Chương 77: CHAPTER 76 – Blades and Flesh

The shadow of the blade wavered in the storm of debris and iron blocks, shimmering red and blue. From the centre of that eruption of rock emerged a woman, her right hand wrapped in bandages glistening purple, coated with a thin film of crystals of the same colour. The iron of the sword and her knuckles collided, releasing a sea of golden sparks.

"Now, Noel!" From the flank, obscured by dust, a colossus of pure muscle lunged forward. Gripped in his metal hand, a heavy dark rifle with a long belt of ammunition strapped to his body. The woman smiled, violently striking the weapon with her forehead. The cloud dissolved, accompanied by the drip of blood.

"Brawny, big, and bursting with masculinity. Appreciable but…" Laure slid sideways, unbalancing Noel and forcing him to bend toward the ground. A series of sparks in various colours decorated the dust haze. The impact between his abdomen and her knuckles swept away the haze, also hurling Hoku away, who promptly anchored himself to the ground with his blade. Noel's body shot toward the ceiling, denting the thick iron beams that supported it.

Laure laughed, bending her knees and jumping with such force that the ground fractured.

"... YOU'RE NOT MY TYPE!" A fresh impact, so strong it brutally fractured the roof, showering her in blood, both her own and his. Laure's forearm was completely bent, with thin white and red columns piercing the dark skin.

"NOEL!!" Hoku darted at her, raising his blade. The white of bone vanished, giving way to a crystalline purple. The sword clashed against those crystals, scratching with a sharp screech.

"You certainly don't lack speed…" The blood began to flow back into her wounds, forcing Hoku's blade away. Laure grabbed him by the cheek with such force that her nails dug into the skin. He tried to seize her, but she was already pressing the metal with her leg, tensed and ready to spring. An instant, a single instant, and Hoku slammed into the ground, still in the woman's grip. A punch, a kick, and finally a headbutt to his bleeding face.

Hands clung to his face, and he felt a strange warmth and an equally peculiar scrabbling.

"It's the first time I've seen one from Sol! You're certainly not bad…" Laure let him fall to the ground, kicking him square in the stomach. Hoku felt the cold, hard concrete caress his back, followed by a moment of darkness.

"Lance faced this thing? No, she was holding back… Even when she greeted him, her frequency was tamer." Hoku lifted his gaze, seeing the gigantic column of flames and debris rise ominously from her shoulders. A product of imagination, yet so vivid in his eyes.

"Noel's body will be trying to regenerate him without using Euphorie, but it will take a while… Without him, we couldn't have forced her here." Hoku rested his blade on the ground, supporting his entire body on that thin metal stained with red. Laure halted her steps, watching him curiously, perhaps because of that strange shiver every time she met his face.

"You won't die with so little… I want to see everything you can do!" Laure smiled, slamming her bare foot onto the dusty floor. A cloud wrapped her from the groin down, letting the purplish glow of her hands grow ever more evident. Hoku murmured something, and his wounds began to snap shut like trapdoors.

"Kezuru." A strange white glow, like the reflection of a knife, shone over his entire body. His eyes grew somehow sharper, scratching at Laure's pupils, though she kept smiling.

"You said earlier that I certainly don't lack speed?" Hoku took a step forward, vanishing from sight and reappearing just beneath her, his fingers tight on the hilt of his sword. Laure did not react, or rather, could not. The iron severed the flesh of her shoulder, staining her arm in the dust.

"You're absolutely right, I don't lack it at all!" With a smile, Hoku struck her full in the face, hurling her several metres back. The woman, her expression neutral, stroked the blood on her face and the bare flesh." That punch cut me…" The red flow halted, and immediately a new limb emerged, moist and strong. Laure moved it for an instant and at once smiled, hopping in place. The moment their eyes met, both vanished, and countless fractures began to appear across the arena.

Laure materialised behind him, driving her elbow against Hoku's shoulder and smashing him to the ground. With equal speed she pursued him, fracturing the earth as her Frequency swelled terribly. Hoku rolled across the ground, regaining his feet in a flash. Laure appeared before him, her face very close. Swiftly, all his energy surged to his stomach, ready to receive the blow. Hoku slid along the ground, spitting blood but still awake, with the same sharp eyes as before. Laure laughed and hurled herself at him.

This time, the blade pierced her flesh.

"Your ability is based on enduring pain and recycling that sensation into pure energy, but at your stage, your brain has completely adapted to it." Hoku drove the point deeper and deeper until it emerged from her back. A red spurt escaped her lips, soiling his face.

"How clever…" Hoku's eyes widened. He released the blade and vanished. Laure's fist crashed to the ground, shaking the entire room. He appeared to her right, reaching for the blade, but Laure spotted him, grabbing Hoku by the throat and slamming him down.

