Another hoot came. Asa knew that the hunters tortured women. It was a method that that race used specifically when hunting humans.

  If he turned and ran to save the woman, he would fall right into this foolish trap, and the result would be that both of his heads would become decorations for some orc tribe together.

  The waters of the Dorno River cascaded eastward in a quick, gentle stream, the slight swells looking like they were beckoning to him.

  Come on, come on, jump in and you'll be safe, you'll be sad and guilty, but at least you'll be alive. After a few years, maybe you'll just gloss over it, and will still use this as gossip material between drinks and friends, and if you can't forget it in a few years, then you can certainly forget it in a few decades.

  Maybe you can also use this sadness as a motivation, a few years later to become a general, leading an army, swept away all the orcs on the continent, for the woman's revenge.

  A third scream came, already so faint that it seemed as if it were merely a hallucination caused by worry.

  Asa cursed as loudly as he knew how to curse viciously, and turned and ran wildly toward the way he had come, at the same time doing his best to let out a roar to tell his pursuers that his foolish trap had worked just as he had hoped it would, and very effectively.

  Then in less than ten minutes, after running wildly, Asa saw his pursuer, and the woman in his grasp.

  Neck-length black hair fell out of her cloak, messily obscuring her pained expression in a blur. Her right hand was bloodied and twisted in a withered vine position, not an inch of the bone intact anymore. It hadn't been a one-time injury that could have done that, it had been breaking one place and then another until there was no more place to lay hands on it.

  Asa settled down slightly, not being able to see where she had been fatally injured for the moment, except for this hand. She was simply being lifted mid-air like a chicken to be slaughtered by her pursuer, a faint moan coming out of her mouth, her voice breaking as if it might be snuffed out at any moment by the claw pinching her mid-neck.

  Following the huge, hairy paw, Asa saw the orc who had hunted him for three days head-on for the first time in broad daylight and at such close range.

  Fully a foot taller and half as wide as he was, a huge body with brown fur covering its entire body, towering ears, yellow pupils, a narrow mouth, and a dog-like head, this was a werewolf. The proportions of its body parts were probably similar to that of a human, but from the perfect curves of its muscles and bones, it was also evident that the strength and agility contained in this body were hard for humans to reach.

  The werewolf was wearing a specially made leather armor, and the meteor hammer on the ground that had once crushed the heads of a dozen of Asa's fellow soldiers was obviously specially made as well; humans and dwarves couldn't use such a huge weapon. The fearsome armament complimented his body well enough to allow him to take on a whole squad of soldiers on his own.

  But the werewolf didn't look that imposing or dangerous, one could even say a bit wretched. The fur on his left arm had clotted with blood, and the wound on it was still bleeding slowly. The Ankal Fine Sword didn't diminish its lethality just because it couldn't be used for slashing; the unique blade pierced into the muscle and ripped out all the surrounding blood vessels and tissues as soon as it rotated, and the slender blade was forged from the finest alloys of the dwarves, and it could even pierce through bone.

  On the back of his left paw there was a charred black mass, you could see the tendons and flesh that had exploded after being burned, the fur around it had been burned off, a sign of a fireball spell. Looking at the slight charred traces of fur on his head one could tell that this was originally a fireball shot at his face, which was blocked with his hand when he was too late to dodge. The timing of the fireball must have been very good.

  If he had taken on the hunter with the woman, the chances of winning would have actually been great Asa felt an overwhelming sense of remorse. Now, he could only give it his best shot, there should still be hope, after all, the Huntsman's left arm had been

  The Chaser let out a grunt and listed his mouth open, revealing sharp teeth and moving his shoulders. Asa didn't understand the meaning of the expression, but he clearly saw the muscles bulge on the claw that held the woman.

  The prey had come, the objective had been achieved, and naturally the bait was useless.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "Stop!" Asa let out a hoarse yell and rushed toward his pursuer.

  "Cluckler," the crisp sound of bone breaking, Asa couldn't tell if it came from the woman's neck or inside himself. With no strength left to dodge between the full force of his overrunning legs coming at him, Asa almost watched as the pursuer propped himself up on his chest with a very precise kick, causing him to fly out like a scarecrow and hit a tree hard. The knife in his hand also plunged into the tree.

  Asa shrank like a shrimp, blood and spittle spilling from his mouth and nose. Several ribs were broken, but fortunately they hadn't penetrated the internal organs. It was as if a million brute cows were rushing left and right in his chest, pushing all other sensations but pain out of his body, and he couldn't even exhale.

