The inn’s wooden door — shut tight just moments before — exploded inward as though struck head-on by a Siege Hammer, instantly shattering into countless splinters that tore through the entryway like a storm of wooden shrapnel.
The dust hadn’t even begun to settle when two massive silhouettes, broad and immovable as Iron Towers, came crashing side by side into the main hall, every eye in the room snapping toward them in stunned disbelief.
Bear Goblins. Two of them, faces twisted with savage fury.
Four eyes blazed with a sickly green light, sweeping the dim hall like Ghost Fire, locking onto every living thing inside within seconds.
Raine and his companions most of all.
What radiated from those vicious, bloodshot stares was raw hunger and a pure, unrestrained desire to destroy — laced with the rank stench and wild savagery unique to Magical Beasts — crashing over the hall like a wave.
"Moradin’s beard! Did these hairy bastards drag their entire tribe along with them?"
The Dwarf’s carefully prepared taunt died in his throat, coming out instead as a low, guttural curse.
The tension that flooded his bearded face was plain to see. This was clearly well beyond anything he’d bargained for.
Kaelin said nothing, but Raine, standing right beside her, felt it clearly — the faint tremor that ran through the wrist gripping her Longsword.
She was breathing in short, sharp bursts, fighting to steady the blood roaring through her body. Her face had gone pale, yet those sharp green eyes hadn’t lost a single edge.
Two back-to-back brawls with Bear Goblins had bled her dry of Physical stamina.
Lady Basha and Lian, who had only just dared to believe they might actually survive this, felt that fragile color drain from their faces in an instant.
Lady Basha’s knees nearly buckled beneath her, while Lian lost her grip entirely — the Flint she’d been clutching so tightly clattered to the floor with a sharp crack. Her slight frame shook violently, beyond her control, fingers fisting desperately into the hem of her mother’s clothes.
Against creatures like these, the two of them — a widow and her child — looked achingly small and fragile.
"Crush the insects! Leave none alive!"
One of the newly arrived Bear Goblins swung its massive Double-Bladed War Axe and let out a thunderous, bone-deep roar.
Its bloodshot gaze swept over the still-warm corpse of its fallen packmate on the floor, and the savagery in those beast-eyes spiked to a fever pitch. Thick strings of drool ran steadily from its fangs.
"Kill! Eat!"
The other Bear Goblin, hefting a Nail Head Hammer, advanced with a ponderous, grinding stride toward Raine and the others. Its ragged, foul-breathed panting filled the silence of the hall with sickening clarity.
As the three massive creatures closed the distance, a crushing wave of dread slammed into everyone’s chest like a physical blow.
The fragile flame of hope — only just kindled by the killing of one Beast — guttered and went out, leaving nothing but a thin wisp of smoke.
Raine’s breath felt frozen solid in his lungs. His hand moved without thinking to the Quiver at his back, and his fingertips found only empty air.
His last arrow was still buried somewhere in the gap of a Bear Goblin’s heavy Zha Armor.
The sounds of fierce combat overhead — shouting, crashing, furniture splintering — hadn’t let up for a moment. The Adventurers upstairs were still locked in a grinding struggle with the wounded Bear Goblin. There was no help coming from above.
Down here, it was just the three of them. Him, Kaelin, and the Dwarf.
Three against three.
The situation couldn’t have been more dire.
Without hesitation, he set his Longbow on the bar counter beside him and drew his Short Sword in a single clean motion, gripping it tight.
The cold bite of the hilt sent a familiar, grounding steadiness into his palm. It was the last thing he had to rely on.
A Ranger’s mastery lay in both blade and bow. Even if he was still only an Apprentice, he would not shame the name of the Master of the Wilderness.
Raine moved first, stepping straight toward the Bear Goblin bearing down on him with the Nail Head Hammer.
Kaelin forced down the exhaustion and trembling ravaging her body. With a sharp snap of her sword wrist, she angled her blade forward and moved to engage the other one.
The Dwarf let out a grinding, stone-on-stone snarl and drove his Shield forward in a hard shove, staggering the Beast in front of him just as it tried to push toward its packmate — and locking its full attention back onto himself.
Even as Raine closed in on his opponent, his mind didn’t freeze up from the pressure. If anything, the nearness of death had sharpened his thoughts to a speed he’d never managed before.
He swept the room with a quick sidelong glance.
The front door had been blown completely open. Pale moonlight poured through the gap without obstruction, and beyond it lay nothing but murky, impenetrable darkness.
Was there any chance of getting help?
The thought flared up like a struck spark in the dark, and for a moment it lit something in Raine’s chest.
This was Mottled Town, after all — a place crawling with Adventurers. If even one person could break out of the inn and spread the word that Bear Goblins were attacking, the whole situation could flip in an instant.
No matter how fearsome the Bear Goblins were, they couldn’t stand against hundreds of Adventurers — and beyond that, the Professional squad Ring of Steel was stationed right here in town.
Hold out long enough, and victory could still be theirs.
Raine’s heartbeat quickened involuntarily.
But the feeling didn’t last. He steadied himself, falling back into the same cold, methodical assessment he used when sizing up threats in Demon Shadow Forest, and turned that same scrutiny on this so-called "hope."
These creatures had slipped into a remote, tucked-away inn without making a sound, ready to turn it into a slaughterhouse. That didn’t happen without careful observation and deliberate planning.
A Predator group operating with that level of coordination — would they really leave a gap in something as critical as cutting off communication and blocking any call for help? Would they actually leave the front door wide open?
What if that was exactly the point? A trap — a lure designed to draw survivors outside, where they could be picked off one by one with ease?
Five Bear Goblins had already shown themselves. In the Shadow beyond that deceptively quiet doorway, could there be a sixth — or a seventh Predator — waiting in perfect stillness for panicked prey to come stumbling right into their arms?
The chill spreading through Raine’s gut was still deepening when his train of thought was cut clean in half.
"AAAHH——!"
A shriek of pure terror ripped through the air from the courtyard behind the inn, sharp enough to punch straight through the walls and slam into every ear in the hall.
Raine’s heart lurched up into his throat. His mind made immediate, brutal sense of what that scream meant.
Someone upstairs — an Adventurer who’d tried to slip out through a back window, convinced they’d found a way out — had run headfirst into a death trap and been snatched up by whoever was waiting in the dark.
There it was. There were enemies outside. Just like he’d suspected.
Even as that cold confirmation settled over him, his peripheral vision drifted through the blown-open doorway to the street beyond.
Out there in the hazy night, in more than one direction across town, tongues of orange flame were licking skyward. Distant shouts and the sounds of chaos drifted faintly through the dark.
A diversion.
The word drove itself into Raine’s mind like a spike of ice.
The Return Inn wasn’t the only target. While this slaughter was unfolding here, something was simultaneously burning elsewhere in Mottled Town — drawing the attention of the town’s patrols and whatever Professionals might otherwise respond.
Even if word of the attack here managed to leak out, no one was going to come running in time. Every available blade would rush toward the bigger, louder disturbances first.
In other words, they were completely on their own.
Trapped inside a bloody cage, left to face these savage Predators with no one coming to save them.
"Bear Goblins don’t think like this. They can’t. So what in the hells is going on with these bastards?"
Raine cursed under his breath, then sucked in a long, slow breath and forced his hammering heart to settle.
Across from him, the Bear Goblin with the Nail Head Hammer bared its teeth in a grotesque snarl and broke into a charge, its massive Shadow surging toward him like it meant to swallow him whole.
He knew. From here on out, he was on his own.