The streets were ruined.
Stone and dust cracked under my boots as the elders pressed down on from every direction.
Their strikes ca sharp and endless, weapons and fists tearing through the air like lightning.
I barely blocked the next one, my hands trembling under the weight of their combined mana.
Each breath I took burned like fire.
I couldn't even think anymore. The voice inside my head, the one that didn't belong to ...kept gnawing at the edges of my mind, whispering things I couldn't understand, things I didn't want to understand.
Every ti I tried to focus on it, another attack ca, forcing back.
There was no ti to think.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
Pixie.
Kneeling on the broken street, horns jagged and bleeding, her body shivering as though she was being torn apart from the inside.
And standing right beside her…was him.
Grandpa Venus.
His expression wasn't cold, nor kind. It was complicated, like even he didn't know whether to mourn her or kill her.
His black robe moved with the wind, his hands folded calmly, like all of this chaos ant nothing to him.
And that's when I knew.
He wasn't going to help us.
Not her.
Not .
Not anyone.
That was always his way.
Sacrifice the few for the greater good.
He had ousted and Grandma Sylvie from the house, stripped her mana core without hesitation, all because it was "necessary" in the first place.
That was who he was.
And now, with Pixie kneeling there, still in the middle of awakening, and drowning under the elders' attacks…he would do it again.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself back up against the weight of three more strikes. Sparks flew as my blade clashed against theirs.
But I couldn't let them win.
Because I knew exactly why they were ignoring her.
I had read about it a while back.
The awakening of a Kalki wasn't just a transformation; a second transition followed it. A painful, drawn-out phase where their body aligned with their Hollow blood, where their very soul reshaped itself, as to what exactly happened for the transition to be complete.
He did not know.
Only when that process ended would they leave behind a Hollow weapon upon death.
And that's what they were waiting for.
That's why every elder was focused on .
Keeping busy.
Bleeding out.
All while waiting for Pixie to finish her transition, so they could harvest her Hollow.
Monsters.
Every one of them.
"Damn it!" I roared, swinging hard enough to send one of them stumbling back.
But two more filled the gap instantly, their spears cutting across the air toward my ribs.
I twisted, barely deflecting one, but the other grazed my arm as more blood spilled out of my body.
My situation was so dire that even the thought of talking to Damien to find a way out was only wishful thinking.
My vision blurred for a second.
The voice in my head laughed.
But I shut it out.
I had to.
Another elder jumped at , and I ducked under his blade, driving my knee into his stomach and slamming him into the ground. But even as he fell, another strike cracked across my back.
Pain flared hot all over my body.
I staggered forward.
My body wasn't keeping up anymore. My skills, my agre two skills, were all I had.
And they weren't enough against these tens of elders with centuries of experience.
After all, almost all of these people had a stronger soul than , making my main skill useless.
As for mana drain?
These fuckers were already wary of it after seeing the confrontation between my grandpa and and focused on continously hacking their weapons at at a close range, so I couldn't use my mana drain.
Each second that passed, I lost ground.
Each second that passed, Pixie's condition seed to be getting worse.
I wanted to scream at her to run. To fight. To do anything. But when I looked back at her… she wasn't even aware of us.
Her body shook violently, her eyes rolling back as if she was lost sowhere else.
And Venus just stood there.
Watching her break.
Watching bleed...
My grip on my sword faltered.
Another strike crashed against . Then another. My legs started losing strength, and my body was screaming for to fall, but I forced myself to stay upright, forcing my blade between myself and the storm.
I could feel my mind slipping. The voice kept growing louder, more demanding. The worst part was, I couldn't even talk to Damien. Not here and definitely not now. There was no ti to understand who or what the voice was.
I was trapped in my own head while fighting for my life.
And then it happened.
I didn't even see who it was. Maybe I blinked too long or maybe my body slowed just enough.
But I felt it.
A cold steel piercing through my chest.
My breath stopped for a mont as my knees gave out. Warmth spread across my torso, sticky and heavy.
I coughed, the taste of iron flooding my mouth.
The world tilted sideways, the screams and crashes of battle fading into a distant hum. My vision blurred totally, but I could still make out the devastation across the Roro estate. Fires burned in the distance, flickering across the black sky, the scent of smoke and blood mixed together, choking and I could not help but wonder how Sylvie grandma would react after coming back from her secret mission.
Would she just mourn my death and move on...or would she take revenge for ?
And then, everything started to mix.
One mont, I was fighting the elders with nothing but my two skills and raw strength.
The next, I was…sowhere else.
I stood in front of a ruined house, realising that this was one of my mories.
The air was the sa, thick with smoke and bitter with iron.
Just a few feet away from … a lifeless body lay on the ground.
Munro Aldritch.
Pixie's father...or maybe not.
All I knew was that he was a man who had done nothing wrong.
A single father who had just been trying to live.
And I had killed him.
Not out of choice. Not out of anger that was mine.
But out of spite.
Spite that didn't belong to .
My chest rose and fell as I stared at the body, blood dripping from my blade in this mory.
And even as my consciousness began slipping away, the pieces finally clicked.
The voice inside my head all this ti…
…it wasn't so unknown stranger.
It wasn't an enemy.
No.
It was .
The Noah that I was supposed to be in the book.
***
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