The hyena brothers, who had been preparing to grumble about all the uninvited parties barging in to steal their kill, stopped when they actually looked.
The Death Reaper Mantis, tiny as she was, was drifting through the tornadoes, the meteor shower, and the erupting magma like a fish at play in the open ocean — a small figure that clearly found the whole arrangement enormously entertaining.
Their indignation curdled into profound envy.
She’s an elemental body, you idiots. Using area-of-effect elemental attacks to kill an elemental war beast was the equivalent of spitting at the sky and wondering why your face got wet.
Not far away, a sickle weasel that hadn’t been part of their group gave them a withering glare and didn’t mince words: “My tornadoes might not have worked either, but even my completely useless approach was a hundred times smarter than four idiots stampeding several thousand wild bulls at a war beast the size of a finger. I’m genuinely in awe — your natural stupidity, combined with dedicated lifelong study of how to be even more idiotic, still couldn’t have produced something this monumentally brainless. If you four hadn’t blown the whole operation by revealing yourselves early, would we have had to show our hand out here in the open? Get out of my sight, all of you!”
The sickle weasel was not one of Lion King’s subordinates. It served the faction known as Human-Faced Tiger, and its strength was considerably above the four hyenas. Though seething, they didn’t dare argue back — they shuffled further away and pretended not to have heard. In truth, they knew they’d been too eager. If they’d waited until Yueyang entered the valley proper, the attack would have had a far better chance. Even if they couldn’t kill the tiny war beast outright, they might have trapped it inside.
“Fire!” A porcupine covered in spines burst forward with a battle cry.
It tensed its body — thwip thwip thwip — and launched nearly a hundred needle-spines in a staggered hailstorm directly at the Death Reaper Mantis. No matter how she tried to weave between them, evasion was impossible; the spines had homing instinct augmented by the porcupine’s unique talent and carried genuine stopping power.
The Death Reaper Mantis watched them close in — and then a meteorite abruptly adjusted course mid-fall, conveniently placing itself between her and the incoming volley. Every spine drove deep into the rock, tips barely protruding. The porcupine was still cursing whoever had ruined its shot when it saw the Death Reaper Mantis apparently fleeing in a panic — right toward it. Delighted, it opened its enormous mouth and snapped forward to swallow her whole.
Crack.
Something hard shattered between its teeth.
It chewed a moment, then froze.
By the time it had fully processed the situation, it found a colossal meteorite had somehow appeared inside its mouth, studded with its own spines — still homing.
Worse, the Death Reaper Mantis had redirected the self-tracking tornadoes right on top of it. Before the porcupine could even yelp, it was swept into the sky. The sickle weasel, seeing an opportunity, shot upward into the same tornado and swung both scythes at the porcupine.
Lightning Cross-Kill — two clean lines of blood appeared across the porcupine’s neck.
The porcupine was a tough creature with considerable power of its own — not the sickle weasel’s equal, but enough to survive. It blasted free of the tornado in a panic, abandoned any thought of counterattack, and furiously dug into the earth with its tusks, vanishing underground within seconds.
The Death Reaper Mantis clapped her little hands in delight at the sight of her enemies fighting each other.
Behind her, something the size of a small hill appeared — a warty toad, opening a horrifying mouth and spraying a thick plume of noxious black smoke.
Poison couldn’t open a Pandora’s Box, true — but it was more than sufficient to kill a newborn war beast. Even the sickle weasel and the four hyenas flinched and scrambled sideways at the sight of the smoke. This was Toad King — one of the five beast faction leaders. While not quite at Lion King’s level, its overall capabilities were comparable. Its comprehensive venom in particular was fatal on contact. The sickle weasel and the hyenas couldn’t imagine it would show up in person to finish off a newborn beast. For an elder of Toad King’s standing to personally go after an infant creature was almost offensively beneath its dignity.
“Whoooosh!”
The Death Reaper Mantis couldn’t speak very clearly yet — she called the wind whoooosh.
Her detached scythe-arms began rotating around her body.
Something extraordinary happened: the entire expanding cloud of dark-green toxic smoke twisted inward on itself, condensed in an instant, and was sucked skyward into a massive toxic smoke tornado. The Death Reaper Mantis sat calmly at its eye, completely unaffected.
The sickle weasel stared — then seized one of the hyena brothers and shook it with genuine alarm: “That’s my technique. That’s my Berserk Scythe-Wind. That’s impossible — how does she know my technique?!”
The hyena being shaken could barely breathe. How should I know, it thought. She must have learned it by watching you, obviously. It did not say this out loud.
Toad King, with the full authority of its vast bulk, charged directly into the toxic smoke tornado, long tongue lashing out, black mouth full of razored teeth lunging for the Death Reaper Mantis. Its body was so enormous that its open mouth could have swallowed the entire tornado whole.
The sickle weasel and the hyenas alike were thoroughly disgusted. For a faction leader to jump in and steal a kill from its own subordinates was beyond shameless — it required a second word entirely.
Clang.
The sickle weasel recognized that sound.
Two bolts of lightning crossed in the sky and traced perfect lines across Toad King’s thick lips. The famously blade-proof hide split open in a massive cross-shaped wound. The bloated tongue was sliced clean through.