"Too bad you're predictable." Laure lifted him high, just above her face. Hoku squeezed her wrist, trying to shift the fingers that were cutting off the air in his throat. Laure stretched out her hand, coating it with sharp reddish crystals. She drew her shoulder back and drove her nails into his abdomen. A glow manifested around him, and her arm was shredded into a reddish cloud.

"Enso!" The ground around him began to decompose, as if it had been diced into small cubes. Laure stared at him in confusion, releasing her grip before losing the other limb as well. Hoku smiled, seizing his sword again and opening two gashes across her chest in an instant. With a kick, he perforated her stomach, sending Laure flying. He caught his reflection in the metal and smiled.

"As I was saying… Your brain has adapted, so it's an almost limitless source of Frequency." He took a step forward, flicking the blood from his blade and letting out a laugh.

"However, there will be a limit where your body can no longer transmute all that pain…" The silvery metal began to vibrate and turn red. The hilt released smoke and a thin hiss. A purplish halo permeated the reddish metal, creating a horrible screech between the two colours.

"... And that is where I will lead you!" Hoku left a dense blanket of debris behind him as his laughter bounced from one side of the room to the other. Laure's eyes seemed almost to burst from their sockets to find him in that storm of rapid dashes.

"His Frequency has risen, and his physical abilities have improved exponentially, yet that earlier technique used the frequency in the air…" Laure stared at her arm, almost completely regenerated, and at her belly, totally rebuilt. She smiled, and the purplish crystals on her knuckles and arms began to grow and sharpen.

"Purge." A violent light, split between blue and red, erupted in a column from her body. The temperature immediately began to climb, until the iron at her feet seemed to boil. A violent boom exploded above her head, and her body moved in response. Hoku's blade and her fingers met, releasing a swarm of flames.

"The Frequency rose?!" Hoku smiled, disappearing and reappearing right in front of her. The iron cut through the air, aiming straight for her neck. A single impact, and soon Hoku realised that his sword barely made her skin bleed. Laure showed him her glowing lips, twisted into a violent smile. She raised her leg, and Hoku dropped his elbow, preventing the kick from splitting him clean in two.

"I've been thinking about it… And I believe it's something far more interesting than what you let on!" Laure slammed her leg down, watching him writhe on the ground as he clutched his reddened flank.

"Your ability can modify both the Frequency inside your body and the external one, am I right, Mr. Hybride?" Hoku got back up, spitting blood and colouring his grin a warm crimson.

"It's nothing special, believe me… If you wanted someone truly interesting, you should have hoped to meet Maliard." The blade trembled, seeking a grip among the cracks in the floor. Hoku watched her, a white halo in his yellowish pupils. Rising, he grabbed a boulder from the ground and showed it to Laure.

"You see, my ability is rather peculiar. However, it cannot function without a conductor to transfer my Frequency to the outside." He cleaned the blade without ever taking his eye off his opponent's body.

"In my language, many words can be read, written, defined in many different ways even though they are a single concept, and do you know how many meanings the verb 'to sharpen' can have where I come from?" Laure threw herself backward, but it was too late. The wall behind her was sliced by an invisible blade. It was not thrown air, nor incandescent energy. Her arm fell to the ground, its fingers still clenched into a fist. From the furrow in the ground, an imperceptible column of greyish smoke rose.

Hoku stayed there, his right index and middle fingers aimed at the wall. A little laugh rose from his throat, followed by a faint cough. The blade was caressed by the red light of the room, its colour heightened.

"If you're curious… I simply made the air that separated me from that wall sharp." Hoku stretched his blade against Laure's throat, scratching it with the reddish tip. Her legs went weak, and her entire figure slid under the boy, who was struck violently in the stomach.

"I bet your ability also acts as an enhancement for your physical capabilities." The woman smiled, sinking her nails into his abdomen. A glow radiated from the blade to the torn flesh, and the claws shattered in a purplish rain. Laure smiled before vanishing, cleaving the air in the room with every sweep of the ground. Hoku clung to his bloodied clothes, tracking Laure's movement with his gaze. Once again the crystal nails and the red blade clashed amid sparks.

No matter how much force his arms tried to pour into the hilt, the woman advanced, tearing rock from the ground and sinking Hoku's feet. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Is she an oni or what?! Even Noel wasn't this brutal when I met him." Slowly he lost ground, feeling his grip grow weaker and more painful. Hoku's eyes slid to the cracks between them, and he smiled. With a shout, he drove his blade into the ground, raising a block of rock slightly larger than his arm. Laure shattered it, bursting through the fragments and striking him directly in the face.

"Kenkyo!" Spitting blood, the ground vanished, leaving a cubic void several metres across around them. The smile on that woman's lips expanded to such a degree that it seemed the pure manifestation of voluptuousness. Hoku grabbed her throat, hurling her into the air with all the strength in his arm. His swollen face began to recompose itself as he kicked something thin and shiny through the air.

