"Fuck... There's a lot of them..."
"I counted 16... And there's probably more."
Rock and Revy were hiding in the last line of trees, in front of the nest, which they easily recognized because of the dried-out trees and bare ground. They were less than a 5-minute walk from the overgrown clearing where they had met the first sherad. Amidst the dense and lush green forest, the dead area of the nest looked like a completely different planet. Between the dead trees and branches lying on the ground, stood wooden figures of various sizes. All of them were bent to some extent, in a position similar to the monster they found in the clearing.
"How many more do you think there might be?" She asked, looking at Rock. He shrugged and looked around the area in front of him.
"At least twice as many..." He looked straight ahead. Perhaps the dead forest wasn't as dense as the one they had been in a moment ago, but it was still hard to see the other end of the nest from behind the dead trees. "In total, probably somewhere between 30 and 40 in the whole nest..."
"So it could have been worse..." Revy said, then took the rifle off her back and started to mount the knife on it. "Do you prefer a rifle with a bayonet or an axe?" Rock looked at her in shock.
"Wait Revy, wait... Weren't we supposed to just find the nest and count them?"
"You really believed that we would end there?" Revy asked with genuine surprise in her voice. Rock only sighed upon hearing her, but she continued without a pause. "Whatever... What do you prefer?" Rock looked at her for a moment and then pulled the axe out from his belt.
"Bayonet..." He said discouraged, simultaneously handing her the axe.
"Your choice." She handed him the rifle, taking the axe from him herself. "You remember how the dwarf taught us to use this, right? Where to stab..."
"Yes, yes, I remember..." He interrupted her, taking the rifle in his hands, holding his left hand around the forearm, and placing his right hand on the grip, but away from the trigger. "I'll have to aim between their ribs and cut their inner layer with a sideways movement..." He said as repeated the movement he had learned.
"Okay..." She said, standing up and throwing the axe over her shoulder.
"Remember not to use revolvers, the shot..."
"The shot could wake up the rest of the creatures, yes I know Rock, you've already said that... No, you don't have to repeat yourself..." Revy stepped out from under the shadow of the tree they were in so far, Rock followed her a moment later. They headed towards the nearest creature. It stood on the edge of the nest, surrounded only by three dead trees. Revy walked up to the monster while Rock walked around, checking what was hidden behind the trees.
"No monsters nearby, just more dead trees... You can strike." He said in a calm voice.
"Okay..."
Revy took a swing with her axe and hit the creature in the middle of the chest, then without wasting a second, she pulled the axe out with full force. The wooden ribs were shattered and the delicate layer torn apart, just like with the previous sherad. However, this one, unlike the previous one, fell forward to the ground without waking up, right after his insides, which were the first to leave him.
"That's the second one... Do you want to take out those weaves, or whatever it's called, now?" She asked, placing the axe on her shoulder.
"No, we'll do that later, first let's try to eliminate the nest." He replied, looking around for another target.
"Okey..." They moved on, along the edge of the nest, marked by unevenly growing grass, to the next creature they had observed earlier. This one, just like the previous one, stood alone under the open sky, but this one was far from the trees. A little further on they saw two more creatures standing still. They decided to focus on the one in front of them. "Your turn Rocky..." She said, walking around the monster. "Try to do it so that these two don't wake up." She said, pointing to the two sherads further away from them.
"Yeah, I know..." Rock gripped his rifle tighter and prepared to thrust. "Push and pull to the side. Push and pull to the side..." He repeated to himself to make sure he did it right. Revy just glanced at him, then at the sherads in the distance, then back at him.
After a moment, Rock held his breath and pushed the blade under the last rib, just above the pelvis. Revy hwithout a trouble spotted the end of the blade that had pierced through to the other side of the monster's body. The monster flinched slightly, but before it could do anything or make a sound, Rock pulled the blade to the side, slicing the inner layer at its base and releasing the blade. The monster fell to the side, slime leaking from underneath it. Rock leaned forward, breathing heavily. Revy, seeing that the sherads in the distance hadn't reacted to them, walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Not bad Rocky baby...Not bad at all..." She said, only half-joking at him. Rock was still leaning forward and resting the butt of his rifle on the ground to support himself. "Rock, are you okay?" She asked after a moment, visibly concerned. "Are you going to puke?" He shook his head.
