While Rei, Byune, and Ielo were passing the time in a relaxed mood, a fierce battle was unfolding on the other side of the door.
Though calling it a battle was generous—it was more of a one-sided slaughter.
"Haa!"
Elena lashed out with Mirage in its whip form, the weapon coiling around a Giant's neck. A sharp tug, and the Giant's head hit the ground an instant later.
As if to exploit the opening, another Giant lunged at her.
The Giants on the other side had been thrown into chaos. The ones touching the door had suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed, lifeless. The Twilight Spear had been hurled through the metal again and again, and countless flames had erupted from this side, burning many Giants to ash. The lucky survivors milled about in confusion.
But the moment two women stepped through the door, the Giants' minds united on a single impulse.
Appetite.
They likely sensed it half by instinct—a woman's flesh was softer than a man's.
Or perhaps they remembered because they had devoured their mother's body at birth.
Either way, for Giants now gripped by starvation with the Black Crystal's influence gone, the finest prey imaginable had delivered itself right to them.
Naturally, they had no intention of letting such a perfect opportunity slip away.
But if the Giants saw them as prey, that prey concealed sharp fangs. No—in this case, claws as well.
The two women who should have been the Giants' meal were instead whittling down their numbers, one after another.
Heads, limbs, torsos—Mirage severed them in quick succession as Elena swung it through the air. Where Vihera's fists and kicks landed, bones shattered and organs ruptured.
The Giants quickly realized they could not simply devour this soft flesh at their leisure. Yet even understanding this, they threw themselves at Elena and Vihera, driven onward by their gnawing hunger.
Another disadvantage worked against the Giants: numerous pockets of scorching hellfire still littered the area.
Most of the heat was contained, so even those standing nearby only felt a mild warmth—but that was only at a distance.
Step into one of those infernos, and the body would burn instantly.
The first Giants caught in that magical fire had been reduced to nothing—not just skin and flesh, but bone as well. It was as if they had never existed at all; not a single trace remained.
The Giants retained enough instinct to sense the danger of those scorching hells. But—
"Haaaaah!"
With a spirited shout, Vihera unleashed a kick.
The Giant caught the blow but staggered back several steps, reeling from a force that defied the difference in their sizes—
"Graaaaaagh!"
—and in the next instant, its foot plunged into one of the lingering hells. The leg charred before their eyes.
The Giant screamed at the agony of its leg burning alive, but Vihera had no intention of holding back. A follow-up strike buried her fist into the Giant's torso, sending it toppling into the inferno to burn alive.
Seeing this, the other Giants did not falter.
Driven by starvation, they had room for only one thought: devouring the flesh and innards of the women before them.
There was nowhere near enough meat to fill the stomachs of the nearly thousand Giants—though their numbers had dwindled considerably by now—which was precisely why each one naturally wanted to claim the prize for itself as quickly as possible.
Elena and Vihera were no strangers to being ogled with lust and desire. Being targeted by eyes burning with pure appetite, however, was a rarity.
Even amid this fresh if unwelcome experience, their bodies never stopped moving. They brought death to one Giant after another.
If they're that starved, you'd think they'd just eat the flesh of the Giants that are already dead... Do they simply not resort to cannibalism?
Evading a Giant's grasping lunge and severing its neck with Mirage as she swept past, Elena pondered the question.
If they were truly in the grip of extreme hunger, it wouldn't be strange for them to devour their own comrades without a second thought.
But since they weren't doing so, she wondered: were they not truly driven by hunger in any real sense?
Even so, her assault never paused. She kept swinging Mirage with blinding speed, cutting down Giants one after another.
Vihera was no different.
Only two... just two were taking on this fight.
Arrayed against them was a horde of Giants. Though the door assault and magic had thinned their ranks, several hundred still remained.
Two against several hundred.
And yet, it was the two who held the overwhelming upper hand.
If someone with no knowledge of the situation had been watching, they might not have understood what was unfolding before them.
"Graaah!"
One Giant couldn't even be bothered to grab her. It lunged straight at Vihera, jaws open to tear her flesh away with its teeth.
Vihera sidestepped with dance-like footwork and raked magic claws—generated from her Hand Gauntlets—across the Giant's throat.
Blood sprayed from the wound, but Vihera was already gone. Before anyone could track her, she was gliding past another Giant nearby, slashing open its flank with the same claws.
