Rodolf became a blur of frantic, enraged motion, driving the searing spearhead repeatedly into her hands.
Elena's white hair whipped around her face as she continuously forced her regeneration to its absolute limits, but the massive drain on her internal energy was taking a rapid toll.
Sweat poured down her pale face, her breathing turning ragged.
"Why the hell won't you just give up?!"
Rodolf shouted, his voice cracking with a mix of anger and desperation.
"I promise I'll stop hitting you if you just say you give up! I really don't want to kill an elf!"
Elena didn't say a word.
She gritted her teeth, keeping her bleeding, regenerating hands raised, her green eyes fixed on him with fierce defiance.
She knew she couldn't win—she just needed to buy enough time for Barn to return.
"Get away from her!"
Jayhon screamed.
Terrified but driven by pure desperation, Jayhon dropped into a deep stance.
He concentrated every single drop of his water-Zheki, focusing it between his palms until the swirling street water compressed into a hyper-thin, violently rotating blade.
It was incredibly sharp, humming with enough pressure to cleanly slice through solid iron armor.
Jayhon aimed it directly at Rodolf's head and fired.
At that exact microsecond, one of the Iron Vanguard guards behind Jayhon lunged forward, raising his heavy sword to cleave Jayhon's head from behind.
But Rodolf's reflexes were terrifyingly elite.
Sensing both attacks simultaneously, Rodolf violently snapped his head downward.
Jayhon's hyper-compressed water blade flew cleanly over Rodolf's ducked head, narrowly missing Elena's left cheek by a hair, and soared straight toward the Vanguard guard who was trying to kill Jayhon.
Before the water could hit him, Rodolf snapped his left hand up, concentrating a tiny, white-hot spark of fire at the tip of his index finger. He fired a localized beam of pure thermal energy.
ZAP!
The concentrated fire beam intercepted the trajectory, slicing cleanly through the right side of the Vanguard's heavy iron helmet, melting the metal like butter. The guard stumbled back with a terrified yell, clutching his scorched face.
"Do not touch my targets!"
Rodolf roared at his own backup, his eyes bloodshot.
"Interrupt only if I'm about to die! That water blade wasn't going to kill me!"
Rodolf turned his gaze back to Elena, his face completely devoid of any remaining pity. "I'm done holding back. Goodbye, elf."
The fire Zheki exploding from Rodolf reached its absolute apex.
The entire cottage turned into a literal oven, the wooden walls beginning to blacken and smoke from the sheer radiating heat.
The fire coating his spear became so intensely hot that the air itself smelled of ozone.
Elena's Life-Zheki began to fail; the intense heat was cauterizing the wounds instantly, preventing her cells from regenerating.
With blinding speed, Rodolf drove the white-hot spear forward.
STAB! STAB! STAB! STAB!
Elena let out a horrific, agonizing scream of pure pain, falling to her knees as the raw heat fried her nerve endings.
"Elena!"
Jayhon shrieked.
Hanjun's face finally lost its blankness, his jaw tightening as a wave of hot, uncharacteristic rage surged through his chest.
"Jayhon, now!"
They moved with everything they had left.
Hanjun drew a massive breath, pulling his internal fire-Zheki up from his gut.
Instead of a dim glow, a brilliant, burning orange light condensed entirely around his right fist, sharpening into a solid, flaming blade of energy. It was incredibly hot, fueled by the pure adrenaline of watching their protector fall.
Jayhon threw his hands forward, casting a thick, rotating shield of water directly in front of Elena to intercept the next strike.
Hanjun lunged from behind, driving his flaming fist straight toward Rodolf's exposed spine with all his might.
Rodolf didn't even look back.
With a fluid, contemptuous twist of his torso, he casually sidestepped Hanjun's incoming strike.
At the exact same time, he thrust his spear straight through Jayhon's water shield, shattering the defense instantly.
STAB! STAB!
The heated iron blade tore twice into Elena's stomach.
STAB! STAB!
Two more brutal punctures ripped through her right hand, followed by a vicious horizontal slash that deeply gashed her left arm.
Elena collapsed onto the polished wooden floor, pooling blood instantly staining the clean timber.
Yet, even as she screamed in excruciating, guttural pain, her fingers still twitched, desperately trying to summon the last fading sparks of green Life-Zheki to heal her internal organs.
Rodolf didn't give her a single second.
He stood over her like a demon, driving his spear down into her legs and torso over and over again in a frenzied, chaotic rhythm.
"Just die! Die! Die! Die!"
Rodolf screamed, his face twisted in a manic, exhausted grimace.
"I'm tired! I didn't want to do this! Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?!"
Elena's screams finally faded into a faint, ragged wheeze.
She lay completely still in the massive pool of her own blood, her white hair scorched and matted.
With the absolute last ounce of her fading consciousness, she looked up at Rodolf, her lips moving silently.
"I'm... not scared of you,"
she whispered, a drop of blood leaking from her lips.
