With Temperance’s command, Arthur and Agnes broke into a sprint. Steady at first but gradually picked up the pace as their figures stretched toward the creature hunched in stillness.

  For a while, the Fallen Soul stood there, unmoving until the pair pierced through the invisible boundary of its reach.

  Suddenly, its head snapped toward Arthur with a feral twitch. He was the faster one between him and Agnes, so he had gained greater ground, putting him closer to the creature than her. So that must have been probably the reason why it aimed for him first.

  Before a word could be uttered it was already there, its sickle howling through the air en route to parting the gentleman’s throat. The end result would have been clear had his cane sword not met its swing.

  Arthur barked a laugh as sparks jumped and scattered, but he couldn’t hold his ground for long. His wrists nearly gave way from the force.

  “Bloody hell, it’s faster than a starving rat! Its strength is ridiculous too!”

  Just as Arthur staggered back, a second sickle whipped around for a followup strike.

  “Fall back if it pushes too far in! From me, there’s a 10 meter distance. It won't chase past it!”

  Temperance’s voice rang out as she took aim with her revolver. By then, Agnes had already intercepted the next blow, her hammer meeting sickle with a shuddering clang that cracked the ground beneath them.

  The Fallen Soul was forced to pull back its second attack against Arthur and use that arm to defend against Agnes’ giant hammer. The force of the clash nearly wrenched free her grip of the weapon, but her teeth bared in a grin.

  “We’ll kill it inside the line, won’t we Arthur?!”

  She pulled back her weapon and immediately shoved it forward, sending tremors through the stones at her feet. The blow sent out seismic ripples that made the air quake and threw the monster a couple of paces back.

  It regained its footing soon after, expressing no real sign in having taken damage from that attack at all. The Fallen Soul’s body twisted at an inhuman angle, shoulder popping with unnatural ease.

  It lunged its blade toward Arthur, who had advanced toward it. However, due to the strange way it moved, he was forced to vault aside.

  “ Spirit Flow Art: [Ten Step Confusion] ”

  With each step Arthur took to evade the creature, illusions flickered like fractured glass from where he was a split second ago, disorienting its movements for a moment…but only for a moment. Because it tore straight through them as though the sight of them was a nuisance.

  “Arthur, left!”

  Agnes warned as her hammer whistled down toward the creature.

  The gentleman acted accordingly and got out of the vicinity of her strike, which crushed the forest floor where the Fallen Soul had been a heartbeat earlier.

  The color of blood burst at her face’s left side, drawing a huge slice that went through her cheek. And without giving the giant woman enough time to regroup, it made its presence known on her left, preparing to slice her head off.

  However, Arthur didn’t give it a chance.

  He lunged at it with a vertical swing of his cane sword that once again clashed briefly with the sickle, pushing him back with another slash he barely managed to avoid.

  Fortunately, Temperance’s quick action ensured his survival. She fired three shots rapidly, bullets cutting clean lines through the night. The first two pinged uselessly off the scything weapons, but the third grazed its shoulder.

  The attack itself wasn’t effective, but it did buy them a little time to fall back. Arthur and Agnes staggered back into the safe zone.

  He had blood running down his forearm where the sickle had touched the gentleman. And Agnes’ cheek was split open, red liquid trailing into her collar as she stood firm.

  Beyond its attacking distance, the Fallen Soul did nothing except move back into its original position, where they found it the first time and lowered both its elongated arms. It stood still as it watched them.

  ‘Ridiculous’

  That was the first word that came into Yor’s mind. She stood behind them, alongside the safety of her older sister Marcille and Tobias. She couldn’t describe exactly how she felt at this moment.

  Her blind gaze was fixed on the unmoving creature, her breath steady though her chest felt tight, her lips curled into a faint smile.

  ‘Men and women moving like blades of wind, smiling as they bleed from terrible wounds, and I stand here in shock. Is this what an actual fight is all about?’

  As ridiculous as it was, she couldn’t deny how exhilarating it felt watching as all of this unfolded. It was incredible to say the least!

  The Fallen Soul clearly held an advantage when it came to speed and its flexibility and disregard for its own body made it quite lethal in a direct fight.

  If these three weren’t working together as well as they were and decided to engage it one on one then they would have surely perished.

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  The most ridiculous part about this was how she was able to keep up with it. Her astris sight allowed her to see it all, to trace every twitch, and every ripple of pressure between them. She was keeping pace with their blurring speed, somehow.

  “That’s a Nightmare for you. Bloody bastard”

  Agnes muttered as she dragged the back of her hand across the blood on her cheek. She flinched in pain once she touched the tearing on it.

  Without a word, Temperance stepped in between them and returned her revolver into its holster. She pressed her left palm gently on Arthur’s forearm, and the other against Agnes' cheek.

  “ [Hourglass] ”

  With the Condition met, her Sealed Technique activated as a pale golden light ran through her fingers. In mere moments, the giant woman’s wound stitched itself shut like time had been reversed, but Arthur’s arm stayed the same, blood still running.

  “That should do it, sorry Art. Let me close that before you lose anymore blood”

  She ripped a cloth from her white shirt sleeve and wrapped it tightly around Arthur’s wound, stopping the bleeding. The gentleman didn’t protest, he flexed his arm after she was done.

  “I’m grateful…”

  Temperance exhaled a breath and said, while looking back at Marcille and Tobias.

  “I think it’s time for a tag out”

  ***

  Danger Class…

  … is a system created by the Belmeth Empire as a way to quickly assess the strategic threat of certain individuals or Chaos Creatures who were a danger to humanity.