“That’s my technique! That’s my Lightning Cross-Kill!” the sickle weasel nearly ripped the hyena’s neck off shaking it harder.
“Hmph. Parlor tricks.” Toad King’s wounds sealed instantly.
Its stubby, awkward forelimbs transformed into something resembling human hands, drawing out a sword that caught the light with cold menace. One sweep — and the entire ground flash-froze. The erupting magma, the burning meteorites, the roaring flames — all of it crystallized into ice. The Death Reaper Mantis suspended in the air became an ice ball. Even the sickle weasel and the hyena brothers a thousand meters back found themselves crusted with frost. A bob-tailed cat several kilometers further out was completely white, whiskers and fur both ice-rimed.
It sneezed explosively.
Within a hundred-meter radius, every frozen thing — small trees, grass, insects, and the injured wild bulls — shattered to dust.
“What does it matter that she’s an elemental body? Absolute power kills anything. She’s just a newborn war beast — making such a fuss.” Toad King, now feeling very pleased with itself, curled its tongue around the ice ball and swallowed it whole, patted its belly with two mismatched arms, and chuckled in low self-satisfied tones.
BOOM.
The laugh hadn’t finished before its stomach exploded from within.
Toad King lurched and gagged, vomiting up a torrent of magma and burning meteorites.
The sickle weasel, shaking off its frost, looked up and found the Death Reaper Mantis still floating in the sky. The magma and meteorites on the ground, however, had a large section missing — and given what had just erupted from Toad King’s stomach, that seemed to account for it. But it had clearly swallowed ice. Why was it throwing up magma?
“Whose technique was that?” the sickle weasel said, baffled. “That disorientation ability, that spatial transfer — that’s definitely not my technique.”
The hyena, noticing it wasn’t being shaken for once, twitched cautiously. “It’s not ours either.”
“Shut up — nobody asked you!” the sickle weasel snapped, and immediately grabbed the hyena by the scruff of its neck and resumed shaking it furiously, the hyena’s bones rattling with every jerk. The other three hyena brothers observed their sibling’s suffering from a safe distance and made absolutely no move to intervene.
“Can’t even kill a newborn — worthless,” said a new voice.
A figure drifted into view — butterfly wings, human head, wasp body. It raised both arms without fanfare and launched Toad King’s enormous bulk into the sky. The Toad King plummeted from thousands of meters up and hit the ground with a wet splat, then the winged figure lifted a boulder with telekinesis and dropped it directly onto Toad King’s eyes for good measure.
“You stinking wasp — you’re no better!” Toad King inflated its belly in fury and bounced back upright. Despite the sustained assault, it was completely uninjured — worthy of its title as one of the five faction leaders.
“I’m better enough not to get played while thinking I’m winning,” the winged figure said coolly.
“What—?” Toad King swept its sword through the space where the Death Reaper Mantis had been hovering — and found only a dispersing afterimage. The real one was long gone. And the human boy who had been so leisurely roasting chicken wings nearby had also vanished entirely at some point. Toad King felt the full weight of the realization settle over it: it had been thoroughly played. With its full power as a faction leader, with ambush positioning and a crushing follow-up — and it hadn’t been able to do a thing to one newborn war beast. The humiliation was profound.
“That’s not even the worst of it,” the winged figure said. “The whole reason she was fighting you was to steal your techniques. Once that little one grows — well. Beast Valley may end up with four faction leaders instead of five. One fewer ugly toad.” It snapped its wings open and shot skyward, dissolving into a point of light.
“Not so fast.” Toad King twitched its nostrils, locked onto a direction, and went hopping in furious pursuit.
“Can’t kill a single newborn. You’re useless.” The sickle weasel threw the nearly-broken-necked hyena to the ground in contempt, spat, and turned away.
The four hyena brothers exchanged glances in silence.
They very much wanted to point out that the sickle weasel hadn’t killed the newborn either — and that by any reasonable measure, a faction leader like Toad King had surely achieved the most spectacular failure of the day. Naturally, they said none of this.
The bob-tailed cat, the porcupine, the meteor bats, the ground-fire earthworms, and the various other ambush parties all quietly dispersed from the devastated battlefield. If any of them had known the newborn war beast was an elemental body — and one that could copy any technique after seeing it once — they would never have come near. All they’d accomplished was making a powerful future enemy.
If the annoying new arrival cleared the stage and moved on quickly, fine.
But if he bore a grudge for today’s attacks, and that tiny creature came back once she’d grown — well. That would be a very bad day indeed.
Another half hour passed before the vulture lurking in the cloud cover finally departed for good.
After it left, Yueyang stepped out from beneath the ice layer — still holding a skewer with two grilled chicken wings on it, a glass of chilled Rare Orchid wine in the other hand. The Death Reaper Mantis followed behind him, hiccupping gently, her small face flushed pink, already seeming approximately seven parts drunk.
“Apparently that wasp saw through you,” Yueyang said while biting into a honey-glazed wing. “Your camouflage still has a long way to go. For your first counterattack, I’ll give you a barely passing grade.”
The Death Reaper Mantis nodded with impeccable obedience, then flew up to his shoulder and thumped him softly with tiny fists in an attempt at ingratiation.
“That won’t work on me. Go practice — stop doing the flattery routine.”