Somewhere in the outer district of Jinkai City, the sounds of rapid blade-on-blade crashing echoed within one of the maze-like alleyways along with the agonized screams that also could be heard occasionally in the early morning.
If one followed the commotion, they could see the trail of dying people in their combat gear littering the ground of the alleyway with their guts spilling out or limbs missing as the smell of blood was thick in the air along the path leading towards the fighting that was taking place behind the abandoned building that used to be a chapel of some religious order.
"Oh my? Are you three going to run already?" Elsa, the infamous bowel hunter, giggled as she stood like a predator in front of the last three standing bounty hunters, who were very terrified out of their minds right now as they just witnessed their bounty target make short work out of their forty-man hunting party with her twin black Kruri knives that dripped with blood and intestinal fluids.
"But I don't think you can escape alive, though..." she grinned as she walked towards them slowly while twirling her knives and causing the three remaining bounty hunters to tremble in fear as they took a step back in unison; their will to fight is nonexistent after such a one-sided slaughter.
"Fuck—?!" But one of the men, with his steel helmet dented and his breastplate cleaved open with a slight cut on his chest, slipped on the entrails of his dead comrade on the ground behind him and then, embarrassedly, fell on his ass while he was crying out in total panic since he had just become an easy target.
"Shit...!" The other two also cursed out loud as they saw their ally commit such a stupid blunder, but Elsa was already closing in on them to take advantage of the opening from their brief distraction, her blade plunging ruthlessly into the light-armored abdomen of the bounty hunter who stood on the right side of the slipped man with supernatural speed.
"Hehehe..." Elsa giggled as she twisted the knife upward until her victim's surprised screams became wet gurgles under the horrified eyes of the other two as the entrails spilled out from his wound.
"Fuck this...!" The third one broke and turned to flee, abandoning his ally, but Elsa's kukri knife quickly found his spine with a sickening crunch, making him paralyzed in agony as she stood behind him while she held his limping body up using her knife.
"Fufufu..." Elsa licked her pink lips, savoring the sensation of the knife cutting through muscles and bone before her purple eyes narrowed in delight as she slit the man's throat from behind him with another knife before she twirled elegantly and pulled out the knife from the man's back, then threw it at the last bounty hunter who was crawling away pathetically.
"Arghh—?!" The kukri knife hit him on his thigh as the blade pierced clean through his muscles and nerves, making him cry out in pain, and before he could even do anything else, Elsa dropped on him with her kukri knife, stabbing him in his back, passing his ribs, and puncturing his heart, killing him.
Straddling on top of the man's back and twisting her knife as she made sure he was dead, Elsa then pulled her knife out as she slowly stood up and pulled out another knife from his thigh before flicking the blood off her two blades.
"This might be the last hunting party for quite sometime..." she murmured, inspecting her knives and her surroundings with detached curiosity before she found some lying body nearby to wipe her blades clean on the dead man's cloak.
"The quality and quantity this time are rather lacking, are they not? How sad..." Elsa murmured, stepping over the corpses with the grace of a cat as she complained about her opponents that bring no challenge. This city's bounty hunters were growing boringly predictable, always using the same tactics and showing the same desperation when those failed before they ended up dying afterward.
"Mmmh, at least there are many guts to see..." Elsa smiled sweetly while adjusting her clothes, flicking away a severed finger stuck on her cape, when suddenly the quiet footsteps that were barely perceived by her ears made her pause. Someone is approaching her without fear, a formidable opponent, Elsa could tell.
"You're making quite a mess, Bowel Hunter." The voice was deep but feminine as Elsa turned to look at Ghislaine, who was walking to her from the other side of the alleyway.
The white eyepatch that the feline woman usually wore on her face was now removed, showing her magical golden eye that glowed with eerie light, and her curvy, muscular figure was exposed fully without her cloak, including her large breasts that were barely contained by the tight red leather straps of her bra and her kaki trousers that exposed a glimpse of her black thong underneath.
Ghislaine has been waiting patiently for quite some time since the fight started, and she picked this exact moment to appear after the fighting ends because of professional courtesy for the previous hunting party. It's too bad that all of them died without significantly doing anything to the assassin, though.
"..." The feline woman cautiously stopped ten meters away from the assassin as her fingers tightened around the hilt of her crimson katana-like sword as it remained sheathed in a black scabbard, but the tension in her shoulders and her agitated tail suggested it wouldn't stay that way for long.
"Oh, now that's a surprise." Elsa's smile widened after she recognized who the feline woman was as her pupils dilated at the sight of the Sword King, Ghislaine, a famous adventurer and mercenary known for her incredible skill with a sword and a magic eye that can perceive magical energy.
"Are you here for my bounty as well? I'll be quite glad if you are, Sword King." Elsa tilted her head, her kukri knives twirling in slow lazy arcs as she asked the feline woman with anticipation in her voice while her stance shifted subtly, ready for an actually challenging foe that suddenly appeared.
The air between the two of them thickened with the promise of violence and tension, the stench of blood from the corpses in their surroundings also doing nothing but encouraging the inevitable battle that was about to commence between them.
"..." Ghislaine says nothing to Elsa while her knuckles crack as her grip tightens around the hilt of her sword, and then the alleyway seems to shrink and disappear around them as Elsa notices that the Sword King is about to strike.
"..." Elsa's breathing was fast; anticipation and exhilaration filled her wide-open eyes as Ghislaine's sandals scraped backward on the ground like a beast settling into a low stance before lunging at its prey.
The tension was now suffocating until it finally snapped and things happened in an instant.
The first movement from Ghislaine was almost imperceptible, her shoulder dipping a fraction, her torso twisting, her calves clenching, before the world seemed to lose its color entirely.
