Ch. 26 The Rat Ogre pounded the ground with both hands in a fury

Infuriated, the Rat Ogre violently pounded the cobblestones with both massive fists.

The structural integrity of the stone bridge groaned under the impact, shaking violently as the abomination roared, launching its massive bulk directly at Wilden.

Mia deftly gathered the volatile energy in her palm, manifesting another incandescent whip of flame.

With a sharp snap of her wrist, the fiery lash tore through the air in a fluid, elegant arc, striking the Rat Ogre squarely across its grotesque visage.

A blackened, smoking welt instantly split the monster’s face as ravenous embers caught its coarse fur.

Blinded by the sudden inferno, the Rat Ogre spiraled into a deeper frenzy, thrashing its knotted, muscular arms in a manic, unpredictable pattern dictated purely by predatory instinct.

Wilden tracked the trajectory calmly.

Side-stepping the monster’s heavy downward smash by a hair’s breadth, he lunged forward, thrusting both straight swords in a synchronized, lethal maneuver.

One blade drove horizontally; the other angled sharply upward.

The first steel tore through the jaw, scrambling the beast’s brain stem, while the secondary blade pierced the sternum, violently rupturing its mutated heart.

The twin strikes executed perfect, calculated synergy.

Planting his boot firmly against the carcass, the Soldier kicked off the instantly lifeless vessel, cleanly extracting his dual blades as the massive Rat Ogre collapsed backward.

The sheer displacement of its heavy, flesh-stitched anatomy caused the entire thoroughfare to shudder upon impact.

Yet, the seismic tremors didn’t subside.

The fractured stone bridge began to split open, and Mia watched in grim fascination as the central span violently collapsed before her eyes.

The Rat Ogre’s carcass and tons of pulverized masonry plummeted into the churning canal below, only for more massive, clawed hands to aggressively crest the newly formed jagged edge.

Rat Ogres.

More of them.

Two additional abominations had burrowed out from the subterranean sewer lines flanking the waterway.

Having compromised the stone piers, they scrambled up the ruined pillars onto the remaining bridge deck, baring their yellowed fangs and roaring savagely at the two warriors barring their path.

Mia felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

Whipping her head around, she confirmed that the primary Skaven vanguard was already closing the distance from behind.

Trapped in a collapsing vice, Mia unleashed her self-fashioned Incantation once more, lashing her fire whip repeatedly against the two advancing Rat Ogres.

The beasts instinctively crossed their massive, scarred forearms to shield their eyes, roaring in pain but maintaining a slow, relentless advance through the heat.

Wilden subtly retreated, closing the distance to anchor Mia’s flank.

“There’s another bridge three hundred yards to the west!” the Colorless citizens of Nuln screamed from the safety of the opposite bank, gesturing frantically through the smoke.

“Push to the Palace District!

Do not stop!” Mia bellowed back, before violently driving her left palm downward, manifesting a roaring wall of fire directly beneath the feet of the two Rat Ogres.

But she had severely miscalculated the reckless adrenaline of Clan Moulder’s beasts.

Defying the scorching heat, the two monsters surged through the blazing screen, their flesh sizzling as they charged Mia.

One lifted a grotesque, tree-trunk of an arm, intending to pulverize the small mortal thing into a red paste.

In the absolute eleventh hour, Mia threw her weight to the side.

The Rat Ogre’s boulder-sized fist smashed through empty air, splintering the cobblestones.

Seizing the opening, Wilden stepped into the pocket, his twin swords weaving a cross-cut that carved deep, structural furrows into the monster’s thick forearm, exposing the pale bone beneath.

“Roar—!” The beast shrieked in agony, clutching its mangled arm as it recoiled two steps.

Seizing the momentum of its comrade’s retreat, the secondary Rat Ogre—shrouded in sparks and burning soot—surged forward to press the assault.

Wilden crossed his straight swords before his chest to absorb the impact, but even his heavy iron-clad frame could not entirely negate the inhuman kinetic force of the abomination.

A brutal, clawed uppercut slammed into his defensive guard, violently breaking his posture.

The sheer impact hurled the Soldier backward several meters, leaving his centerline completely exposed.

Right as the monster lunged to deliver the executionary strike, a massive, swirling hỏa cầu thrown by Mia detonated directly over its skull.

“Are you alright?!” Mia gasped, desperately stabilizing Wilden’s massive frame.

Given the astronomical height disparity between the petite girl and the hulking Soldier, the scene carried a bizarre, dark comedic flavor.

Not waiting for his response, she violently slapped an emergency recovery Incantation directly onto his chest plate.

“The blessing remains active,” Wilden rumbled, his hoarse voice steady.

Mia realized her panicked reflex had wasted a fraction of her precious divinity.

Ahead of them, the Rat Ogre that had absorbed the full force of the hỏa cầu was thrashing in absolute agony.

Clawing frantically at its own visage to extinguish the unholy embers, it tore away large chunks of its own mutated flesh.

Its supersonic, glass-shattering shrieks caused even the standard Clanrats pursuing them from behind to falter in primal terror.

The abomination’s head was thoroughly roasted.

Even though it had successfully scraped away virtually all the muscle tissue from its face, exposing a bloody, ghastly white skull, the magical fire clung like a maggot to the bone.

The flames rapidly migrated down its thick neck fur, consuming its entire torso in a raging inferno.

The Rat Ogre died a horrific death, thrashing and rolling across the asphalt until the blistering temperature bypassed its exposed skull, effectively boiling its brain within its casing.

The remaining Rat Ogre, nursing its deeply lacerated arm, lingered warily behind the smoking, charred carcass of its fallen pack-brother.

It hissed and bared its fangs viciously, but its predatory instinct refused to let it advance into the kill-zone.

“Now is our window!

Move!” Mia whispered sharply, spinning on her heel to sprint back toward the mouth of the street.

The Skaven swarm pursuing them had witnessed the catastrophic, agonizing demise of their apex bioweapon.

Instantly, from the lowest Skavenslave to the heavily armored Stormvermin, the collective ranks began to hesitate, their resolve fracturing.

Throughout history, regarding the science of how to force such inherently selfish, cowardly, and treacherous creatures to obey orders, generations of Skaven Warlords and Grey Seers had perfected a singular methodology.

Before a campaign commenced, they would execute an unlucky rat using the most unimaginably sadistic methods possible, broadcasting a clear message to the pack: This is the exact price of cowardice.

When the common vermin deeply internalize that horrific image, their fear of their commanders would eclipse their fear of the enemy, rendering them bizarrely brave.

By some twisted stroke of cosmic irony, the agonizing death of the Rat Ogre had perfectly replicated the psychological effect of a pre-battle execution.

Mia harbored no illusions that this psychological paralysis would contain the swarm for long; after all, she was an active heretic to their species.

Darting down the avenue, she unleashed one final wall of fire across the cobblestones, the hungry flames aggressively feeding on the mounds of Skaven corpses littering the street to sustain their height.

Watching the barrier ignite, Mia couldn’t help but muse internally that from an evolutionary standpoint, it was an act of profound structural wisdom for humanity to have shed the majority of their body hair.

As the screeching Skaven scrambled backward to avoid the spreading inferno, Mia and Wilden seized the tactical window.

Ducking low, they dove into a narrow alleyway splitting the residential blocks, pivoting sharply toward the western bridge layout previously flagged by the citizens.