The room was eerily silent, and there were only two people left in the room… or at least the pieces of the two people, as neither of their body parts was complete.

The woman had been split into two and the upper part of her body had deep claw marks across it and her right arm had been severed, but it was on the floor a little distance away.

The man's body was also in a just as terrible state, his hand had also been severed, and his body had flesh missing from all over it… he looked like a half-eaten meal that had been discarded.

All in all, it was a gruesome sight that shouldn't be seen by anybody as it could easily give even the bravest of men nightmares. Yet even in this gruesome sight, something moved. Surprisingly it was the man's head that moved, it seemed that even after all the trauma that his body had experienced, his soul simply wouldn't rest until it confirmed something.

Simply put, he was a man on a mission.

The man's eyes fluttered open and his head moved slightly, but that was the end of his movements, his body had been too badly damaged to do any more and the fact that he was even still alive spoke of the extreme willpower that was able to push him to go after enemies that could easily swat him aside when he was still far from death and that same willpower was what kept him from letting go of the last sliver of life in his hands… for now, as even he couldn't stave off the embrace of death for much longer.

His eyes quickly darted around the room as he looked for any sign of the presence of the culprits that had put him in this state, but the lack of their presence and the sound of what seemed like combat coming from outside the house's windows told him that they were gone.

Upon noting that the culprits were gone and were seemingly being apprehended somewhere outside the house, he breathed a sigh of relief and visibly relaxed, his body beginning to lose its tension and he began to ease closer to the darkness called death, but for him, it didn't seem so bad.

His wife was also on the other side, and he would be able to tell her when they met, that he had protected their children with every breath in his body and with every ounce of his strength.

One would ask…

How did he protect his children?

After all, the only thing he did was to charge ragefully at the ones who had killed the mother of his children, and even then, he wasn't able to leave a single scratch on their skin… or fur in their case.

But the man that was slowly approaching death would respectfully disagree.

He hadn't just been prancing around and swinging knives like some trained assassin while shouting in rage because his wife had just been killed before his very eyes… or he had, but his thoughts were not as simple as a mindless revenge-starved buffoon.

Despite showing extreme physical abilities just moments before his eventual defeat, this man had always been smart. It could be seen from his previously scholarly look that he used his brain to bring food to his table and not his physical strength.

He always knew that he wasn't able to defeat a beastman, not to mention defeating three extremely dangerous and bloodthirsty individuals of the species, yet he attacked them as if he had lost all reason even though he knew that he would not even be able to touch their heels, especially as a completely normal human, a smart one, but a human nonetheless.

There were two reasons for his actions, of which the first was to buy time. He had already called the authorities responsible for taking care of this kind of situation, namely the MPA, and he knew that it was only a matter of time until they arrived.

Unfortunately, it seemed the MPA was feeling very inclined to take their sweet time to get off their asses and come and save a society in need and this leads us to the second reason.

A distraction and diversion… these may seem like two extremely similar reasons, but for him, they weren't the same.

Previously, just before the beastmen made a move, one of them had noticed two extra scents in the room, and why wouldn't he?

This was the children's bedroom after all. The calling of attention to the scents had prompted his wife into frantic action, as for the two of them they didn't need to hear it a second time to know what that beastman was referring to.

Unfortunately, his wife ended up dead due to her frantic actions, leaving him behind with the burden of protecting his children's safety at all costs. This was what had prompted him into action and spurned him to attack the beastmen, as a way to distract them from continuing to find out about the two extra scents that would inevitably lead to his children being found and dragged into this mess.

Of course, his rage at his wife's death helped him with the courage to attempt this suicide plan with such brevity.

After losing one of his arms in less than one exchange between him and only one of the beastmen, he realized that even his ingenious idea wouldn't matter if he died in less than ten seconds. He also couldn't take his chances at trying to delay his death while hoping for the MPA officers to arrive.

He scoffed at the mere thought, he wasn't one to put his children's lives into the hands of mere strangers, even worse was when they didn't seem to be reliable at all.

Suddenly he came to a realization…

Since it was already a given that he'd be dying very soon, as the beastmen didn't seem the type to let someone go out of sympathy, he decided to use the last bits of his body and the last moments of his life to protect his children by not allowing them to be found, and the answer to that was in front of him all along.

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Like always my people, I beseech thee, shower upon me your stones of power and elevate me to a position of higher ranking on the charts.

Thank you for your gracefulness.

The next chapter is the end of Tisha's story and from there we shall be returning back to the huge dungeon battle, anticipate and vote... who knows, you may loosen my hold on a few extra chapters.