"No... but give me a moment..." He said, taking a deep breath. "I was sure that thing would attack me... It' just..."
"Yeah, but you managed to kill it before it could wake up..." She said with a slight smile, praising him. "That's the point... You did better than..." She bit her tongue, remembering the situation from over a week ago and the unpleasant feeling in her stomach associated with it. She quickly gritted her teeth. She felt the need to drink something. Something that had alcohol in it. She shook her head to focus, then turned to Rock again. "You did better than you thought, so your emotions are cooling down... Now come on... It'll take us a week if you keep moping about every sherad in this nest."
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along. After a moment, he managed to pull himself together, although he was still a little shaken. They headed towards the two sherads they had noticed earlier. Both were standing near a large tree, or at least what was left of it. Rock and Revy walked around the large tree trunk, which at this point was no different, apart from the scale, from a rotten board driven into the ground. Not seeing any creatures in the immediate vicinity, they moved on to elimination.
"Do you think that if we kill one, the other will wake up?" She asked, approaching one of them. "They're not sensitive enough for our conversation to wake them up, so the sound of breaking wood or a fall probably won't wake them up..." Rock twisted his face, thinking.
"Maybe... But remember how you didn't kill it the first time you hit it and it started to squeak slowly..." Revy nodded. "If this one even squeaks, the other one will probably wake up and we won't be able to kill it before it alerts the nest..."
"And then we'll be fucked..."
"Most likely..."
"So we have to kill them at the same time..." She said and he nodded confidently.
"Exactly..." And only after a moment did he understand what Revy meant. "Wait. How do you want to do that?"
"I'll take care of this and you take care of the other..." Rock looked at her in surprise.
"We're supposed to do it both at once? And who's going to make sure that others didn't wake up?"
"If we do this right, no other will wake up. Now come on!" She said pointing at the monster. Rock reluctantly nodded and walked up to the creature. It had its back to them and was leaning slightly forward. The monster's long arms hung down and reached the crouched figure to the knees. And despite the fact that the monster itself didn't even reach his chest with its head, he was still terrified by the monster's long arm, at the end of which, long claws reflected the sunlight.
"I've done this once... I can do it now..." He said quietly to himself, then swallowed hard and positioned himself, gripping the rifle in his hands. Revy herself was also ready, standing one and a half meters away from him, ready to strike the side of her creature's chest.
"On three..." Rock nodded. "One... Two... Three!" On three, the axe blade and bayonet pierced the bodies of the monsters, and after another second, both weapons were pulled out of them, practically at the same time. The axe left broken ribs and a huge hole in the monster's side, while the bayonet blade cut the soft tissue, so that slime began to flow from the hole, like a waterfall. Both sherads fell dully onto the dry soil, and the slime leaking from them slowly moistened the ground. "It wasn't bad, I have to admit." She said, throwing the axe over her shoulder, the blade of which was still covered with a thin layer of entrails of 'wooden skeleton'.
Rock, being bent over, just looked in her direction and nodded. He was clearly still slightly dazed by what he had done a moment ago, or rather by the fact that they were still in one piece, and not cut into strips, by the sherad's claws. This time he was in better condition than the last time. He knelt down by the creature he had knocked down and looked at its hand, specifically the palm. As before, when the monster was standing on its own, the hand was straight, but now the hand was half-clenched, with all the claws pointed inwards. Out of curiosity, he put his finger on one of them. He immediately felt a sting. He quickly removed the finger and looked at it. A drop of blood began to ooze from the end of it, even though he had barely touched the sharp end. They were really lucky that no sherad had woken up yet, otherwise they would have turned them into slices. Or at least him. He looked towards Revy, who had been staring at him.
"Ready?"
"Yeah..." He said reluctantly and slung the rifle over his shoulder heading towards her.
"What did you do to yourself?" She asked seeing the blood on his finger.