"Humility is the art of reducing our ego and our achievements. It is nothing other than the sharpening of the soul!" Right before her face, Laure saw the shape of a slender mass of rock glittering with an unnatural silvery glow, as if she were looking at the tip of a carefully tended blade. A snap of fingers resounded in the air.

"Diabolical…" A gigantic shadow spread over her body in a single second, obscuring everything. The mass of earth removed into nothingness now floated above her head. Hoku leaped upward, kicking it down with all the strength in his legs. The projectile of metal and cement struck Laure, crushing her to the ground and wrapping her in a cloud of debris.

"It's not enough, is it?" The moment his feet touched the floor, he raised the hilt to his chest and pointed the blade toward the dust cloud. The air tore, and a spurt of blood splattered across the floor.

"If you keep doing that, you'll never find a husband…" Hoku smiled, holding the blade steady against Laure's knuckles; completely regenerated, had it not been for the river of blood staining her cheeks and eyes. The woman laughed and kicked him in the stomach.

"I don't think that's any business for a little foreigner…" H0ku wiped his lips and spat a clot of blood and mucus right at her feet.

"Really? But I have been in this archipelago for such a long time!" Once again the two sized each other up, then vanished and reappeared across the room. The cuts on her arms multiplied, as did the bruises and blood on the agent. The blade severed her fingers, but a strike from Laure sank deep into his flank. Laughter rose from both of them, muffled by hisses and clashes. Where everything had begun, a terrifying scene now poisoned the sight of Jeanne and Maliard, wounded and barely able to command their bodies.

"What have you become?" David smiled, seizing the remnants of bone still desperately anchored to his shoulder. Before him, his face rendered unrecognisable by ice and rock splinters, stood Lance Klint. The only undamaged portion of flesh was the left side, offering a glimpse of purplish veins beneath the bluish crust.

"It has been since time immemorial that I could not feed, and you give me barely a mouthful…" The arms made from rocks on David's shoulders collapsed to the ground, and the portals snapped shut. A heavy, baleful air immediately pressed down upon his shoulders. Lance stretched his hand toward the ice that tore at his skin, pressing his nails against its surface. The smile beneath twisted into a churning cauldron of rage as he began to rip away the cold.

"IT'S UNACCEPTABLE!!!" Maliard stared in horror as his companion's face was hurled aside. At Jeanne's feet, Lance's eye, a globe of crystal with yellowish touches, rolled. Maliard raised his gaze, watching the black slime coat his skull bones, plugging the blood and slowly restoring shape to that horrid monster of such familiar aspect. Blood began to flow once more inside his wounds, and a new eye burst from the empty socket, full of morbid vitality.

With a smile, Lance seized his arm, likewise afflicted by ice, and tore it off with a single flick of the wrist. He dropped it, shattering it into a mass of reddish splinters and necrotised flesh. David lost his smile for a second, feeling a constant whisper in his ear, something ethereal and steeped in malignancy.

"Karmesin!!!" All the blood in Lance's body exploded outward, coating his hands in a hideous armour of bony scales of an infernal crimson tone. Beneath those veins, sharp onyx blades emerged, luminous. David shook his head, stretching his hand toward the beast before him.

"Five fingers shall fall…"Lance spoke, and David saw his index, middle, thumb, ring, and little fingers fall and stain the remains of his shoes. In front of him, Lance stared straight into his eyes, flicking the blood from his armour.

"The liver will suffice as an hors d'oeuvre…" A flash of pain tore through David's body, followed at once by the slimy heat of blood. In Lance's hands, a dark, soft mass. David understood, grabbing his shoulder and freezing. The boy looked at him, baring all his teeth, especially the two terribly long canines. His forearm was severed, and an immediate warmth spread across his abdomen.

"Greetings…" From his hand, a flash of black and red light burst forth, enveloping David and hurling him against the remains of the wall. The explosion brought down the entire partition, opening access to what appeared to be a reception hall, perhaps displaced here by the damage from the Leviathan. A large chandelier swayed furiously, spreading its crystalline light into the red of the room. A table of black wood with gold finishes occupied the centre, despite the absence of any dishes.

On the walls, paintings of a young man with blond hair and dark eyes. In every depiction, his face and slight receding hairline conveyed pure resolve and ambition, driven by those thin pink lips. David raised his aching body, sheathing all his skin in ice and rock. To his right, lit by intermittent alarms, a complex of pipes and dark gears. He smiled, raising his hand toward a portal above his head. Clutched in his fingers, a blade of rock and ice nearly as large as his entire body.

