It took no more than five minutes to end the entire cavern.
When Sylvana and the princess heard the commotion, they were sure the orc was dead. But the sounds weren't of a battle. They were of a slaughter. A single, deep-throated roar was followed by a wave of high-pitched shrieks, then a wet, rhythmic chopping sound that went on and on and on until only a horrifying, meaty silence remained.
The goblins were caught off guard, and they were in no condition to fight a raging orc.
They were unarmed, distracted, and in the middle of their depraved ritual.
Drunk with lust and power, their senses dulled, they didn't notice the red-skinned demon until the axe was already falling.
Valkar moved like a force of nature.
His rage was a pure, undiluted thing, a white-hot fire that consumed everything but the cold logic of the hunt. He didn't think. He simply 'was'.
The goblins were obstacles, their bodies breaking apart under the force of his axe. Bone, flesh, and armor offered no more resistance than dry twigs. The four whip-wielders, the self-appointed masters of this harem of horrors, were the first to die. Valkar's axe sheared through the neck of one, then arced back to split the skull of another before their corpses had even hit the ground.
The rest of the goblins panicked, a wave of mindless terror crashing against the cliffs of Valkar's wrath. They scattered, tripping over their own feet, climbing over each other in a desperate attempt to flee the red giant.
The funny thing was that in their panic they forgot where the exit was and ran deeper into the cavern corners where they got stuck, making them easy targets for Valkar to hunt.
"Filthy little... shits," he snarled as he brought down the blunt end of the axe on a goblin's head, the skull caving like a rotten fruit.
His [Rage] skill demanded blood, demanded slaughter, and he obliged with an almost religious fervor.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The system notifications were a constant, reassuring hum in the back of his mind, a litany of death and reward.
[You have killed: Goblin]
[+52 Exp]
[You have killed: Goblin]
[+48 Exp]
[Level Up!]
With every notification ding, Valkar's excitement grew. All he cared about was keeping on slaying.
Sadly, the fun didn't last long.
The last goblin, a scrawny creature that surprisingly had a little bit of courage, tried to jump on Valkar from behind.
Unfortunately for him, the orc didn't glance back, and he simply swatted him out of the air like a fly. The goblin slammed into a rock wall and slid down, leaving a dark smear, before going still.
Ding!
[You have killed: Goblin]
[+42 Exp]
Silence.
The last echo of a wet crunch faded, leaving only the sound of Valkar's own ragged breaths. The [Rage] skill receded, a tide of crimson fire pulling back from his senses, leaving him feeling hollowed out, slightly cold. The red heat of his skin faded to its normal green, and he shrank back to his normal, still-immense size.
The berserker's strength vanished, replaced by a bone-deep weariness and the familiar, insistent burn of the curse.
He stood in the center of the cavern, an island of stillness in a sea of carnage. The floor was a slick, grotesque painting of green flesh, black blood, and shattered bone. The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the stench of goblins mixed with the cloying, broken scent of the females.
He looked at them. At the four pitiful torsos stuffed into their niches in the wall. The sight turned his stomach. There was no strength here, no fire. No potential for strong offspring. Only misery. This wasn't a source of mates; it was a cancer that needed to be cut out.
Valkar walked toward the woman, an elf, the closest one. He stared down at her vacant eyes, her bruised skin. He felt nothing. No lust. No pity. Just a cold, clean anger that these things, these goblins, had been allowed to exist.
The elf didn't react. Her gaze was fixed on some point far beyond the cavern ceiling, her mind shattered long ago.
"It's a mercy," he grumbled to himself, the words tasting like ash.
He raised the bone axe, its edge still dripping with goblin filth. He positioned it over her neck.
Only then did the woman react, her gaze still fixed on the ceiling; a single tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek as she tilted her head slightly, pressing on the edge of the axe.
She knew. And she welcomed it.
Valkar didn't hesitate; he raised the axe higher, attempting to cut with one clean blow.
"Wait!"
Sylvana's voice, weak but sharp, cut through the silence. She stood at the entrance to the cavern, leaning against the rock wall for support, the princess hiding behind her. Her face was pale, her eyes wide as she took in the scene of mass slaughter and the four pitiful figures in the wall.
"Wait..." she repeated, her voice trembling. "Don't."
