Chapter 277: A quick clean up
The men around the carriage snapped alert at the second Luke warped toward their leader.
"You!" The one who’d lost his arm bared blood-stained teeth, eyes gone crimson with rage.
Luke’s face stayed flat. Only the faint crease between his brows gave him away. He was annoyed right now.
Someone had come after his family.
He already knew what he was going to do about that.
"Kill him!" the leader barked.
An arrow hissed in from the left.
*Thump.*
Luke caught it out of the air without looking and snapped the shaft one-handed.
He summoned his dagger and stepped into the nearest man’s space.
"Who sent you. Who do you work for?"
Not a question. A countdown.
His feet were already moving toward him, and body tense.
The man’s blade shook against his own chest. "Empty your ca-*ghak!*"
The dagger buried itself in his throat, still smoking, and the sentence died with him.
The man choked on his blood and the sensation was too agonizing to even cry in pain.
Luke turned, found Monica’s and the others staring, and stated, "Look away-"
A blade shrieked past where his head had been a half second earlier. He’d already moved.
"Luke!" Monica’s voice cracked with alarm.
She needn’t have bothered. Luke was already inside the ambusher’s guard, wrist locked, body spinning.
*SQUELCH.*
The dagger tore through the flesh of his neck and lodged against bone.
"Ahhh-*ghuk!*" The man’s scream cut off when Luke’s skull met his nose.
He dropped. He did not get up.
A pool of blood began to form around the two assailants he just slaughtered
Silence swallowed the field. Luke swept his eyes over what was left of them.
"None of them is a magician." He frowned. "So why does the air taste like Gamma?"
*SHUUU.*
Another arrow.
Luke dropped low, let it scream over his shoulder, and came up already running.
Three men stood in his path. He went through the gap between them like they weren’t there, straight at the archer.
The man panicked, dropped his bow, and ripped a knife free.
*Swish.*
Luke rocked back and let the blade cut air. The archer lunged again, aiming for his skull.
Luke caught the wrist mid-strike and drove a fist into his gut.
"*Ghuk!*" The man folded, staggered, and hit the dirt gasping.
Luke’s claws came out. Two quick punches, one on each side of the man’s throat. The archer choked, spasmed, and went still.
*SQUELCH*
Luke pulled his claws free and jerked his hands to clean the blood off.
The rest of the group watched him do it. His action held no hesitation or mercy. He was no mere traveler with flashy weapons!
Two men broke formation and ran for the tree line. The rest closed in around Luke instead, blades raised, faces pale but stubborn.
Stubborn was going to get them killed faster.
The first swung wide, a clumsy arc meant to keep distance. Luke stepped inside it instead of away, palm slamming into the man’s elbow and folding the joint backward with a wet crack.
"AAAGH!"
Luke didn’t wait for the scream to finish. His claws opened the man’s throat on the follow-through, and he was already moving to the next one before the body hit the ground.
The second came from behind, smart enough to know a frontal attack was suicide. Luke heard the shift in footsteps, dropped to one knee, and drove his dagger up and back.
The blade caught the man under the ribs.
He froze mid-swing, weapon still raised, eyes wide with confusion at his own body no longer listening to him.
Luke stood, twisted the dagger once, and let it slide off the blade.
A third and a fourth came together, thinking numbers would matter. But well.
Luke ducked the first sword, let it pass over his head, and caught the second attacker’s ankle as he stepped in. One yank and the man crashed onto his back, skull cracking against a boulder hard enough that he didn’t move again.
The first swordsman spun around to find Luke already there, too close for the blade to matter.
Luke’s forearm crushed his windpipe before he could bring the sword back around, and the man’s hands scrabbled uselessly at Luke’s arm until his legs gave out.
Luke dropped him and looked up.
The two runners were nearly at the tree line.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance, and vanished from where he stood.
The first runner heard nothing. No footsteps to be warned. Just a hand closing around the back of his collar and yanking him clean off his feet.
"Wait, wait, I surren-"
Luke’s claws ended the sentence and the man’s life at the same time. He let the body drop into the underbrush without a second glance.
The second runner had heard his friend’s voice cut off behind him and made the mistake of looking back instead of running faster.
Luke was already on him.
The man swung a dagger in blind panic. Luke caught the strike between two claws, twisted, and the weapon clattered uselessly to the dirt.
"Please, I was just following orders, I didn’t want to-"
"Wrong words." Luke’s voice signified he was already fed up of all this. "Should’ve picked better company."
He drove his palm into the man’s chest. Something inside gave way with a sound like a snapped branch, and the runner folded backward, dead before he finished falling.
Luke walked back into the clearing at an unhurried pace, blood misted across his sleeve, expression unreadable.
Bodies littered the ground around the carriage. Some still twitched. Most didn’t.
Only one man remained standing, the leader, sword shaking in a one-armed grip, the stump of his other arm wrapped hastily in torn cloth.
Luke stopped a few feet away and tilted his head, studying him as if he was worth the effort or should he just end him.
"You," Luke said, voice quiet, "are going to answer my questions."
The leader’s sword hand trembled harder.
"Or you can end up like them." Luke nodded toward the field of corpses without looking at it. "Your choice. But I’m only offering it once."
Behind him, Monica let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
Roxanne and Laila remained frozen, their lips slightly parted in utter disbelief, while Thea’s face had turned deathly pale.
She just...bit that man yesterday?
Realizing he had no chance of winning, the leader quickly changed his approach.
"You’ll regret killing me," he warned. "I work for someone you wouldn’t dare stand against."
Luke let out a quiet hum. "Do I know him?"
The man frowned. "Of course not."
"Then why," Luke asked calmly, "am I supposed to fear him?"
He took a step forward.
The leader instinctively stumbled back. "Wait...you still have time to earn his forgiveness. Just hand over the women..."
Luke disappeared from his sight.
In the very next instant, a blazing blade pierced straight through the man’s chest.
The final thing he saw before his life slipped away was an endless abyss.
The darkness that resided within a monster’s eyes.
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A/N:- I hope you liked the Chapter. That’s the difference between him and a normal human now
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