"They're already here!" I yelled at Zofia, who merely gave me a look of profound boredom.
One of the silhouettes had breached the water. The glow in its eyes and the sheer hunger in its gaze made me take a step back.
It was about my height. The grease on its dark skin reflected the golden and green light. Its sharp, white teeth gleamed, looking much more like a shark's than a human's. Its webbed hands and feet ended in three claws that twitched with muscle spasms.
They were hideous.
"Your ability to state the obvious is exceptional." Zofia seemed much more interested in the slow, lumbering movements of the colossal corpse out at sea.
"You think this is funny?!" I screamed at her again. She closed her eyes and seemed to count under her breath.
This bitch!
"Spare me your pointless reactions." Tilting her head slightly, she went back to admiring the rotting deity. "You have your weapons in your hands. Your options are clear."
The weight of my blades became much more pronounced the second she said that. I broke a sweat.
"Wait..."
"Aaauurrrhhhhggg." The thing that had emerged from the sea moved faster than it had any right to.
It charged straight at me, flailing its arms and letting out wet, labored breaths.
My body acted on instinct.
Its hand whipped out in a blur, aiming for my neck. I bent my knees, and its claws sliced through empty air. Had I been a second slower, I'd be drowning in my own blood.
I extended my arm. My left sword pierced its jaw, embedding itself so firmly that by applying downward force, I brought its face down until we were eye-to-eye.
There was nothing behind those eyes. With my free sword, I stabbed it repeatedly in the back of the neck.
I let out a grunt and ripped my blades free. The corpse slumped to the ground inelegantly. I felt the creature's black blood on my weapons and face.
I could deduce a few things from this. It didn't seem to possess higher intelligence.
Good. For a moment, I feared I was killing something capable of complex thought.
I shot a glance at the gigantic corpse, which seemed to be trying to use the pillar to haul itself completely out of the water. Its stench was grotesque and overpowering.
I moved my gaze. The sea's green glow made me sick of my stomach.
I looked back down at the dead creature at my feet. The blood leaking from it was thick and pitch-black, resembling tar.
Its face looked like a crude, vulgar imitation of a human's. The arrangement of its features was scrambled and fused with fish-like traits. Deformed, sunken eyes; black skin covered in scales that seemed to be eating its own flesh.
"Repulsive..." I muttered.
"Aaaa Rrhh Ggg," another one of the things shrieked.
It must have been some form of communication, because the moment they broke the surface, three of them sprinted toward me.
I clenched my jaw.
One launched itself at me, arms wide and jaws snapped open.
I remembered the first rat I ever killed. A smile crept onto my face at the thought. These monstrosities were a nice step up in enemy progression.
I sidestepped, letting it crash into the sand, pivoted quickly, and drove both swords through the back of its neck.
I ripped my blades out and delivered a double slash to the chest of the second one charging me.
"Tch." My cut only drew blood. The creature scrambled back and glared at me.
The third one didn't stop. I activated my ring's effect. I slit its throat and, in the same motion, stabbed the one that had retreated right where I assumed its heart would be.
Suddenly, an intense pain flared. I looked down. The creature's claws had pierced my thigh.
"You bastard," I said with a smirk.
I don't think it understood me, but its dark-blood-stained lips twitched. The bastard died giving me a wound. I was impressed and furious in equal measure.
Something grabbed me from behind and hurled me closer to the water. Mid-air, I realized it was the one whose throat I had slit. Even while dying, it had found the strength to move and throw me.
Impressive.
I grunted in pain as I landed face-first in the sand, feeling two hands wrap around my legs.
I flipped over quickly. One of those things was half out of the water, looking at me with absolute hunger. As if I were about to be a fish-man's dinner...
I threw my sword. The blade buried itself in its chest. I had aimed for the head, but whatever...
"Aruarrrhhh!" The thing shrieked in pain, letting go of me to pry the sword from its chest.
I smiled. I leaped up, drove my remaining sword through its right eye, and watched the tip protrude from the back of its neck. I yanked it out just in time.
Another hand shot out of the water and tried to grab me. I delivered a downward slash that severed its fingers, then quickly scrambled away from the shoreline.
I flicked my sword to clean off the black blood and scanned my surroundings.
More and more of those things were beginning to emerge from the sea, joining the ones already on land.
"I'm surrounded..." Seven of them on land, their beady little eyes fixated on me.
The gold and green light cast strange, shifting silhouettes around me.
These primitive beings, servants of the corpse that had erupted from the abyss, filled me with an unnatural revulsion.
A sensation bloomed in my chest that was neither fear nor anxiety.
I picked up the sword I had thrown into the creature's chest and recalled the lessons my friends had beaten into me.
{Valior}
A terrible pain shot through every nerve in my body. I smiled.
