Chapter 238: Chapter 231: Consequences
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Mikoto’s breath hitched. A sharp gasp tore from his throat, his delicate form jolting as sothing cold and tallic slid through his body.
There it was.
A silver blade, slick with his own blood, protruding from his small, lithe torso.
The wound gaped around the impalent, his armor doing little to halt the deep, unforgiving penetration. His delicate, gauntleted fingers trembled as they gingerly brushed the slick tal. The warmth of his own blood seeped through his fingertips.
("A lung—")
His thoughts stumbled, fragnted. His vision blurred at the edges, his body screaming in protest, but his mind—his mind was still razor-sharp, before his attacker could even consider twisting the blade, Mikoto reacted.
His slender right arm snapped backward in a counter, his elbow driving into the unknown assailant’s face, the impact crunched. A sickening collision of flesh and bone. Their skull caved inward, their nose shattered, their cheekbone collapsed like brittle glass.
The assailant made no sound of pain.
But they flew.
Their body launched through the air like a ragdoll, a blur, the force of the strike tearing the embedded blade from Mikoto’s flesh as they crashed violently into the debris-littered ground.
Clang.
The blade clattered to the ground behind him, tainted in a crimson sheen—his blood.
Mikoto staggered, barely able to suppress the involuntary shudder that wracked his fra. His gauntleted hand shot to the fresh wound, his fingers pressing against the torn armor and warm, wet, pulsing agony beneath.
("Tch... it grazed a lung. Fuck.")
His breathing hitched—shallow, uneven. His body shuddered, his insides feeling as if they were unraveling, organ by organ.
With sluggish movents, he turned.
His gaze flickered to the sword on the ground. A simple silver longsword, utterly unremarkable. No detailed design. No magical presence. No enchantnts.
Yet, it had pierced him.
How utterly pathetic.
If he were not in such disarray, he would have sensed the assailant and could have defended himself. His lips curled in disdain, but before he could dwell further, a voice—a familiar, condescending voice—slithered through the air.
"I got that blade for quite the good price, you know?"
Mikoto’s eyes narrowed, tracing upward from the bloodied steel to the source of the voice.
And there he was.
Aelfric.
The Ancestor of Wisdom.
That sa unblemished, infuriatingly composed face, the sa dark spiked hair framing his ever-present smirk, the sa haunting red eyes, mirroring his own yet lacking any true soul.
Mikoto scoffed.
"Of course it’s you," he sneered, voice laced with disdain, though his breaths were coming shallower, his body screaming for reprieve.
Aelfric wiped the blood from his face, the damage already undone. His nose, his cheekbone—the injuries that should have left him a disfigured man—gone.
Erased.
As if they had never been there.
Mikoto’s delicate features twisted into disgust. How abhorrent.
"Finally crawled out of your hole, eh?" Mikoto drawled, tilting his head, his silky white hair slipping over his shoulder. Even now, even wounded, he refused to look weak. "Of course you couldn’t be bothered to fight
fairly."
Aelfric chuckled, his smirk widening, his gaze soaking in the sight of the petite, bloodstained boy before him.
"Why would I bother with what’s fair concerning trash like you?" He took a step forward. "And I am the Ancestor of Wisdom, you know. Battling you at full strength is hardly sothing anyone would consider wise. But the state you are in now? Well you’re free ga."
Mikoto clicked his tongue, already calculating, already thinking ahead. But no matter how sharp his mind, his body... his body was failing him.
("Guinevere and Lyra should still be busy looking for that. I didn’t exactly make the location easy, so I can’t expect backup.")
He grit his teeth. No magic. No backup.
The absolute worst possible scenario.
"That power you unleashed..." Aelfric murmured, his tone almost mockingly intrigued, as if dissecting a fascinating specin. "It took a toll on you. A mortal could never contain such force, not even with a fabricated vessel. It likely even scarred your very soul."
Mikoto’s jaw tightened.
"Your magic is unstable. You couldn’t sense
approach. That’s why an ordinary blade was enough to wound you. That’s why—"
Aelfric smiled, slow, taunting.
"I surmise you cannot even summon that pesky little sword of yours."
