The bolt shot through the air with a sound like ripping fabric amplified a thousand times. Ruho barely tracked it one second it was in the ballista, the next it was just gone, moving at what had to be near supersonic speeds. The magical runes along its length left a brief trail of blue light in the air, like a comet's tail.
Then it hit.
The bolt punched through the Gigantosuchus's neck with the force of a small meteor. There was no resistance, no slowing down, the reinforced tip just carved straight through scales, muscle, bone, and out the other side, leaving a hole easily three feet in diameter. A perfect circle of destruction that Ruho could literally see through from his position on the roof.
For a moment, nothing happened.
The Gigantosuchus stood there, frozen mid-stride, its jaws still open, its eyes still focused on the castle. Steam or smoke Ruho couldn't tell which rose from the massive wound in its neck.
Then it collapsed.
The impact shook the plateau. A hundred feet of prehistoric predator just dropped like someone had cut its strings, the massive body hitting the stone with a sound like a building falling over. Dust billowed up around it. Smaller rocks scattered from the impact point. And then, finally, it was still.
Dead.
Actually, genuinely dead.
"YES!" Ruho screamed, throwing his hands in the air. "YES! TAKE THAT, YOU OVERSIZED LIZARD! I KILLED YOU! ME! THE GUY WITH TWENTY MANA POINTS! HA!"
From the divine peanut gallery, he heard the sound of applause. Slow, measured, the kind of clapping that suggested genuine appreciation rather than mockery.
"Magnifique!" Napoleon's voice rang out, full of approval. "A perfect shot! Precise, devastating, executed under pressure with a weapon you had never used before! This is exactly the kind of adaptability that wins campaigns, young man!"
"Thank you!" Ruho shouted at the sky, still riding the adrenaline high. "Thank you, that means a lot coming from—"
"Monsieur Vexor," Napoleon continued, "you simply must invite me back for future engagements! This has been the most entertainment I've had in decades! But alas, I must take my leave—my wife Joséphine is expecting me for our afternoon promenade through the Elysian Gardens."
There was a pause.
"Wait," Vexor said, confused. "Joséphine? I thought you two separated? The divorce in 1809? I processed both of your souls separately, and the paperwork clearly indicated—"
"Ah, but love changes in the afterlife, my friend!" Napoleon said, his tone taking on a romantic quality that sounded deeply wrong coming from a military commander. "The petty concerns of the mortal world succession, heirs, political alliances, they mean nothing here! In death, we have rediscovered what drew us together in the first place! Her wit! Her charm! Her—"
"Oh god, he's going to keep going," Azirel muttered.
"—absolutely captivating laugh! The way she moves through a room! I wrote her seventeen letters just this morning! Seventeen! Each one more passionate than the last! She says I'm being excessive but I can see in her eyes that she loves it! We are planning a picnic next week in the Gardens of—"
"OKAY!" Vexor cut in loudly. "That's wonderful, Napoleon! Very happy for you both! Enjoy your promenade!"
"I shall! And Monsieur Ruho, continue to survive! You are providing excellent entertainment!" Napoleon's presence faded, still talking about Joséphine's eyes or her dress or something equally nauseating.
Ruho stood on the roof, his ears ringing from the ballista shot, and stared down at the dead Gigantosuchus. He'd done it. He'd actually killed the thing that had been hunting him. He was safe. He could—
"You need to hide," Azirel said suddenly.
Ruho blinked. "What?"
"Hide," Azirel repeated, his tone urgent. "Get off the roof. Get inside the castle. Lock the doors. Do it now."
"Why?" Ruho asked, confusion replacing his triumphant mood. "I killed it. It's dead. The threat is gone."
"No," Azirel said slowly. "The threat just multiplied by about a thousand."
"What are you talking about?"
"The body," Azirel explained. "You left a hundred-foot corpse sitting on your plateau. That's thousands of pounds of fresh meat just sitting out in the open. Do you know what's going to happen now?"
Ruho felt a cold sensation in his gut. "Scavengers."