"Nothing, I wanted to check those claws of theirs..." He said raising his hand and checking the puncture on his finger.
"And?"
"Let's stay away from them." He said without looking up. Revy looked at him with slight surprise.
"Yeah... No shit Rock..." She said after a moment, then moved forward. "Now come on, the sooner we take care of the rest, the sooner we'll get this over with..." Rock looked at her, then turned his attention back to his finger. With his thumb he smeared the drop of blood that had formed, immediately after that another drop of blood began to form, but this time much slower.
For the next two hours, they walked around the nest, searching, finding, and killing sleeping sherads they found. As a rule, Revy would be the one to deal with the sleeping monster, as she was clearly better at it than Rock. However, he also gained a few sherads to his account, when Revy needed a moment's respite or when they needed to simultaneously get rid of two monsters that were standing close to each other.
Very carefully combing the forest, they counted 34 sherads to their names. Unfortunately for them, the sun had long since passed its zenith. True, they still had at least a few hours before it set, but they still wanted to get back to the village before that happened. Luckily for them, they had already combed through most of the dead forest. Only the furthest part remained to be checked.
Rock walked ahead. In his hands, he still held Revy's rifle, the barrel and bayonet of which gleamed from the dried sherad's slime that had managed to collect on the weapon. Revy was a step behind him, the shoulders of her coat stained from the entrails of the sherads dripping onto her from the axe she was leaning against her shoulder. Luckily for her, the slime and the monster's entrails didn't carry an unpleasant smell with them. They were odorless. The only thing that bothered her was that when the slime dried, it became sticky and stiff. Revy felt as if the right shoulder of her coat was taped with ducktape. It didn't interfere with swinging the axe, but it was slightly annoying.
"Holy shit..." She hissed through her teeth, looking at her shoulder again. "Another fucking shit stuck to my coat... And of course it fell apart too. Now I have even more crap on my coat..." She said, brushing the remains of the dried leaf off her shoulder after she had clumsily tried to remove it.
"Weird..." Rock said in surprise, looking at her from the corner of his eye. "I've never heard you complain about dirt before..."
"I wasn't complaining until 20 minutes ago... But this fucking slime turned my coat into fucking silver tape... Everything sticks to it, which is more annoying than the dirt itself..." Rock looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and with a gentle smile returned his gaze to the front, trying to hide the smile caused by the abstraction of this situation. Revy just clicked her tongue seeing his smile. "I'll be fucking smiling like that too, when you try to clean this shit off my rifle and knife when we get back..." Rock gently waved his hand in her direction.
"Okay, okay, I'll stop now..." He said, slowly walking forward, then disappeared behind a larger tree a moment later. Revy was still trying to brush off the dirt when she heard Rock's voice again. "Ummm Revy... Come here quickly..." Rock sounded worried. Revy stopped fussing with her clothes and, grabbing the axe in both hands, quickly but cautiously came up to Rock.
"What happened?" She asked, standing next to him. He looked at her and then moved his hand forward.
"Look." He said uncertainly and just as worried as before. Revy turned her gaze in the indicated direction. In front of her was a small clearing, in the middle of which was a huge tree, broken in half, and around it, corpses of sherads, in various states and scattered chaotically. Some were torn in half, others crushed, broken or otherwise destroyed. Revy took a step forward and knelt down by the nearest corpse, a creature torn in half.
"I know you well enough to know that you didn't do this..." She said, turning to face him.
"You know me well." He replied, approaching her. She turned back to the corpse and touched the ground beneath it with her hand.
"The ground under the body is dry..."
"So they must have been lying here for a while." Rock took out his notebook and wrote something down. Then he looked around them. "They look like they're fighting... I counted 15 sherads... Including this one." He said looking at the body in front of them.
"16" Revy added from herself. Rock looked at her in surprise, she directed her hand towards the fallen tree. "There's another one crushed under the tree..." Rock knelt down, to level with Revy, then he noticed the remains of the wooden skeleton of Sherad, crushed by the tree.
"So the tree was felled at the same time as those sherads..." He mumbled under his breath, writing something down in his notebook.