"Come on!" I roared. I sprinted at the closest creature and unleashed two horizontal slashes at its chest.
The poor bastard had no concept of magic. It crossed its arms, expecting to block the blows. With my strength exponentially amplified, I cleaved through it like warm butter.
Its death was a spectacle; the cleanly severed halves of its body flopped onto the sand.
This was the strength that killed the Rat King. They don't get to underestimate it.
"UArggghh!"
"UUrgghhh!"
"Gruuuga!"
"Drahyygg!"
"Urgg!"
"Argg!"
And they didn't. They swarmed me.
I welcomed them with open arms and my best smile.
I decapitated the first one in my line of sight with a clean stroke. Its headless body took three more steps before collapsing.
The second tried to bite me. My response was to cave its face in with a punch. The brain trauma caused it to spasm, driving its claws into one of its allies before dying.
Great teamwork, buddy.
Two attacked simultaneously. One leaped at my head, jaws wide, while the other thrust its claws at my heart. I took a step back, moving out of the danger zone and letting them kill each other. The result was highly entertaining. One pierced the other's heart, and the second ripped the first's head off with a bite. Both dropped dead.
The remaining ones froze for a few seconds before fleeing in absolute terror back into the sea.
"..." I watched them dive in. Seconds later, as if they had jumped into an industrial blender, their shredded remains were blasted back onto the shore. "..."
One of their heads landed at my feet. Its lips were still moving. It probably couldn't comprehend that it was actively dying.
"It's almost tragic." Zofia's voice came from the side. I preferred looking at the dying fish-man over looking at her. "In some remote past, they were likely devout believers of that empty husk, convinced it was the salvation for their miserable lives."
"Were they... human?" The horrific implication made me want to vomit.
"Perhaps." Her indifferent tone was infuriating. "Does it matter?"
I gritted my teeth. With every passing second, I hated her more.
"You are..." I started, turning toward her.
She spread her arms. Her face remained indifferent, but there was a theatricality to her gestures. Like a ringmaster.
"Can you imagine it? People putting their faith in that." I looked at the divine corpse; its figure somehow looked frailer now. "Then one day, because they placed their trust in something as absurd as an idol of clay and sold their souls, they were transformed into exactly what they were to their god."
With a deafening roar, a waterspout erupted from the sea, illuminated by the repulsive green light that had summoned the creatures. Hands, heads, and feet protruded from the swirling water, thrashing in desperation.
The ocean, which had likely been their home, was now their prison.
"Resources. Meant to slow the decomposition of something that is already beyond dead." Maybe I was wrong, but I detected amusement in Zofia's voice. "Look closely at the result of such naivety."
The pillar of water began to spin like a hurricane. The centrifugal force was so violent that body parts were launched through the air. The shrieks of those things, the sound of their bones snapping, and the way the water dyed itself a sickly purple will haunt my nightmares.
I didn't know whether to cover my eyes to block out the evil, cover my ears to silence the horror, or cover my mouth to stop myself from screaming at the utter insanity of it all.
They used to be people...
The pillar glowed intensely. Moans of suffering reached my ears, and I could see faces locked in expressions of pure agony swirling on the water's surface.
"Are those...?"
"Souls." Zofia's answer made a heavy weight settle over me. "They may be corrupted and as common as stones, but..."
The swirling mass of water and souls condensed until it formed a tight sphere, hovering inert above the sea for a few seconds. Then, it shot straight into the mouth of the decomposing deity at such speed I heard the sound barrier shatter.
The impact echoed like a thunderclap.
"Mom!"
A little girl's voice, ringing out in ghostly agony, froze my blood.
"Please, God!" That was the voice of an adult man, equally tormented.
"My children!"
"I just wanted to stop being poor!"
"Please, someone make it stop!"
"Save me!"
… I never imagined there was something worse than death.
"You cannot fathom how valuable a soul is. Within a single one, there is so much—perhaps too much. Love, hate, despair, hope, truths, and lies." Zofia watched the same abominable spectacle I did, yet sounded as if it were entirely mundane. "In each one, there is a fraction of that divine spark, a pathway to the origin of all things, and... a way to obtain power."
The screams ceased. The thing remained motionless for a few seconds.
"...What did it do to those souls?"
"It consumed them." It meant nothing to her. The suffering of others, of all living beings, was just data. "Those souls must be woefully insufficient compared to yours."
A cold, rational terror gripped my body. For a split second, my mind tried to reject the weight of what Zofia had just said.
And yet...
"Does that thing..." As I stared at Zofia's indifferent face, the words tumbled out, a mix of fear, horror, and disgust. "...want to eat me?"
