Hacking the Game Didn't Go as Intended [Part Two]

CHAPTER 235: The Price of Evil

The beasts were scaled and akin to komodo dragons. Jagged stone plating jutted from their backs and they wielded their armored tails like clubs. Their eyes glowed red, and when their mouths opened, rows of serrated, saw-like teeth were revealed.

In moments, the fleeing mob was reduced to twitching piles of flesh.

Aurelius stumbled backward. "What are you doing just standing there?!" He barked at the mages. "Attack them! Now!"

The mages nodded nervously, raising their staff. Following their incantations, waves of water, bolts of lightning, and plumes of fire rained down on the monsters.

Nothing.

The spells fizzled, washing harmlessly over the beast's stone plating then dissipated like mist.

"Th-They're absorbing it—?" one mage whispered in horror.

The monsters pounced.

One screamed as claws tore open his gut. Another was caught mid-chant and decapitated. A third tried shielding himself with wind magic, but the monster crushed him against the wall like a fruit beneath a hammer, his body painting it red.

Even the dignitaries didn't escape.

A portly man was dragged by the ankle, screaming until his skull was cracked open like an egg. Another man tried to flee, only to be skewered through the back by two monsters and torn apart in opposite directions.

A woman's body was twisted backward until her spine snapped. Limbs flailed. Blood fountained. Screams echoed—then died one by one.

Aurelius didn't wait.

He ran.

The moment he saw the spells fail, he bolted, dashing between corpses and rubble, ignoring the pleas and cries for help. One of the mages, bleeding out and missing half a leg, stretched an arm toward him.

"P-Please... help me..."

Aurelius didn't even slow down. "Fulfill your role like a good little lamb," he spat. "Be useful for once."

The mage sobbed as he was torn open.

Daisuke knelt, shielding the few demihuman children who remained. They huddled into him, their tiny fingers gripping his tunic.

"HISS!"

One monster lunged.

Daisuke summoned his daggers, the metal singing as they materialized in his hands. He shot forward like a phantom—low, fast, and silent.

DING!

[Terragoros | Lvl 15 | Champion | HP: 694/694]

The first beast opened its jaws.

Daisuke slid beneath it and sliced upward, carving through its underbelly. Guts spilled out in steaming globs.

Another one pounced from the side.

He twisted, stabbed both daggers into its neck, and used its body as leverage to spring upward and flip over a third beast. In mid-air, he hurled both blades—one piercing an eye, the other lodging into a creature's brain through its open mouth.

He landed, willed the blades back, and spun.

Two more lunged. He stepped aside, let them collide, then plunged his daggers into the base of their skulls.

All five fell. Dead before they hit the ground.

The children stared, wide-eyed, their terror momentarily dulled by awe. Aurelius had also been watching. He paused, panting. His boots squelched in the blood of the dead.