Normally, she would have created some distance. But Vihera was far from normal.
Instead of retreating, she charged deeper into the thick of them.
Both hands, both feet, and the blade jutting from her Foot Guards' heel—all moved in perfect coordination, carving through Giant bodies in rapid succession.
The Giants' attacks were wild swings; a single hit was rarely fatal. But every wound bled, slowing them. Every severed tendon left a limb useless.
Some still tried to force their broken bodies to move, but a sluggish Giant was no longer a threat to Vihera or Elena. It was just a target.
A light touch—then Magic Impact Palm. Organs ruptured, hearts destroyed. For those Giants that had dropped to their knees, she struck their skulls and obliterated their brains.
"Whoa... It's pretty one-sided. Actually, one-sided fight doesn't even cover it. This is annihilation. A massacre."
The voice belonged to Rei, who had been peering through a gap in the ruined door. He'd been standing watch outside, but with absolutely nothing happening, he'd gotten bored and sneaked a look inside.
The door was so riddled with holes from the earlier fighting—molten red in places—that calling it a door was generous. "Wreckage" was more accurate. Finding a gap to peer through was trivial.
"Nn."
"Kyu."
Beside him, Byune and Ielo were watching through another gap. Ielo sat perched on Byune's head, observing its master's battle.
From the outside, it would have looked absurd. But Rei just thought, Well, no one else is watching, and let it be.
"Looks like they don't need me at all. With that kind of overwhelming Combat Power gap... Though I never expected things to go this far."
He had no worries about Elena and Vihera's strength. Having fought Giants himself, he couldn't imagine the two of them losing to such creatures.
If they were ordinary women, they might have run out of stamina mid-battle. But Rei could say with absolute certainty that neither of them would lose to exhaustion here.
Elena had inherited the Ancient Dragon's Magic Stone. Vihera had absorbed Unbris.
Still, if anything went wrong, he'd be through that door in an instant.
"Oops. Here they come."
If he could see through the gap, they could see him. And it was only a matter of time before some of the Giants—who couldn't all reach Elena and Vihera at once—turned their attention to the group at the door.
Two women alone could never satisfy hundreds of starving Giants. Many couldn't even get close to the fight. Finding fresh prey was a simple calculation.
Rei glanced at Byune beside him.
"I'll handle them here. Keep watch behind us—make sure nobody sneaks up."
"Nn."
Byune looked mildly put out but obeyed, falling back to guard the rear.
She knew exactly how strong Rei was. He was every bit Elena and Vihera's equal—there was no need to worry about him.
Not that she didn't want to fight too. It wasn't that she shared Vihera's love of battle. She simply couldn't imagine reinforcements arriving from behind.
She wasn't wrong. The Jaya forces in this cave had already been neutralized. At most, a few soldiers who'd only been knocked out earlier might stumble their way—but even those would likely have broken bones.
Byune might struggle against a Giant in single combat, but she could handle wounded stragglers without breaking a sweat.
She knew that, and so she obeyed.
"Right. First things first—this door's in the way."
It was a wreck—riddled with holes, partially melted from the heat. If the Giants slammed it toward them, someone could get hurt.
Best to clear it before they get any ideas.
Rei raised the Death Scythe in his right hand and swung it in a wide arc.
"Power Slash."
The blade carved through the air with impossible force, blasting the ruined door clear off its hinges with power that seemed to belong to another weapon entirely.
Several Giants that had been closing in to reach Rei were caught in the flying wreckage.
"Caught" was too mild. They were pulverized.
Power Slash carried enough force to make even Rei feel the strain. The Giants struck by the debris suffered shattered bones and destroyed organs from the impact alone.
If the Black Crystal Rei had destroyed were still intact, the Giants might have healed those wounds. He'd seen it himself at the Mejougo underground facility.
But the crystal was gone. Its fragments, embedded in the Giants, had vanished when the main body was destroyed.
No one yet understood that this was the true cause of the Giants' rampage.
"They don't even flinch at their comrades going down. Well... that's Giants for you."
The ones struck down by the door crumpled to the ground, broken. But whether they lacked the concept of comrades or their hunger simply crowded out all else, the remaining Giants paid them no heed. They caught sight of Rei and charged.
He watched them come. Death Scythe in his right hand, Twilight Spear in his left—his usual dual-wield stance.
He stepped forward to meet them.