"Sword of Light..." The whispery words left the feline woman's lips at the same time the blade left its sheath, too fast for sound to keep up and too swift for the average human to perceive as Ghislaine disappeared and reappeared behind Elsa in the blink of an eye with her sword drawn.
Then, a second later, the world regained its color with a sonic boom and powerful gust of wind in the alleyway as the shockwave from the feline woman's sheer speed tore apart Elsa's cape before she could even blink.
"Ugh..." Elsa staggered backward in confusion, her body strangely unresponsive for a moment. Then when she looked down at her body, the world suddenly tilted sideways as her torso slid cleanly from her hips, bloodless for one horrifying second before warm red blood gushed out from the two halves. Her legs collapsed later, knees buckling like puppet strings cut, while her upper body landed on the ground first.
"Oh..." Elsa managed to utter, more fascinated than pained or in denial. Her intestines spilled across the ground just like her victims, yet her fingers were still gripping on to her kukri knives.
"How... exhilarating!" Crimson bubbled at the corner of Elsa's lips as she laughed, the sound wet and broken, but she looked weirdly too lively for one suffering such a fatal injury.
When Ghislaine turned warily to look behind her, she saw Elsa's flesh around her wound begin moving. Muscle fibers slithered like serpents, knitting together and growing along with new bones as her pelvis reconstructed itself, cartilage spiraling outward to form new hips at startling speed.
The Sword King frowns deeply as her magic eye sees the magic energy fueling Elsa's regeneration magic as she forces her body to heal and recover against nature's order.
"Damn regeneration magic..." Ghislaine muttered, her grip tightening on the hilt of her sword as she watched Elsa's body fix itself with grotesque, squelching sounds without being able to interfere immediately since she herself was still recovering from using her ultimate technique.
The Bowel Hunter slowly stood up with her knives in her hands, her grin widening as her naked lower half was now completely reconstructed without even a scar on her unblemished skin.
"Your technique is very impressive, just like the rumor says, Sword King, and if not for me being a little hard to kill, you might have actually killed me earlier..." Elsa, without any shame that her naked lower half is bare for the world to see, grins as she points one of her kukri knives at Ghislaine.
Ghislaine frowns, putting up a guard with her sword as she assesses the assassin's unnatural healing ability. The regeneration magic of Elsa is just too potent and too seamless in activation. It also shouldn't be possible for flesh to knit back together and new bone to grow so fast without visible strain on the caster's reserves.
"Hard to kill, but that doesn't mean impossible." Ghislaine mutters, and her golden eye pulses faintly, tracing the residual magic clinging to Elsa's body, which seems foreign, borrowed, and unstable. A borrowed power, a gift, or perhaps even a curse.
"Maybe...!" Elsa lunges first, knives flashing in crisscrossing arcs. Ghislaine steps back, her blade deflecting one strike while the other grazes her ribs, just shallow enough for the blood to bead, not deep enough to matter.
"You must be slower now," Elsa chuckled, flicking Ghislaine's blood from her knife. "Did that technique tire you out, I wonder?"
Ghislaine doesn't dignify the assassin with a response. The Sword King circles her opponent warily, her tail flicking behind her as she plans for the next strike. Elsa's healing is unnatural, but her magic should have limits. Ghislaine intends to find out how much the assassin could regenerate before her magic energy ran out.
Then the feline woman feints left and pivots, her sword flashing upward in a crescent-moon arc. Elsa barely twists away, but the blade nicks her shoulder, sending a fresh spray of crimson across the alley wall. The Bowel Hunter hisses, more annoyed than pained, and retaliates with a vicious swipe aimed at Ghislaine's throat.
The Sword King leans back, her golden eye tracking every micro-movement, and counters with a brutal knee to Elsa's stomach.
"Ugh...!" Elsa stumbles slightly, coughing blood, yet her grin never wavers.
"You hit like a bull..." she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as they were moving, circling each other for an opening.
Ghislaine doesn't respond as she decides to pressure the assassin, her sword a blur of crimson steel, each slash fast, testing Elsa's defense and reflexes until the third strike finds purchase, carving a deep furrow across Elsa's thigh. The Bowel Hunter staggers, but her flesh knits shut before the blood even hits the ground. Ghislaine tries to press her advantage, but Elsa manages to parry her attack.
"My turn...!" Elsa shouted, her voice almost playful as her knives blurred in a flurry of strikes. Ghislaine parried each one, the clang of steel echoing sharply, but the assassin's speed was getting faster with every strike, and each deflection cost the feline woman another shallow cut, another trickle of blood. Then, with a twist of her wrist, Elsa's kukri hooked the guard of Ghislaine's sword, wrenching it aside just enough to sink her second blade deep into the feline woman's side.
"Kuh..." Ghislaine kicked Elsa back with a sharp jab of her knee before the assassin could twist the knife, sending Elsa skidding across blood-slick cobblestones with her knife coming off Ghislaine's side.
Warm blood seeped through the Sword King's side, but she refused to clutch the wound, not when her opponent was already recovering and eyeing her weakness.
"You'll be bleeding a lot more," she said cheerfully, spinning her bloodied knife between her fingers as she observed her opponent. "How long can you hold out before your body betrays you, I wonder?"
"..." The feline woman remained silent, her breathing steady despite the crimson soaking through her clothes. She adjusted her grip on the sword, unshaken by her injuries. The pain was inconsequential; she'd fought through worse.
"Uoh-ooh ah-ahh—!!" Then, coming out of nowhere, a loud primate war cry startled Elsa as a crossbow bolt with something warped around the arrowhead struck the ground in front of her from a high angle.
"What—" and before she could understand what was happening, the bolt exploded and released a thick cloud of white smoke, impairing her vision and interrupting the fight...