The very air around them trembled, saturated with the scent of sweat, fear, and approaching violence.

  Eiron didn’t think.

  He didn’t have the luxury of thinking.

  All he had was a filthy, primal instinct: run or die with your ass exposed in a merciless pin.

  He turned and ran, completely naked, his legs spping the damp ground in stumbling steps, his bare body shed by the cold wind. He heard Zara the ghoul's roar behind him, mingled with the growl of the wolf and the sound of wild grass being crushed under massive feet.

  He had never run like this before — naked, trembling, trapped between two monsters that wanted to devour him: one wanted to suck him dry to the marrow, and the other wanted to tear him to pieces and eat him without distinction.

  A rge thorn scratched his knee, and blood burst from it, but he didn’t stop.

  “Shit, shit, shit...” he panted, his tongue dry as if stuck in an endless desert.

  A red window appeared in front of him:

  [Warning: Critical physical condition. Running speed: 65% below average.] [Friendly note: You can always die in a more elegant way.]

  “Go to hell...” he spat the words at the stupid system as he leapt over a shallow hole, feeling his testicles rise like two bites of instinctive fear.

  Behind him, the ghoul's roar rang out again, and then suddenly... a crash, the sound of bones breaking.

  A gnce over his shoulder revealed the scene:

  Zara the ghoul, in all her savage glory, was locked in a struggle with Garol the wolf, her bare hands gripping his massive jaws while his fangs tried to bite her neck. Blood sprayed, the grass stuck to their skin, and the whole scene looked like a pornographic nature documentary made for the dead and insane.

  “Good luck, you bitch...” Eiron muttered, and let his legs fly.

  But he knew his luck wouldn’t st.

  Just as he was about to change direction, his eyes caught a faint glint between the blood-soaked grass — a spear.

  Zara’s spear.

  Her long spear, partially wrapped in taut bck leather and a handle of polished bone, y just a few meters away.

  His eyes met the ghoul’s movements — she was locked in a frenzy with the wolf. Her bare shoulders gleamed under the pale sun, and the tattered cloth that once wrapped her body now barely covered anything. With every motion, bits of the fabric flew, revealing a bare waist, a nearly naked chest, and dark underwear pulled tight between her thighs sculpted like drawn bows of death.

  Her thighs shone, covered in sweat and dust, her taut stomach trembled with each roar, and her chest — nearly bare, with only scraps of torn cloth covering her nipples — bounced with every blow like it was openly defying death.

  Zara the ghoul, in her wild nudity, wasn’t just a fighter.

  She was a living embodiment of raw instinct.

  Eiron cursed under his breath.

  The wolf? No chance. It would eat him alive.

  The ghoul? Crazy, deadly — but injured.

  Half her wrap was torn, her shoulder bleeding. Maybe, just maybe, if he saved her, she could keep him alive. Or at least… it might give him a chance to say a line before his skull got crushed.

  “Think... be smart, she’s a creature with a half-lit mind.”

  “But she’s bleeding. She might reason. Even for just a few seconds,” he thought, gritting his teeth.

  The system had said the chance of negotiation was five percent — five wasn’t zero... in his situation, that meant a lot.

  …But the naked truth was something else:

  That body, that filthy nudity drenched in blood and violence, awakened something primal in his chest.

  Desire, hunger, a voyeuristic lust for survival.

  And the lie he told himself — that he was analyzing the situation rationally — was just a mask over an instinct screaming:

  “Help her… and maybe she’ll let you touch her.”

  “Don’t be stupid... she won’t let you live.”

  “But if she does...?” his naked member rose like a soldier seeking glory.

  That moment… wasn’t mercy. Wasn’t heroism.

  It was an unspoken promise: if they survive… maybe... he’d get his taste of that hell incarnate as womanhood.

  He ran toward the spear, his body sliding over the blood-soaked grass, air sshing his naked skin, every hair turning into a bde of cold, fear, and excitement.

  A prompt appeared instantly:

  [New Skill Acquired!]

  [Seductive Touch - Level 1]:

  Increases the chance of seducing compatible creatures by 10% upon direct contact.

  Always active during physical contact.