"That is my primary hypothesis." She never took her eyes off the corpse deity. "I can understand it. Despite how it looks, a certain amount of divinity remains in that husk. What they killed was its soul and its will. Most likely, the nature of your existence is attracting whatever shreds of consciousness are left in that thing—if such a thing even exists anymore."
"Why?"
"Use a little imagination. Your soul is exotic. That is an empty husk." Zofia looked at me with piercing intensity. "It is likely desperate to see what will happen if a divine body consumes a foreign soul."
I imagined myself reduced to a tormented spirit, undergoing the exact same process as those poor bastards, and...
"What will happen to me if I get consumed?"
The silence that followed made my anxiety spike. It felt as though Zofia was withholding the answer just to watch me squirm.
"No idea." Hearing that from her chilled me to the bone. "Whatever is born from that union will undoubtedly be something entirely new. Possibly an abomination that must be destroyed—mindless, voiceless, trapped in its own mind for eternity, condemned to know the world only through its most basic senses, or..."
Zofia fell into deep thought, analyzing the dead god with intense eyes.
This demon in human form spoke of my eternal damnation with the calmness of someone wringing a chicken's neck.
But...
"Or?" The possibility she left hanging in the air. I needed to know.
"A new God could be born." A shiver ran through my entire body. A fresh wave of despair and fear flooded my system.
"I refuse," I said on pure instinct. My back and forehead were drenched in sweat, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to... I don't want to die like this!
{Purity}
I cast the spell, part of Jakob's original repertoire, and immediately felt as though I had just woken up from a deep sleep. The massive weight on my eyelids made my legs give out.
"Fool." Her grip on me was far gentler than I thought she was capable of. "This is no place to lose consciousness."
Zofia's hand kept me from hitting the sand.
"I don't want to die," I blurted out without a filter. "I don't want to stop being me. I want to see my friends. I don't want to end up like those poor people."
Nobody deserves that fate.
"..." Zofia's gaze grew cold, though not entirely indifferent this time.
I couldn't hold it back anymore.
"Please," I begged Zofia, who, true to form, looked at me with sheer exhaustion.
"Do you think your whining does any good right now?"
"AAAAAAHHHH!" The corpse clinging to the pillar let out a massive groan. Its eyes flared with golden and green light.
Its belly swelled like a water balloon. It threw its arms wide, and a kaleidoscopic glow erupted from its jaws.
The ground beneath me and my own fatigue vanished instantly. I found myself completely mesmerized by what I was witnessing.
Every marine parasite on its body was incinerated by green fire.
The creature's muscles retracted tight against the bone, and the color of its scales and skin dissolved entirely. The corpse transformed into an effigy of sheer calcium, complete with horns and the freshly dead remains of ships and sea life.
The only part of the creature that remained untouched was its belly. It glowed with golden and green light, the skin stretching so thin I could see something moving inside.
"Fascinating." Zofia kept her tone professional and hollow, but I noticed an intense spark in her eyes.
"What's happening?" I had been completely lost this entire night.
"It is going to give birth," she said calmly.
My brain actively tried to reject her words.
And then.
A massive, thick blade pierced the belly from the inside.
Golden liquid gushed like a waterfall from the wound, muddying the seawater and sending steam rising into the air. I watched in horrific fascination as the blade traced a vertical line down the stomach. Thick, bone-white fingers grabbed a flap of the skin and pulled it aside like a curtain.
"..." What emerged wasn't grotesque in the traditional sense, nor was it human enough to be pleasant to look at. "Abomination."
I said it with absolute certainty.
It dropped gracefully toward the sea, stopping just inches above the water's surface, floating ethereally.
No.
A bulbous, fleshy cord connected it to the calcified corpse, preventing it from touching the water.
"Mmm... the defective scion of a dead deity. In other times, they would have called it..." Zofia's voice held a note of amusement. "A demigod."
"Aaaaarrrrrkkk!" The thing shrieked. It sounded like a cornered beast layered over thousands of overlapping voices.
Its structure was humanoid, almost like a magnificently chiseled marble statue. Defined muscles, a sculpted abdomen. It truly looked like an idol.
"It's a monster," I said. I saw nothing divine, glorious, or heroic about this being. "It's a grotesque parody of humanity."
Only its basic framework was human. The similarities stopped there. It possessed no face, nor even a mockery of one; the closest thing was a disproportionate maw jutting with fangs.
Its feet were flat, resembling bull hooves. Its left hand had only two massive fingers, and its right arm, just past the wrist, morphed into a gigantic white blade—a hybrid between a single-edged sword and a curved axe.
"It is comical that you say that," Zofia said, pointing a finger at the creature. "Prepare yourself."
I didn't have time to ask 'For what?' The demigod closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
I didn't think. Thinking would have killed me.
