Sota focused intensely on the road ahead, relying entirely on the pale moonlight to determine their next direction.
As for Takeshi, he stood at the rear of the cart awaiting Sota's signal, pulling back his arm that held the rope, lurking for those predatory monsters as they pursued them.
The horse's speed was gradually decreasing, causing the distance between the cart and the monsters to slowly shrink.
'Don't these monsters get tired?'
His thinking was logical for a normal human; if these monsters had their legs torn or half their heads mangled, they would still continue their path behind their prey with everything they had.
That is what it means to be a Rivarg monster: possessing no feelings like happiness or sadness, and feeling no pain no matter what happens.
However, they did feel fear at times—or rather, a dormant survival instinct would occasionally ignite. These monsters did not fear death, but their buried instinct pushed them to flee in certain situations.
At the front of the cart, in the driver's cabin, Sota finally managed to spot the slope and the bend in the road; only seconds separated them from reaching it.
"I see the path we'll take!!"
Sota screamed at the top of his lungs, a sound that nearly burst the eardrums of Takeshi, the monsters, and the horse alike.
'Control your volume a little...'
As soon as Sota's voice echoed through the air alongside the sickening sound of the monsters' footsteps, Takeshi tightened his grip on the slender rope. He lunged forward and leaned, swinging his arm and tearing through the open air to throw the rope in his hand with all his might.
The dagger tied to the rope shot forward like a piercing arrow, heading toward the lead Rivarg monsters. Quickly, the sharp blade pierced the head of one of the monsters in the front, specifically between its sharp eyes.
Despite this, the monster struggled with the last of its strength to move forward, but due to the direct injury and the members of its own kind trying to surge ahead, it fell to the ground only to end up being trampled.
This was exactly what Takeshi wanted.
As soon as the injured monster was covered by the rest of the pack, Takeshi flexed all his shoulder muscles, leaned his torso, and pulled the rope with every ounce of strength he possessed.
Suddenly, the injured monster was dragged from among the massive crowd, striking some of them with force, delaying everyone in the front row so those in the back could move forward.
They, too, were not safe from the injured monster, which moved with Takeshi's motions—for he was the one controlling it. The monster had met its end the moment it was trampled.
Its face was filled with wounds and lethal injuries caused by the claws of the monsters that had trampled it without any pity.
Takeshi felt a surge of anger that these monsters did not respect their comrade, but he calmed himself, realizing that humans were much worse than that.
Takeshi pivoted, pulling the rope tied to the monster with him, obstructing the path of the majority so they would be trampled mercilessly.
Takeshi's plan was to eliminate the monsters or at least delay them in this manner, but due to the narrow range of motion in the cart, he could not move the tied Rivarg monster enough to kill the rest.
However, knocking them down was enough now. Even if the speed of just one monster among that crowd decreased, it would be trampled and killed without mercy—so what if it actually fell?
Now it could be said that Takeshi's plan had begun to succeed partially. The problem lay with the strongest monsters that could withstand those strikes without faltering.
The second problem was that the fewer they became, the less effective his plan became; if there were no monsters left to trample the others, what was the point?
But he had already disposed of a large number of monsters—nearly 20 out of 50—and he was still getting rid of them at a steady pace.
Now it was Sota's turn to shine.
He would have truly shone if he could have controlled his cowardly facial features. Regardless, he summoned the courage to support and insisted on being of some use.
'You said I was brave, Takeshi... so I won't let you down!'
He spoke in his heart as soon as they reached the turn near the cliff, which led to a rugged descent that might double the speed of the horse and the cart—but it would double the speed of the monsters as well.
Once he tightened his grip again on the horse's reins, he suddenly screamed with all his might, shattering the gloomy atmosphere of the forest.
He pulled the horse's rope toward him with force, and at the same instant, he loosened his left hand to pull the rope on his left side, guiding the horse toward the right with the rugged turn.
In the back, Takeshi almost lost his balance due to the sharpness of the turn's angle, but thanks to his strong, steady feet, he remained standing in his place.
He soon felt the cart tilt, and then its speed increased after slowing down for a moment.
"Good job!!"
Takeshi shouted before returning his focus to the monsters in his direction, quickly beginning to think of his next move.
'I won't be able to keep this pace before these monsters reach us...'
He shifted his gaze toward the cliff, which was not far away, and thought.
'I hope this works...'
Takeshi pulled the tied monster to his left side, opposite the rugged slope. He gritted his teeth and pulled the rope with all his strength to strike more than five monsters at the same time.
His strike was not meant to knock them down, but to push them toward the right side, where the slope overlooked the towering ground.
Takeshi finished pulling his hand, which was constrained by the small space he was in, to push those monsters toward the slope so they would fall mercilessly.
Thanks to Takeshi's physical ability, he was indeed able to repeat this process several times. It was truly exhausting; every time he did it, his shoulder trembled from the intensity of the strikes he was delivering.
Especially since he was hitting more than one monster at the same moment, and on top of that, the range of motion was poor and narrow inside the cart. But in the end, it served its purpose thanks to him breaking the roof of the cart and being able to at least stand up.
His plan was indeed working; once five monsters would fall, another time one monster, and other times he couldn't hit any monster, making him look as if he were playing with a flying rope attached to a beast.
But the thin rope was not going to withstand completing this process on its own, as it began to tear gradually with every use and swing.
Takeshi had already dropped about 24 monsters thanks to this strategy first, and secondly thanks to the stupidity and savagery of the monsters that did not even try to deter this simple plan.
Just as Takeshi tried to make another swing, the sound of something tearing reached his ears, and the sound erupted from in front of him.
Soon, the thing that tore became apparent.
In a critical moment, the rope snapped at the level of the dagger's knot, causing the monster attached to the dagger to fall to the ground, leaving Takeshi holding a regular thin rope.
At the same time, the cart began to emerge from the dense pine tree area, and the bottom of the slope began to appear thanks to the bright white moonlight in the sky.
It was the tree-free clearing Sota had told him about; if it were true that monsters do not approach moonlight, they would not encounter any other monsters in that area.
But the problem lay in the monsters that were pursuing them; they would not leave them unless they lost their lives or the sun woke from its slumber.
Therefore, a suicidal idea came to Takeshi's mind.
Without warning, Sota felt a recoil in the cart, and as soon as he turned around, he saw that Takeshi was not inside the cart.
"Don't tell me..."
He tried to stand up and focus on the horse's path at the same time, only to see Takeshi's figure from afar as he stood in the path of the Rivarg monsters before him with absolute pride.
"What are you doing, you fool!!"
Takeshi raised his hand slowly, staring at those damned monsters as they headed toward him with insane speed, and said in a loud voice with high self-confidence:
"Don't worry, we'll meet at the bottom."