"Yup..." Revy replied, then straightened up. "That was the last part of the nest, so we can go back now..." Rock looked in her direction.
"Wait, Revy... Don't you want to know what happened here? What attacked them?"
"Why? It made our job easier, but I don't necessarily want to send a thank you letter..."
"Don't you think it's not dangerous? Isn't it worth finding out what it is?"
"Sherads don't look like something that would be at the top of the food chain." Rock just frowned, having to agree with her to some extent, but something still didn't sit right with him.
"Revy, that thing felled the tree... Dry and dead one, but still." Revy sighed and then turned her back to him, looking into the center of the nest.
"Rock..." She began calmly, but then fell silent as she noticed several pairs of glowing green eyes on the branches of the dried-out trees, piercing her through and through. Revy felt uneasy. She dropped the axe to the ground and drew one of her revolvers. "Rock." She said carefully quietly, stepping back to him.
"Yes?" He replied, not taking his eyes off the corpse, taking notes, and then he felt Revy's hand on his shoulder.
"Look." She said again without raising her voice. Rock turned around, seeing a group of sherads in front of them, slowly descending from the trees. He couldn't tell if they had been there all along or if they had just appeared. He looked around. There were only trees there, but he had the impression that running away from the sherads on their own territory was suicide.
"What do we do?" He asked, grabbing the rifle and squeezing it tighter.
"There are only 8 of them... I think this is the remnants of the nest. Let's stay calm and we should be able to handle it." Revy said with confidence, then pulled the second, black, revolver from the holster and cocked the hammer. Rock swallowed and, pulling the lever of the rifle, inserted the first bullet into the chamber. At the sound of the bolt closing in the rifle, as if on the command, the first sherad, let out a high-pitched squeal and took off from the line of trees, straight towards them.
Revy quickly aimed the weapons towards the monster, fired the first, second and then third shot. The first bullet hit the sherad in the shoulder, knocking him off balance slightly. The second flew right next to the chest, while the third hit his side. The creature fell to the ground writhing, while slime began to pour out from under him. However, before the first bullet hit the first charging monster, the second one had already taken off to flank them.
Rock, sloppily, lined up for a shot and began to follow the monster running along the trees with his sights. He pulled the trigger, suddenly the bark of a dried-out tree behind the sherad shattered under the impact of the bullet. Rock reloaded and fired a second time, then a third time. However, each bullet only penetrated the dried-out trees behind the running sherad.
"Rock, put some fucking effort into this!" Revy shouted right after hitting the first sherad and before locking on the next target.
"I'm trying!" He replied in an equally raised voice, then aimed again, slightly in front of the monster and pulled the trigger. This time the bullet pierced through the sherad's torso, it fell to the ground and, as a result of the momentum from the movement, began to roll on the ground.
In the meantime, Revy was already firing more shots. She aimed specifically at another running sherad. The first shot missed him, fortunately not wasted. The bullet hit another one standing behind him, knocking him to the ground. Revy kept aiming, despite everything, at the previously chosen target. Another shot, and another, and another. The monster, running in an arc towards her, passed each bullet fired. Revy gritted her teeth, following the sherad, in the background thundered the sounds of Rock's rifle shots, trying to hit another monster. Suddenly the beast made a sharp turn, heading towards her.
That was its mistake.
Revy quickly fired three shots. All the bullets, with a force, pierced the sherad's body, knocking him unceremoniously to the ground.
She quickly took a step back and looked in the direction from which the sherads had come.
A few meters in front of her another one fell, from Rock's bullets.
"Are you okay?" She asked without even looking in his direction.
"I guess?" He answered uncertainly, panting, himself impressed that he was still alive.
"I told you we'd make it... There's only two of them left..." She said, raising her revolvers towards the sherads, uncertainly hiding behind the trees. Then she thought for a moment "Two... Shouldn't there be more of them..."
At the same moment she felt someone grab her by the coat and pull her back. She only heard Rock's scream.
"Revy!"