My body moved entirely on instinct. Primrose had beaten these automatic responses into me after weeks of brutality in the forest.
Her voice even echoed in my head: "The world changed. Adapt or die. There is no third option."
I threw myself to the left.
The blade-arm cleaved through the space my torso had occupied a millisecond before. The air shrieked as it was split apart.
The sand exploded behind the strike, and the shockwave caught me mid-roll, tossing me across the beach like a ragdoll.
I hit the ground hard, tasted copper, and forced myself up before my brain could catch up with the pain.
The thing had already pivoted. It didn't need to recover its stance. It spun on those horrific flat hooves, and that faceless head—that grotesque, gaping maw—locked onto me with the precision of a predator that never needed eyes to hunt.
It charged again.
"Shit!"
I crossed both swords in front of me.
The blade-arm slammed into my guard with the force of a collapsing building. My boots dug trenches into the sand. My arms screamed in agony. Every tendon, every joint, from my shoulders to my fingertips, howled in protest.
I held. For one second, I held.
Then, the thing bore down on me, doubling its strength.
My guard collapsed. My left wrist let out a sickening pop as it bent at an unnatural angle. I clenched my jaw and choked down the scream of pain through sheer willpower.
I felt the bones grinding together. A white flash of pain wiped my mind blank.
I need to make distance.
I rolled backward, regained my footing, and looked up.
It was already moving.
Too fast.
I ducked purely on instinct. I barely dodged the next slash; the blade passed inches from my nose, and I caught my own reflection in the weapon's steel.
I can't waste this chance.
Using my good hand, I launched a straight thrust at its abdomen.
Its body contorted as if it actually had organs, folding in on itself.
The blade-arm swung toward my face. I brought up my other sword to block.
The impact made me see stars, and I was sent flying through the air again.
"Shit..." Even as I fell, I saw the thing fluidly return to its natural stance.
I landed hard on my back but didn't waste a second getting up. I needed to figure out how to predict its movements.
Primrose's voice echoed in my head: "His shoulders tell you where he's going. His eyes tell you what he's looking at. His feet tell you when he's going to move."
It had no eyes. It had no shoulders I could read. Its "feet" were flat plates of bone that gave nothing away.
It was like fighting a natural disaster that had learned how to wield a sword.
"How the hell am I supposed to kill you?"
As if in answer, the thing extended its blade-arm toward me.
Its limb snapped out like a whip, the blade flying like an arrow.
I side-stepped.
The strike blasted a crater into the beach. Fragments of rock and compacted sand flew like shrapnel.
One clipped my cheek.
I immediately felt the warmth of blood.
I was in its range for a fraction of a second.
… I saw the demigod struggle to rip its arm out of the ground.
This is my chance.
I activated my ring and sprinted straight at the thing. I buried my right sword deep into its ribcage with every ounce of strength I had left.
The blade sank to the hilt. I felt it part muscle, scrape bone, and punch through something that felt disturbingly like wet clay.
The thing didn't flinch. It didn't even react to the wound.
Its left hand—the one with the two massive fingers—clamped around my forearm like a hydraulic press.
Oh no.
It lifted me off the ground as easily as I'd lift a coffee mug.
For one horrifying second, we were face-to-face.
That lipless, fang-filled maw opened mere inches from my head.
The breath that hit my face was the concentrated essence of everything drowned and rotting at the bottom of the ocean.
"Fuck you," I growled, my rage finally eclipsing my fear.
I jammed my sword into its open maw with my injured hand. Then, I slammed my boot into its chest and kicked off with everything I had.
I wrenched my arm free—leaving a patch of my own skin caught in its fingers—and landed flat on my back in the sand.
I looked at the wound I had inflicted.
The muscle was regenerating before my eyes.
The fibers knitted back together. New tissue bloomed like pale, wet flowers.
The gap between its ribs filled with fresh, white bone that hardened in real-time.
In three seconds, the wound was completely gone.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
The thing finally yanked its arm out of the ground. Its undivided attention snapped back to me.
The hairs on my arms stood up.
It lunged at me, blade extended.
It tried to decapitate me in one swipe, but I deflected it with the edge of my sword. Giving me no time to breathe, it thrust at my face. I ducked just in time and launched a kick to force some distance between us.
It didn't matter.
It extended its arm and slashed my left shoulder before I could completely evade it, pulling back instantly to swing again. It aimed for my stomach; the blade grazed me, drawing blood, though it was superficial.
I tried to close the gap to go on the offensive, but the way it wielded that blade-arm kept me at bay.
It unleashed precise, devastating slashes carrying the full weight of its body. I could barely parry them, forcing our edges to grind together.
One of my hands is practically useless. I can't win with just one arm...
The next three minutes were the worst of my life.
