The ground trembled violently as the feral Armored Buffalo charged.

Evelyn stumbled on the cracked pavement, her center of balance completely thrown off. Her boot caught the edge of a rusted pipe, and she fell hard onto her knees.

She let out a sharp gasp, twisting her head to look back.

The metallic behemoth was almost ten meters away, its massive, four sharp horns lowered directly at her torso. Thick steam violently expelled from its flared nostrils.

There was no time to dodge. Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the impact that would shatter her ribs and crush her into the earth.

SWOOSH.

A sudden, terrifying rush of wind hit her face.

She wasn’t crushed. Instead, a strong hand gripped the collar of her shirt. Before she could even scream, she was violently yanked upward, her feet leaving the ground entirely as she was pulled backward through the air.

CRASH!

The Armored Buffalo missed her by an inch. Unable to stop its massive momentum, the beast slammed headfirst into the rusted, structural pillars of the collapsed Ferris wheel.

The impact was deafening. The force of the beast buckled the thick steel beams. The entire structure of the massive wheel groaned, the metal shrieking in protest before the immense weight of the rotting ride finally gave way.

Thousands of tons of rusted metal and broken carriages came crashing down directly on top of the beast in a spectacular, suffocating cloud of dust and debris.

Hide landed gracefully on the roof of a nearby booth, setting Evelyn down beside him.

"You can open your eyes now," Hide said, his breathing slightly heavy. Pushing his Agility to the absolute limit while carrying a person was taxing.

Evelyn snapped her eyes open. She stared in absolute horror at the mountain of collapsed metal where she had been standing just a second ago.

She slowly turned her head, looking at Hide’s dark, scaled hands and the glowing blue eyes staring back at her.

She blinked, regaining her composure with startling speed. A faint blush dusted her pale cheeks, but she immediately scowled, awkwardly pushing her shoulder against his arm to put some distance between them.

"Don’t just stand there staring," Evelyn snapped turning around. "Cut these damn bindings off me!"

Hide rolled his eyes, but he brought Night Singer up and cleanly sliced through the glowing cord of hardened mana tying her wrists together.

Evelyn immediately rubbed her sore wrists, her hands trembling slightly.

"What the hell happened to that beast?" Hide asked, his eyes locked on the dust cloud below them. "That thing is not even a beast anymore."

"I have no idea," Evelyn gritted her teeth. "I was maintaining the comms link when some weird guy wearing a Joker mask just... appeared."

Hide’s jaw tightened. "The Joker."

"He attacked me out of nowhere," Evelyn continued, her voice trembling with a mix of anger and lingering fear. "Shiro tried to protect me, but that masked freak... he killed him instantly. He just crushed his throat. I didn’t want to lose Yuki too, so I forced her back into her seal."

She pointed a shaking finger at the rubble.

"Then, that guy caught a normal Armored Buffalo that was wandering nearby. He just touched it... he did something to it. The beast started growling in agony, and its body just... exploded in size. It grew massive and its... armor pierced out of its own skin, and it went completely feral. Then he tied me up and just left."

Hide’s expression darkened completely.

The mystery of this Joker was getting deeper and significantly more dangerous. Who the hell was this guy? He possessed a talent that could make him faster or teleport him, completely masking his presence, he could even create gates, and now... he could forcefully mutate Calamity Beasts into feral giants?

What the hell did a monster like that want with Hide?

BANG.

The massive pile of collapsed steel beams violently shifted.

"Watch out!" Evelyn yelled.

Bursting out from the mountain of debris was the Armored Buffalo. It staggered forward, mostly unharmed by the sheer weight of the Ferris wheel, having only lost two of its jagged, rusted horns.

But its face was a horrific sight.

Half of its skull had been smashed into paste against the steel pillars. Dark blood, bone fragments, and grey brain matter dripped freely down its snout, yet the beast didn’t seem to feel any pain. The feral madness kept it moving.

Its single remaining red eye locked onto the booth.

It let out a gurgling, wet bellow and charged directly at them.

"Move!" Hide shouted.

Hide and Evelyn instantly jumped in opposite directions. The beast smashed straight through the booth, obliterating the small structure into splinters and passing right between them.

Hide landed on the cracked pavement, his boots skidding slightly.

The beast skidded to a halt, tearing up the asphalt. It whipped its massive body around to face Evelyn, preparing to charge the defenseless tamer again.

Suddenly, a black blur shot through the air.

THWACK.

The short blade of Night Singer buried itself completely up to the hilt directly into the beast’s right buttock.

The Armored Buffalo let out a deafening, agonizing shriek. It kicked its hind legs back wildly like a bucking bronco.

Hide, who had dashed in to throw the sword, immediately jumped back, the massive steel hooves missing his jaw by a fraction of an inch.

The beast raged even further and completely forgot about Evelyn. The feral creature whipped its mangled head around, its single eye locking onto Hide with pure killing intent for touching its butts.

It scraped its hooves against the asphalt and dashed straight at him like a freight train.

Hide didn’t run. He didn’t even try to dodge.

Instead, he smirked. It was exactly what he wanted.

"Hide! Get away from there!" Evelyn screamed, her voice cracking in panic.

Hide ignored her. He planted his boots firmly into the ground and raised both his hands, palms facing the charging behemoth.

’Mana Blast.’

He channeled the dense energy from his surroundings directly to his palms. The mana compressed rapidly, forming a swirling, volatile ball of dark violet energy that crackled with destructive power.

He waited until the beast was five feet away, its massive, bloodied snout practically touching him.

Hide thrust his hands forward, sending the ball of compressed mana directly into the beast’s mangled face.

BOOM!

The explosion was catastrophic.

The attack hit the head of the beast point-blank. The compressed mana violently expanded, completely bypassing the beast’s metal armor. The entire front half of the Armored Buffalo was instantly annihilated.

The beast turned into a grotesque, expanding rain of dark blood, shattered bone, and liquefied organs.

Everything above the torso was simply erased from existence. The massive shockwave cracked the pavement beneath them, leaving only the two massive hind legs standing for a brief second before they collapsed heavily into the cratered area of effect.

Hide stood at the edge of the crater, lowering his hands. The dark scales of his Carapace smoked slightly from the heat of the blast.

A stray drop of dark blood landed near his eye. Hide blinked rapidly, tilting his head and scrunching his face slightly to try and get it out.

Standing opposite of him, Evelyn stared at the smoking crater, and then looked at Hide.

Her eyebrows twitched violently.

"Did..." Evelyn muttered, her face turning entirely red. "Did he just wink at me?"

Suddenly the ground beneath their boots lurched.

It wasn’t a normal tremor, it felt as though the entire world shuddered.

The humid air suddenly grew suffocatingly dense. A massive, suffocating wave of wild mana washed over the amusement park, so potent and violent that Hide felt a sudden, sharp pain in his sinuses.

He touched his upper lip. His fingers came away slick with warm blood. A nosebleed.

He looked at Evelyn. She was holding her nose too, her eyes wide with terror.

"Hide..." she whispered, pointing behind him.

Hide turned around.

The other section of the ruined city—the area he had just flown over, and where Elara was fighting—was violently tearing itself apart.

The ground was literally lifting into the air, like a paper being folded. Massive slabs of bedrock, ruined buildings, and entire city scrapers rising upward, forming a terrifying mountain of debris right in the middle of the gate.