Mikoto remained silent, because he was right. Sothing was wrong. His magic was fraying. His very essence felt off. He could feel it slowly repairing, but ti was a luxury he did not have.
"You seem pretty confident." Despite it all, despite the pain, despite the dire situation—Mikoto smirked. "I might not be able to summon Sabre or use magic right now, but my physical strength is more than enough to deal with a pissant like you."
"Do you truly think you can last?" Aelfric’s voice was smooth, almost pitying. "Your body is still paying the price of that form. You will crumble before ."
Mikoto chuckled. "You don’t sound so sure and I know exactly why."
Silence.
Mikoto’s rosy lips curled wider, his eyes gleaming with sothing triumphant.
"Lyra told
about your ability. And your Ancestor buddy? Told
sothing real convenient."
Aelfric’s gaze sharpened.
"Your future sight—it’s superior to conventional clairvoyance, yeah? But it follows the sa principle. Fate and the future are one and the sa. That ans..."
Mikoto tilted his head, grinning.
"You don’t know what I’ll do next, do you?"
A flicker of sothing dangerous passed through Aelfric’s eyes.
"And with
being directly tied to Lyra and Guinevere... their futures are in disarray too. aning—"
Mikoto leaned in slightly, his breath ragged yet laced with laughter.
"You. Are. Blind."
"You’re correct..." Aelfric’s voice, always so asured, so composed, was a whisper of certainty edged with sothing dangerous. "These eyes of mine know not your fate."
And yet, despite that admission, a slow smile began to stretch across his lips, the corners pulling ever so slightly as if he were relishing the challenge. His black robes swayed in the wind, speckled with Mikoto’s blood.
"But even so, everything is in my advantage. As such, Mikoto... I shall kill you."
Mikoto... simply tilted his head.
He had been idly rubbing his delicate chin, the ghost of a thought flickering in those molten-red eyes before sothing cruel—sothing awful—lit within them. A lightless hint of amusent. His lips, delicate and deceivingly sweet, stretched into an impossibly wide grin, one that should have never belonged on a face so ethereal. So beautifully inhuman.
"Tell ..." His voice was soft, a prelude to sothing terrible. The pause that lets fear fester. The breath before the plunge. "What would your wife and child think of such talk?"
The world stopped.
The shifting winds ceased to howl. The red-stained ground beneath them suddenly seed colder. Everything felt like an afterthought.
Aelfric’s expression—composed, amused, so sure of himself—shattered.
His pupils shrank. His breath caught in his throat as though the weight of the past had suddenly wrapped its cold, dead fingers around his neck. His entire fra stiffened, rigid, unprepared, as if the words had struck sothing deeper than any blade ever could.
"What...?" The word barely left him, strangled, uncertain. "How...?"
His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white, then unclenched, then clenched again—like a man trying to hold onto sothing that no longer existed, that had already slipped through his fingers eons ago. His body betrayed him in that mont, every twitch, every minuscule movent screaming of sothing long buried and suddenly unearthed.
Mikoto saw it.
And oh—
Oh, how he relished it.
A sharp, manic sound tore from his throat, a bark of laughter so unhinged, so delightfully cruel, that it echoed through the air, filling the void with sothing far worse than silence. His petite fra trembled, not from pain, not from exhaustion, but from sheer, unadulterated glee.
"Gyahahahah! Now that’s one hell of an expression... ha...hahahaha!!"
He doubled over, delicate shoulders shaking, hands on his knees, breathless from his own amusent. His cheeks were flushed, a soft pink hue against his porcelain skin, as though he were witnessing the greatest joke ever conceived. His white hair fell ssily over his eyes as he threw his head back, savoring every second.
"You act... haha—oh fuck, you act all scheming and shit, and now look at you."
His body trembled, red eyes gleaming through strands of white.
"You... you!!"
Aelfric’s voice cracked, not with fear—no, not yet—but with sothing volatile, sothing unrefined, sothing he hated. His hands shook, his breathing shallow, his immortal body betraying him in the only way it could. His chest rose and fell in uneven intervals, his lips slightly parted as though he wanted—needed—to say sothing, anything, to deny what had just been spoken into existence.
But Mikoto wouldn’t let him.
"Aww~
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