The gore splattered across his chest and arms was a cold, clinging mess, making him instantly regret the explosive method. Still, a quick survey of the results was a welcome trade-off.

  The fireball had been effective, but not decisive. The scorched hound was still moving, its charred muscles contracting in agonizingly slow, sluggish twitches. It was "alive," but no longer a immediate threat.

  The one that had taken the full force of his lightning, however, was completely and utterly still. The result was unambiguous: decapitation, whether by blade or force, worked.

  His tactical assessment took less than three seconds. As his eyes lifted from the corpses, he registered the nine remaining creatures closing their clockwise circle, their rotting bodies tightening the noose around him.

  "Trying to keep me from running?" Vincent asked the horde nonchalantly, wiping a strand of gore from his cheek. The question was met with only low, guttural growls and the squelch of their maggot-infested paws on the damp earth.

  Once their encirclement tightened, three creatures broke from the main group, forming a smaller, counterclockwise ring just outside of sword range. They were herding him, testing his defenses.

  Vincent stood ready, his hand resting on the hilt of the Zweihander strapped to his back, his breathing steady.

  They attacked as one.

  In a single, fluid motion, Vincent summoned a jagged wall of glacial spikes toward the creature behind him while simultaneously drawing the massive sword and sweeping it in a wide, horizontal arc that cleaved the two in front of him clean through their torsos.

  A quick glance over his shoulder brought a flicker of satisfaction—one of the larger, randomly formed ice shards had sheared through the third creature's neck at a perfect angle, decapitating it.

  But the feeling was short-lived. Looking back at the two he had slashed, his satisfaction curdled into grim annoyance. Though bisected, their upper halves were still dragging themselves forward, claws digging into the earth, jaws snapping. His elegant slash had only inconvenienced them.

  "Yeah, this isn't working."

  With a grunt of disappointment, he slammed the Zweihander back into its sheath. Elegance was a luxury he couldn't afford. He charged the crippled creature on his right.

  The thing, still stumbling as it tried to balance on its two remaining front legs, had no time to react. Vincent's right fist, now encased in a brutal gauntlet of jagged ice spikes, slammed into its face.

  *CRUNCH.*

  One gory punch. Then two. Then three. Each impact was a sickening blend of wet tearing and the crackle of instant frost. Gore and brain matter froze to the icy fist, building a macabre, frozen mace with every blow. He didn't stop until the twitching ceased completely.

  Only then did he turn his gaze to the second bisected creature, utterly unconcerned with the larger pack closing in.

  This one had adapted faster, propping itself up stably on its front legs. But it was still too slow. Vincent's left hand shot out, now sheathed in the same deadly ice, and its face met the same explosive, freezing fate.

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  Vincent’s patience snapped. Waiting for them to dictate the fight was a fool's game.

  He broke into a sudden, direct sprint. The circling creatures misinterpreted the move, thinking he was attempting to flee. One immediately broke formation to cut him off, planting itself directly in his path.

  It realized its mistake a second too late. Vincent’s target was never escape. It was carnage.

  He made his intention brutally clear. His ice-gauntleted fist, still caked with the frozen gore of its pack-mate, didn't just strike—it caved in the creature's skull with a wet, terminal *crunch* . The body dropped like a sack of stones.

  Vincent didn't even break stride. He shook the fresh offal from his fist, his eyes already counting the remaining shadows in the gloom.

  "Five more," he muttered to himself, the words a low growl of grim resolve as he glanced back in the direction of the camp. "I can do it before the end of my shift. Probably."

  Once his thoughts were collected, he dashed toward his next target.

  The creatures, learning from their previous mistake, adapted. The one he targeted held its ground while the others immediately shifted, trying to flank him from outside his field of vision.

  *So simple-minded. So pathetic.*

  Their tactics were transparent to him now. They were ambush predators, reliant on fear and overwhelming numbers. Against a foe who refused to be intimidated or outmaneuvered, they had nothing.

  Vincent feinted toward his original target, then pivoted on his heel to charge the leftmost creature instead. As he moved, he unleashed a volley of fireballs and icicles not to kill, but to harass—forcing the others to scatter and dodge, disrupting their clumsy pincer movement before it could form.

