Chapter 20: Beastman
Parting the bushes, I found myself holding my breath at the sight before me—my heart felt like it had stopped.
Beyond the thicket stood a humanoid creature about two meters tall, its whole body a greenish-blue. Two tusks curled upward from the corners of its mouth, climbing its cheeks. Half its face was covered in red paint like some crude war paint. The nearly bald head was tied into a thin little braid, reminiscent of a certain creature called "shāmǎtè" back in my world.
But the most eye-catching part was its powerful limbs—muscles bulged so hard the veins popped out. If I took a hit from those arms, my scrawny body would probably shatter into a fine mist on the spot.
I suspected those giant hands could crush my skull like a melon.
A beastman?!
I stared, stunned, at this massive creature I was seeing for the first time—yet it felt strangely familiar.
Why familiar? Well, that went back to my previous world. I’d read a fair number of beastman-themed color comics. Ah, and black-and-white ones too. Most of the plots involved beastmen and elves...
Ahem. Anyway, the beastmen in this world looked quite different from those little comics. For one, though rare, they did have hair—but the hairstyle resembled something out of a primitive nomadic tribe.
Other than that, they were pretty much the same. Just one glance, and I could tell—this was definitely a beastman.
An inexplicable sense of danger crept over me, pushing me toward escape. It wasn’t just because I was seeing such a huge, inhuman creature up close for the first time—there was something else. A subtle, uneasy feeling...
I noticed the beastman was currently squaring off against a young elf girl. She looked to be in rough shape—half-kneeling, using her curved blade for support. Clearly injured.
She wore the Coleman Academy uniform—she was a classmate of mine.
She had shoulder-length silver hair, with one side tied with a red ribbon. Her purple-glass eyes shimmered with exhaustion, her whole presence listless.
A Moon Elf?
Judging by the scene, she and the beastman had been fighting for a while now. Unfortunately, she was far too young.
Something about her face struck a strange chord in my memory—gradually, her image overlapped with Astrid before her Divine Awakening.
That’s when it hit me—this little elf girl looks uncannily like a pre-awakened Astrid. If I didn’t know that Astrid had already completed her Divine Awakening, I might have actually mistaken her.
Maybe she was Astrid’s kin—or even a direct relative?
A Divine Princess who hadn’t awakened yet didn’t possess Divine Authority. Her strength, speed, and everything else were still on the level of a child. Matching brute force with a beastman whose biceps looked like they could benchpress a house? That was just asking for trouble. I wasn’t even sure if her curved blade could pierce his skin.
The outcome was already decided. If nothing changed, this silver-haired elf girl was headed for a bad ending.
And as for what kind of bad ending… let’s not get into the R-rated details.
Some derivative works liked to portray beastmen as noble warrior clans who respected strength and would never do anything dishonorable to a captured female knight. But unfortunately, from what I’d read in the Demon Race Guidebook, the beastmen in this world matched audience expectations perfectly.
Simple-minded, brutish, obsessed with warfare, highly aggressive—and had a particular fondness for women of other races. Especially other people’s wives. And most twisted of all—they liked to make the husband watch.
Sure, they worshipped strength—but they also loved other men’s wives. They were full-on cuckold enthusiasts.
So, if this elf girl lost the fight, what would happen next... well, one glance at the beastman’s glittering, excited little eyes said enough. The story didn’t even need to play out—you could already guess most of it.
This beastman could barely hold himself back from enjoying his prize.
Elves and beastmen—the classic duo of every doujin. A timeless re-enactment.
And afterward, if this beastman found her satisfying, he might even drag her back for his kin and brothers to “share.” If not, then by next morning, someone from Coleman Academy might stumble across the elf girl’s mangled body somewhere in the forest.
I glanced silently at my flintlock, still smoking and overheated in my hand.
Useless. I couldn’t fight with it. And honestly, I doubted a flintlock like this could even kill a beastman.
The caliber was enough to down a rabbit, sure—but compared to that beastman’s build? It might as well be a toothpick.
And the barrel was still hot. Firing it now would probably cause it to explode in my hands.
Didn’t matter—I couldn’t step in anyway.
After a moment of silence, I pressed my palms together and muttered under my breath, “Sorry, classmate. I can’t help you. I really can’t.”
“If I try to interfere, I won’t be saving you. I’ll just be getting myself killed. So... don’t blame me.”
I was ready to bail…
“Help... help me…”
The sound of fabric being torn. A girl’s tear-choked voice, dripping with despair.
The scene was eerily similar to what had happened to Astrid back then.
Maybe it was the memory of Astrid that stopped me—or maybe it was the elf girl’s resemblance to her. I didn’t know. Some vague, irrational force took hold, and before I knew it, I turned around, grabbed a stone off the ground, and hurled it hard at the beastman.
Smack!
The little rock struck the back of the unfeeling beastman’s head.