Valkar paused, the axe still raised. He turned his glowing amber eyes toward her, his expression unreadable.
"Why?" he rumbled, the single word a challenge. "They are broken. Better to end their suffering."
"You don't know that!" Sylvana insisted, taking a shaky step forward. "You don't know what they've been through. Maybe... maybe they can be healed. Their minds... maybe they can come back."
The elf's vacant gaze was fixed on him now. The single tear had cut a clean path through the grime on her cheek. There was no pleading in her eyes, no hope. Just a quiet, endless abyss of pain.
"Do you think they want to be healed?" Valkar asked, his voice devoid of mockery. It was a genuine question, a query from a mind that saw problems in terms of solutions, not feelings. "They are meat. They are wombs. They are nothing else. I am ending nothing."
"They are people!" Sylvana shot back, her voice cracking. Her own injuries screamed at her, but she pushed the pain down, fueling her defiance with it. "They were people once. You can't just... just decide their lives are worthless."
"I can," Valkar said, turning back to the elf. "I just did. In my world, the strong live. The weak die. The broken are put down. It is clean. It is fast. It is a mercy."
He raised the axe again.
"Wait!" The princess's high, thin voice joined Sylvana's. She peeked out from behind her protector, her face a mask of terror and revulsion. "Please, sir. Don't. We... we can't watch this."
Valkar's jaw tightened. The axe trembled, a sign of the immense, conflicting forces warring within him. The cold logic of his new mind said to kill, to clean the wound and give these poor souls the final rest they desire.
"Sigh..." he let out a long breath, and with it, the tension in his arm. The axe lowered, slowly. The simple, brutal solution was too much for these two to witness, and for a reason he couldn't name, their opinion mattered.
"You deal with it."
That's all he said before he turned away from the women, the gruesome scene no longer holding his interest.
"We need to move. The noise will attract more things."
He didn't look back. He started toward a dark tunnel on the far side of the cavern, the one he hadn't come through.
"..."
Sylvana stood frozen for a moment, her mind struggling to catch up. He had... he had listened. He hadn't killed them. He had left the choice to her. The sheer unexpectedness of it knocked the breath from her lungs.
An orc. A monster. He had shown a sliver of what looked... like consideration? It was a small mercy, but it was a mercy nonetheless.
She let out a shaky breath she didn't realize she was holding.
"Princess... stay here."
Sylvana walked toward the women. The princess didn't want to let go, but she nodded, her eyes wide with fear.
When Sylvana reached them and saw up close what the goblins had done to them, her own legs nearly gave out. Her stomach churned; fortunately, there was nothing in her stomach to throw up.
She had expected suffering, but this... this was a systematic destruction of a person.
She knelt before the elf woman, the one whose tear had caught the light. Her movements were slow, deliberate, her purple eyes filled with a sorrow so deep it was a physical weight.
"Can you hear me?" Sylvana whispered, her voice gentle. She reached out, her fingers hovering just above the woman's bruised cheek, afraid to touch, afraid to cause more pain.
The elf didn't react at all, and no matter what Sylvana did, she couldn't get any reaction out of her.
She then checked the other three women. The other elf, the human, and the halfling. They were all the same. Broken shells. Their bodies were alive, but the people they once were were gone, lost in some dark, unreachable corner of their minds.
"What... what do we do, Sylvana?" the princess's trembling voice called from the cavern entrance.
Sylvana stood up, her heart a heavy stone in her chest.
"The orc was right," she said, her own voice hollow with the bitter truth of it. "They are gone."
She looked at the four women, at their empty eyes and limbless torsos. They couldn't be moved. They couldn't be saved. Leaving them here meant a slow death from thirst or starvation, or worse, the arrival of another pack of goblins to resume their horrific use.
There was only one kind thing left to do.
Her gaze fell upon a decent-looking dagger, one of the few things that weren't completely broken in the carnage, lying near a dead goblin. She walked over on unsteady legs and picked it up.
She turned back to the elf woman, the one whose tear had saved her moments ago.
"Forgive me," she whispered, her tears finally breaking free, hot tracks on her dirty cheeks.
With that, she gave a quick, merciful end to the four broken women; each one of them got a prayer for their souls to rest in peace.