorpal Rabbits within it. It was theorized to be a Vorpal Rabbit that had somehow evolved into a powerful new species. Through the many past confrontations and failed subjugation attempts made against it , the Catalysers of the realm had pieced together most of characteristics ,the most important of which is that through its evolution, Blood Harvest had changed from a Corpus-type beast into the more specialized—and notorious—Blood Subtype.

  Beasts of the Blood Subtype were infamous for one signature trait , as they were known as the type that grew stronger by hurting others.

  That was why the shallow wound on her fox was such bad news. The moment the first drop hit the earth, Blood Harvest was caught by an irresistible instinct. It lowered its body, standing perfectly still for a heartbeat before one of its sickle-feet began stomping the ground in a rapid, excited tremor.

  The beast shuddered, its pupils contracting to pinpricks. It was as if it had been injected with a potent stimulant.

  Then, in an instant, it sprang forward again—this time with a blatant, terrifying increase in both force and speed.

  “Shit,” Gryla cursed again, her fear confirmed.

  She knew what was happening. Blood Harvest’s primary ability was called [Blood Sport]. And True to the nature of its subtype, this ability granted the beast a stacking boost to its strength and speed the more it made other creatures bleed . And now that the first blood had been drawn, the hunt had just entered a far more dangerous phase.

  The change was immediate and horrifying.

  Where Blood Harvest had been a blur, it now became a streak of crimson vengeance. The air whistled as it moved, its sickles carving after-images into the gloom. The boost from [Blood Sport] wasn't subtle; it was a floodgate of violent potential swinging open.

  "Don't let it press the advantage! Double effort, now! Hold the line!" Gryla's command ripped through the din, sharp with urgency.

  The elite squad responded, fighting now with a desperate, total focus. The tanks planted themselves deeper, becoming immovable objects against the unstoppable force of the beast. The agile fighters darted in to intercept, and not give the beast a single second of respite.

  But it was a battle of inches, and they were losing ground.

  Blood Harvest moved with a ferocity that defied containment. When an attacker swooped in, the beast was already there to meet it, a sickle lashing out with such speed it was a miracle the blow was parried at all. The force of the clashes sent shockwaves through the defenders' arms.

  It turned its focus on the tanks, its attacks transforming from strikes into a sustained, brutal assault. Each kick and slash landed with the weight of a falling tree, hammering against shields and armored hides. The defensive line shuddered and groaned, pushed back step by agonizing step across the torn earth. The tanks held, but their Catalysers' faces were masks of strain, their beasts' breaths coming in labored grunts.

  The elite squad was fighting with everything they had, calling upon every reserve of strength and synergy. They held the line, but just barely. It was no longer an encirclement; it was a desperate, buckling barrier against a storm of claws and crimson steel.

  Gryla fought tooth and nail, desperately clinging to the hope of salvaging the situation. Yet That hope would soon take a devastating blow .

  Blood Harvest brought its sickle down upon one of the three tanks in a seemingly straightforward overhead slash. The defending beast braced, muscles locking to resist the blow. But the attack was a feint. As the sickle made contact, the beast didn't try to cut—it hooked. With a brutal twist, it anchored its bladed foot onto the tank's armored body.

  Then, with all its strength, it pulled.

  Using the tank as an anchor point, Blood Harvest launched itself upwards, a crimson arc vaulting cleanly over the defender's back. It was a devious maneuver, executed in the span of a single breath, and for the first time, the Titled Beast had escaped the elite squad's encirclement.

  If that wasn't catastrophic enough, the beast didn't even turn to face its former captors. Instead, it abandoned them entirely. Its eerie gaze snapped past the struggling elites, fixing with chilling intent on the distant, unprotected ranged squads.

  Then, it shot toward them.

  Gryla’s eyes widened as she saw the beast’s intention. Panic laced her voice as she immediately yelled, “Quickly, stop it!”

  She and the other elite members spun and tried to give chase, but it was futile. Fueled by [Blood Sport], Blood Harvest was a red streak across the clearing, far faster than their exhausted beasts could match.

  Sensing that they wouldn’t be able close the distance in time, Gryla shouted toward the ranged squads, her command cutting through the chaos. “Suppression fire! Stop it before it reaches you!”

  The support Catalysers, seeing the crimson doom bearing down on them, scrambled to obey. A ragged volley of elemental attacks erupted toward the approaching beast to form a desperate wall of denial between them and its sickles.