Rapid strikes clashed. I couldn't believe it, but this monstrosity had more swordplay talent than I did.
Every slash I dodged was followed by another. And another. And another. A continuous, flawless cascade of violence that was so perfect my mind started lagging behind my body.
I was surviving on pure reflex.
I ducked, narrowly evaded cuts by mere centimeters, and tried desperately to maintain distance.
I slipped past a descending strike aimed straight at my shoulder by letting the blade-arm slide harmlessly down the flat of my sword.
I thanked whatever gods were listening for the muscle memory Armine's hellish training routine had burned into this flesh.
The sparks our steel threw off illuminated the night like fireflies.
I barely dodged a bite by stabbing my sword up through its jaw, forcing it to take a second to regenerate.
I thanked the heavens for the evasion instincts Primrose had drilled into me after weeks of hunting me like an animal in the dark.
But I wasn't getting anywhere.
At one point, I managed to catch the demigod's bicep in a cross-guard with both my blades.
I severed the arm.
A river of golden liquid stained the sand.
I didn't waste a second.
I stabbed it in the chest—right where its heart should be—and forced it to the ground.
I planted my foot on its chest and frantically stabbed its face until it was reduced to a pulp of white mass covered in gold.
Mid-strike, the arm abruptly grew back.
"Shit." The thing launched a slash that grazed my cheek, but luckily, I snapped my head back in time. Grunting, I drove my sword into its elbow, dragging the blade through the muscle and rendering the joint useless.
I pierced its skull with my bad hand, then yanked out my other sword to impale its chest.
It healed before I could even pull the blade free.
I slit its throat.
The wound clamped shut around my steel, nearly tearing the weapon from my grasp.
"No..." Covered in golden fluid, I realized my mistake too late.
A punch to the face from the creature's free hand left me stunned. I felt its flat hoof crash into my abdomen, sending me skidding backward.
I stumbled back several steps, gasping for air.
"Shit."
This thing is learning.
I watched it stand up. Maybe it was the concussion, but I swear it smiled smugly at me.
My body felt like lead. My mind was losing its edge, and the exhaustion was taking a heavy toll.
In a blink, it was right in front of me again.
I'm no match for this thing. Not while it keeps regenerating and I keep tiring out.
Before, I was dodging with full steps. Now, it was down to inches. I was losing ground. Step by step. Exchange by exchange. The beach felt like it was shrinking around me.
"Go to hell!" I screamed. I triggered the ring's effect and poured everything I had left into my speed.
For one brief, glorious instant, it was enough.
I slipped behind it and drove both swords into its spine, burying them to the hilts.
The thing didn't even turn around.
Its blade-arm bent backward at an impossible angle, and the edge caught my left shoulder.
I felt the impact before the pain.
A deep, structural sensation. Like something inside me had been forcibly rearranged.
I was launched into the air.
I slammed into the sand and rolled, half my face plowing into the dirt. I saw the long red streak my blood had painted on the ground as I fell.
I shifted my good eye. I looked for the demigod, but my vision was blurring; it was just a white smudge.
My eyes feel so heavy. I can barely hold my swords.
I looked at my shoulder.
The cut was deep.
Deep enough that my left arm no longer felt like it belonged to my body.
I'm so tired... I just want to rest.
I closed my eyes.
"Stand up," Armine's voice ordered.
The memory of her in the training room flashed in my mind. Standing in front of me, arms crossed, her face impossible to read.
"You're not done yet. Stand up. Your center of gravity is your anchor."
I...
I saw the thing lumbering toward me with slow, measured steps. It seemed to have grown confident.
Bastard.
It's useless.
"You have two legs to brace yourself against the world, and two hands to fight whatever comes at you," Primrose scolded me, even though she wasn't here.
"Is that all you can do, Jakob Liedschlag?" Zofia spoke from the sky, like a funeral shadow. "It seems all the faith your so-called friends placed in you was a total waste."
Friends?
I...
That's right...
I stood up.
With effort. So much effort.
"I'm not dead yet," I slurred, not even able to focus on the monster in front of me.
I only had one hand. My right sword became my entire world.
"Arrrrkkkk!" the profane demigod let out a horrific shriek.
It launched another attack, aiming straight for my neck. I parried it with my single blade, using it as leverage to push the weight of that monstrous arm away from my body.
It wasn't enough.
A two-fingered punch slammed into my ribs.
I heard something snap.
I felt bone give way.
The impact tossed me aside. I landed hard on the wet sand near the shoreline, hitting with enough force to leave a permanent impression of my body.
I spat blood.
I dug my right hand into the sand and pushed.
My ribs screamed.
My shoulder wept blood.
My left arm hung uselessly, dead weight.
Even so, I got to my feet.
