I glanced at the door, and after a small consideration, dragged two of the smaller cages to the door before starting to work on the beasts. I didn't expect it to be useful for long — and even if it blocked for hours, there was little benefit to being locked in a room with no exit.

I expected the barrier to last a few seconds at most. Not groundbreaking, but should be enough to give me some reaction time.

"Now, the weapon," I murmured as I glanced at the far-side wall, with several spears affixed. Unlike the weapons that decorated the walls upstairs — or the one that was given to me by Toross upstairs, to kill the caged beasts — the spears lacked the fancy decorations.

I grabbed one, and realized the difference was not only the decoration. There was no magical sense of energy radiating from its surface, dancing under my fingers. No easy butchering for me, I realized.

I walked to the weakest beast — from what I could ascertain from a glance — and stabbed. It tried to dodge, showing its rabid anger against people — as none of them tried to hurt the other beasts, not even when they were piled in some of the bigger cages — not intense enough to prevent them from dodging.

Unfortunately for the beast, the cage was too small for it to escape. The stab was successful, but pushing took a considerable effort. Nothing like the earlier smoothness I had experienced with the clearly magical weapon.

"They don't like they care much about the servants," I murmured as I glanced at the other on the wall. More than twenty, spread around like fire extinguishers, clearly there to be used if there was some kind of accident with the monsters.

But I sincerely doubted they would have been useful, especially with the combat performance the unlucky servant who decided to make his last stand had displayed. The spears were only there to create a false sense of security.

It didn't surprise me. It wasn't the first workplace safety violation I had seen with potentially catastrophic consequences.

I wasn't standing lazily as my mind wandered. Even as my attention wandered, I was stabbing the beast repeatedly, and the wound recovered after each attempt. It took twenty stabs, most of it delivered to its vitals, to take him down.

[+183 Experience]

An extended effort, one that would have taken everything I had if it wasn't for the unfair playing field of the cage. "Life is not fair, little buddy," I murmured as I moved to the next beast … then next …

[+95 Experience]

[+133 Experience]

…

[+46 Experience]

Beast after beast fell under my spear, allowing me to gather enough experience to level up in less than two minutes, at the cost of painfully burning arms and desperate breathing.

[Experience: 4510]

Experience that I was tempted to use leveling up. It didn't take a genius to realize just how easy the attempts would get if I assigned ten more points to strength. But I didn't know their detection distance, and I had a fear that leveling up would alert them not only to my presence …

But also the fact that I was rather more mobile than what they might be believing. Since they took this long to arrive at the servants' quarters, I imagined them going through every room carefully before moving down.

That, or they took longer than I expected to finally kill Toross… With everyone having the ability to regenerate, along with all other abilities, I had no idea how the combat actually worked in this new world I found myself in. I could guess that it took longer than what I was used to … but how much longer?

Still frowning as I waited for things to turn into a disaster, I continued killing the beasts, glad for their constant rabid anger. It made the death cries of the other beasts far less suspicious as I continued killing the beasts — occasionally discarding a spear as they broke down, proving weaker than my old bones.

Magically-enhanced old bones, maybe, but still old bones.

Still, as I had passed the mark of twenty-thousand experience, I had barely managed to kill a fourth of all the beasts that were in the cages, but another spear broke in my hands, leaving only four more to be used.

An interesting bottleneck to face, I thought, but I didn't stop killing. I could always start searching for more weapons once I finished with the task at hand. At least, that was my plan before it was interrupted by a loud shout. "Gather around," a shout exploded at a distance, making me freeze as I felt a presence clashing against me, Resilience once again creating a barrier.

I recognized the voice. It was Toross, which was a surprise. After their fight had started, I was expecting the intruders to be the ones victorious. Maybe they had come to an agreement. Or maybe, Toross was the victor.

I didn't know which one was the best case.

Yet, Toross' continued survival wasn't the only reason I froze — not even the greatest reason. No, that honor went to the pressure that accompanied his shout. I had thought that Toross lacked Falael's ability to use the impact of Charisma, but that shout proved it to be otherwise … maybe, if the thing he had been using was Charisma in the first place.

The difference was hard to describe, but whether it was Toross' subtler aura of inspiration, Falael's orders that demanded the truth and obedience, or the late captain's anemic display of pressure, Charisma lacked … flavor, for lack of a better term.

Toross' shout was certainly not flavorless, and that was not an advantage. Not when the flavor in question was a disgusting mixture of blood, ashes, and fire… Or at least, the mental equivalents that left me trembling in a primal fear, the kind that I had never felt before.

No, I corrected as a memory stirred forward. A fear that I felt only once, in that tunnel of light, when my gaze locked with the shadows that surrounded the tunnel of light.

I wasn't the only one that reacted. Even through the insulation of the stables, I heard servants shouting back. "Yes, my lord," they shouted, but I didn't enjoy the tinge in their tone. There was an angle of desperation in their tone. No, not desperation…

Madness.

Once again, I felt glad for the existence of Resilience, allowing me to resist whatever magical effect that shout had. Then, I turned my attention to the beasts, beasts that stilled for a moment before exploding into action once more, their roars even louder, their smashing even more desperate.

That was not the only difference. This time, none of the beasts paid any attention to me, every single one of them facing the direction of the shout.

"A mad gambit," I murmured as I looked at the beast, removing the barricade from the door even as I did so — glad that I had only pulled three cages in front of the door.

Toross exploded into another cry. "Embrace the destruction, weakling!" he shouted, though this time, it was even more of a beastly growl than actual human speech. I doubted that I could have understood his words without the assistance of Perception. Even with that, it was a close call.

"Yes, my lord," a servant shouted, one that was cut off by a desperate cry, one that filled with a weaker version of whatever Toross' cries had been radiating.

The mention of destruction didn't make me feel better. The suffix of destruction that came attached to my archery skill felt considerably more ominous.

"A problem for another time," I said as I continued working. I opened the door, but didn't step out. I might not have lived long in this new world, but I had to be an idiot not to realize that whatever going on was extraordinary.

And not the good kind.

"Let's see if I read you correctly," I murmured as I closed in the first cage. It was locked, but that was not a bother. I had already tested that the sigil worked to unlock the cages earlier — one with no surviving beast, naturally — and now, I targeted a cage with a solitary beast. Some kind of raging wolf.

I braced myself as I unlocked the cage, my other hand gripping the dagger tightly, ready to defend myself if I had misread the reaction of the beasts.

Yet, the wolf-like creature just dashed forward, completely ignoring my presence. "Excellent," I murmured as I went through cage after cage, unlocking them. I had no idea if Toross and the servants could handle all, or if it would end up in my death after they had been dealt with… but at this point, it was not something I could actually pay attention to.

"Attack, kill them all, prove yourself worthy of destruction," Toross shouted, his voice making me shiver in fear once more. I didn't even want to imagine how I would have felt without Resilience acting as a barrier.

However, the deafening stampede of beasts was getting smaller much faster than I had expected, which was hardly a good sign.

I dashed out of the room the moment I unlocked the largest cage, moving in the opposite direction of the stampede, hoping that I would be able to avoid Toross — though I didn't neglect to grab a spear on the way out. Just in case.

I had no idea what was going on with him, but I had a feeling that faking unconsciousness wouldn't work.