As he looked at their group, something clicked inside of him, 'Shit... were they trying to regroup after scattering like that?'
Looking at death approaching him from all directions, Nolan briefly remembered how they had scattered when he had killed the cub. He had taken it as a good thing and had forgotten one thing.
They are a herd, and in the end, it is their behavior to regroup; it was how they survived among predators.
And he happened to be the unfortunate one… being exactly in the wrong spot at the wrong time. The only saving grace was that not all of the boars were returning.
'Damn! Should I fight or what...' Gripping his sword, he tried making a decision with what little time he had in his hand.
Nolan wanted nothing more than to just run away or hide somewhere, but neither of them were possible in this situation. The boars were closing in, and he was standing beside the corpse of their cub... hand covered in their kin's blood.
That wasn't all; there were the Shrooms as well.
Thinking about Shrooms, Nolan turned his head only to find the situation getting shittier.
'Are they spawning or what!?...'
In just a few seconds, the monsters had tripled in size. Instead of two, now six of them were moving toward him, albeit a bit slowly.
'No point in thinking…' Nolan weighed his chances and prepared himself for a desperate move attempt at his survival.
In just a matter of seconds, he made a plan… and that was to use the fat monster's inability to quickly turn around to his advantage and run away in that little time frame.
Even following this plan made one thing clear: even if he wanted to run away, he had to at least trade one blow with the monster.
Cursing himself to not be greedy ever again, he looked toward the ancient tree...
Instead of an escape route, he saw three boars running toward him. With his heart pounding like crazy, he gripped his sword with both his hands and began moving with steady steps.
Letting a puff of air out, Nolan calmed himself. Aiming his sword at them, he charged toward the monster.
As he moved closer, he could understand why they weren't normal animals and instead were labeled as monsters.
The monster was a hulking, beastly creature with thick, patchy fur and a boar-like snout tipped with tusks. Its eyes glowed with strange hunger, and its back bristled with jagged spine-bones.
Long claws were strong enough to tear through trees and flesh alike. Covered in scars and filth, it reeks of rot—more monster than animal. With a single look, one could say they were only born to hunt and kill.
Time seemed to slow down as the distance between them was no more than one meter.
Raising his sword, Nolan swung it at the one in the middle. Steel met flesh as he felt a great vibration shaking his hand and then his body to its core.
Somehow, he managed not to lose balance.
He had cut the monster, but it wasn't deep enough.
He should be happy, but in an instant, he felt something was wrong with the situation. The boars just passed right beside him without fighting back.
In the next second, Nolan heard a loud screech behind him.
Screeeccchhh!!
Perplexed by the whole ordeal, he turned slightly only to see something that was not following his common sense again. It was then that he realized something...
…The boars weren't coming for him. No, they were after the Shrooms.
'No... what have I done...' he had realized, but it was already too late, the blood had already drawn out.
The other two boars charged past him and slammed right into the incoming mushroom monster. The rest were doing the same... they were fighting the Shrooms, who were just spawning out of nowhere.
But the one Nolan had attacked suddenly stopped in its tracks, its grooves digging into the ground. Turning around, it looked at him and then into his eyes.
Licking the blood dripping from its side, it let out a deep growl and charged.
'Fuck me...' Nolan tried to back away, but its charge was just too fast.
Just the sheer force of the sprint made the ground quake beneath his feet. The beast came thundering forward, its eyes bloodshot with fury.
Raising its tusks... the monster moved, intending to meet him with these sharp, scythe-like harbingers of death.
In seconds, it reached him as Nolan barely managed to raise his blade in time. The tusks struck.
The impact should've torn him apart... but something had absorbed most of its energy. Instead of turning into bloody goo, his body only shuddered for a moment.
Even with most of it gone, the force hit him like a hammer. His feet skidded back across the dirt, shoes digging trenches in the soil. Pain flashed in his ribs, but Nolan held firm.
Narrowing his eyes, he tightened his grip around the sword.
The boar snarled at him, furious that its charge hadn't crushed this puny prey.
Despite being petty, Nolan didn't do anything in return to reply to their taunt. The reason was simple: he couldn't afford to; there wasn't even a second to waste, as the monster had once again begun its charge.
Staring at it, he spun away, dropping to the ground as one of those monstrous tusks swung past his head, barely missing his head by a few inches. Rolling around, he quickly came upon one knee a few paces away from the monster.
A few seconds in, and with just two exchanges had made his breathing ragged. One good hit like the first one again, and he wouldn't stay on his feet.
But Nolan wasn't trying to match it head-on. He knew better than to try something like that. The very second he had encountered these beasts, he had known this wasn't a fight of strength.
No, it was a dance of death... a dance where the one who lasts longer on the floor wins, and not the one who had more fancy moves.