The Laughing Swordsman

The cougar swiped at Apollo in anger, but found his target disappeared before it landed. Apollo appeared next to the cougar, letting loose a flurry of strikes.

In just a moment, several deep wounds appeared on the cougar's skin. The wounds were covered with thin black lines at the edge. Moments after the wound formed, the hardened black section began to peel off.

However, Apollo continued slashing before it could, causing more and more black lacerations to appear.

And eventually, the cougar split in two.

The cut between the halves was terribly messy, consisting of black slash marks within the flesh and the occasional strand of flesh that hung on the outside. This was not enough to kill the cougar, but it wasn't able to connect its two halves for the time being.

While Apollo was slashing it, the cougar turned around to face him. However, in the time that it took for that action, its face and neck were slashed several times over.

The cougar recoiled while letting out a roar, but halfway through was cut off.

Because its throat had been cut through.

Apollo's eyes widened as though he was trying to catch every single detail possible, from where the cougar moved to how the air trembled after each swing. However, what Apollo saw wasn't a cougar in front of him, but a set of stars.

He used both his free hand and bokken to slash at these stars, in an attempt to cut them free from the sky.

The cougar didn't want to fight anymore. 

It attempted to retreat, but the cougar's front legs were cut off, leaving the front half of the cougar to fall on the ground powerlessly. It tried its best to heal, growing back flesh the moment any charred section fell off.

However, Apollo would continuously slash any wound that was about to heal, not letting it do so.

In the end, the front half of the panther could only take down the slashes that were more relentless than the raindrops from a storm.

The cougar looked like a mangled mess, missing the majority of its facial features, while its limbs had turned into a pile of black powder. Apollo kept attacking, slowly deepening each black wound.

The skin at the edges of his free hand had already ripped off, to the point one could see the bone. At some point, his pinky and thumb broke off with a crack.

However, he refused to stop attacking, fully suppressing the cougar.

Lightning crackled continuously, almost like Apollo was a needlessly active thundercloud.

In just several seconds, the cougar no longer had a face, replaced by countless cut marks and black ash. Only a bit of the back of its head remained. In this time, the top half of the cougar had grown two tiny makeshift arms out from its initial slash wound. They were black in color and had tiny hooks at the end.

These tiny arms hooked into the ground and pulled backward. However, it didn't even get farther than half a meter with that initial pull. Apollo simply had to walk forward casually, not even needing to stop attacking.

Despite the lack of success, those tiny arms continued pulling with all they could. Occasionally, a new arm would join, attempting to speed up its retreat as much as possible. However...

Its struggle was futile.

As for the bottom half of the cougar, it desperately attempted to grow a new set of legs. First, two black bones extended out of it. Then, a bit of flesh wrapped around them. 

The bottom half of the cougar was clearly panicking, as it considered that was enough, despite lacking the proper joints and actual feet. It began to gallop awkwardly, especially since its new front legs were much shorter than its back legs.

The bottom half of the cougar obviously wasn't used to this form of running. The front legs would sometimes propel the body forward, but would also sometimes push against the ground the wrong way and get rid of all of its momentum.

Sometimes it even went backward.

In the end, the bottom half of the cougar could only move forward slightly faster than the speed of the average small child.

While this was happening, Layla and the insect were watching curiously.

Layla's furry ears twitched. Then, out of nowhere, a bright smile appeared on her face as she raised her hands high into the sky.

"Yay! Go friend!"

The insect gave a glance to Layla, then raised its two tiny arms as well.

"Eay! Wo fwend!"

Within the time of their cheers, Apollo was nearly finished with disintegrating the entire top half of the cougar.

Black ash floated into the air, scattered by Apollo's electrical strikes. The top half of the cougar slowly disappeared, almost like its very existence was being erased by a really ineffective eraser.

The bottom half of the cougar just so happened to be running towards both Layla and the insect. While Layla just continued watching on passively, the insect tilted its head to the side.

After a bit of hesitation, the insect slowly took a step forward. As though that step brought it encouragement, the insect slowly sped up, until it began running.

The speed of the insect wasn't anything sensational but was much faster than an adult man. Considering how young it was, that was quite impressive.

The bottom half of the cougar lugged itself forward, clumsily stepping forward and backward. That was when the insect flew up with its wings and landed on top of it.

The bottom half of the cougar noticed the insect, but continued on as though it didn't. As of now, it wanted to focus its everything on fleeing.

Not that it fled particularly well, but it was trying at least.

Upon landing on the bottom half of the cougar, the insect raised two of its arms out and let out a battle roar.

"Waaaaaaa!"

Then, it began to flail its two arms wildly.