"Not just scavengers," Azirel said grimly. "We're talking about every predator and opportunistic feeder within a ten-kilometer radius. Maybe more, depending on wind direction. That much blood in the air? That much meat? You've basically rung a dinner bell for the entire island's carnivore population."
"So... so I'll just stay inside," Ruho said. "Let them eat it. They can have it. I don't care."
"You should care," Azirel continued. "Because scavengers are often more dangerous than active hunters. They're desperate. Aggressive. They'll fight each other for access to the carcass, and if you get between them and their meal? They will absolutely kill you without hesitation."
"Okay, but I'm inside a castle—"
"And you need to cut up the body," Azirel interrupted.
There was a long pause.
"I'm sorry," Ruho said slowly. "Did you just say I need to cut up the body? The hundred-foot-long prehistoric crocodile body?"
"Yes."
"FUCK NO!" Ruho's voice rose several octaves. "Absolutely not! Are you insane?! I barely killed it with a magical siege weapon! You want me to go down there and just... what? Start carving it up like a Thanksgiving turkey?!"
"You need meat," Azirel said reasonably. "You were literally just complaining about having no food. There's probably tens of thousands of pounds of edible meat on that corpse. This is your food problem solved."
"I don't know how to butcher a crocodile!"
"It's not that different from any other animal," Azirel said. "You just... cut along the muscle groups and separate the—"
"I'VE NEVER BUTCHERED ANY ANIMAL!" Ruho screamed. "I lived in a six-square-meter apartment and ate convenience store food! The closest I got to preparing meat was opening a package!"
"Well, you're going to learn today," Azirel said firmly. "Because if you don't harvest that meat soon, the scavengers are going to do it for you. And trust me, you do NOT want to be competing with the local wildlife for resources."
Ruho slumped against the ballista, his brief moment of victory completely destroyed. "This is a nightmare. This is an actual nightmare."
"There's another problem," Vexor's voice cut in, uncharacteristically serious.
"Oh good," Ruho said flatly. "What now?"
"You've disrupted the ecosystem," Vexor explained. "The Gigantosuchus wasn't just a predator. It was THE apex predator in this region. It kept the population of medium-sized predators in check through direct predation and territorial intimidation. Other dangerous species avoided this area specifically because the Gigantosuchus lived here."
Ruho felt the cold sensation in his gut intensify. "And now it's gone."
"Now it's gone," Vexor confirmed. "Which means this plateau, this entire area, just became prime real estate for every other apex predator on the island. You've essentially created a power vacuum. The local ecosystem is about to go through a dramatic shift as other predators move in to claim this territory."
"What kind of predators?" Ruho asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
"Well," Azirel said slowly. "There are the Razorback Pantheras think saber-toothed tigers but twice the size and with venomous claws. The Skytalon Wyverns that nest in the mountains and hunt in packs. The Tunnel Serpents that can grow up to sixty feet long and burrow through solid rock. Oh, and there's a colony of Dire Wolves about fifteen kilometers south that have been trying to expand their territory for years but couldn't because of the Gigantosuchus."
"So you're telling me," Ruho said, his voice barely above a whisper, "that by killing the thing that was trying to eat me, I've invited a bunch of OTHER things that want to eat me?"
"Basically, yeah," Azirel confirmed. "Welcome to ecosystem dynamics! Every action has consequences!"
Ruho looked down at the dead Gigantosuchus. At the massive corpse that was about to become a beacon for every dangerous creature within miles. At his empty castle with no food and no defenses except two more ballista bolts and whatever other magical weapons Vexor had installed.
"I hate this world," he said quietly. "I hate it so much."
His stomach growled, reminding him that ecosystem dynamics or not, he still needed to eat.
"Fine," he said, pushing himself away from the ballista. "FINE. I'll go cut up the stupid crocodile. But if I die doing this, I'm haunting all of you."
"You can't haunt us, we're gods," Azirel pointed out.
"Then I'll haunt this castle! I'll be the most annoying ghost ever! I'll rearrange furniture and slam doors and—"
"Just go get your meat,"
"FUCK YOU"