Chapter 234: Monument To Overkill

’HOW DARE YOU?!’

Something inside Tera snapped.

Her thoughts exploded into a white-hot furnace of rage.

How DARE it even look at them?

She instantly opened a portal where the beast was crouching—

But it had already moved. It was in the air, its bloated body launching upward in that explosive leap, and the portal sat on empty ground beneath where it had been a split second ago.

Tera’s teeth clenched. She ripped the portal closed and opened another directly in its path—

The portal shimmered into existence ahead of the beast’s trajectory, but she had also been too late. The portal hadn’t opened quickly enough to slice through it.

"DAMN IT!"

A third one its path worked, and the beast was redirected right near her.

The impact on the ground rattled her bones and sent cracks through the dirt beneath her feet.

Tera was pissed. She was furious. She was shaking with a rage so intense her vision had narrowed to a single point.

The system was panicking.

[HOST PLEASE RETREAT IMMEDIATELY—]

The beast’s arms latched forward, and Tera opened the portal. This moment would be wasted if she just protected herself.

She was fed up!

Tera swiped the portal through the beast’s entire body in a single, sweeping motion down into the exit point that opened directly above one of the pits.

The screech that erupted from the ground was deafening.

The beast had hit the bottom of the pit—all twenty feet of free fall onto sharpened bamboo stakes—and the sound it made told Tera exactly how deep those stakes had gone.

Tera was seething.

And she was just as mad at herself. She could have done that from the very start, and this would have been over in seconds.

It was all this stupid thing’s fault!

The beast’s arms appeared over the edge of the pit, slamming against the lip, lashing out wildly, and throwing globs of acid in every direction as it tried to pull itself out. Its screech had turned into a continuous, grinding wail.

"SHUT UP!" she screeched as loud as she could.

She opened a portal at the base of a group of bamboo stalks from the swamp. And its exit point was directly above the pit. From the sliced bottom, the stalks dropped through the portal, and the downpour of poles into the pit started.

It rained down on the beast, piercing it as its screams pitched higher and grew wetter.

The beast’s arms lashed out in a frenzy. One arm caught a cluster of nearby bamboo and sent the poles flying. A broken stalk spun through the air, and Tera barely twisted aside as it nicked her shoulder.

It drew a sharp, hot line of pain she didn’t stop for or even pay attention to.

That thing must die!

More and more stalks dropped, and with each batch she raised the exit portal higher and higher, letting more bamboo stalks fall harder and drive deeper into the monster below.

’JUST DIE ALREADY!’

The arms were slowing, and its screeches were growing weaker, but Tera kept elevating the portal, and the bamboo was falling so fast it whistled. Each impact drove the stalks deeper into the beast, through the beast, and into the poles already there. The pile was climbing higher and higher out of the pit, and within seconds, stalks were biting into other stalks.

A jagged hill of bamboo spears was rising above ground level.

[HOST! STOP!]

[It is dead!]

[IT IS DEAD!]

[It has been dead for the last several impacts!]

[PLEASE!]

[(°△°|||)]

Tera stopped.

She stood in the ruined clearing, gasping, and her whole body trembling. She stared at the small hill of bamboo jutting out of the pit, a tangled, jagged mass of spears poking up at every angle.

She used the scan.

At the bottom of the pit, beneath all of it, the corrupted beast was a pulpy mess.

Tera used the portal to cut away the bamboo around the top of the pile and below, stopping at the section that hadn’t been touched by the acid at the bottom.

She didn’t want to see what was at the bottom.

But she walked to the edge anyway.

She looked down.

It was worse than she had imagined. The acid from the beast’s body had eaten into everything around it, creating a hissing, smoking stew of dissolved flesh and corroded bamboo. What was left of the creature was barely recognisable — a shapeless, oozing mass of grey-green pulp impaled on a forest of broken and melting stakes.

The smell hit her.

Unable to take it anymore, Tera dropped to all fours and vomited into the pit.

[...]

[Did Host just desecrate the beast’s death site?]

[(⊙_⊙)]

Tera spat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and let out a dry, ragged laugh.

She stood up on shaking legs and opened the portal again. She ran it through whatever was left down there—slicing, shattering, cutting through every piece the portal could slice through until nothing at the bottom resembled anything that had ever been alive.

[Host]

[Hasn’t Host done enough?]

[It is never getting up again]

[This system is genuinely concerned about Host’s current mental state]

[( •?? ^ •??)]

Tera didn’t stop until it was watery porridge. Bamboo and flesh and acid-eaten earth, churned into an unrecognisable mess at the bottom of a twenty-foot pit.

Then she stopped.

Tera turned as she heard the worried shouts behind her.

Her mates were sprinting across the clearing. Behind them, the rest of the clan and the wolves were pouring out of the tree line, dozens of beast-folk with wide eyes and stunned faces.

They slowed as they got closer. One by one, their run became a jog, then a walk, then a stop. They were staring at the ruined area and the small, battered female in the midst of it.

But Xavi and Ermin didn’t stop. They ran straight to her, and Xavi’s arms wrapped around her while Ermin’s hands found her shoulders, her face, pulling her toward them and trying to move her further from the pit’s edge—

Then they also stopped.

Their eyes had caught what was in the pit.

Xavi’s arms went slack around her while Ermin’s hands froze on her shoulders as they took in the pulverised remains of that monstrous beast.

They slowly turned to look at Tera.

She stepped back from them gently.

"Sorry, I’m a bit dirty," she said softly as if they weren’t looking at what was a monument to overkill.

A breeze moved through the clearing and ruffled Tera’s hair. She brushed it back, smiling at her mates.

"I told you I’d take care of it."

The beast-folk stared at her in stunned silence. Calis dashed out of the group, heading towards Tera, and he too stopped when he caught sight of what was down there.

[Ding!]

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: BEAST SLAYER]

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: NIMBLE DODGER]

[Influence: +30!]

[?|!(0?0)!|?]

[Host...]

Tera barely had time to process the amount of influence before another notification appeared.

{!NOTICE!}

{※Host No. 874532842 has gained a Sponsor※}