The collapse of our formation was instantaneous and brutal. In the cold logic of the battlefield, the first to fall were those with support jobs—the healers and the specialists—followed quickly by those ill-suited for the frantic press of close-quarters combat, like the archers. Seeing their comrades being butchered like livestock triggered a visceral shift in the surviving guards. The fear that had initially paralyzed them curdled into a suicidal fury. Men and women who had been professional raiders only minutes ago began to fight like cornered, rabid animals.

  It was a grim exchange of mathematics. For every one of our allies who fell into the mountain dust, two bandits were dragged down with them. Within what felt like an eternity but was likely only minutes, half of the combatants on both sides were either dead or lying in the dirt with lethal, life-draining wounds. In any normal skirmish, one side would have broken and fled by now. However, our side was composed of high-level individuals who had lost friends; they refused to yield while the sliver of victory still remained. The bandits, despite losing twenty of their own, were still double our number. They could see our exhaustion, see the blood-soaked leather of our armor, and it fueled their belief that a total victory was just one more push away.

  I fought in a trance of high-speed calculation. My body moved with a mechanical precision, dodging just enough to avoid a lethal strike so I could land a fatal counter. It felt like playing a retro game on "Hell Mode," where a single pixel of overlap meant game over. I was accumulating a dozen minor nicks and scratches, the cumulative blood loss starting to make my vision swim. Just as I found a momentary opening to breathe, the air behind me hissed.

  A powerful, horizontal slash tore through my side. It wasn't deep enough to disembowel me, but the white-hot agony of the steel parting my flesh was staggering. I felt my health reserve plummet. When I checked Player Window, it seemed like I lost 50 HP from just that cut alone and I was bleeding with my HP dropping even more.

  I dashed forward, my boots skidding in the gore-slicked dirt, fearing a follow-up strike. I pivoted and funneled my mana into two consecutive uses of Healing Touch. The first burst of golden light stemmed the torrential bleeding; the second knit the skin and muscle back together. The wound closed, but the dull, internal throb of the trauma remained.

  Fueled by a sudden, jagged surge of rage at the pain, I swung my sword at the nearest bandit in my path. My blade, backed by my abnormal strength, sheared through his copper sword as if it were dry kindling and continued through his face, splitting his skull entirely.

  I whirled around, my eyes searching for the bastard who had ambushed me—and for Namo. Namo was supposed to be my back, my silent guardian. I saw the culprit first; he had been charging me, but he skidded to a halt, his face paling with fright as he watched his comrade’s head and weapon fall in separate directions. Then, I saw Namo.

  He was lying on the ground exactly where I had been standing when I was hit. He was gasping for air, his chest hitching with a shallow, wet sound. His feline ears were pinned flat, and tears were spilling from his wide, terrified eyes. I flicked my eyes toward the Party Panel.

  ***

  Namo

  HP: 7/101

  ***

  The sight of that single-digit number sent a cold, burning sensation through my chest. Namo, despite his job, was far less experienced than any of the guards here, let alone me. The fact that he had survived this long was a miracle, likely because the enemies were too focused on the "Monster" in the center of the fray—me. But he had reached his limit. Seeing him lying in a near-death state, his eyes searching for me through a veil of tears, made my mind go white with a cold, focused fury.

  I dealt with the trembling bandit in front of me with a single, contemptuous thrust and sprinted to Namo’s side. I pulled a high-quality healing potion from my inventory and pressed it into his shaking hands. As he fumbled with the lid, I stood up and finally looked around.

  The silence was deafening. I had been so submerged in the "flow" of the murder that I hadn't realized the screaming had stopped. Around me lay nearly seventy bodies. They were twisted in the grotesque geometry of sudden death, their eyes open and filled with the lingering horror of their final moments.

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  “Khh— Khahahaha. Hahahaha!”

  A laugh bubbled up in my throat, sounding jagged and wrong even to my own ears. It wasn't joy. It was the sound of my composure shattering. I had come to this world to explore, to savor the "fantasy" of a lighthearted adventure. Instead, I had found myself standing in the center of a slaughterhouse.