"I'm... scared for you..."
She knew.
She knew that the moment Barn walked through that door and saw his entire world destroyed, the gentle, lazy guard would vanish forever.
The Golem King Slayer would return, and anyone in this room would face an existence worse than death.
Rodolf didn't care.
He delivered one final, heavy thrust into her shoulder.
Elena's eyes rolled back, her body going entirely limp, her chest stopping its rise and fall. Her regeneration completely shut down.
She was down, completely motionless, looking entirely dead.
"Finally,"
Rodolf panted, wiping the sweat and ash from his forehead.
He tossed his heavy spear onto the bloody floor with a loud clatter.
He turned his bloodshot eyes toward Hanjun.
Before Hanjun could even raise his hands to defend himself, Rodolf closed the distance in a flash, driving a brutal, fire-enhanced fist straight into Hanjun's jaw.
BAM!
Hanjun was lifted off his feet, crashing hard against the stone hearth.
Rodolf dropped on top of him, mounting his chest, and began raining down a relentless barrage of heavy, bone-crushing punches directly into Hanjun's face.
CRACK. CRACK.
The sickening sound of facial bones fracturing echoed through the quiet house. Hanjun didn't scream, but blood erupted from his nose and mouth, his eyes rolling back as his consciousness began to shatter under the immense, unbridled physical trauma.
The two Iron Vanguard guards standing at the door stared in absolute awe, their bodies shivering slightly beneath their armor, they were thinking, How can a fire zheki user land hard punches like that?.
Is this guy really just a normal tier 2 junior guard?, we are both tier 2 mid but we still think he's stronger than us, they wondered internally.
His raw power is completely insane.
Rodolf rose from Hanjun's limp body, his knuckles dripping with the boy's blood.
He turned his gaze to a trembling, crying Jayhon.
"No... please..."
Jayhon whimpered.
Rodolf grabbed Jayhon by the wrists, violently twisting and stomping down on his arms until a horrific SNAP echoed through the room.
Jayhon let out a piercing shriek before Rodolf delivered a devastating kick straight to his ribs, sending the blue-haired boy sliding across the floor into the pool of Elena's blood.
For the next two minutes, Rodolf simply unleashed his frustration, brutally kicking and punching both boys until they were completely broken, unmoving masses of flesh and torn linen.
Silence returned to the ruined cottage.
The entire floor was completely covered in a thick, horrifying lake of dark crimson blood.
Rodolf stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving as his fire-Zheki finally deactivated.
The two Vanguard guards carefully stepped over the ruined door frame, looking around the smoking, blood-splattered kitchen.
"Alright,"
the lead Vanguard whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
"The targets are neutralized. The elf is taken care of.
Let's grab the bodies and head back to the citadel before the ki—"
Suddenly, from the dirt pathway outside the ruined doorway, a low, gravelly baritone voice began to drift through the quiet air.
It was steady, cheerful, and entirely unhurried.
"Leaves from the elder bough,Falling so slow.
The forest is silent now,
The cold winds blow..."
Rodolf's entire body froze.
The two Vanguard guards snapped their heads toward the open doorway, their hands instantly gripping the hilts of their swords.
The footsteps were heavy, slow, and familiar.
"I sit by the ancient stone,
Under the shade.
Waiting for you to come,
My lovely elf..."
The singing got closer, echoing clearly through the gaping hole where the front door used to be.
"Ooo, lovely elf,
Come marching home.
No more to wander,
No more to roam.
The stars in the canopy,
Shine through the loam.
Ooo, lovely elf,
Please march on home..."
Rodolf frantically gestured to the two guards, his face pale as they quickly ducked into the shadows of the adjacent hallway, hiding behind the blackened wooden pillars in absolute, breathless silence.
"Your bow hangs upon the wall,
Gathering dust.
The golden autumn leaves fall,
In time we trust..."
Barn stepped through the threshold.
He was smiling broadly, his crooked iron helmet sitting slightly askew on his head.
In his massive, left hand, he was carefully cradling a large, pristine glass jar filled with thick, golden honey.
"Ooo, lovely elf, look what I got!"
Barn called out in a booming, cheerful, singing voice, completely oblivious to the silence.
"Some good, tasty honey from the upper district market! Isn't that what you wanted?
Let's share it with the kids, they're gonna love—"
Barn stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes traveled from the shattered door on the floor... to the blackened, smoking walls... to the limp, broken bodies of Hanjun and Jayhon lying in the corner... and finally, to the center of the room.
Where Elena lay completely still in a massive, expanding lake of crimson.
The cheerful smile on Barn's face completely vanished.
His features went entirely blank, his eyes widening into a hollow, terrifying void.
His left hand completely relaxed.
The glass jar slipped from his fingers, falling through the air in agonizing slow motion before smashing violently against the blood-stained floorboards, scattering shards of glass and thick, golden honey directly into the pool of red.