  Blood Harvest moved through the storm of fire and ice as a conductor of chaos. The boost from [Blood Sport] didn't just amplify its speed—it made its movements unnervingly unpredictable. It didn't run in a straight line or a simple zig-zag. It would accelerate to a blur, then suddenly skid on the ground suppressing it's momentum, allowing a fireball to sail over the space it had just occupied. It would feint left, its body leaning, only to use the momentum to spring to the right as a cluster of ice shards shattered where it should have been.

  Worse, its eerie, intelligent eyes seemed to be able to calculate the trajectories of the attacks. It had watched the ranged squads for the entire battle and had learned their rhythm—the slight pause as a Catalyser gathered power, the turn of a head to aim, the way they favored volleys from the left flank to corral a target right.

  Now, it used that knowledge. dodging not just the attacks but Thier very intent. When the squad leaders shouted to create a crossing fire and force it into a kill zone, Blood Harvest was already slowing down, letting the converging attacks smash harmlessly into each other ahead of it. When a wall of wind was summoned to block its path, it had already changed its angle of approach two seconds prior, slipping around the barrier's edge before it fully formed.

  It was a nightmarish display. The ranged squads were pouring everything they had into the space between them and the beast, but it was like trying to catch a wisp of smoke with a net. Each carefully laid trap was met with pre-emptive evasion. The distance was closing, and not a single attack had managed to so much as singe its crimson fur. The beast was surpassing their fire with unstoppable momentum.

  Seeing the crimson terror slice through their final volley untouched, Gryla’s hope had shattered. There was no stopping it.

  “Disperse! Scatter now!” Her command came in a scream .

  But it was too late.

  As the first Catalyser turned to run, a shadow fell over them. Blood Harvest landed not with a pounce, but with a terrible, deliberate grace directly in Thier path. The victim had time only to widen Thier eyes, Thier beast letting out a half-formed snarl of challenge, before Thier world turned red.

  A single, vicious backhand slash from the beast’s sickle-limb moved too fast to see.

  A sickening thud followed, of something heavy and soft hitting the earth. The Catalyser and Thier beast were hurled aside like discarded rags, a single, deep rent torn across them both, painting the red ferns a darker, wetter crimson.

  The beast did not pause to roar in triumph. It barely seemed to notice it's fallen victim before it's eerie gaze was already sweeping the scattering survivors, selecting its next target.

  At this point the battle had been fundamentally broken.

  Gryla's attempts to reform a defensive line were useless. Each command was immediately obsolete, shouted into a chaos that moved faster than she could direct. The problem was no longer just Blood Harvest's speed or strength—it was the relentless, mathematical escalation of [Blood Sport].

  Each fresh injury it inflicted didn't just weaken Thier forces. But also stoked the beast’s own power. Its reactions grew quicker, its attacks landed with more crushing force. A shield that had held firm moments before would now splinter. A dodge that was once sufficient became a fatal miscalculation.

  It was a brutal equation with only one solution ,the more the group fought, the more they bled, and the more they bled, the stronger their enemy became. They weren't just being overpowered; they were being outscaled. With every passing second, the gap between their waning strength and its swelling power widened, turning a hard-fought contest into a grim, inevitable rout.

  But the final nail in the coffin was driven when one of the three tanks, determined to end blood harvest's rampage, decided on a desperate charge.

  A large rhinoceros beast broke from the crumbling line, lowering its head and thundering toward the hare. Its massive horn was aimed like a spear, a promise to gore the crimson fiend even if it cost the beast its life.

  Faced with the suicidal assault, Blood Harvest didn't retreat. Its crimson eyes and dark pupils contracted, locking onto the incoming behemoth. It answered not with evasion, but an attack of it's own.

  The hare jumped into the air, executing a forward flip. As it rotated, it kicked downward, adding brutal momentum to its descent. Simultaneously, it activated another ability. A sickening crimson light flared around the sickle-feet, and two crescent-shaped blades of solidified energy—each half a meter long—shot forth.

  The crimson cresents met the charging rhinoceros with devastating speed. The first cleaved the beast's great horn in two with a sickening crack. The second sliced downward, carving a grievous trench from the rhino's shoulder all the way to its hindquarters.