And then, the demigod stopped. For the first time, it stood completely still.
That faceless head tilted slightly, an animalistic gesture.
As if it couldn't comprehend why this tiny, bleeding thing kept getting back up.
Then, it opened its mouth.
"Why do you keep fighting?" And out came the voice of a little girl.
My blood ran cold.
"You're tired," the voice said. The exact same voice that had cried 'Mom!' when her soul was consumed. Sweet. Young. Broken beyond all repair, yet still trying to sound like a child. "Hear my mortal voice. I am Marlaal, Lord of the Seas and Master of the—"
"Shut up," I hissed. My voice dripped with pure venom and hatred. "You repulsive creature, don't you dare use that girl's voice!"
I screamed loud enough for my voice to echo across the cove.
A terrifying pause followed.
"You speak to a god." The voice shifted. It was still the little girl's, but there was something else behind it now. Something much older. Colder. More aware. "She was tired too, just like you. She closed her eyes, and it was warm. She never had to be afraid again."
My vision blurred with absolute rage. My grip on my sword tightened until my knuckles turned white.
Don't listen to it.
Don't listen to it.
It's using the voices of the consumed.
"She is happy now." Now it was a man's voice. Paternal.
"Son of a bitch..."
"All you have to do is drop your swords. Let go. She's waiting for you, son. On the other side. In the warm place."
My right hand trembled so violently the blade vibrated in my grasp.
"You..." My body burned with fury. The exhaustion vanished. The wounds meant nothing. "If you're a god, I'd rather pray to dog shit!"
Using the voices of the people it murdered to manipulate me. Trying to exploit my emotions.
"Know your place, Mortal. You are only alive because I allow it." Another voice. A woman's.
I laughed at the absurdity of it.
"You're no god," I growled through gritted teeth. "You're nothing but a corpse wearing a suit made of screaming people, and I'm not going to—"
"You don't belong here." The little girl's voice pierced through the others. "You will never be one of them. You will never have a home here, and no one from your world even remembers you exist."
Something fractured inside my chest.
"SHUT UP!"
I moved before I even realized it.
{Valior}
The spell erupted through my body like boiling acid poured directly into my nervous system.
The ring's effect stacked on top of it.
And for one searing, blinding moment, every lesson, every scar, every hour of suffering I had endured compressed into a single point of absolute, unadulterated fury.
"What would you do if someone hurt that person?" Conlaoch. His wolfish grin flashed in my mind. His serious eyes.
"I would break whatever I had to break." Rodrigo. His honest exhaustion. His unwavering certainty.
"The brave man dies once, the coward dies a thousand times. I prefer the thousand. But if someone threatens what I love…"
I closed the distance.
The blade-arm swept toward me in a horizontal arc, looking to bisect me at the waist. I ducked at the absolute last microsecond, feeling the wind of the blade ruffle my hair, and drove my right sword up into its armpit with an ascending thrust.
The blade lodged deep.
Good.
I didn't try to pull it out. I grabbed its arm with my bloody left hand—the hand that shouldn't even be able to move—and used the monster's own limb as leverage to vault onto its back.
Dirty fighting. Primrose would be proud.
I locked my legs around its torso and drove my remaining sword into the base of its neck.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Every thrust splattered my face with golden blood.
It burned.
Like acid.
The thing thrashed violently. It reached a hand back to grab me. Its fingers closed on empty air. I shifted my weight and stabbed again, aiming for the exact same spot, trying to sever something vital before the regeneration could catch up.
But it was already healing.
I felt it beneath me. My sword was being pushed out by the force of the regrowth.
Like trying to stab a blade into wet mud that won't stop expanding.
"Die!"
I stabbed faster.
Harder.
With a ferocity that would have horrified me if I had any room left for rational thought.
The thing finally caught me.
Two massive fingers clamped around my ankle and plucked me off its back like a tick.
It slammed me into the sand.
Once.
The world went white, and my hearing blew out.
Twice.
Something in my left arm sounded like a green branch snapping.
Before the third strike, I triggered the ring's effect using the last absolute dregs of concentration I possessed and twisted free.
I rolled across the sand and ended up on one knee, gasping, bleeding from too many places to count, my left arm hanging at a sickening angle that turned my stomach.
The demigod was whole.
Intact.
All the wounds had vanished. Its chiseled, white body was clean. Pristine.
Mockingly pristine.
It was built to take damage and recover. Engineered to survive absolutely anything thrown at it through conventional means.
I couldn't kill it with swords. Not like this. Not even if I fought for a thousand years.
I needed something stronger. Something capable of killing it in a single blow.
"Cilfann and Lloer."
Zofia's voice broke through the fog of my memory.
The spell she had forced into my soul…
I didn't understand it.
