"That twin-sword user is nowhere to be found. Do you think he’s already headed back?"
"If he's gone, he's gone. We have the Security Force with us, so we’ll just have to manage on our own."
Melt and Anhel, who had no way of knowing Isaac’s current whereabouts or predicament, shared a brief exchange about the man’s sudden disappearance.
While the women discussed how they should stop relying on someone who appeared and vanished as fitfully as Isaac, Fee called out to Yugo, who was waiting a short distance away with Skull.
"Brother, is something wrong? You have a rather troubled look on your face..."
"Yeah... I was just wondering what kind of Magic Armor Beast it was that attacked Skull’s herd. Why did it target the horses? I’ve been trying to figure out the motive."
"The reason they attacked? We already knew it was for sport or something like that... right?"
"Well, yeah. It’s just, I feel like there’s something different about this one compared to the Magic Armor Beasts we’ve encountered so far. It doesn't act like a normal living creature."
Reflecting on the Magic Armor Beasts he had fought until now, Yugo explained the sense of wrongness he felt to Fee. To put that discrepancy into words: their actions did not follow the instincts of a biological organism.
Excluding special cases like Rush, Yugo had experience fighting two types of monsters so far: the Arachlaw and the Toadstinger. The actions of those two species felt as though they were driven by biological necessity.
The Arachlaw had attacked the magic train to carry off passengers, intending to use the humans as food or as a breeding ground. The Toadstinger had attacked settlements to expand its habitat, attempting to achieve its goal by turning the residents into puppets.
Though they employed terrifying and mysterious methods, their objectives were actually quite simple. Their actions were the result of following primal, biological desires. Whether it was hunger or the urge for survival—instincts that any living creature possessed—Yugo could understand the principles behind their behavior.
"...But this time, it’s different. They didn't kill to eat, and they didn't kill to increase their numbers. They slaughtered Skull’s herd just for sport. I can't stop thinking about why they would do that."
"Now that you mention it, it certainly is strange. Could it be that this particular Magic Armor Beast is just exceptionally cruel?"
The culprit was an atrocious being capable of annihilating a herd of swift horses; there was almost no doubt that it was a Magic Armor Beast. However, the fact that its motive was a hunt for sport—something that didn't align with biological instinct—was deeply concerning.
As Fee suggested, it was possible that an incredibly cruel species had appeared, but the state of the horse corpses was far too clean for that, and the lack of any further victims since the massacre felt unnatural.
Yugo worried that they were overlooking something vital. He racked his brain for an answer... until a sudden possibility struck him.
"A hierarchy ranking...? You mean the hunt was for that purpose!?"
"Wait, what...!?"
Fee’s face twisted in surprise at the words Yugo muttered. Yugo was picturing a certain Kaijin Group in his mind. He wondered if the Magic Armor Beasts had attacked Skull and the others to decide the pack's pecking order, determining their hierarchy ranking based on the results of the slaughter.
(Could it be... that Skull’s herd wasn’t the first? Did these monsters hunt something else much earlier and learn this behavior...!?)
Just as Skull had awakened to righteous indignation and a desire for revenge after his companions were killed, perhaps these Magic Armor Beasts had encountered an unprecedented event that taught them the concept of hunting for sport.
Perhaps they started by killing something weaker, and once they decided to increase the difficulty of their prey, Skull’s herd became the target. He remembered that the Kaijin Group he had first thought of did something similar. They were a Battle Race that found supreme joy in killing people as if it were a game, gradually making the conditions more severe to improve their status within the group.
Perhaps the Magic Armor Beasts that attacked Skull were mimicking that same Battle Race.
Searching for what could have triggered this behavior, Yugo thought of the monsters that had caused trouble recently. He covered his mouth, a groan escaping him as the realization set in.
(Is it those Black Crabs again!? Did they flee here from Mount Yumyum, too? And then—!!)
Those small crabs must have fled to this area and picked a fight with the Magic Armor Beasts living here, only to be wiped out in a counterattack. The predators that crushed them must have discovered the pleasure of tormenting the weak then and there. From that point, they decided to incorporate the act into the pack’s hierarchy ranking.
The small crabs were too easy to kill. To decide who was the strongest among them, they needed more difficult prey.
The prey those Magic Armor Beasts found was the herd of horses Skull belonged to. They had slaughtered them specifically to crown a Leader.
If this theory was correct, the enemy was not a single entity, but a group controlled by a Leader who had proven its strength through the hunt.
After the small crabs and the horses, the next challenging prey they would target would undoubtedly be humans. Just as Yugo realized that the Magic Armor Beasts were likely moving toward the nearby settlements, the shouts of the Security Force echoed through the dark night.