On his chest, a black tattoo began to appear, depicting a woman and a harp From the same portal, a top hat fell onto his head. Its surface was glossy, and the seams seemed made of something organic yet indiscernible. The only natural thing about that garment to the human eye was the pink, sharp magnolia flower anchored halfway up the hat.

"Now… I will give you everything I can muster up." The man smiled, staring at the boy, who drooled while still clutching the liver in his greasy fingers. Maliard got back to his feet, gripping his chain, scraped together thanks to what little ability he had left to move air.

"Lance…" He stopped as soon as his companion sank his teeth into the organ he held in his bloody hand. His eyes lit with joy, shining gold as never before. The drool at his mouth only increased, along with the pallor on Jeanne's face. Lance finished the horrid meal, spitting some remains to the ground, now visibly disgusted.

"Women taste better, just as I remembered…" Lance murmured bitterly, twisting his lips redder than ever. Even his hair had lightened to an almost silvery colour. All his concentration returned to David, who had emerged from the decorated room. His blade carved a furrow in the ground, making small wedges of ice and snow rise. The boy smiled, walking toward him. With every pool of blood his footprints left behind, a red and black flower sprouted, its star-shaped petals mingling with others of a more wavy form.

The flowers stopped appearing when he launched himself at David, covering the entire space between them in a heartbeat. A laugh rang through the ruins of the hall as gigantic structures of ice and sea rock twisted and coiled into a labyrinth of matter.

"Kreidefelsen auf Rügen!" Lance threw himself from side to side, driving his red claws into the white, smooth rock. A sharp monolith launched him over the ledge, letting him hover above the black sea beneath. A colossal mass of rock, plants, and even water began to paint a landscape of unthinkable beauty: a cliff where the horizon merges with the sky, or would have, had the stones not turned into deadly traps. Lance hurled himself at David, yet something blocked his hands.

"Not while I'm admiring!" The man drove his sword between Lance's hands, then flung him against the rocks. Instantly the smooth stone became sharp, cradling him in a piercing embrace.

"Magnificent! It's exactly like the fairy tale of the Devil and the Prince!" David laughed, riding the waves among the cliffs, pointing his finger at Lance, crucified upon the bloodstained rocks. A clap of his hands and the white matter obeyed, crushing the boy in an instant. He removed his hat and waited. A rain of white splinters tore through the placid sea surface, ripping through the plants and cutting David's face. The cliff shattered violently as Lance emerged in a veil of barbed blood.

He bared his teeth: red here, white there, in a smile illuminated by the golden glow of his pupils. Laughing, he lifted one of the rocks and launched himself into the air along with the fragment. David stretched out his hand, encircling him tighter and tighter. His smile became truly evident when he saw Lance smash through the barrier.

"Die now." The column of rock crashed down upon him, making the sea erupt in a briny rain. Both were enveloped by the block of water suspended in the void. David stroked his wet clothes, savouring the distorted reflections on the water's surface. Before him, in the blue, a red, dense mist began to thrash.

"Oh, Lachesi …" Muffled by the water, a soft, delicate voice caressed his eardrums through the current. Lance's figure became visible, his palm wrapped in black armour and aimed at David.

"That is the black relic… The twin of Monica Net's weapon." As the glow reached his eyes, his body immediately shielded itself. Violet light began to dance, boiling the water into a swarm of bubbles.

"Devour my spirit and feed on the world!" The scales on his arm opened, beginning to absorb the bubbles and the water around him. Black veins carved his face, and his hair lightened still further, now resembling dirty wax.

"SALVE!!" David opened a portal a few moments before a beam of black and violet light pierced the sea, burrowing into the wall and vanishing to the upper floors. The energy burst from the tower, radiating its luminosity across the entire region. Anyone outside felt an icy shiver at the sight of that unnatural, malefic colour. Even the flames lost the strength to burn and dimmed.

"A weapon that disintegrates every trace of Hel presence from the world…" David tore off his arm, perforated by Lachesi, and threw the smoking remains to the ground. With a smile, he plunged his shoulder into the portal, pulling out another blade along with a new limb.

"YOU SHOULD NOT WIELD IT!" A dark, metallic hand gripped the remains of the railing, now fused with ice and rock. A laugh broke free from the black void as the weapon's owner returned to the battlefield. His body was torn by dark, luminous scars, as if they had been painted on. Lance's breathing was irregular and laboured, accompanied by the twisting of bones beneath his chest. His hair, once black, was now cerulean and slicked to his nape. His teeth began to protrude from pale lips, like the rest of his skin.

The blood armour had collapsed, giving way to a full coating formed by Lachesi itself.

"Not bad… As a first amusement after all this time!" With an unnaturally shrill voice, Lance dropped to all fours on the floor, fixing David with the gold of his eyes. Maliard and Jeanne stared at him, feeling something far worse than worry growing in their guts, a feeling that transcends fear and hatred: terror.