I had no training, no practice, no real foundation to comprehend what it did or how to shape it.
But I could feel it.
Deep within my chest, beneath the broken ribs, the hammering heart, and the terror...
Something lay coiled.
Something vibrating at a frequency I had never felt before.
Resonating right at the exact point where Jakob ended and I began.
It still burned where she had pressed the blue flame.
And it wanted out.
"..." I forced my left arm to rise, pointing the blade toward the sky.
I crossed my right sword horizontally over it.
The demigod tilted its head again. Curious. Perhaps it felt the shift.
My left arm screamed. Every nerve was a live wire. The broken bone ground against itself, and the edges of my vision began to go dark.
I didn't care.
A brilliant, warm golden glow erupted from both blades.
It was like touching the sun.
This must be the source Zofia spoke of. The grand concepts that have existed since the King of Souls gave them form.
"AAAAAHHHH!" I screamed in agony as I slashed at the air.
Where I cut, two golden lines remained suspended in space.
An intense light flared from them.
It looked like a star being born, illuminating the beach and blanketing me in a comforting warmth.
I smiled, though I didn't know why. My eyes locked onto the monster.
I flipped it the bird.
The demigod howled with a thousand voices. And it charged.
I didn't move. I waited.
Three steps.
Two.
One.
"Cilfann and Lloer," I whispered.
The star shot toward the white abomination, expanding until it dwarfed the monster itself.
The golden cross-shaped star slammed into the demigod, drowning it entirely in light.
"AAAAARRKKK!" the voices shrieked in agony.
The explosion of light that followed the impact forced me to hold my breath.
The shockwave whipped my hair around and kicked up a massive cloud of sand, forming a dense smokescreen.
When the wind finally dispersed it, I let out my breath.
The left arm was gone.
The right shoulder was gone.
The center of its chest had been hollowed out into a cross-shaped void, through which I could see the dark sea and the golden moon.
The thing stumbled.
And for one glorious, terrible second, I thought I had done it.
Then, the golden blood began to move.
Not away from the wound. Toward it.
The edges of the void quivered, and I watched with mounting horror as the obliterated flesh began to knit itself back together.
Slowly.
Much slower than before.
As if the light had damaged something fundamental in its regeneration cycle.
But even so... It was healing.
"AAAAAAAAHHHH!" The thing roared again. I recognized the pure fury in the sound.
"Damn it..."
The demigod's body convulsed. Its spine arched backward at an impossible angle, and the wet, sickening crunch of bones reforming made me grit my teeth.
The stump of its left arm swelled into a massive, pulsating pustule.
It burst in a shower of golden fluid, and a new limb erupted. Long, thrashing against the sand.
It wasn't marble-white like the rest of the body; it was a raw, fleshy red. It writhed like a worm, searching desperately for something.
That wasn't an arm.
"Anomaly..."
It was a neck. A long, serpentine column of flesh that ended in a second, faceless head, featuring a vertical maw lined with human teeth.
"..."
From the cross-shaped wound in its chest, two more blisters formed and burst, birthing more protrusions.
Slick.
Half-formed.
Hideous.
They unfurled like blooming nightmare flowers. Each one ended in another head. Another mouth. Another ring of teeth.
The demigod's legs thickened before snapping with sickening crunches. Six new joints formed, allowing it to stand taller, wider, and far more stable.
The blade-arm extended another half-meter. The edge thinned down until it looked like a razor wire.
I couldn't help but smile.
"You are a total fucking monster," I told the beast.
"AAAARRRRHHHGGG!" Its roar nearly shattered my eardrums.
The four faceless heads swayed on their sinuous necks.
Each one snapped its jaws in a different, jagged rhythm, letting out guttural, feral breaths.
Staring down this thing, all I could say, calmly, was: "Empty."
The spell had drained me completely.
My legs felt like wet paper. My vision was tunneling. My broken arm swung at my side like a pendulum of pain.
I gave it everything. Every lesson. Every drop of strength Armine, Primrose, and Conlaoch had forged into me.
And I had only made it worse.
The four heads snapped toward me in unison.
Then they spoke. All four mouths. At the same time. Each with a different voice.
"Mom, why does it hurt?!"
"Please, God, I'll do anything...!"
"My children, where are my children...?!"
"I just wanted to stop being poor...!"
The chorus of the damned. I felt sick for those souls all over again.
"They don't deserve this," I mumbled, bone-tired.
My knees gave out. The wet sand caught me; it felt like a very comfortable bed.
"Fuck..." I was so tempted to just close my eyes, but...
"Stand up." I didn't know whose voice it was this time. It really didn't matter.
My right hand fumbled blindly for my sword and found only wet sand. I wasn't even going to attempt to use the left.
