Chapter 297: My Tsundere Programming Has Encountered a Fatal Error
Natalia heard his ribs break. The sound was wet and awful, like soone stomping on a bag of chips filled with at. His combat suit tore open across his chest, revealing the ruin beneath. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him skidding through the black water, leaving a red trail in his wake.
He hit a pillar.
Slid down.
Coughed blood.
"SATORI!"
The na ripped out of Natalia’s throat before she could stop it. Her barrier flickered. Her concentration shattered. For one terrible mont, she forgot about everyone else, forgot about the mission, forgot about everything except the broken boy bleeding in the black water.
You idiot. You absolute IDIOT. Why would you break yourself for her? Why would you throw your body away like that? Why—
Emi was crying.
The healer had collapsed to her hands and knees, tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking with sobs. But she wasn’t looking at Satori with the gratitude of a saved teammate.
She was looking at him like he was a god.
A savior who had descended from the heavens to shield her from darkness.
Natalia felt sothing ugly twist in her chest. Sothing hot and possessive and completely inappropriate for a near-death situation.
He’s MINE. He protected you because you’re USEFUL, not because he cares about you. Don’t you DARE look at him like that. Don’t you—
Satori stood up.
Natalia’s thoughts crashed to a halt.
He shouldn’t be standing. His chest was caved in. Blood poured from his mouth with every breath. His left arm hung at a wrong angle. By every law of biology and common sense, he should be dying.
But he stood up anyway.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his functional hand.
And he grinned.
That infuriating, arrogant, scumbag grin that made her want to slap him and kiss him in equal asure.
"Is that all you got, calamari?"
His voice was rough. Wet. It bubbled with blood. But it was steady.
Sothing was happening to him. Natalia could see it now. The air around him was shimring. His eyes were too bright, almost glowing with crimson light. Every wound on his body seed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat, and with each pulse, he moved a little easier. Stood a little straighter.
The pain is making him stronger.
She’d known about this ability. He’d told her about it during one of their private sessions, voice casual as he explained how agony was just another resource to exploit. She’d thought she understood.
She hadn’t understood at all.
"Isabelle!" His voice cracked like a whip. "Grab Soomin and fall back to the barrier! Emi, keep the others alive! Natalia!"
He looked at her.
His eyes found hers across the chaos of the battlefield, and everything else faded away. The monster. The dying. The crushing weight of the gravity field. There was only him, broken and bleeding and beautiful in the worst possible way.
Possessiveness.
"Hold the line, Nat. I’ll handle the big guy."
Isabelle didn’t argue.
The queen of the Onyx Hounds retrieved her spear from the water, grabbed the injured Soomin by the scruff of her neck, and retreated toward Natalia’s barrier without a word of protest.
Satori turned to face the Abyssal Nerve.
The monster pulsed with what might have been amusent. Its child-face tilted, those empty eyes studying the broken human who dared to challenge it.
"Foolish," the voice whispered in their heads. "You are already dead. Your body simply hasn’t realized it yet."
Satori raised his bat.
"Funny. That’s the sa thing my guidance counselor said when I told her I wanted to be a Hunter."
He attacked.
Fire erupted from his hand. [Thermal Incision] carved a burning line through the air, searing into the entity’s gelatinous body. Steam exploded from the wound. The monster scread, its psychic voice tearing at Natalia’s mind.
Satori pressed forward.
He swung the bat like a demon possessed, each impact sending ripples through the creature’s form. He was carving chunks out of it. Burning away its mass. Forcing it backward for the first ti since the battle began.
But he was taking hits too.
A tendril caught his left shoulder. Natalia heard sothing pop. His arm, already damaged, went completely limp.
He kept swinging.
Another tendril swept his legs. He crashed into the water face-first, disappeared beneath the black surface for a heart-stopping mont, then exploded back up swinging.
Blood sprayed from his mouth with every exhale.
Stop. Stop. Please stop. You’re going to die. You’re going to—
He went down to one knee.
His bat drove into the stone beneath the water, the only thing keeping him upright. His entire body shook like a leaf in a hurricane. The water around him had turned red with his blood.
The Abyssal Nerve lood above him.
Its tendrils retracted. Its mass condensed. All that darkness, all that ancient malice, gathered into a single point at the center of its body. A spear of void energy crystallized in the air, aid directly at Satori’s head.
The weapon pulsed once. Twice.
Ready to fire.
The battlefield went silent.
Natalia couldn’t breathe.
Ti stretched like taffy, each second lasting an eternity. She saw everything with horrible clarity. The blood running down Satori’s face. The way his hands trembled on the bat’s grip. The smile still carved into his features, that arrogant scumbag grin that refused to die even when he couldn’t move.
He looked up at the void spear.
He looked death in the face.
And he laughed.
A broken, bloody, defiant sound that echoed through the cathedral chamber.
No.
Sothing cracked inside Natalia’s chest.
No no no no no—
The logic broke. The strategy broke. The carefully constructed mask of the ice princess, the tsundere armor she’d worn for years, shattered into a million pieces that scattered across the black water like broken glass.
She didn’t care about the plan anymore.
She didn’t care about the hierarchy.
She didn’t care about anything except the fact that he was about to die and she couldn’t let that happen. WOULDN’T let that happen.
Her barrier dropped.
The gravity slamd down on the unconscious bodies behind her, but she was already moving. Her hand reached out, telekinetic power flaring in a wild, uncontrolled burst that sent black water exploding in every direction.
The void spear began to move.
And Natalia scread.
Not his title. Not his role in her life. Not any of the careful, distant nas she used to keep herself safe.
Just the only word that mattered.
"SATORI!!!"
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