Chương 97: 16 - Sacrifice

When examining a suspect, it is important to keep in mind that the typical markers of a pact with demonic forces are ambiguous. White hair, missing body parts, and other unusual appearances can be attributed to the worship of demons. Yet, they can also be of natural causes. The justice of the Arbiters is not blind. Thus Licaniel blessed us with the skills necessary to unveil the truth. Excerpt from To Recognize Corruption, by Arbiter Sevran. Dark Bolt. What was a finger if she got a chance to continue?

Her heart was threatening to jump out of her chest. But as the roots of the monster pressed her to the ground, the idea was growing more appealing. Because she couldn't move, she couldn't read her journal. There wasn't even enough space to summon it. Yet, she remembered the skill quest. Sacrifice a finger. Could she do that? She wanted to shrug, but her bindings didn't allow her to. She'd do anything to survive. Anything for her streak. But… Could she sacrifice a finger? She couldn't move.

But the force that governed this world cared little for practicality. Just as the decision to pay the price solidified in her mind, she felt it in her right hand. Her ring finger, to be precise, was gone. Gone. Just like that. Not cut, withered, melted, or severed. Just gone. It wasn't even painful, save for the gaping absence when she grasped her sickle. In place of her finger, instinctual knowledge on how to use Dark Bolt surfaced in her mind. It was simple.

Much like Inflict Weakness, she just had to lock on a target and will for the spell to fire. Missing, through a mistake or a dodge, was always a possibility. But here… She couldn't exactly miss, could she? So she did as she should, and channeled the willpower to cast Dark Bolt. She felt something spill out of her. It wasn't mana. She'd played the Warlock class for a decade. Sure, Lone World Online was a game, but the similarities were enough.

Then, Dark Bolt had cost health to cast, here the price was something more insidious. She was draining her lifeforce. Somehow, she knew it to be true. She scoffed, almost tempted to laugh at herself. This felt like the ramblings of a lunatic. But it was true, she could feel it with such certainty that doubt wasn't an option. She hesitated. But the lancing absence of her finger reminded her of the line she'd already crossed, and she fired from the tip of her index finger.

She couldn't see it, but she sensed the needle pull her lifeforce before it moved. It hit the roots. Of course it did, her finger was point-blank on her target. Unlike everything she'd tried before, this had an effect. The roots writhed as if they could feel pain, allowing the light of the setting sun to reach Alexandra. The first thing she noticed was that her hair had turned white. Then she moved, rushing in the gap to extricate herself from her captor.

On the roots, a stroke of darkness spread, swallowing it all. The beast roared from a mouth she didn't know it had. The main body moved. Faster. The earth shook. It was coming for her. Alexandra raised her sickle holding hand to her face. There was a gap between her pinky and middle finger. No stump, just empty. She should run, but all she felt was rage, and a thirst for violence she wasn't sure she could contain. She bit her lower lip, and frowned. It really was a bad idea. She ran at it.

The darkened roots were sluggish, their tips dragging furrows in the dirt instead of snapping upright. She took the first at the base, one pull, clean. The second deflected off something hard beneath the bark and she adjusted, found softer tissue, and cut it there. Black fluid wept from the wound and browned the grass where it fell. The main body hadn't stopped moving. The earth rolled ahead of it in slow waves she could feel through the soles of her boots.

A root came from the left, fast, the kind that hadn't been touched by the bolt. She caught it on the spine of her blade and redirected it down into the dirt, stepping on it as she passed. Another from behind. She felt the displaced air and turned, took it on the backswing, two hits before it came free. Back to the dark ones. She cut four in quick succession, the blade going deeper than she expected each time, the weakened tissue offering almost no resistance.

She was moving through them in a rhythm now, reading the boundary between the slow roots and the fast ones by the color of them, dark and weeping versus green and taut. Her shin hit something and she stumbled, caught herself on one hand, was back up before the nearest root could find her. The severed ends behind her were still seeping. The creature stopped. Not the roots. Everything. The ground went still beneath her feet. The roots that had been reaching, flanking, testing her edges, went slack where they stood.

The main body sat with its surface glistening, mossy and dark green in the flat evening light, and did not move. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Alexandra held her sickle up and breathed. She was smiling. Tall. Then the smell arrived. Not the orange sweetness from before. Something else. Woodsmoke. The faint bitterness of Aetherveil that had worked itself into every surface of a particular house on the main road of Lanterne.

The figure appeared between two root stumps at the edge of the clearing. Lara, arms folded, weight on one hip, wearing her usual caring expression. Her feet sat half a finger's width above the ground. She opened her mouth. The voice that came out was not Lara's.

"Come inside. Soup's on." Alexandra looked at the floating impression of her friend. She spat blood from a cut inside her cheek.