Reality crashed down on me in that moment.
It was over. I was done.
I had exhausted every option. I can safely say I gave it my all. But it just wasn't enough.
"Brat, use me," a voice said. Must be the blood loss making me delirious.
"I'm sorry, Armine. I would have liked to see your face one last time."
"Don't you dare..."
"Damn, I never managed to beat Conlaoch even once... I really wanted to ask Primrose about her father. I bet she has some amazing stories."
"Brat!"
"It really was... nice, being around them. I'm going to miss them... Even…"
"USE ME, YOU IDIOT!" Friedrich's voice exploded in my consciousness.
Lucidity snapped back into me like a rubber band.
My left hand burned. I looked down.
The revolver was there.
Of course it was. It's always there.
The milky-white metal gleamed brighter than ever. It pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
"Friedrich..." My eyes stung. "Thank God."
"DON'T WASTE TIME, YOU IMBECILE!"
"My arm is..."
"IT DOESN'T MATTER! DON'T YOU DARE DIE HERE, YOU WORTHLESS PUNK!"
I smiled. What a surreal situation.
But...
"Aaaaahhh!" Even though it was shattered, I forced my arm to move, to lift. My fingers felt fused to the grip.
I grinned. This is going to hurt...
"PULL THE TRIGGER, I'LL HANDLE THE REST!"
I took a deep breath. Everything seemed to shift into slow motion.
The abomination was already moving.
All four heads reared back, opening their maws simultaneously, preparing to strike from four different angles.
My vision sharpened. The world went dead silent.
The four heads. The thousand voices. The golden moon. The dead god. Zofia, watching from somewhere.
It all compressed into a single, singular instant.
I stared down the hydra through the sights of the revolver.
I thought of my mother. Her face, which I was forgetting.
I thought of Armine. Her hand on my shoulder. "That's what friends are for."
I thought of Primrose. Her stew on a freezing night. Her eyes in the dark.
"When everything seems to be against us, we have to use whatever is close by to keep from losing our minds."
I thought of Conlaoch.
I thought of a boy with white hair and red eyes, standing in the snow, asking me if he could have a place to return to.
I pulled the trigger.
One of the heads exploded. Golden rain showered the sand.
"Aaaaarkkkkk!" The remaining heads shrieked in unison. It was an appalling sound.
I bit my lip to keep from screaming from the recoil. The pain was so absolute it crystallized into pure clarity.
I didn't stop. My arm moved on its own. Pulling the trigger became an instinct.
The three new heads were reduced to ragged stumps of shredded meat. Every shot made me feel like my body was being ripped apart.
By the end, the demigod had dropped to its knees right in front of me. It hadn't stopped advancing until the very last second.
Its primary head stopped just close enough that Friedrich's barrel bumped against its forehead.
"Please," the demigod begged, every voice speaking at once. "Have mercy."
I felt neither anger nor pity for the thing.
"No."
A bullet punched through its skull, traveling straight through and burying itself in the stone of the cliff behind it.
I stared intently at the supposed demigod's body, fully expecting it to mutate into something even worse.
But nothing happened.
When a Boss was defeated in [Kings Roads], it dissolved into an ethereal, golden light.
Death wasn't so clean here.
The body began to crumble. Every cell created by the dead god fell apart, breaking down like salt in warm water.
The only things left were the blade-arm and the umbilical cord connecting it to the divine corpse.
The weapon hovered in the air for an impossible second.
Still shining. Still sharp.
Still retaining its horrific beauty.
Then it dropped inelegantly into the sand.
"Awesome," I wheezed, utterly exhausted. "Loot."
To my absolute horror, the umbilical cord zipped backward like a tape measure, retracting into the corpse.
"AAAAHHH!" Even heavily calcified, the sea god began to move again.
"No..." This can't be happening.
"AAAAAHHH!" It extended its arms toward me, a vile green light beginning to pool in its maw.
"You've got to be shitting me!" I yelled, aiming Friedrich at the corpse.
"You don't need to exert yourself any further." Zofia's voice reminded me she was still here. "I will handle this."
I turned to look at her. She slowly raised her right hand, extended her index finger, and her eyes flared with light.
"Vanish, false deity."
The energy the corpse had gathered was unleashed in a gigantic, sweeping beam.
The sky itself turned a sickly green as the attack barreled toward us.
Then, a concentrated blue laser shot from Zofia's fingertip, completely overpowering the deity's beam and piercing cleanly through its skull.
"How utterly absurd," Zofia murmured, lowering her finger slightly. The laser cleaved the body neatly in half, and the two pieces began to slowly collapse. "For a pathetic excuse of a god to dare raise its hand against me."
And just like that, the Master of Star Magic executed a god with a single finger.