  The rhinoceros collapsed mid-charge, its immense inertia digging a furrow in the earth as it slid to a stop. Its Catalyser gasped, spitting out a mouthful of blood from the backlash of his totem's catastrophic injury.

  Blood harvest was now able to take down one the tanks that had once contained it making jarringly clear that it was nearing if not already at the height of it's power.

  Watching her strategy crumble and her forces collapse was like two heavy blows to Gryla’s spirit. Despite her iron will, a cold seed of despair took root in the back of her mind. She had lost the moment she failed to contain the Titled Beast and allowed [Blood Sport] to take hold. Deep down, she knew it.

  The leader gritted her teeth, a bitter taste in her mouth, before issuing her final command.

  "Everyone, fall back! Escape formation!" she yelled, her voice hoarse but cutting through the chaos.

  In their current state, victory was impossible. Gryla knew it. So instead of throwing Thier lives into a hopeless fight, her duty shifted. She would now work to salvage what she could—to reduce their losses before it was to late.

  Receiving the order for an escape formation, every still-responsive Catalyser knew what to do.

  First, Gryla’s silver fox drew in a mighty breath before exhaling a dense, billowing stream of fog. Its efforts were instantly supplemented by other beasts with similar abilities. Within moments, a thick, clinging shroud—imbued with sensory-dampening properties—blanketed the entire battlefield.

  Trapped within the sudden, blinding fog, Blood Harvest halted its murderous rampage. Unable to detect targets and wary of attacks from unseen angles, it shifted from attacking to guarding its position and waiting.

  This was the opening they needed. Drilled in the maneuver, no one flustered or stumbled. They used the precious seconds to organize a disciplined retreat. Those still standing grabbed the wounded, hoisting them onto beasts before mounting up themselves.

  At the rear, the defensive wall carved one last, violent path through the now-confused swarm of Vorpal Rabbits, clearing a vital escape route for the fleeing group.

  Once everyone was set, they didn't hesitate. Following their training and Gryla's sharp guidance, the group burst from the edge of the fog on their beasts. The creatures, now acting as desperate mounts, galloped with everything they had, trampling anything in their path.

  They had to. Once clear of the fog, they couldn't stop. They had to keep moving, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the Titled Beast's territory before it could give chase.

  The hunt was over.

  Almost an hour later, Gryla and what remained of her group were finally in the clear.

  They were a shattered procession. The proud, unified force that had marched into the forest was gone, replaced by a limping, bloodied column. Beasts bore deep, weeping gashes, their breaths ragged and labored. Catalysers slumped in their saddles or leaned heavily on their beasts, faces pale with pain and exhaustion. The air was thick with the smell of blood, sweat, and the sharp, medicinal tang of hastily applied poultices.

  At the head of this broken remnant rode Gryla. The unshakable leader was gone. Her silver armor was scarred and smeared with dirt and gore. The confident set of her shoulders had collapsed into a weary slump. Her eyes, once sharp with command, were now hollow, fixed on some point in the middle distance as she mechanically checked their surroundings. The fire that had driven the expedition was extinguished, leaving behind only the cold ashes of defeat and the heavy weight of the wounded depending on her to get them home.

  After finding a safe spot to rest, the group finally halted. The immediate, frantic work of tending to the most critically wounded began in grim silence.

  Once the triage was underway, Gryla approached one of her vice leaders. Her voice was low and bitter. "Report. Give me the full tally."

  The man stood at weary attention, his own armor dented. "Without counting the beasts, most members are wounded. Less than half of those wounds are grave. We… we also have confirmed a few fatalities."

  Gryla gritted her teeth, a wave of shame and visceral agony twisting in her gut. She forced it down, her face settling into a mask of strained control. "Prioritize the critically wounded. Stabilize everyone we can. We move for the station as soon as it's possible."

  "Understood, Leader," the vice leader said. He made to turn, then paused. "There is one more thing. After the head count… We've determined that we're a couple of members short."

  Gryla’s brow furrowed in surprise. Had they lost people during the escape without even realizing it? "How many?"

  "Only two."

  Gryla’s mind, dulled by exhaustion and defeat, churned for a moment. Then it clicked. Her head snapped up, and her gaze swept across the huddled, injured forms of her Catalysers, searching for two specific faces.

  A cold suspicion dawned, cutting through her despair. She muttered under her breath, the words barely audible, "Wait. Where are those two rookies?"