"No." Lara's smile twisted and distorted into an impossible grimace as she flew at her. She knew it was an illusion, but she wasn't sure she could ignore it. So Alexandra raised her sickle, and met the farce head on. The fake Lara hit her like a wall of wet roots and she stumbled back two steps, got her footing, and brought her sickle back up. Lara's face. Lara's hands. The same height, the same shoulders. She hooked the nearest arm at the wrist, pulled it wide, stepped inside.

The grip that found her was strong, fingers digging into the muscle above her collarbone. She drove her elbow into Lara's ribs and felt something crack. She cut twice into the gap she'd made. Black fluid ran down the inside of Lara's forearm. The face didn't change. Still Lara, still the same eyes, watching her with an expression she couldn't read and didn't try to. The thing wailed.

"Soup." The illusion came back low. She caught it on the spine of her blade, turned with it, brought the sickle down on the back of the neck. The cut went deep. The illusion made a sound between the chirp of a bird and the creak of wood. She drove her knee up. The grip cracked loose a finger's width and she wrenched free, skin tearing. Lara straightened. Tilted her head. Smiled.

"Soup?" Alexandra moved first. Hook to the leading arm, redirected past her hip, step inside, blade finding the side where she'd already cut twice. She felt the sickle find something beneath the surface and pulled. Lara seized. She pulled harder, the curve doing the work, and something tore free with a sound that scattered black fluid across the front of her shirt. Lara's knees found the dirt. Then her hands. The face was still hers, eyes still open, still watching, right up until it wasn't.

The features blurred at the edges, lost resolution, the shape of the jaw going slack and wrong. The hands were too long suddenly. The shoulders sat wrong. Alexandra lowered her sickle, wrapped it around Lara's neck. The fake's eyes widened.

"Alexandra, don't!" The voice was a close enough impression that she hesitated. Her hand tightened on the grip. She pulled, slicing Lara's throat open. It came apart. The roots lost their shape all at once, collapsing inward, the face the last thing to go. Alexandra stood over a pile of dead wood and breathed. Her forearm was bleeding. The skin had torn on the way out of that grip, a long shallow split from wrist to elbow. She looked at it for a moment, then looked away. The illusion had fallen apart.

But the monster wasn't dead. The main body hadn't moved since the illusion dropped. She walked toward it. The weakened roots came first, three of them breaking the surface in a loose arc, slower than anything she'd faced today. She took the leftmost one at the base, stepped over the middle, hooked the third and redirected it into the dirt. None of them bled the way the others had. Running dry. Ten meters. Five.

The moss surface was split where the darkness had spread, a long fissure running up the side of it, the edges blackened and weeping. She could smell the chlorophyll from here, thick and green, overlaid with a hint of rot that wasn't there before. She put her hand flat against the surface. It gave slightly, like pressing a bruise. Hollow. She found her grip on the fissure's edge, fingers digging into the softened tissue, and pulled herself up. A root caught her ankle immediately.

She kicked it loose without looking down, got her knee onto the surface, and pushed up to standing. The main body swayed under her weight. The moss compressed and split further beneath her boots, black fluid seeping up around the soles. Two roots came up over the side. She cut one, stamped the other flat, felt it crack under her heel. It was fragile. She started jumping. Not high. Just enough to drive her weight down through her heels on each landing, targeting the split in the surface, working it wider.

The structure groaned beneath her on the third impact. On the fifth something gave way with a wet crack and her right foot sank ankle-deep into the interior. She pulled it free and jumped again. The roots had stopped coming. The surface was collapsing inward now, the fissure spreading in both directions, the edges crumbling as the interior lost its structure. She moved with it, keeping her footing as the ground shifted, reading the surface. Where it held, where it didn't. She found the center of it by feel.

The densest point, where the tissue was thickest, where the collapse was slowest. She planted her feet and drove her sickle in two-handed, spine first, as deep as it would go. The whole mass shuddered. She pulled the blade free and drove it in again. Again. Each impact sank deeper than the last, the compromised tissue offering less resistance every time. Black fluid was running freely now, soaking into the dirt around the base of the creature in a spreading dark ring.

Something ruptured beneath the surface with the sound of a snapped bowstring and the whole mass sank three inches in one motion, the sides folding inward, the top tilting. She rode it down. When it stopped moving she was standing in the collapsed center of it, knee-deep in wet moss and broken root, her sickle still in her hand. The plains were quiet. She looked down at what was left of it, breathing hard through her mouth. Still smiling. Her journal appeared in her left hand. She flipped it open.

Dark Bolt: Somber power requires fuel. Sacrifice a finger (1/1). Dark Bolt 1 -> 2 Sickle Mastery 4 -> 5 You've achieved a feat: Defiance Alexandra's eyes went wide at the last line. She didn't expect that. She flipped the pages, looking for details. Defiance: Slay an Iron rank while unranked. +1 all stats. She whistled.

"Nice. I need more of those." Then she remembered the state of her body and winced. White hair, missing finger, ruined clothes, cuts and bruises everywhere… How was she going to explain that to the real Lara?