  This was really not an enjoyable end. The hunter thought with disappointment as he watched the prey that had cost him so much effort over the past three days be such a failure. He had been looking forward to ending it with a good grunt.

  When he found the telltale tracks and scent by the campfire this morning, he was certain it was a trap. How could this cunning prey have shown his tracks seemingly on purpose to himself? It must be a trick of some kind. So he chased another line of tracks that didn't seem to look like much. Surprise and annoyance completely deranged him when he realized that his judgment had actually been wrong again, and that he had been fooled again by this prey's gimmick.

  And this other human's fighting prowess was out of this world, nearly getting himself hit in the face with a fireball blast. Well this human was also fragile, and immediately lost the fight due to severe pain after having his hand broken by himself.

  The result was a victory for himself after all. It was very successful in luring the fleeing prey, and now it was time to walk over and rip the head off quite easily.

  No, there was no need to be so quick. It would be an interesting afterthought to savor the process and see what else the human would do when he knew his life was coming to an end.

  Play a trick afterward? Or struggle? Or curl up in a ball and let out some unintelligible wail with tears in his eyes? Well don't come to that, I'm already tired of seeing it.

  It took Asa a while to exhale and get up, his chest felt like it was full of knives between his ribs, and he kept jerking up and down as he breathed. He barely looked up at the knife stuck in the tree, the white sap secreted by the tree had dripped all over the blade.

  He recognized the tree, the thin straight roots on it had once reminded him of an almost shameless remark. Now he remembered it again, and looking at the woman who had fallen to the ground without a moan, a force of grief and anger sustained him as he stood up and pulled the knife from the trunk. With all the strength in his body he raised the knife forward.

  The pursuer watched the oncoming prey with an almost pitiful state of mind. This turtle like slow and trajectory obvious movement is the struggle after you? It was even possible to see the pulsing of your every muscle and the contortions of your movements due to pain, to see when and where the knife fell with how much force.

  The Chaser raised the hilt of the meteor hammer in his hand and blocked the knife without deviation with a loud clang of metal meeting metal. As expected, the knife and hand were rebounded away together, along with his body, and he was jolted backward, the empty door between his chest and abdomen wide open, so that if he could just dig his claws straight in from underneath, he would be able to rip out that hot, screaming heart.

  Except the chaser hadn't anticipated a seemingly inconsequential detail. The sap clinging to the knife turned into countless tiny drops under the intense vibration, splashing into the chaser's eyes, and onto his wet nose.

  It wasn't sap, it was a thousand small knives hardened with poison and full of barbs and burned red. The hunter let out a long, mournful scream that he had never heard before.

  The whole world was replaced by this agony. His vision was first crimson and then completely black, his nose was no longer working, there was nothing there but pain, and even his ears could only hear his own screams. Then the only remaining bodily sensation immediately found something cold shoved through the small of his back, reaching all the way to his chest, not very effortlessly, but very resolutely squeezing itself out of the middle of his originally well-arranged internal organs.

  A fear that even managed to mask the pain swarmed over him, and the Chaser subconsciously gripped something under the small of his back, using all his breath and fear. Then he heard another scream that was nothing compared to his own.

  Again, Asa couldn't hear his wrist bones shattering into pieces, could only feel the countless bone fragments running rampant amongst the muscles and veins still protruding from his skin. He wasn't exerting himself, he hadn't the slightest bit of strength left, he was using the immense sting to bend his knees wildly against the hilt of the knife. The elastic rupture of heart muscle came from the hilt.

  The Chaser suddenly stopped hooting and covered his chest, so hard that the sharp tips of his claws dug into his fur through his leather armor, as if trying to muffle back the thing that had ruptured inside. But after a few wobbly steps, he collapsed with a thud.

  Asa covered his left hand and wailed and gasped on his knees for a few moments before he was able to struggle to his feet.

  It was all over.

  No, it wasn't. He couldn't stay here too long, the smell of the hunter's body would attract a whole bunch of lizards. He was already weakened enough to be a fish out of water for those ugly scavengers, hopefully the woman had some more useful healing potions in her bag, or something high grade like that water purification charm.

  Asa staggered over to her. Looking at the woman's pale face, which had once been so beautifully set off by a smile, and in half a day was about to become food in the mouths of those ugly animals, just like the werewolf's corpse over there.

  I'm sorry, it's all my fault. Asa painfully knelt in front of her. Suddenly he saw the lips seem to move, and thought he was hallucinating, but then immediately heard a moan, a little stronger than his own.