Sensing something, she turned her gaze to the other side. There she saw the sherad's hand with its sharp claws pointing in her direction. He must have sneaked up and flanked them, which they didn't notice. And now, having the opportunity, it jumped at her.
Luckily for her, Rock reacted quickly enough and pulled her away. She only felt a hand wave in front of her face, above her line of sight.
Now the beast was directly in front of her. She quickly aimed both revolvers at the beast's center mass and fired both at once. Shattering its wooden ribs and spraying slime.
Before it fell, Rock took a step forward and struck his bayonet in its center, then pulled it out immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, the bayonet must have come loose, because before the monster fell from its wounds, the knife got separated from the rifle and dug into the ground next to them.
They didn't have time to think about that, because to their horror, behind the falling sherad they saw two charging towards them, wanting to take advantage of the opportunity.
They were close. Too close.
Revy, in a surge of instinct, raised a revolver in her right hand towards the creatures running towards them and after pulling the hammer, pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately. All she heard was the sound of hitting the already burnt out primer.
In panic, she tried to raise the second revolver, covered in matte black, but before she could, the monster lunged at her.
Falling to the ground stunned her slightly, but she recovered quickly enough to grab the monster's hand and block the attack aimed at her throat. Holding Sherad's hand, she felt as if she was holding on to a tree branch. It wasn't thick, but definitely, she wouldn't break it in her hands, but she didn't have time to think about it further, because the monster's other limb was already pointed in her direction.
Luckily for her, she managed to catch that one too. She held it tightly, not allowing sherad to break free. Sherad, clearly seeing no other option, began to push against her. He wasn't particularly strong, but Revy felt that with time she would lose her strength, and the creature would win, so she couldn't play for time.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Rock. He wasn't in a better situation. He was also pinned to the ground by Sherad and together with it, they were wrestling with the rifle, that was the only thing separating him from the monster.
Revy's breathing began to accelerate involuntarily.
She felt Sherad start to press harder against her.
Her vision started to turn tint of red.
Sherad started to struggle even more.
Her breathing quickened even more.
She felt like she could hear her own heart beating.
Suddenly she heard a voice.
"Give up already..." Revy turned her head to the side, in the direction the voice came from. She saw herself. Dressed as she had been that fateful evening in Yellowflag. Lying in a pool of blood. Staring at her with a dead gaze. "Give up..." She heard her own voice from her dead lips opposite her. "You've already lived once... Why do you need a second life... If not now, then you will die other way..." The world around Revy froze. "Die..." Her own lips said, then smiled at her.
Revy returned her gaze to monster in front of her.
He pressed against her even harder.
She tried to calm her breathing, but it didn't work.
It only speeded up.
She looked around.
She couldn't see her black revolver anywhere.
She must have dropped it somewhere when she was knocked down.
She saw the bayonet stuck in the ground.
If she freed herself, she could reach it.
If she freed herself, she could do it.
She managed to take a deep breath.
With a surge of strength, she pushed the sherad away with her hands.
It didn't expect this.
She kicked him out with her foot.
She rushed towards the bayonet.
She caught it and without wasting a moment, she threw herself at the monster. Sensing her only opportunity, she began to stab it. Blow after blow fell. Another and another. Another and another. Another and another. Another and another.
At one point, she turned to Rock. He had been losing the wrestling match with the sherad on top of him.
Revy quickly stood up and rushed towards the monster that had pinned Rock to the ground.
She caught him and knocked him down, then, while on him she began to stab him with the blade of her bayonet.
Rock quickly shook off the shock. Still breathing panickily, he looked towards Revy. She slowly began to stand up from the remains of the monster that had been on him a moment ago. Her hands were covered in a layer of slime, her sleeves wet from it. She was tightly clenching her right hand around the knife which, in addition to being covered in slime, had acquired many new dents on it's blade.
He looked up. Her entire coat was covered in dirt, and her chest was rising and falling very quickly. She had lost her hat somewhere, and her face was half covered in blood, oozing from a cut above her eye.
AN: Well, this chapter marks one full year of Black Lagoon: Unknown Frontier.
I am happy
And you can go now.
See you in next month...
At least I hope so...