Read Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four for Free Online

caterpillar crashed face first into the ground. With none of the quivering death throes that might be expected from a lower organism, it was reduced to a lifeless piece of meat.
    The villagers, dumbfounded, stared at its corpse. The very same monster that had given them such a ferocious battle had been rendered a harmless insect with a single blow—literally with one stroke from a sword. So great had been the change in the situation, their minds couldn’t keep pace. Their brains didn’t have the means to comprehend it.
    The sudden silence was broken by the girl as she said, “D . . . You’re . . . you’re just incredible . . .”
    Letting go of the girl, D walked over to the caterpillar without a word. He kept only his thumb around the hilt of his sword, cupping the other fingers to catch the ichor that spilled from the cut he’d made in the creature. When the girl saw him bring it up to his lips, her eyes went wide. His handsome head arched back. She saw a thin stream of blood fly from his lips and up into the sky.
    Dhampirs must be able to spit with great force, because the geyser of blood reached some thirty feet into the air, where it scattered in a red mist. Once D had finished disgorging it, he wiped the back of his right hand across his lips and then simply stood there. And all the while the villagers remained frozen in place. Not because the young man who’d suddenly appeared to slay the hellish beast with a single blow had entranced them with his swordplay, and not because they were shocked or terrified, but because their very souls had been taken by his beauty—or so it appeared to the girl.
    Finally, one of the villagers went over to the young woman and said, “Hey, Maquia!”
    Just then, a weird howl shook the air. As the villagers turned to look at the defensive palisade, a shadow fell across them. It belonged to the enormous creatures that had sailed through the air and over the fence: a colossal arthropod that looked just like a scorpion gifted with a nauseatingly gaudy coloration and a mollusk that seemed to be no more than a knot of innumerable sucker-covered tentacles. Each of the creatures was the size of a small hut. The claws of the giant scorpion were wet with fresh blood.
    “How many of them are left?” D inquired, but at that very instant tentacles streamed toward him like weeds underwater.
    “Just these,” a villager replied.
    The Hunter seemed to become a silvery flash that raced between the tentacles, severing each and every one of the hideous appendages and leaving them lying on the ground. The villagers took in the action. The deadly battle was over in seconds—but it was something they would pass down to their children and their children’s children.
    The young man in black seemed to glide in a gentle arc while the giant scorpion closed on him from one side, its scythelike claws extended. The young man swept his right hand down without any particular effort. No one had actually seen him raise it to strike. Sparks flew, and the giant scorpion’s claws thudded to the ground. Only later did they learn that the claws were covered by nearly an inch of shell that was every bit as tough as iron.
    Taking a step toward the monstrous bug as it tumbled backward, the Hunter lashed out with his naked blade, driving it deep between the creature’s beady red eyes and then flinging the massive fifteen-foot-long, two-ton form at the mass of tentacles to its rear with a single movement of his right arm.
    The mass of tentacles backed away. As it barely dodged the giant scorpion, the figure in black, following the scorpion’s trajectory, landed by its side. Split in two, the mass fell into two halves and ceased moving; almost simultaneously, it became countless individual tentacles that scattered. There was no sign of a body connecting them. It was unclear whether the creature had been a swarm of sentient tentacles or if a single intelligence had united them. The stench of their compatriots’