  He closed the distance in a heartbeat. The creature, cornered, lunged with its maw gaping wide like a monstrous pair of scissors. Vincent didn't retreat. He stepped into the lunge.

  His left hand snapped up to grip the upper jaw. His right hand seized the lower. With a grunt of raw effort, he wrenched them apart.

  A horrific tearing sound, like the sound of a canvas being ripped echoed through the air as the creature's jaw muscles and connective tissue shredded, taking a massive chunk of its chest and neck with it. Vincent discarded the bloody ruin of its face and, with his now-free right hand, delivered a final, piston-like punch to its skull. The blow caved in what remained, rendering the creature permanently harmless.

  The entire brutal sequence was over before the others could even close the distance.

  "Four left," Vincent muttered, the count a grim mantra as he turned to face the remaining horrors.

  One creature was close, while the remaining three hung back, spreading out.

  Vincent decided to retry his previous tactic. He launched a volley of fireballs and icicles toward the two furthest creatures and rushed the lone, closer one. This time, however, the pack didn't scatter. The one he charged refused to engage, instead backpedaling swiftly.

  Seeing it retreat, Vincent didn't break stride. He shot his arm out, and the earth behind the creature obeyed. A sharpened spike of stone erupted from the ground, piercing clean through its back and skull which opens it like a flower.

  He then turned to the three others now closing in. The first was already in the air, lunging for his throat. Not a beat later, Vincent pivoted and kicked it with bone-shattering force, sending it flying into a nearby tree with a sickening crunch.

  The second was met with a devastating punch from his ice-spiked right fist, the impact launching it sideways into the undergrowth. He immediately grabbed the third mid-lunge with his left hand and delivered a single, concussive punch to its head, killing it instantly.

  Vincent didn't pause. He sprinted toward the one he'd punched, which was stunned on the ground and struggling to rise. Before it could recover, he stomped on its head with his right foot. Once, twice—until its skull gave way with a wet crack, caving in completely.

  As he looked up, the final creature—the one he'd kicked into the tree—was already in the air, a blur of teeth and rotting fury. Realizing it was too late to dodge, Vincent threw his left arm up in a cross-guard.

  Jaws like a steel trap clamped down. Even reinforced with magic, fangs tore through muscle and grated against bone. Gritting his teeth against the white-hot pain, Vincent drove his spiked right fist into the creature's body again and again, until it finally went limp, its death grip the last act of a vicious predator.

  Sigh.

  A wave of relief washed over Vincent as the immediate threat ended, but it was short-lived. His mind snapped back to the first creature—the one he had pinned to the ground with his short sword through its skull. It was still alive.

  He rushed back to where he'd left it, the blade's hilt still protruding from the twitching beast. His initial instinct was to simply end it, but a cold, clinical curiosity stayed his hand.

  He examined it. At its core, the creature was unmistakably a gray wolf. But it was a wolf undone. Its fur was patchy, revealing decaying skin and necrotic muscle beneath. One eye was milky and vacant, the other dangling by a thread of gristle.

  This was the heart of the horror: it was already dead, yet it refused to stop. His brutal experimentation had confirmed the only sure method was the utter destruction of a significant portion of the brain.

  "Brain," he muttered.

  The single word sparked a grotesque idea. His eyes shot to the creature's head. He could... open it. See what foulness was animating the corpse.

  *Maybe I should? No. Not worth losing sleep over.*

  The thought was dismissed as quickly as it came. He was *NOT* going to play anatomist on a maggot-ridden carcass in the middle of a cursed forest just to satisfy his morbid curiosity. Resolute, he decided to take the short-sword back and quickly stomp the creature's head into paste before he could reconsider.

  As he raised his foot, a sudden, sharp sting lanced up his left arm. He glanced down, his blood running cold.

  *Shit.*

  The bite wound was worse than he'd thought. Blood wasn't just trickling—it was gushing, flowing freely in a dark rivulet down his arm. The punctures were deep, the flesh torn. This was not a wound that would close on its own.