  I saw Selvia. Her once-elegant face was a mask of dried salt and dirt; she had clearly spent her final moments in a state of absolute terror before the end came. Her skin was a deathly, translucent pale. A Priest—a valuable, rare asset—wasted in the dirt. Kaelen and Drenil, the party leaders, lay not far away. Their expressions were strange; they didn't look horrified. They looked... satisfied. It was clear they had sacrificed their lives to buy a few extra seconds for their comrades. It had been a noble gesture, and it had been entirely in vain. Everyone was dead.

  The most pathetic sight was the merchant. I couldn't even remember his name now. He had started this whole mess for a bit of extra greed, and he had been among the first to die. His face was frozen in a mask of shock and resentment, likely still cursing the world as the light left his eyes.

  “Hikkk!” “M-monster! L-let’s run!”

  The voices pulled me back from my study of the dead. Two surviving bandits were standing a few yards away, their weapons trembling in their hands. They looked at me as if they were facing a legendary beast from the deepest floor of the dungeon. Considering I had personally dispatched twenty of their brothers, the label of "Monster" was probably accurate.

  I didn't immediately attack. I felt a strange lethargy, a sense that these two weren't worth the effort of lifting my sword. But then, their terror shifted. I watched as their eyes darted toward the merchant’s mangled corpse.

  “H-how can this be? We planned this... we were twice their number...” one stammered. “It’s the monster's fault... if it weren’t for him, we’d be rich.”

  But then, their greed—that baseline human filth—reasserted itself.

  “Wait. Look at that. Gold coins.” “What!? Wait... is that a Platinum coin?” “Don’t be ridiculous. How could you tell a platinum from a silver at this distance?” “Look! It’s larger than a silver... and it has the wings of an angel engraved on it! It's a platinum coin!”

  They began to giggle, a high-pitched, hysterical sound that signaled they had lost their minds to the prospect of wealth. I looked toward the merchant's body. A pile of coins had spilled out over him. It wasn't a torn pouch; it was as if a reservoir had burst. I remembered what Copez had told me: merchants possessed a Coin Purse skill, a spatial storage specifically for currency. It seemed that upon the merchant's death, the skill had unraveled, pouring the contents onto his cooling chest.

  There were dozens of gold coins, and there, glinting with a cold, white light, was a Platinum coin—equivalent to a hundred gold. To these bandits, it was more money than they would see in ten lifetimes. Their malice returned, focused and sharp.

  “He looks badly injured,” the one on the left said, his eyes narrowing as he evaluated my blood-stained tunic. “Hehe. Let’s kill him and avenge our comrades. Then all of this—the goods, the items, the platinum—it’s all ours.”

  It was a stroke of luck that they thought I was on my last legs. I didn't disappoint them. I leaned heavily on my sword, limping slightly and clutching my side where the waist wound had been. I made my movements look sluggish, my breathing heavy.

  I let them close the distance. They were blinded by the shine of the metal in the dirt, convinced that they were about to finish off a dying "monster" and claim a king’s ransom. As they entered my attack range, I shifted.

  I didn't limp. I dashed.

  I positioned myself to the far right, ensuring the first bandit’s body would block the second one’s line of sight and path of movement. I activated Sword Dance.

  With my Strength stat effectively at 11.72, the speed of the skill was invisible to the naked eye. I deflected the bandit's desperate, clumsy swing with a casual flick of my wrist. Before he could even realize his weapon had been moved, I pivoted and decapitated him. His head spun into the air, a spray of crimson painting the mountain road.

  The second bandit froze, his brain failing to process how a "badly injured" man had just moved with the speed of a lightning strike. That moment of hesitation was his death sentence. I threw my entire weight forward, my steel sword leading the way. I plunged the blade directly through his chest, aimed precisely at the heart. I felt the resistance of the ribs snap, and the tip of the sword emerged from his back.

  “Guahh!”

  He gasped, a spray of blood hitting my face. He spasmed for a few seconds, his fingers clawing uselessly at the air, before his eyes rolled back. I pulled my sword from his chest and let the body slump into the mud.

  The silence returned to the mountain pass, heavier than before. I stood amongst the seventy corpses.

  [Edited]