  The system was introduced a century ago and it did not take long before it was so widely used that even rival nations adopted it. All excluding the Godfather Republic of course.

  The Empire codified all threats into seven classes, each described in common speech. The idea was not to measure strength alone, but the weight of a threat. As in how much ruin a single creature, being or race could cause if left unchecked.

  A rule of thumb to note about them was that each class was separated into three sub bands, which was the Low, Standard and High.

  Low meant that the danger was manageable with ideal prep and terrain. Standard was the expected performance of its class. And High performed above its class but couldn’t be moved up rank because it lacked certain qualities.

  At the bottom of the list was the Pest Class. Basically things that were just nuisances at best and local scourges at worst. They didn’t pose much of a threat but were enough to cause trouble, not enough to topple a village without sheer numbers though.

  Above them, the Wild Beast Class. These were predators and monsters strong enough to challenge most Ascendants and claim territories.

  The Hazard Class was where bloodshed truly began. Individuals in this range could destabilize entire regions if left ignored for too long. Most Fallen Souls fell into the High sub band of this class, but a lot of factors played a role in determining that.

  Then there was the class where most, if not all Chaos Creatures fell from and above. This was the Nightmare Class. To encounter one was to find oneself in a story that ended badly most of the time. Their mere presence was suffocating and pervasive, as if the world itself bent around them.

  It would take a whole squad of Vultures or even Magisters to even take one down. Walking away without a scratch was never a guarantee.

  Worse still were the Disaster Class. Living calamities so potent that even nations had to prepare as if going to war when going against one. They had enough power and influence to bring down an entire country by themselves.

  There was the Calamity Class. This was a rare , terrible classification whispered of in the way men speak of black storms on the horizon. This was a threat no singular or even united countries could handle.

  Only a handful had ever been recorded bearing this class, possessing enough power to wipe out even one of the three superpowers in the Auren continent.

  And finally was the Cataclysm Class. This one was the rarest among them. A class that was closer to legend than truth, and so high above the others it was treated almost as a myth. Beings who fell under this classification were said to threaten not only an entire species but the world itself.

  They held the fragile line between existence and oblivion. In a sense, they were basically revered as deities.

  The beauty of the Danger Class system lay in its simplicity and widespread popularity. Everyone, from scholar to farmer or some random joe could understand and was fully aware of it.

  It mostly centered around the principle of how much damage a being was capable of. And the Fallen Soul standing before them could definitely cause damage suitable for that of a High Hazard Class.

  Arthur ranked it up a bit by classifying it as a Low Nightmare, which wasn’t wrong. If whatever duty didn’t bound it to this place, the rural city of Fens would have been destroyed a long time ago.

  So the real question was…why was it so adamant in staying in that exact position and attacked anyone that got close?

  ‘A gatekeeper’

  It served as a gatekeeper to the chapel of St. Vicar. It stood in a tense silence, swaying in that still, unholy patience. Its scythes dragged faint lines in the earth as though marking graves.

  That made Yor shudder. If Duskfall couldn’t overcome it, then coming here would have been a waste of time.

  “Thing’s not even bothered. We’re gnats, nothing more”

  Agnes said as she spat a mouthful of saliva to the ground.

  “Even if we all go at it at once, we’d be lucky to chip the damn thing. This isn’t a Fallen Soul fists and steel can break clean casually”

  Arthur muttered while brushing off dust from his coat sleeve. Temperance looked from one side to the other, almost entertaining the idea of just circling around it since the creature didn’t want to leave this spot.

  It would be a logical decision as they would not have to sustain anymore injuries. But that did that not solve the issue at hand and they were still tasked with taking out any Fallen Soul they came across.

  And so, they had no choice but to face it head on. Temperance drew in a breath and sighed heavily.

  “Then it’s time for a tag out”

  She turned over her shoulder.

  “Toby, found the core?”

  The creepy plague doctor mask wearing man straightened at the sound of his name. His fingers had formed a neat circle that hovered before his mask’s lenses.

  “Chest cavity. Precisely center mass”

  “Perfect. You and Marcy are up then!”

  She said that with such enthusiasm that she must have been smiling when she did. Arthur and Agnes fell back without question and in their place stood Marcille, lowering her body into a runner’s crouch and spear angled like a striking fang.

  On her left was Tobias, who in contrast, stood perfectly straight. He lifted a hand to the edge of his beak, leaving it there.

  Watching from the rear, Yor cocked her head in confusion. Something about his posture prickled an easy feeling in her chest, but Arthur interrupted before she could ask.

  “Cover your noses, unless you fancy an early grave”

  With that argument, everyone’s hands shot up to their faces. Everyone except for Marcille. She just gave Tobias a quick nod as the creepy man adjusted the strap on his mask.

  “Three seconds, Marcille. No more”

  His voice came out oddly flat through the filters but it was understood.

  ‘What are they gonna do…’

  In the next instance, Tobias bent down a bit and with a dry creak, the beak of his mask split open like a bird’s maw. From it hissed a rolling plume of gas melded with black and green colors. It spilled forward rapidly, swallowing the Fallen Soul almost instantly.

  Since this didn’t count as a direct attack, the creature did not make any movements. And that was a fatal mistake.

  “Spirit Blade Art…”

  It was so fatal that Yor found it impossible to track.

  Marcille had moved but she could not keep track. In the blink it took for the smoke to ripple, the gatekeeper’s body jerked and crumbled into shredded parts.

  From a few centimeters, kneeling behind the ruin with her spear’s blade glistening in the night, was Marcille Drapes.

  “...[Four-Layered Hunt]”