"Captain! The head!" shouted Reidar, as he stretched the bow rope, loading an arrow with difficulty, due to the pain caused by wounds on both shoulders.

Dag, after stunned the bat, grabbed the fur on its head, lifting it laboriously in the direction of Reidar, who was aiming.

With an expression of pain, Reidar was able to fire the arrow, which hit the bat full in the forehead, piercing its head.

Blood splattered in Dag's face, who kept holding his grip to avoid falling to the ground.

The Red Executioner was still behind his back and weighed him down greatly, forcing his enemy to give in to the weight.

Reidar stretched his bow again, once again aiming at the head of the giant bat, which, despite the arrow piercing his skull, continued to shake.

Dag with his eyes closed and blood-soaked again tried to hold it still.

A second before Reidar could fire the arrow, something else hit him from behind, scratching his back.

The accidentally fired arrow hit Dag's immobilized bat on the shoulder.

Karl turned around to see what had happened behind Reidar.

Another bat, slightly smaller than the first, had unbalanced him and tossed him to the ground.

It clutched Reidar's ankle between its jaws, dragging him to the ground.

"Aaaagh! Help me! There's another one!" yelled Reidar as he looked at Karl, who was paralyzed with fear.

He looked around: on the one hand, Reidar was about to be quartered by an abominable being, who was dragging him into the darkness of the forest; on the other, his Captain was struggling with an even bigger bat, which despite the wounds caused by the arrows, did not seem to give up.

"What the f.u.c.k am I gonna do now?" thought Karl, who was forced to reason quickly.

Impulsively, he turned to the bat that dragged Reidar. He took courage and with his tomahawk hit it on the head.

The tomahawk's blade lodged in the skull of the beast, hard as the rock, and remained stuck inside it.

The fowl left Reidar's ankle and looked up at Karl, who shrugged his eyes in fear.

It then uttered a loud screech and placed one of its front paws on Reidar's face, holding him stranded on the ground.

Karl retreated, tripping and falling backward, as the beast stretched its neck towards him, opening its jaws and dripping its saliva on Reidar.

However, the archer, meanwhile, managed to extract a dagger from his belt and before the second bat could hurt Karl, he hit it violently in the neck, stabbing it.

When the dagger blade entered the animal's flesh, Reidar moved his weapon vertically, opening the chest of the bat, whose entrails began to leak.

As Karl watched helplessly at the scene, Reidar found himself in a pool of blood, covered in the guts of the corpse of the giant bat he had just quartered.

"Help... help me..." said to Karl with a thread of voice, choked by the weight of the beast's body.

Karl recovered from his shock, got up from the ground and moved the corpse from above Reidar, who managed to breathe again.

Then he turned to Dag: just then, the first bat, much bigger and more powerful, managed to knock Dag to the ground and turned to him.

Dag retreated, quickly unhooking the strap that held the Red Executioner tied, while the bat pulled out the arrow lodged in his skull with one of his front paws, incredibly fitted with opposable thumbs.

After extracting his tomahawk from the other monster's head, Karl began to run towards Dag, desperate to hit the enemy behind him but noticed that one of the giant bat's ears turned to him.

Before he could hit it, the mutant animal turned backwards and violently hit Karl with a wing, causing him to slam his back into a stone trunk.

After a few seconds, Karl and Reidar were next to each other, wounded and on the ground.

When the bat turned again towards Dag, he had managed to extract the Red Executioner from its protective towel.

With considerable effort, he waved the heavy double-headed axe, but unable to lift it completely, hit the bat on one of its lower legs, cutting it sharply.

The severed paw flew away after impact and the beast fell to the ground but continued to advance towards Dag, crawling on the wings.

Dag managed to stand up.

The Red Executioner suddenly began to emit red lightning bolts, which crackled around Dag, illuminating the surrounding forest with flashes.

Dag looked at Brann's weapon: he had done nothing to unlock its power, yet something had unleashed the potential it was holding back.

As the bat continued to advance slowly towards him, leaving behind a trail of thick blood from his severed paw, Dag continued to look at the axe in detail.

The power of that weapon was enormous and he would begin to feel it flowing through his body as if he had just been hit by a sudden adrenaline rush.

"The only thing that changed a few moments ago is that one of the blades of the axe got blood-soaked" he thought, looking at the animal's blood covering one of the Red Executioner's black blades, a.s.suming it was the thing that unlocked its potential.

Dag looked at the bat advancing towards him.

He positioned his legs to easily shake the heavy axe he was wielding and fired a powerful blow, which easily severed the head of the bat, sending it flying meters away.

Caught in the heat of the Red Executioner's power, Dag struck the animal again, but this time with a vertical blow.

As soon as the axe touched the back of the bat, it split in two as if it was made of b.u.t.ter.

Its blood squirted from all sides, before the raised gaze of Karl and Reidar, who had just witnessed their Captain's victory.