Ouch

As Morly swung his blade at the monster's neck, he thought about what he had seen.

The moment before the wretch had shot forward to try and attack the guard carrying the girl, it had sprouted claws from its fingers and toes, though they hadn't appeared to be sharp at all.

He confirmed his suspicion as he saw the monster move away and around at an impressive speed, doing so in a strange manner that was distracting and hard to follow.

These were meant for greater stability when running around, which was why it was moving on all four at times, especially when trying to stop or change direction, it was fast but it wasn't quite used to its tremendous speed yet, he would have to strike before it adapted.

The attacked aimed at the monster's neck missed and only managed to cut some hair as the creature, jumped away, it did so, so fast that it unintentially did a backflip but still managed to catch itself rapidly.

Morly did his best to push it back but the clock was ticking and the monster was visibly getting better and better at each attack, even daring to try and attack but despite its impressive speed, its claws were too weak and its weight was too light for it to deal any damage.

It barely left an indentation in the armor as it claws snapped, even against his bare body, Morly doubted the attack would leave a very deep cut at all, the creature wasn't strong at all, it definitely needed to strike in weak spots to hope to deal actual damage.

'It seems like I'll need to use some mana' Morly thought as he began enacting his plan, he wasn't going to cast any complicated spell, it wasn't even considered a spell at all after all.

His crude mana usage didn't seem to be noticed by the wretch, seemed like the monster wasn't capable of sensing anything yet.

Slashing close the ground, almost close enough to touch it, forcing the monster to jump to get away, using the mana circulating in his body, he leaped forward with much more speed than before.

Despite being built for speed, the wretch didn't have the vision adapted for it and was surprised as a sudden blur got in its face, it expected a sword strike as the human raised his blade high to the right but as it focused, the left knee of the guard slammed into his neck.

The flexible monster's neck bent and weaved to weaken the blow as if made of soft tissue.

Using that opportunity, Morly contorted his body in a painful manner as he slashed at the monster's neck on the other side, his armor would absorb the blow anyways, so he didn't have to hold back, in this position, the flexibility of the monster would be of no use.

The monster however, still had tricks up its sleeves as it rotated its head around, showing his black teeth as he put them in the path of the sword, fragments of its pointy teeth mixed with blood flew in the air.

Despite the blow having been blocked mostly by the teeth, the shock had still caused its cheeks to rupture halfway through.

It shoved its hand in its blood-filled mouth and threw some of it into the guard's face before slipping away and rushing into the nearby woods while holding its lower jaw up.

Morly couldn't see anything and the reinforcements were too late to track the monster, it had managed to escape after slaughtering nearly the entire population of a village.

Morly could only stand there, powerless to do anything, he could only wait but considering how smart that monster had seemed, it wasn't likely to show back in front of him like this again.

The very next day, the local adventurers got a new quest with a hefty rewards for once, the area was pretty calm after all and most adventurers around here were not local residents and were only coming through.

The sum paid to the local guild wasn't astronomical but was certainly enough to make them feel as if they were drowing in money.

The quest was simple, find and slay a very specific monster, a wretch whose mouth had been left slit by one of the guard captain, the name of the captain wasn't described, as the locals would know that it had been from the strongest guard in town.

Which could have made them reluctant to go after the monster, it was said that it had run away into the forest but that was far from the truth, they were going on wild goose chase.

___________________

'Damned human, this hurts so much!' coherently thought the still beautiful wretch, despite his slit mouth, he was still mostly fine.

He had come back to the underground of the village after looping around in the forest, his injury had stopped bleeding but the two parts wouldn't stuck back together and if he wasn't holding it together, his lower jaw would hang down and pull on his injured cheeks, opening them even further.

He barely had had time to adapt to his newfound powers and increased brain power before this canned human had jumped him.

The wretch had only wanted to finish what he had started, what kind of misbehaved man-eating monster would let one of his ingredients run away? None! And certainly not one as handsome and intelligent as him!

The plan had worked perfectly, he had produced another wretch thanks to his superior reproductive abilities, with the help of nondescript creature not built at all to give birth to something like this.

Using his supernatural charisma, he had sent it toward the village and to his death too, although that hadn't been part of the job description and boom! Everyone thinks there is no monster, calms down and sleeps peacefully onto eternity.

Utterly flawless and yet, this human had somehow showed up and attempted on this poor creature's life.

As well as the wretch thought he had gone about it didn't matter, the injury sustained was an issue that needed fixing and thus, he put one of the skills learned back then to good used and began stitching everything back together.

It hurt like hell but he was happy to be able to put something he had stolen to use so quickly, he had pretty much emptied every house possible as he murdered their inhabitants, alongside a large amount of food, he had scored lots of items.

Before stitching everything together however, he put his injury to good use, thanks to the extra space for movements, pulling out his broken teeth was as easy as it was painful.

Just like his claws, his teeth could go in and out and change as he desired, pulling them out wasn't necessary to fix them but he had an idea to put them to use, he was spiteful and was planning on messing with that guardian human as much as possible.