  (Note: Other skills avaible but not yet activated:

  [Scent of Temptation - Level 1], [Whisper of Seduction - Level 1].)

  He ignored the prompt. It wasn’t the time for mental masturbation.

  He grabbed the spear with a trembling hand.

  Heavy... but banced.

  This wasn’t a whore’s spear, but a killer’s weapon.

  He ran.

  The sound of battle ahead was like the scream of a tearing earth, the roar of a blood waterfall, the echo of merciless primal violence.

  Garol — the feral beast — had sunk his fangs into Zara’s shoulder, tearing flesh and bone, burying his face like a hyena in a red feast.

  Her blood burst out like a violently opened lifeline.

  But she didn’t scream like a victim.

  She screamed like she was ripping death from its throat, like pain aroused her.

  Eiron focused — an opening.

  Everything inside him screamed: now or die.

  The spear tore the air before him, his heart pounding like ritual drums, sweat soaking his back.

  Garol, distracted by Zara’s flesh, exposed his side covered in sharp bck thorns — but they weren’t thick there.

  Then —

  He lunged.

  The spear pierced the wolf’s skin,

  then a thick yer of muscle,

  then something soft inside — like it lodged in an infmed liver.

  The howl was a mix of savagery and sudden rage.

  Garol turned halfway, too te for the pain that overtook him. His thorns shook, one scratching Eiron’s cheek as he pulled the spear back violently, releasing a spark of blood.

  Zara turned, her hair sticking to her face, her eyes sparking for a fight.

  A moment... not a word in it.

  Then—

  She attacked.

  She leapt onto the wolf's back, blood bubbling from her shoulder,

  her bare legs wrapping around its neck like a seductive trap.

  With her nearly exposed chest and waist wrapped in a bloody sheet barely covering her tight buttocks,

  she screamed as she struck its head with her elbow.

  A hit.

  Another.

  Then with her knees—straight to its throat.

  Its bones burst,

  then she gripped its skull with both hands—

  and snapped.

  Its spine shattered under her grip, the cracking sound like a branch breaking under the foot of a demon.

  The wolf fell.

  Dead.

  Its quills trembled, then went still.

  Eiron, still clutching the handle of the embedded spear, knelt on the wolf's corpse, breathing like someone who just crossed through a hell reeking of cunts and blood.

  Zara above him.

  Her hair falling to one side of her face,

  the sheet torn further, her right nipple fully exposed,

  her blood-smeared stomach pulsing with every breath,

  and her underwear—a tight piece of dark navy fabric—wedged between her buttocks like a demonic string, soaked in blood and sweat, sticking to her skin like a pornographic tattoo of flesh.

  And the blood streamed from her shoulder, dripping on her chest, staining her exposed nipple in dark red.

  She sat atop the wolf's corpse.

  She didn’t smile.

  She didn’t snarl.

  She just looked at him.

  Just a look. A heavy, frozen look, as if searching his face for something… or as if she wasn’t seeing his face at all, but seeing him as a strange creature from a world that no longer meant anything to her.

  Then she spoke.

  "Urgh… Zara Nish… Gha-rookh Nada…"

  Her voice was like the purr of a tired animal, a tone bleeding before speaking, but filled with something strange… as if she was reciting a spell she herself didn’t understand.

  Eiron understood nothing. And he didn’t think he needed to.

  He looked at her shoulder. The bleeding hadn’t stopped. Her blood was darker than it should be. Those eyes, despite their stiffness, for a moment dipped into unconsciousness, then fred again like opposing embers.

  She was bleeding to death.

  And sat as if she didn’t intend to fight it.

  And suddenly… all that desire, that proud erection, every lustful fantasy he had imagined minutes before, evaporated in a cold cloud of ash.

  He felt disgusted.

  With himself.

  With his body.

  With the stupid thought that he might get something from her.

  She wasn’t a body.

  She was a walking scar.

  A beast breathing struggle.

  Something that didn’t belong to the world, nor to a boy like him… half-naked, half-coward, half-man.

  But a small devil in his chest—sneering, sticky, filthy—whispered a thought to him, ughing like a child who broke a toy then thought of how to throw it into the fire.

  "Do I kill her?"